Technology Combines Pen, Paper & Internet

Several European companies are collaborating on a new pen-and-paper technology that will allow users to digitally record and transmit everything that is written down or drawn. What makes it different from similar systems is that all of your notes, drawings or handwritings are stored and then can be seamlesslly available to you - or the friends or colleagues you designate - from anywhere that you can access the Internet. Or they can be sent to your mobile phone. Medical professionals, architects, graphic artists - or anyone who works with pen and paper, or needs to share written information quickly - could find this a more convenient system than keeping notes with a hand-held organizer, tablet PC or anything else with a keyboard. Another possible market fis companies that use paper forms, such as insurance companies and pharmaceuticals. (Click to read full story.)

Fiber Project Announced For West Virginia

Fiber to the home may be coming to West Virginia communities in the near future. A Virginia company has announced plans to build a series of open-access broadband networks in communities across West Virginia.

Using ultra-high-capacity fiber optic cables, iTown Communications Inc. can deliver telephone, video, high-speed Internet, home security and other data services to homes, school and businesses, company President and CEO Keith Montgomery said.

The first network will be built in Beckley and in Raleigh and Fayette counties, Montgomery said. Parkersburg and Bluefield signed on last month and other communities are in discussions with what the company calls the West Virginia First Project.

The company plans to install its own fiber network in communities, stringing cables along utility poles with individual drops to homes and businesses, just as telephone and cable companies have done. In each community, iTown would set up a separate public/private company to build the network, he said.

West Virginia Broadband Update Beats National Average

West Virginia businesses and households added high-speed Internet connections last year at a pace that beat the national average. According to the most recent broadband subscribership data from the Federal Communications Commission, West Virginia’s broadband growth in 2004 was 54 percent. That beat the national average of 36 percent. In the Mountain State, broadband connections grew from 101,000 to 155,000.

West Virginia Ideal for Federal Digital Repository

West Virginia would make an ideal location for massive server farms that would serve as a repository of data and electronic records from federal agencies. With is reliable electricity grid, widespread fiber optic network infrastructure and remote location, the Mountain State should make a pitch to locate high-tech data centers in its rural communities.

Provided below is an excerpt from a story in the July 2005 edition of the MIT Technology Review that showcases not only the challenge facing the federal government, but also the potential major possibilities for major data repository/archive centers.

The Fading Memory of the State
July 2005, MIT Technology Review
Click to read entire article

The official repository of retired U.S. government records is a boxy white building tucked into the woods of suburban College Park, MD. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is a subdued place, with researchers quietly thumbing through boxes of old census, diplomatic, or military records, and occasionally requesting a copy of one of the computer tapes that fill racks on the climate-controlled upper floors.

Researchers generally don't come here to look for contemporary records, though. Those are increasingly digital, and still repose largely at the agencies that created them, or in temporary holding centers. It will take years, or decades, for them to reach NARA, which is charged with saving the retired records of the federal government (NARA preserves all White House records and around 2 percent of all other federal records; it also manages the libraries of 12 recent presidents).

Unfortunately, NARA doesn't have decades to come up with ways to preserve this data. Electronic records rot much faster than paper ones, and NARA must either figure out how to save them permanently, or allow the nation to lose its grip on history.

Continous Computing and Mobility Changing Rapidly

Social Machines
MIT Technology Review, August 2005
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/08/issue/feature_social.asp?p=1

Excerpts:

After a decade of hype about "mobility," personal computing has finally and irreversibly cut its bonds to the desktop and has moved into devices we can carry everywhere. We're using this newly portable computing power to connect with others in ways no one predicted--and we won't be easily parted from our new tools.
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This explosion of new capabilities shouldn't be mistaken for "feature creep," the accretion of special functions that has made common programs such as Microsoft Word so mystifyingly complex. There is something different about the latest tools. They are both digital, rooted in the world of electrons and bits, and fundamentally social, built to enable new kinds of interactions among people. Blogging, text messaging, photo sharing, and Web surfing from a smart phone are just the earliest examples. Almost below our mental radar, these technologies are ushering us into a world of what could be called continuous computing--continuous in the usual sense of "uninterrupted," but also in the sense that it's continuous with our lives, in all their messy, social, biographical richness.
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This information field enables people to both pull information about virtually anything from anywhere, at any time, and push their own ideas and personalities back onto the Internet--without ever having to sit down at a desktop computer. Armed with nothing more than a smart phone, a modern urbanite can get the answer to almost any question; locate nearby colleagues, friends, and services; join virtual communities that form and disband rapidly around shared work and shared interests; and self-publish blog entries, photographs, audio recordings, and videos for an unlimited audience.