Last Call

3/26/2009

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5:40 PM -- A few things you should see before heading for the bar to watch the rest of your bracket fall to pieces:

1. Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) goes to a tradeshow to talk about what it's going to be doing at an upcoming tradeshow.
   
   
2. Deep Packet Iinspection is becoming the next technology carriers will abuse to provide "better service" while magically charging lots more money for services that they used to sell on a flat-rate, who-cares-how-much-you-use basis. Well, hey, their monopoly on the voice network is just about over. Who can blame them?
   
   
3. Google cut 200 sales and marketing jobs. What will those folks do with their pets all day if they can't take them to work?
   
   
4. Good news for you old-school TV watchers out there (who wouldn't be reading this blog, anyway, despite the gloriously large fonts we're using): The NTIA has some money to replace expired TV converter box coupons. See? Change has come to America.
   
   
5. Service providers are going to love this: A new service called OnLive offers video games on demand and is capable of displaying beautiful graphic images and video, even on crappy consumer hardware. It does all the rendering in a cloud, which means it's magical. I wouldn't be surprised if unicorns were somehow involved. Anyway, when you look at even the most simplified description of how the service works, you see a big cloud in the middle where service providers are going to hide and take your wallet once you start enjoying yourselves.
   
   
6. I'll end on this bombshell: Investigative reporter Mitch Wagner discovers that city governments are inward-looking, out-of-touch, and stodgy when it comes to social media. I should add that they're also understaffed, usually under-funded, and that I'd rather someone in the bowels of the city spend her days keeping my tap water on than setting up a Facebook fan page. Just sayin'...
   
   

— Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading