Below you find interesting anecdotes mixed with shameless self promotion
www.OBSID.net - an attempt to improve product diversity in a market heading for unity of choice and thought at express speed.
Obsid, unlike most fashion retailers and e-tailors, attempt to remove the cyclic aspect of fashion and thereby, which can seem like a contradiction, extend the "currently" available choice.
The store has just opened and it will be very interesting to follow how the choice of products will evolve over time.
The idea was conceived as a result of the current tendency of general alignment between high-street retailers where the product diversity has been reduced to nuances and minor differences in cut. The founder,Valerie Eldenmalm (my wife), living in central London, noticed how the choice of what is available to buy has been reduced to bare minimum with all the major high street stores working out of the same "trend books" and "style guides".
Famous places for fashion design like Carnaby Street have been reduced to simple outlets of standard products that can be found in any commercial centre around the country.
London is clearly suffering from this reduction of choice more than most capitals in Europe. Oxford Street, once the epitome of choice and diversity, has been reduced to a simple suburban centre with the standard stores you will find in any location. No need to mention that almost every store you find on Carnaby Street also exist on Oxford Street, Long Acre, Strand and by all means shortly Tottenham Court Road currently being "refurbished" to contain the same combination of stores as every other high-street in UK. Did I forget to mention that you will find the same set of stores in many airports including the one in United Arab Emirates and Bangkok. United Kingdom is perhaps suffering more from this impoverishment than other capitals in Europe and Asia, but the trend is clear - the market is managing "choice" in a way that is not positive for the customer.
The name was inspired by the black mineral Obsidian.
Support diversity, buy something at obsid today!
In 1999 a friend and colleague introduced me to SIP, what he called the future of how phone calls and other "session" oriented applications would establish sessions - or simplified how they would contact each other. I was not entirely enthusiastic as there were significant design errors in fundamentals of the protocol... I specifically remember the total ignorance of the design that something like 90% of all communication on the internet at one point or the other goes through a NAT (Network Address Translating unit).....as a result SIP was delayed 3-5 years and has lost out to other proprietary protocols that understood the requirement from start. Never the less these minor issues have all now been solved, currently the main obstacle that SIP suffers from is that even with 10 years of experience using VoIP in different forms and fashion, I understand less than 20% of the settings in some of the SIP clients out there...
Proposing a solution: SIPCCP, SIP Client Configuration Protocol. I got as far defining the issue: Configuration is too complex, configuration will change, users are reluctant to learn complicated settings, all SIP clients have their own subset of the three required* settings. Anything beyond these basic settings should be in a organized extension to the protocol. I think the core requirements are the following:
I'm interested in participating in the development of SIP CCP and look forward to hearing from YOU.
* Required settings: It is possible to deploy a fully functional SIP client giving the user only one piece of information: 1 a domain name or an IP address. Never the less that would imply no billing relation ship, which in general is not so plausible.
Steve Rapaport, expat, genius and philosopher - has this sense for languages, that I don't. He's started out explaining language grammar, and how simple it really is (Hmmm), on this blog: http://petabit.multiply.com/journal.
In increasingly complex network environments many corporate find it necessary to implement VPN solutions to provide basic network security preventing snooping and other unwanted activities. Last few years, with the spreading use of VoIP technologies, it has become clear that the VPN approach as a solution to wired and wireless security is outdated and inadequate. Being involved in a "mobility project" for a large organization in Sweden I compiled this 
table, highlighting several weaknesses in common solutions. The chart makes certain important assumptions:
Luckily, there are efficient solutions for providing acceptable security levels for the most common applications. Companies like Stalker, IBM, Fapware and Novell has excellent solutions in place, that enable both secure and mobile e-mail,file sharing and group collaboration.
Article in "Tidningen Mobil" about my ideas concerning Wireless LAN and communication.
After a few years of typical "baby diseases" WLAN was a mature technology.I found it very interesting that despite significant investments none of the large WISP's seemed to generate even close to the millions and millions of dollars that most market analyzing firms predicted. To understand the problem I contacted two experts in the field of mobile data, Larry Cain, co-founder of Mobile Star and Dennis Lindwall a senior telecom expert in one of Europe's prominent telecom consulting firms.
The analyses was not simple and there was no clear single reason for the failure, but two important factors appeared as more influential then the others:
As a result I created Amazingports with the purpose to enable advanced marked segmentation capabilities. A bi-effect of improving network control capabilities was improved security as every user was given a unique set of services, with QoS and authorization adapted to location and needs - as opposed to the "profile" approach implemented by competing solutions.
The entire solution has rendered one pending patent and quite some interest as markets mature and competition become fierce for the operators.
The ability to address more customers thus improving revenue potential and selling more to existing customers and subscribers, improving ARPU are increasingly interesting capabilities.
Amazingports first customers, including companies like TeliaSonera, and later customer like Alexandra hotel in Stockholm, have all experienced the advantages of Amazingports system.
In short, anybody who plans or is deploying public networks, should closely evaluate how Amazingports technology can improve their revenues.