What’s New with Wu

Last night.  Thanks to Kathryn Tucker and to Josh Silver for having faith

White Spaces - this FCC is proving itself a champion.

Here is a former industry executive turned Radio Commissioner speaking in 1931 (in a quote found by Bob McChesney):

“What has education contributed to radio?” he asked.   “Not one thing.  What has commercialism contributed?   Everything — the lifeblood of the industry.”

Testimonial:  I bought and unlocked an iPhone in September and loved it.  A jailbroken unlocked iPhone is hands down the greatest wireless device going right about now.

But then, being myself, I left that iPhone in a DC taxi.  I bought a new one, only to find that Apple had beefed up their protection.  I began to think that the age of the unlocked iPhone was just going to be a few months.

Those days are over. I don’t know who wrote it, but ZIPHONE is a bloody miracle.  It unlocks and jailbreaks a store-bought iPhone in about 5 minutes.   In September, the same thing took me about 2-3 hours.

I repeat: ZIPHONE is a miracle.

I was very pleased with Verizon’s “grand opening” announcement –

I take it at face value that they’ve just decided its a good idea to be more open.

One way to manifest power is to make people use ridiculous words in serious contexts.  For Google, making people use “Google” as a verb was its first great linguistic coup.  With last week’s “Android” announcement, Google has done it again, making more serious people talk about Androids than since the “Blade Runner” remake.

an unlocked iPhone.

More later this week in Slate.

I wrote a column for Forbes Magazine on Wireless Innovation. It’s here.

You have to sign in to read it; in less well formatted form, it is also reproduced below. By this post I as copyright owner dedicate the column to the pubic domain, so you can copy it elsewhere if you like.

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