Before I report on last week’s Digital Cities Expo, a gripe about hotel broadband. Now that Wi-Fi’s ubiquitous (heh), everybody thinks they can stick a couple of Wi-Fi access points on the lobby ceiling and charge $10 per day for “broadband” access.
Sony Bravia 46-Inch HDTV
11/27/09
Wal-Mart has a 46-inch HDTV, the Sony Bravia KDL-46S504, on sale for $798. This 1080p HDTV features a 60Hz refresh rate and a 20,000:1 contrast ratio. It also has three HDMI inputs, and is Bravia Link compatible. The lowest price we found for the KDL-46S504 on PriceGrabber was $1200 at Crutchfield, so you'd save about $400
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11/27/09
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Acer Aspire AS5517-1208 Laptop
11/27/09
RadioShack is offering the 15.6-inch Acer Aspire AS5517-1208 laptop for $400. This Aspire laptop features an AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive, and it runs Windows 7. It's currently selling on the RadioShack Website for about $550, so the deal is a good $150 off
Of all the Hyatts, Marriotts and airports I’ve tried connecting from these past six weeks, the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Va. - where Digital City was held - was the worst. My room was on the third floor: 0% connection strength. On the second floor: 0%. (Talk that the events' folks had masked the hotel connection are unconfirmed.) In the lobby, (just down the sweeping staircase), connectivity ranged from 8% to 100%. (It might be obvious, but 8% equals dial-up or worse speeds.) The folks at the front desk were apologetic, offering, “Oh, the reception on the upper floors is better.”
Digital City Expo brought together more than 300 community leaders, vendors and big thinkers - all in various stages of building municipal broadband networks (using fiber, wireless, power line) for public safety, education, and residential and business use. Many are battling their cable and telco incumbents for the right to do so. We heard stories from Philadelphia, Corpus Christi, North Kansas City, Utah (of course, everybody’s heard of UTOPIA), Iowa and others.
A few stand out, like Iowa. Forty-ninth in the nation in job growth, Iowa loses 9,000 college graduates per year. Of its 950 communities, 900 have fewer than 500 people. A non-profit group, Opportunity Iowa, is working to pass a state referendum allowing for the formation of a “fiber utilities entity,” the first step in getting fiber lines to everybody. As you’d expect, the incumbents are fighting to pass their own counter legislation, named “The Taxpayer Protection Bill.” Nice, guys.
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