Dorian In the World

Yes it -is- out there and it is called Sonos.

I have owned my two zone Sonos system plus controller for just over one year so I figured it was time to tell the internet world about how this amazing music system has completely 180'd how I own, manage and listen to music.

Sonos is made up of Zone Players that you place in each room where you would like to distribute music. Only one unit must be connected (somehow) to your LAN for access to wherever you store your MP3's. The storage area can literally be any drive map(s) or hard drive visible on the network. I started off story my MP3's on my PC but my collection quickly outgrew the hard drive space and I later migrated to a network hard drive (essentially a hard drive in a case with an ethernet port).

The truly amazing part about Sonos (other than it's simple existence) is that each of the other Zone Players you distribute throughout your house (and property) self form a 54Mbps proprietary wireless mesh with all other Zone Players you own. This means only one of the Zone Players needs a LAN connection and all others -create- a LAN connection with eachother (all Zoneplayers have 4 switch ports essentially extending your LAN for ANY data use).

The second amazing part about Sonos is that in each 'zone' you can have completely different music playing than all other zones or even link some Zones together to play the same music or internet radio station.

I have recommended the Sonos system to many people. When guests at my home see and play with my Sonos system they are truly amazed...especially if music or technology enthusiasts.

I have said again and again that Bose or Apple should be all over purchasing Sonos and exploiting their unreal technology even further.

That being said, the Sonos group is continually innovating and providing new software (which is automatically updated!!!) and hardware.

Finally, their tech support is of a quality that every company should hope to one day match. I do not say that lightly.

Dorian

Posted by Dorian Banks at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well WiNOG 2006 seems to have been a terrific success. A big thanks goes out to Charles and the CWLab team for putting this industry event on each year. I cannot wait to see this conference in ten years time!

Personally I had some great discussions with many individuals that no doubt have spurred me to think (even more) about our industry and the global impact it is having and going to have on communications and information flow.

I was particularly excited chatting with Tony from CWLab. I told him about our equipment woes and what a strange time it is for our industry.

At no time has last mile wireless ever been so promoted and yet we have such a dearth of good last mile equipment available. At MetroBridge we were migrating to WiLAN equipment at each of our new POP sites. Just a few weeks ago WiLAN announced their exit from the hardware game to focus on their patents (another NTP)?

I asked Tony what we could do to convince manufacturers to make radios that WE wanted. The features, quality and price that could help make our wireless ISP's even more successful. We both concluded that manufacturers mostly cared about getting volume orders from major ILEC's and CLEC's. Tony then began to tell me about some great ideas he has for a new generation of radios. Very exciting stuff. I am going to look in to raising some capital for R&D on the concepts. Who knows, maybe this time next year we will have a hardware company!

Dorian

Posted by Dorian Banks at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The OECD has released a lengthy report on the state of WiMAX (PDF).

It was interesting to see a close to comprehensive comparison between countries on various metrics regarding WiMAX. Clearly at odds with most of the other countries in the report was the United States.

I have been deploying last mile microwave since 2000 and last fall began deploying what WiLAN termed 'pre-WiMAX' equipment (recently WiLAN announced their exit from the hardware game to focus on their WiMAX patent portfolio).

WiMAX has clearly been overhyped by the media spurred by early poor communications from the WiMAX Forum (my company, MetroBridge, was the first Canadian carrier accepted in to the Forum).

I am beyond confident that WiMAX (last mile microwave, truly) is one of the major events to happen this decade in the tech world. Operators (whether ISP, cellular, municipalities...) now have a window to be on board with WiMAX or be left behind.

This week I speak at WiNOG in Austin on improving ARPU for last mile microwave connections. I hope to introduce major differentiators that show why companies/groups like General Electric, Intrawest, 911, Suzuki and GM use our connectivity as their primary connection for their operations.

Exciting and revolutionary times.

Posted by Dorian Banks at 9:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most brilliant shows to come out of the UK is The IT Crowd. Although there is a link on the Channel 4 site to view past episodes it is presumably blocked for those viewers outside the UK. However, all episodes (6 as of today) are available as Torrents.

The show is about a very small IT department of a UK business and their (in)ability to run an efficient IT help department. If you have ever been in an IT department or had to interact with one this show will no doubt provide some great laughs.

On another note, supposedly Canada is the leader in illegal downloads.

Posted by Dorian Banks at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have owned a Blackberry since 2000 I believe. I had the old 957 model which now looking back upon the weight, size and functionality kind of reminds me of those old grey Motorola 'brick' phones (of which I have a new one sitting on my desk).

Over the past two years I have strongly asserted to anyone who asks whether my blackberry (since the 957 a 7280, 7290 and now an 8700) is useful or not, I strongly proclaim that my company, MetroBridge Networks, would be atleast 30% smaller in both sales, number of employees and number of customers with Blackberry.

Can this be possible having real corporate growth of such dimensions from a small PDA? Today with MetroBridge growing we purchase almost all new employees a Blackberry for use as their cellular phone and direct connection to our Exchange Server via our Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Whether this growth is real or imagined the personal productivity gains I realize on the new 8700 is truly jaw dropping. While away on holidays recently I sat in the surf in 35 degree celsius weather sending emails, logging in to devices for troubleshooting and reading the news (some holiday!!!).

Dorian

Posted by Dorian Banks at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)