The End Run Around the Gatekeeper

I get the Telecoms Newsletter which handily links me to their site and this story about increasing the zing of WiFi in the UK. UK watchdog wants to beef up wifi

   

Britain's telecom regulator, Ofcom, is looking at ways to increase the legal range of high-powered wifi equipment to 6.2 miles.  If successful, the boost in range could have profound effects for both the consumer and the industry.

   

Ofcom intends to up the power limits for 2.4Ghz band equipment which could be used to good effect .....

The dots are the bad news, to read the rest of the story, I have to pony up the paid sub. Errmm. Let's see; this is a tale about a report released by a Government regulator. What's the betting nobody has an exclusive on this one? Select text, right click, search in Google. Bingo!

Ofcom's proposal to raise Wi-Fi power limits has met with approval from a major hotzone operator, who says it could help the business case for rural broadband Wireless broadband provider The Cloud has backed a proposal from Ofcom to allow higher-powered Wi-Fi transmitters in the UK.

Niall Murphy, co-founder of The Cloud, told ZDNet UK that the regulator's plan means rural areas would have a better chance of getting coverage from wireless access providers.

   

"It means that the economics of deploying in lower density areas are improved, because with certain outdoor coverage scenarios it increases the range per kit ratio,"

And so on, including a link to the original document at OfCom, wow! Now if you really want to be anal retentive, you might want to put your exclusive content behind a paywall, but to do it with a report on a public document? Somebody is stuck in hard copy mode where you can get the money on the strength of the headline.

As Dave Weinberger points out, you have to shift your paradigm sometime.

   

A cool whiff of reality has apparently blown through the Washington Post offices. They announced yesterday that they're going to start including links to other sources in their online articles, even to competitors. That's great. It brings real value to their pages, value that users otherwise will seek elsewhere.

To paraphrase the treacly new age greeting card, "if you respect your site visitor, don't just let them go, send them somewhere interesting, its the only chance you have that they will come back."

The coda: the harder you try to hang on to them, the more you drive them away.

Update. The Post has also tried to be cute by offering Netizens the chance to be interviewed as politicians by their journo Dana Millbank. Here's the pitch.

   

Welcome to the washingtonpost.com Video Mash-Up, where our readers have the opportunity to create their own interview clips opposite Post political reporter Dana Milbank. We provide the questions, you provide the answers!

   

First, download the MPEG2 video clip you see playing at the top of this page, using the "Download Clip" button below. Using your own editing software, cut it up any way you like and splice in your own video, according to the rules below. Then attach your finished mash-up clip to an e-mail and send it to the address below.

   

In a few weeks washingtonpost.com will post all videos submitted that meet the requirements below and will give viewers the opportunity to comment and rate the videos. That's not a deadline, though -- we'll keep posting new videos if we keep getting them from you.

Umm. Probably not. In fact Millbank just looks embarrassed and sounds flat as a pancake. Its abuse of a journalist to expect them to play this silly game.

Putting up the raw material from his interviews, and providing the tools for users to edit their own pieces, then enabling them to host the results on their own sites, and paying them for any versions that the WaPo itself uses; that might have a future.

Encouraging people to upload their own interviews, especially now that Skype has a video option as well, and making those available too, and paying for corporate use of any material (like Current TV) will have an even bigger future.

Still, its 2 toes in the water, the only real question is whether the Post is doing the dipping, or is that foot Canute's?

Powered by Qumana