The Tomigaia Blog

Upgraded to MT 3.2

After coming under heavy trackback spam, I upgraded to MT 3.2 yesterday. Let's see if this helps.

Finally getting back to this blog.

It has been many months since I touched this blog. I have some time this summer, so I am going to be working on it. The first this I have done today is to upgrade the blog software I am using to Movable Type version 3.17. This should disable comment spam and ping spam... (I hope).

This does mean that all of you out there need to get a TypeKey id to add comments, but that should not be too hard.

Hope to put some new content on this blog very soon.

Claimed my own blog at Technorati.

I just claimed my own blog at Technorati. What will this do for me? Let's wait and see!

In Korea for IETF-59

I am in Korea this week attending IETF-59. It has been an interesting meeting, with great support from the Korean hosts.

One big topic that was on everyone's mind seems to be SPAM. It sounds like the IETF community is going to get serious about fixing some weaknesses in the e-mail infrastructure by standardizing a way for authorizing SMTP senders withing a specific domain (for more info, see the charter.)

I also went to the night market at Dongdaemun, and saw how much people in Seoul like to shop at night.

I hope to put some pictures up here soon.

Visit to Japan

I am visiting Tokyo this week after being away for about 2 years. It is great to be back. So much has changed, and yet there are many places that are exactly as they were when I moved away in 2001.

Some impressions from walking through Shibuya and my old neighborhood of Tomigaya: the youth are very different from their parents. They have rebelled against the contraints of tradition, and are going to live life on their own terms.

Cell phones are now in everyone's ears. The Internet has become a commodity, and everybody is using it, all the time. Many people I speak with feel that the Japanese economy is improving. Consumer electronics seems to be selling well. Everybody seems to be upgrading their digitial camera or their cell phone.

After seeing so much positive energy in the street, I feel like Japan may improve a lot in the next few years. It's great to see it firsthand.

New Year's Resolution

For 2004, I hearby resolve to try to work smarter. To find a better balance between work and play. To be more creative, to try more lateral thinking.

Thanks to everybody who read my blog in 2003, and I promise to write more thoughts down in 2004.

Happy New Year!

Looking forward to Movable Type 3.0

I just found out that one of the new features that will be in MT 3.0 will be registration for commenters. This is great. I can't wait. No more easy way to add "comment spam"!

Closing comments on this blog

Due to the actions of a bunch of blog spammers who defaced my blog, I am turning off open comments on all my blog entries.

For now, if you have comments, please e-mail them to me, and give me your permission to post them to the blog.

I hope someone finds a reliable solution to blog spammers! This is a start.

Attending the 57th IETF meeting in Vienna

I am at the Autria Center in Vienna today, attending the 57th IETF meeting. At the reception last night there were all the usual suspects in attendance. It seems that there are more European attendees than usual. One big debate that seems to be on everyone's mind is the continuing validity of the "end to end principle". There is a lot of debate about what this term really means. I have been reading the Reed paper and a page by J. Noel Chiappa.

I won't be blogging from each Working Group meeting, but I will try to blog a little about the bigger issues under discussion.

Summer Greeting Card

I sent out a Summer Greeting card by e-mail today. If you would like to see it, click here. Does it make sense? Should it make sense?

Attended GEL conference

Today I spent the whole day at the GEL conference. It was organized by my friend Mark Hurst of Good Experience fame, and it went very well. Despite the fact that two of his speakers were no-shows, all the other speakers were excellent, and there was a good feeling in the room. I found the talk by Ze Frank to be the funniest, and Jim Kunstler's to be the most passionate.

I reccomend this conference to everybody who cares about good experiences. Next year's should be even better!

Report from the 56th IETF Meeting

After attending this spring's IETF meeting, I feel that I have a much better idea of how the organization works. It is still a refuge for the gods of the Internet, and they are an interesting bunch. I was very busy, and didn't have much time to socialize, but did meet a very interesting person there, a Michal Wasserman, who was both an engineer and a very good composer of piano music.

As for trends in technology, it is hard to judge that from the IETF, but I can tell you that IPv6 is very popular, and so is SIP.

I will be at the next IETF meeting in Vienna, and hope to enjoy my first meeting in Europe! See you there.

Off to San Francisco for the 56th Meeting of the IETF

I am off to San Francisco for the IETF meeting. I hope to post any interesting happenings while I am there. There should be a good group of people there since many technology folk live in the Bay Area.

Did J-WAVE interiew. Audio Available

I did the J-WAVE interview this evening (Monday morning, Tokyo time). The nice people at J-WAVE have made the audio of the interview available on the web.

I thought the interview was going to be in English, but at the last minute, the producer asked me to do it in Japanese. I was nervous, but I think it went very well, and I hope it leads to some interest in bringing Thinking Pictures to Japan.

Radio Interview Postponed due to Columbia Crash

I got a call from the people at J-Wave today, and they asked to postpone my interview for a week because on Monday morning they are going to talk to someone in the US about the Columbia disaster instead. I am happy to postpone. I am still in a state of shock about the crash.

Japanese Site Goes Up

Cyrus and the crew here have made a first draft of a Japanese version of the web site. Please send us your comments and suggestions!.

On the Road: Broadband for the Masses, from Vegas to Tokyo

Last month I traveled to Las Vegas to help operate a booth at the NAB
convention for one of my clients, Digital Garage Inc. I actually like
going to conventions, as you get to meet a lot of people who would
otherwise be difficult to approach or not on your
radar. Unfortunately, attendance was down 20% this year compared to
last year [1] showing the effects of the current slump in spending in
the broadcast and broadband industries. Despite this fact, there were
still around 100,000 people there to meet!

Instead of just gawking at all the lavish carpeting and the pretty
plasma displays, for this event I tried to look at everything through
the lens of "what are the killer applications for broadband". I must
say that I didn't see anything that filled the bill, but there were
some interesting ideas on display that may hold promise.

Some highlights of the show for me were: audio (music) identification
technology from Fraunhofer (see [2]), video archiving technology from
NTT called SceneCabinet (see [3]) and Smoothy, a new
digital content commerce system from Digital Garage.

My feelings after looking at many booths and playing with many demos
are new very clear. The current generation of set-top boxes leave a
lot to be desired, and will never fully converge with the PC. On the
other hand, the PC may replace the set-top box with the release of PVR
software coming soon. In general, I got the feeling that a lot of
people had had to scale back their ideas and their dreams for an
explosion of broadband usage in 2002. While making the mood at NAB
more pragmatic, I found the hype somewhat easier to digest than at
shows in previous years. (One side note: half of the taxi drivers that
I met in Vegas had broadband internet connections at home. One asked
me how to trade music files without Napster!)

After a week in Vegas, I flew to Tokyo for a week of meetings. While
there, I wanted to get a better grasp of the situation on the ground
in Japan , and to gauge firsthand if the economy was getting better or
worse, or neither.

In a nutshell, I can state that the IT economy is going through tough
times, but will not have a meltdown like the US IT economy did in
2001-2002. I also saw some signs of major social changes happening in
Japanese society: more unemployment among the salarymen, young people
without jobs sending i-mode mail all the time, old friends closing
down of many of the family run businesses in my old neighborhood of
Tomigaia after chain stores came to town, and a general apathy towards
the government and politicians.

One interesting meeting I attended was at the NTT BroadBand offices
where they demonstrated the new Fiber-to-the-home service. Right now
in Japan, anyone can order a 100Mbs fiber line, and NTT will send a
team out to run fiber to your house. For around $100 a month, you have
"best-effort" service (no guarantees of uptime or actual bandwidth). I
saw some of the content and applications that NTT is supporting, and
the MPEG2 video at 6Mbps looked fantastic. I also saw video-publishing
portals and video-conferencing portals, as well as pay-per-view
content. It seems like NTT is trying very hard to offer a compelling
package, and they are having a fair amount of success so far. I don't
want to think about what Verizon would charge for a 100Mps connection
to my house in New York City!

For me, April was a month filled with travel and work, but I got the
feeling that both the Americans and Japanese are moving quickly towards a
nebulous place called "broadband-land" without knowing exactly what
they want. I would keep my eyes on NTT for a while, and see what
happens with their grand experiment of FTTH. It could be bigger than
FOMA! ;-)

References:

[1] http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/business/2002/apr/05/513269233.html
[2] http://www.emt.iis.fhg.de/produkte/audioid/index.html
[3] http://www.ntt.co.jp/cclab/e/pamph/sp/sp1.html
[4] http://www.garage.co.jp/smoothy/