The TechIE fellowship

This week, I have a more 'personal' post. I'll talk about the Instituto de Empresa Business School, where I'm studying Telecom Management since two months ago. IE is one of the top Business Schools in Spain and Europe, present in the best rankings worldwide. We have decided to start a "Tech Club" there. This is mainly aimed to promote the networking and interchange of ideas about IT and the Digital Business.

One of my friends told me once that he couldn't understand our Engineering, talking about waves that he cannot touch, see,... like the bridges that he may design. Well, that's not magic, that's physics enabling human communication. And around IT there's a lot of business and inter-relation with very different aspects of our life nowadays. As what I try to do in this blog, if you want to know more and understand this world in a simpler way, join the 'community'! Do you dare?

Internet.afr

Today’s post might be a reflection in a loud voice. We know wealth is not equally distributed. And Africa is the main point everybody can look at. It might sound a little futile to talk about internet access in Africa, when lots of people are starving, not having basic Maslow’s pyramid needs covered…

But that’s what I read in this article, and just the first phrase shows us the great digital divide: African users must pay 90 times more than US ones! Not fair at all, in that way for example, how could they be able to access online education? Maybe that’s still a too far objective… but education is basic for the progress of these nations and to confront the evils that happen there. And that doesn’t mean that a bad usage of internet could bring more evils… Although the primary task is to ease accessibility to people, after they get more food first…

Users rule the web

Probably, if you’re reading this, you ever used Second Life, or LinkedIn, or MySpace… Also you may know that then you’re part of the web 2.0. Basically, we could consider that web 1.0 is the way we used internet since its beginning, being a passive receiver of information, while now we can become a very active part of the web.

And all this is creating a wave for new businesses and new models. Most of them have online advertisement as one of the main source of income. And they are also looking for other sources of revenue. Or course some are asking for membership fees, or special services charges. Would you be willing to pay for one of these online social networks and what is the extra value you get from this decision?

Wide Wireless World

What do you want wires for? It’s not only that they occupy a space in our room, house, etc, neither that they are not the most fashionable way of decorating your house… It’s also that you can go to spend the afternoon to the park and have connectivity to anywhere in the world with your laptop and your phone for example.

Doesn’t that sound great? Well, it’s still in developing process. The reliability and speed of today’s fixed lines (DSL, cable, etc.) cannot be comparable to the wireless ones. But soon wireless technologies such as ‘Beyond 3G’ and WiMAX (although still to be proven their feasibility) will hit the ground.

A new technology has appeared into the scene: xG, a low power and long range system. It’s said that it transmits data 3 times faster than other technologies, at the same power and frequency. As WiMAX, it needs still to be proven… Have you heard of other broadband technologies apart from the standardized ones?