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Seedcamp pointer

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seedcamp-100x100I’m going to just quickly mention that on Tuesday we met with some Seedcamp companies, at the  nesta-70 offices in central London. Craig Newmark has put up a nice quick summary with links in case you want to check them out. Craig is a fellow Traveling Geek. I will pick my favorites later, although I liked all of them, and will let you know what each technology is going to be useful for in my professional life. You will find them all fascinating and probably will end up using one or more of them some time in the near future.

I know already that my first favorites will be technologies that help find and then aggregate information that will make your blog or web site more informative for your readers. Or that make your job as a blogger easier because they help you locate not only your own writings (which believe it or not is a problem for many bloggers) but new information from sources that you trust.

BT Openzone Wireless Broadband

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BT Mobile Broadband - USB modem

I wrote about the open wi-fi network in central London – back when I was just “hoping” that it would give us coverage while in London. Indeed it looks the network is around and that there are many wireless hotspots. I don’t know yet how pervasive the outdoor coverage is, but coverage at shops (coffee shops for example) seems pretty much available.

But the service that’s saving my life here is BT Mobile Broadband, which is available for £15/month (special promotion) on a “commercial” plan. (See photo of their [new] USB plug-in device above)

Advertised as providing “up to 7.2Mb (actually I would say 7.2mbps – or megabits per second) I was getting 2.5mbps on Sunday afternoon, and through the week have been getting upwards of 640kbps almost all of the time, which isn’t as good, but is roughly equivalent to a DSL line in the US. It’s also not quite as good as wi-fi, but if you’re at a public-access wi-fi spot, you’re unlikely to get anything better than the 640kpbs speed anyway.

On Monday at Reboot Britain [see Howard Rheingold’s article on the conference, where he spoke] we were inside a steel and brick building, in an inner room, and the local wi-fi was so overloaded it couldn’t maintain a connection for longer than a few minutes [this is common for large conferences of geeks], and I stayed on the BT Mobile service the entire day and it was rock solid, though at the lower data rate. That’s why I say it “saved by life.”

If you’re in Britain, need data on the road, and can’t tether your computer through a phone, this service seems like it would be indispensable. [I don’t know whether non-British national can purchase it short term…but if so, it would be great.]

[Disclosure: BT corporate is providing the device for me and the other Traveling Geeks, along with service, for the week I’m in London. I have no obligation to write about it or promote it.]

Life Imitates Google Earth (TG2009)

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Traveling GeeksIn a stroke of Alice Through the Looking Glass, I arrived in London after an overnight flight, took the Heathrow Express (fast train – 15 minutes from the airpor to central London), then switched to the tube (subway) for a short ride to my hotel. (JD Lasica was with me.) Arriving at the Barbican tube stop, which is where we emerge to walk two blocks to the hotel, I stepped out onto the street. This was my reaction (see video below) – didn’t know which was real, the real or the Google Earth (Google Street View, actually). Kind of deja vu because everything looked entirely familiar to me after having gone around the block many times on Google Street View to try to determine the best walking route to the hotel. You can tell from my excitement that it was a real revelation to discover that I could “go to a place” in the virtual world, use the virtual world to make decisions about a route, and then have it actually play out properly in real life. Amazing!

Backstage Pass- Howard Rheingold

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Traveling GeeksHoward Rheingold, who I’ve known casually for a few years, is one of my heroes. Not only does he write well, about current social media topics (Smart Mobs) but he is an artist at heart and like me a child of the 1960s. Though Howard paints (and wears painted) shoes and gardens and does a lot of work from his idyllic Mill Valley (CA) location.

Howard will be a speaker at some of the events we’re visiting, but he’s a listener too, so dear UK native, be sure to get together with him and let him know what’s happening in London and Cambridge.

Backstage Pass- Tom Foremski

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Traveling GeeksTom Foremski is the Silicon Valley Watcher. We met up at Green’s in Fort Mason, San Francisco, to get phones working and try out some tiny Internet-enabled portable devices. Here’s what Tom is looking forward to learning on the London trip.

Why is this a short post? Well, I have to go catch the BART (train) to the airport in a few minutes. Thank goodness for fast Internet connections.