Linklist: May 3, 2012

2012-05-03 | David Levinson

Akamai: State of the Internet Report [Comment: It’s not faster than last year, because, like roads, it is not rationed or priced properly]

Tim Lee @ Ars: Why bandwidth caps could be a threat to competition: “Since the first dot-com boom, unmetered Internet access has been the industry standard. But recently, usage-based billing has been staging a comeback. Comcast instituted a bandwidth cap in 2008, and some other wired ISPs, including AT&T, have followed suit. In 2010, three of the four national wireless carriers—Sprint is the only holdout—switched from unlimited data plans to plans featuring bandwidth caps.”

Tom Vanderbilt @ The Wilson Quarterly: The Call of the Future : “Today we worry about the social effects of the Internet. A century ago, it was the telephone that threatened to reinvent society.” [“He is currently at work on You May Also Like, a book about the mysteries of human preferences.”]

David Willetts @ The Guardian: The UK government is promising: Open, free access to academic research [Woot!]

The rent is cheep.

2012-05-032013-05-27 | David Levinson

The picture is sort of difficult to see, but a bird family seems to think this traffic light (Franklin and Seymour) is a good nest site. This is not an unknown phenomenon. I would think the lights going on and off 24 hours a day would be annoying, but the rent is cheep.

Mobile Showroom

2012-05-032013-05-27 | David Levinson

By occupying metered parking spaces on Oak Street, General Motors has set up a mobile showroom for its Chevy line in Minneapolis. Is this guerrilla marketing or standard business behavior (I haven’t seen it before)? Is it legal? Should the city charge more for parking if it is going to be used like this?
It seems clever, since this is right before graduation, and many graduating students will be in the market for new cars.