Update 3 - Updated Kindle Blog Publishing info, corrected blog's feed to be full text feed.
Update 2 - Forgot to mention BWIA Magazine, and made various editorial tweaks.
Update 1 - original post (was titled Update...)
I've been making some incremental moves to restart writing about
Broadband Wireless Internet Access / WiMAX and I've made some...
encouraging enough... progress that a(n) brief update is appropriate.
Tweeting - "@bwianews"
Twitter
has grown on me, both as a "follower" and a "tweeter". My original take
on Twitter and tweeting was that it's just another way to stay
connected with your circle of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and
influencers, on a par with IM, blogs, mailing lists, email, Facebook,
LinkedIn, etc. Twitter just another communications tool. To those that
despise Twitter as a silly waste of time just to be able to know what a
celebrity had for lunch... yeah, it can be merely that if that's the
content you choose to subscribe to. But Twitter is entirely,
individually customized, so you can make it into an effective tool by
being highly selective about who you "follow". And periodically pruning
what/who you "follow".
One of the things that has really grown
on me about Twitter is the 140 character limit of each tweet. It's a
(fun) challenge to condense content you want to share into 140
characters, but that 140 character limit of each tweet is a joy to read
and scan. If it's important for it to be said, you can say it in 140 characters. But better than the challenge of composing content in 140 characters is reading
content in 140 character chunks, and that's what ultimately swung me
over to considering Twitter as an effective communications tool.
Another
effective way to use Twitter is to establish multiple Twitter accounts
for your various interests. What makes this an effective strategy is
that better Twitter clients allow you to monitor more than one Twitter
accounts. Thus, I created Twitter ID bwianews
and moved all the Twitter users that I follow because of some relation
to Broadband Wireless Internet Access and WiMAX to that account. More
importantly, I will use "@bwianews" to Twitter "microblog posts" (that
phrase will take some time to get used to) about BWIA / WiMAX that I
consider significant, including (relatively rare) "re-Tweets". A number
of colleagues from when I wrote a lot about BWIA / WiMAX had found me
on Twitter, but probably aren't that interested in my impressions of
life and general, and with creating "@bwianews", they don't have to.
This
may well be controversial, but I'm seriously considering the
possibility of offering sponsorships for "@bwianews". That is, in
return for a sponsorship fee, I'll post several Tweets per day on
behalf of the sponsor. Don't like the idea of ads? Don't follow
@bwianews - Twitter is 100% opt-in.
Broadband Wireless Internet Access / WiMAX Blog on Amazon Kindle
The Kindle, and now the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX are impressive little
devices, and I'm sure that I'll have one within a year. A logical, but
savvy, nonetheless, move on Amazon's part to broaden the overall appeal
of the Kindle(s) was to offer subscriptions to magazines in addition to
ebooks. But it caught nearly everyone by surprise that Amazon also
began to offer "subscriptions" to individual blogs. Not just
"megablogs" like, say, Boing Boing and Slashdot, but individual blogs
written by... individuals, like Tom Evslin's excellent blog Fractals of Change.
$0.99 or $1.99 / month gets a Kindle reader a once-per-day delivery of postings
from an individual blog, reformatted (from the basic text of the blog's
RSS feed) for comfortable viewing on the Kindle.
For individual blog publishers like Tom and I, it's found money, so I signed up. It's pretty painless. BWIA News isn't quite ready for Kindle as I haven't uploaded two required graphics, but I'll do so soon. BWIA News is now ready for Kindle subscriptions.
One
change that posting with Kindle in mind that I'll explain up front* is
that I'll now be publishing full article text in the RSS feed. To
publish blogs on the Kindle, Amazon's servers simply subscribe to a
blog's RSS feed, reformat it, and distribute it to Kindle subscribers.
So if your blog's feed is set up to publish an excerpt, rather than the
full text of the post, in the RSS feed, paying Kindle readers won't get
to see the full text of your blog's articles.
* (Mostly for my
good friend Bill V. who, without this explanation, would soon let me
know that he's glad to see content on this blog again... but he
strongly prefers to see an excerpt rather than full article text in the
RSS feed.)
Giving Up On AdSense, Will Consider Individual Advertisements
Google
AdWords / AdSense was nice, in its time, and I made a little bit of
money from it for a while, but it's no longer generating enough income
to make it worth the screen real estate that was devoted to it, so I've
stopped displaying AdSense ads.
It was past time to do that.
Google keeps foisting more and more administrative overhead onto casual
AdSense publishers like me... pfah! But mostly Google never addressed
or even acknowledged my major issue with AdSense - that I couldn't
specify the advertisers that I wanted to specifically display. Instead
of readers seeing a relevant AdWords ad for, say, Redline
Communications WiMAX, they would see four ads for cut-rate cellular
voice resellers. That's nice... but hardly interesting (let alone worth
clicking-through) to the typical reader of BWIA / WiMAX News. While
AdSense enabled me to prohibit specific ads from being displayed (by
URL), I couldn't keep adding to the exclusion list indefinitely. I tried - but there were always
more marginal ads in the queue as fast as I excluded the worst
offenders. What AdSense really needs, in my opinion, is an opt-in
option; then it would be a lot more useful. And yes, I'm sure Google's
engineers are smart enough to work out some protection for the scammers
/ spammers that would feature only high-revenue clickthroughs for real
estate, investment, jewelry, etc.and then "click-farm" the resulting ads.
Another
interesting factor is that I've been periodically contacted about
advertising, even though the content has grown somewhat static.
Apparently advertising on blogs is becoming more mainstream. So,
instead
of AdSense ads, I'm willing to consider individual ads,
either banner ads or small "AdWords-like" size and location (such as
the
current location in the upper-right corner of the blog). If you're
interested, contact me via that link.
BWIA Magazine
(excerpted from www.bwiamagazine.com)
BWIA is Broadband Wireless Internet Access and BWIA Magazine is a new publication about BWIA that will debut in Summer, 2009. BWIA Magazine
will encompass cellular broadband technology (HSxPA, 1xEV-DO, LTE,
etc.) used to deliver Broadband Internet Access, Broadband Internet
Access via satellite, WiMAX technology (Mobile and fixed), Wi-Fi, Municipal Wi-Fi, microwave point-to-point networks, proprietary systems, and many other technologies.
BWIA Magazine will initially publish on a bimonthly schedule. BWIA Magazine will utilize a hybrid print/online publishing model through the use of print-on-demand services such as MagCloud. BWIA Magazine
will be available at no cost online; print subscriptions (and
individual issues) will be available upon payment of a subscription or
individual issue fee. BWIA Magazine will include
advertisements, and we feel that this will be a strong draw for
readers. Just as there is a dearth of quality content on the subject of
BWIA, there's no one good place to find out who the vendors of
BWIA-related products are.
Consolidating Down To Just A Few BWIA-related Blogs
I tried an interesting experiment - "self-franchising" a number of narrowly-focused blogs - Independent Clearwire Blog
is one example. While I think the idea could have worked, I ran out of
time and funding to be able to devote enough time to generate content
for all of them. In the coming months, I'll be consolidating all the
content from those "splinter" blogs to this one, and then redirect the
domain names to the relevant Category.
Wrapping Up
So the upshot of all of this is that, with the option of
"micro-blogging" via Twitter, some possibility of at least modest revenue via multiple streams, and really interesting things continuing to happen in the Broadband Wireless Internet Access / WiMAX industry...
Yes, I'll be gradually resuming writing about BWIA / WiMAX.
Writing about BWIA will remain a part-time endeavor for me for the foreseeable future. Between
health, job, and home life, things have stabilized enough for me to resume writing about BWIA.
This post was composed and posted mostly via Broadband
Wireless Internet Access / WiMAX - Verizon Wireless 1xEV-DO and 1xRTT
via a Novatel MiFi, In transit from Portland to
Seaside, OR. I'll write more of my impressions of the MiFi soon... it's
far from perfect, but it's mostly usable. Completed using in-house Wi-Fi at the very nice Rivertide Suites in Seaside, OR.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2009 by Steve Stroh, except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
Interview on Plutopia News Network Podcast
Plutopia News Network - STEVE STROH: BROADBAND ACCESS
(April 29, 2021) With Scoop and Jon, technology writer and broadband consultant Steve Stroh discusses broadband access, rural wireless Internet providers, satellite-based Internet, fiber networks, and much more.
“If you can get fiber, do it. Because it is the best, highest quality – not just fastest, but it’s the best option for broadband Internet access. Because, basically, it’s pure data. You’ve got a pair of glass fibers dedicated to you, typically straight between your house or business and the central office. Or wherever it’s going to be hubbed out of. It’s immune to electrical interference, it’s generally immune to everything – water doesn’t bother it, it’s not shared with other people, and about the only thing that can take out fiber is squirrels or backhoes.”
Steve writes about about Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems and technology. In 1997 he started a column about wireless for Internet Service Providers called Wireless Data Developments in Boardwatch Magazine in April, 1997. He’s currently thinking and writing about Independent Broadband Networks, small broadband networks usually in rural areas.
Direct link to MP3 audio file of the interview:
https://media.blubrry.com/plutopia_news_network/s/plutopia.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Steve-Stroh.mp3
...
My wonderful wife Tina frequently accuses me of under-promoting myself, and I'm guilty as charged. I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago as soon as it was publicly available.
This interview was a fun conversation with Jon Lebkowsky, a techie of long-standing (exceeding my long standing techie-ness) and his podcasting partner-in-crime Scoop Sweeney on their eclectic podcast Plutopia News Network.
This interview came out of writing my story Why Starlink Will Win Rural Broadband. Jon and I are participants in "a certain online community (which I cannot name)" and as part of the discussions in that community about Starlink, Jon invited me to do an interview. Jon and Scoop were easy to talk to and asked good questions. They teased out the quote which quite dramatically starts the podcast. The hour plus of our conversation flew by quickly.
Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-05-13
Portions Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh
Posted by Steve Stroh on May 13, 2021 at 11:37 in Articles On Other Sites, Broadband Wireless Internet Access Conferences, Business Models, BWIA Industry Commentary, BWIA Industry Stories, BWIA Industry Trends, Coverage In Other Venues, Fiber, Policy, WISPs | Permalink