White Spaces web access

A new form of wireless network known as White Spaces will come online next month, the FCC announced today.

White Spaces has been called "WiFi on steroids" and has been championed by the likes of Google and Microsoft.

Spectrum Bridge has been given the OK to become the first active White Spaces database administrator. The FCC says it can begin operations on January 26. The first approved device will be made by Koos Technical Services, and it will work much like a wireless router.

The downside is it will only be available in Wilmington, NC. The FCC is working on expanding approvals nationwide as fast as its little government fingers let it, although it didn't say when that might be.

White spaces brings with it tons of potential for new devices and applications. It is faster than WiFi so it can handle more data. It can bring (nearly) free Internet access to the most remote areas of the country, places that can't get WiFi.

It can aid in education. It can improve medicine. It can even make your favorite team win on Sundays (well, maybe not).

Because it uses broadcast television signals, any place that can pick up a broadcast TV signal should be able to tap into White Spaces. A large range of wireless frequencies have always been reserved for broadcast television, much of it unused. Researchers at Microsoft, Google, Dell and other companies, like Spectrum Bridge, developed methods to let data devices like PCs use those blank frequencies.

But when they first showcased their research, broadcasters weren't happy. They argued that TV Band Devices (TVBDs) would interfere with television signals. Years of bickering ensued between the broadcast companies, device makers like Microsoft and Google and the FCC. Many iterations of devices were built and tested. The data folks officially won in late 2010 when the FCC said it would allow TVBDs.

But there was a catch.

Before millions of devices could be sold and put into use, TVBDs needed a way to make sure they wouldn't knock out any TV stations. The FCC decided a complex database was the solution. This would keep track of TVBDs and assign them safe frequencies.

Such a database would in turn need “database administrators.” Earlier this year, the FCC selected nine companies to do the job -- all that applied -- including Google and Spectrum Bridge. They would be allowed to charge a small fee for their efforts.

After Google was accepted, Microsoft applied. And the FCC said, sure, why not? It let Microsoft be a database administrator, too.

But the real money will be in devices and applications for those devices, perhaps billions of dollars worth.

In a written statement, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said,  "Unleashing white spaces spectrum has the potential to exceed even the many billions of dollars in economic benefit from Wi-Fi, the last significant release of unlicensed spectrum, and drive private investment and job creation.”

One database and one device in one city does not a billion make. But it has to start somewhere.

Server-centric and Client-centric designs

Over the years, software development has ping-ponged between server-centric and client-centric designs. Today, with dominant mobile platforms like iOS and Android, apps have entered a hybrid client-server architecture.
What this means for developers is that they have to juggle more technologies than ever before. And in response, we’re seeing the rise of developer platforms that handle functionality that has never been outsourced before—everything from databases to sending email to providing user authentication. As more software moves to the cloud so too does the development tools used to make the final product.
From the Client to the Server to a Hybrid
Back in the ’90s, desktop software ruled. This meant that most software development was client-side. The world was also less connected. So, even if your application connected to the internet, users didn’t expect it to always be online. Developers could dutifully create client-side software and ship it to consumers as a simple download with no strings attached.
But then, the web slowly became ubiquitous by the ’00s. More and more software was being moved into the browser. For developers, this meant more time spent doing server-side coding. Requests are made to the server, the server crunches it to produce a result and sends it back to the browser. There were probably bits of client-side javascript, but most of the heavy lifting was being done on the server. Knowing server-side programming was key during this time.
Fast forward to the present and a complicated picture emerges. Networked mobile applications are at the forefront. It turns out that the eventual endpoints of the web won’t be desktop computers, but rather, mobile devices. The number of tablets and smart phones will dwarf desktops. Already, services like Facebook are seeing two times more mobile activity than desktop.
Hybrid is Complicated
Developers now have the challenge of creating both client and server code that deeply interact with each other. This means having to keep up with two different styles of development, and most likely more than one programming language and environment.The client code needs to work on resource-constrained devices with a network connection that is slow and unreliable. And because we’re dealing with clients that may be out of date, the server needs to be able to handle multiple versions of clients that are making requests. Add in data migrations and you have a recipe for disaster.
Consumer behavior is also becoming more demanding. Users expect their apps to always be online, or at least pretend to be. This means having to gracefully handle caching, queue up requests, and wrangle a whole slew of networking issues. Oh, and you’ll also need to have various 3rd party integrations like Facebook and Twitter.
Combine all these things and it’s clear that you’ll need something more than just a highly capable team of developers. You need to leverage developer platforms.
The Rise of Platforms
Over the past few years, we have seen the rise of X as a Service, where X could be anything from platforms to infrastructure and other services. One could argue that this all began with Amazon Web Services, and have since blossomed with countless services like Heroku, Mailgun, dotCloud, and AppEngine.
All these services have one thing in common: they increase the productivity of developers. Using these services is like standing on the shoulders of giants. Why create another deployment of Rails if Heroku focuses 100% of their time and energy on it?
Everyday, platforms are reducing the amount of time developers have to focus on non-app specific code. What this means is that apps can be developed faster at higher quality with a tighter focus on the core product. Yes, you are ceding some control over your app’s development to a third-party, but the whole point of these developer platforms is to do one thing very well at scale. The time for developer platforms is now, and it will only accelerate as more of the world comes online.

Beijing or SV? Hmmmmm

Twenty years ago, Zhongguancun was but farming fields and small houses, far from the city center of Beijing. The ‘cun’ at the end of Zhongguancun literally means “village.” As with much else in China, the change has come lightening fast.
Today, Zhongguancun is China’s closest equivalent to Silicon Valley. It’s host to electronics super malls, research centers, publicly-listed tech giants, and hundreds of startups. During my walk to work between twenty-story office towers, it’s hard to imagine this land was farmed but one short generation ago.
Here are three reasons why Zhongguancun (or the larger Haidian district) has grown into China’s top tech hub:
1) Academic Hub
Right next door are China’s top two universities, Peking University and Tsinghua University. But the northwest of Beijing is also home to countless other universities, including technical universities like USTB, BIT, BUPT, and Beihang. It’s the raw talent pool that has American industry leaders and politicians bemoaning a new “engineering gap.”
The transition from farming village to technology hub began with technology research. In addition to the universities, funding came from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and later multinational corporations (MNCs). As Daniel Shi notes on Quora, “There is just a ridiculous number of MNCs with their R&D centers in Beijing: Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Oracle, BEA, Alcatel Lucent, Google. Nowhere in the US do you have such a huge concentration of R&D organizations in one city.”
Soon, a small market emerged in Zhongguancun to sell electronics to students and academics. Jack Xu, founder of lite-blog Diandian, describes a serendipitous meeting in that scene:

In 1997, Zhongguancun Technology Park was a tiny village. It had only two buildings, and an assortment of entrepreneurs hustling their programming skills, taking government contracts, and hiring [Tsinghua] students like me to do the work. At times they might get RMB 100,000 for a contract, but pay us only RMB 5000, thus retaining 95% for themselves. Back then I could make a mere RMB 2000 a month, 1000 for myself and 1000 for my parents, so they wouldn’t need to farm anymore. To me, it was a responsibility, to survive on my own as early as possible. It was also because of my work in Zhonguancun that I became a well-known programmer in a small circle and later a real opportunity came along.

That real opportunity was Jack Xu’s meeting with Joseph Chen in 1998. Today, Chen is the CEO of the social network Renren (NYSE: RENN), where Xu worked for five years, including as VP of the Interactive Division.
2) Government and Media
In America, an entrepreneur hears “government” and runs the other way. In China, government is best kept close, out of choice or necessity. The Internet is one of the most private of industries in China, one of the few without huge state-owned firms, but the government still plays a key role.
At the early stage it can be government contracts, subsidized office space in a tech park, or financing from a government-affiliated research institution. The government wants to build Beijing as a showcase capital in all aspects, so there’s extra funding for tech too.
Once a startup reaches scale, government connections are key to everything from payment licenses to “content management.” When your video website is blocked because it was found to contain sensitive political or pornographic content, who you gonna call?
Virtually all business in China is of “strategic national interest,” but some is extra-strategic. All media firms or even sites with user-generated content must have a big presence, if not their headquarters, in Beijing.
3) A Virtuous Cycle
A tech hub can build momentum that feeds upon itself. Startup founders come out of research centers and large technology firms, drawing upon their network for advice, seed funding, and talented employees. When the boss leaves to launch his own venture, it’s common for half of his division—the talented half—to go with him. The employee networks of Beijing-based tech giants like Baidu, Sohu, and Sina are becoming Chinese versions of the “PayPal Mafia.”
In “Why Startup Hubs Work,” Paul Graham of Y-Combinator writes, “I think there are two components to the antidote: being in a place where startups are the cool thing to do, and chance meetings with people who can help you. And what drives them both is the number of startup people around you.” Like Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun also has a critical mass of people who are crazy enough to do startups.

Beyond Beijing

I wrote that Zhongguancun is China’s closest equivalent of Silicon Valley. The caveat is because there’s a lot happening elsewhere in China too. China’s three Internet giants are Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, but only search giant Baidu is headquartered in Beijing.
Hangzhou is home to the Alibaba Group and its e-commerge empire (Taobao, TMall, Alipay, and Alibaba.com). Neighboring Shanghai is rich in gaming, MNCs, and venture capitalists, although they fly up to Beijing to do most of their deals. As far as tech hubs, this area is second after Beijing.
Shenzhen is the headquarters of Tencent, China’s largest social networking and gaming company. Equally impressive is the hardware hacking coming out of the region. It’s home to countless entrepreneurial Shanzhai electronics manufacturers who copy, mix-and-mash, to create ”Motoloba” handsets and “commemorative” Steve Jobs Android tablets. When you hear about “sub-$100 Chinese-flavored Android devices”, it’s Shenzhen leading the charge.
Other up-and-coming hubs include Dalian, Chengdu, and Xi’an,

Silicon Valley is often said to draw top talent because it has one of the best living environments on earth. No one would say that about Beijing.
Beijing is an acquired taste, one that’s often smoky with pollution. In a Sinica Podcast discussing the soul of Beijing, China hand Jeremy Goldkorn of the blog Danwei.org called it “the anti-lifestyle capital, the anti-San Francisco.” The unpleasantness of the city, the lack of Shanghai’s creature comforts or Shenzhen’s sunshine, gives it an edge. There’s a gritty determination to seize the moment, whatever the obstacles in the way.
One friend told me that Kai-fu Lee was recently asked why his startup incubator InnovationWorks wasn’t based in picturesque Chengdu, where the cost-of-living is low and the ladies are said to be the fairest in all of China. Lee jokingly replied to his entrepreneurs that when they’re happy and relaxed, he’s not.
But do not mistake it for a city of automaton entrepreneurs. Beijing is at once ”the center of authority and a hotbed of creative thinking” as Evan Osnos writes in “City of Dreams.” There are leaps of creativity. Sites that start as copycats evolve to become unrecognizable from the original, like the red-hot microblog Sina Weibo that today bears little resemblance to Twitter.
When TechCrunch held its first international Disrupt Conference, it was right to come to Beijing. It’s dynamic, messy, and very different. But Silicon Valley aside, there’s no better place on earth for tech right now.

Leadership

One of the most often overlooked aspects of leadership is the need for pursuit. Great leaders are never satisfied with traditional practice, static thinking, conventional wisdom, or common performance. In fact, the best leaders are simply uncomfortable with anything that embraces the status quo. Leadership is pursuit – pursuit of excellence, of elegance, of truth, of what’s next, of what if, of change, of value, of results, of relationships, of service, of knowledge, and of something bigger than themselves. In the text that follows I’ll examine the value of being a pursuer…Here’s the thing – pursuit leads to attainment. What you pursue will determine the paths you travel, the people you associate with, the character you develop, and ultimately, what you do or don’t achieve. Having a mindset focused on pursuit is so critical to leadership that lacking this one quality can sentence you to mediocrity or even obsolescence. The manner, method, and motivation behind any pursuit is what sets truly great leaders apart from the masses. If you want to become a great leader, become a great pursuer. A failure to embrace pursuit is to cede opportunity to others. A leader’s failure to pursue clarity leaves them amidst the fog. Their failure to pursue creativity relegates them to the routine and mundane. Their failure to pursue talent sentences them to a world of isolation.  Their failure to pursue change approves apathy. Their failure to pursue wisdom and discernment subjects them to distraction and folly. Their failure to pursue character leaves a question mark on their integrity. Let me put this as simply as I can – you cannot attain what you do not pursue. Smart leaders understand it’s not just enough to pursue, but pursuit must be intentional, focused, consistent, aggressive, and unyielding. You must pursue the right things, for the right reasons, and at the right times. Perhaps most of all, the best forms of pursuit enlist others in the chase. Pursuit in its purest form is highly collaborative, very inclusive and easily transferable. Pursuit operates at greatest strength when it leverages velocity and scale.
I also want to caution you against trivial pursuits – don’t confuse pursuit with simple goal setting. Outcomes are clearly important, but as a leader, it’s what happens after the outcome that you need to be in pursuit of. Pursue discovery, seek dissenting opinions, develop your ability unlearn by embracing how much you don’t know, and find the kind of vision that truly does see around corners. Don’t use your pursuits to shift paradigms, pursue breaking them. Knowing what not to pursue is just as important as knowing what to pursue. It’s important to keep in mind that nothing tells the world more about a leader than what or who they pursue – that which you pursue is that which you value. If you message to your organization you value talent, but don’t treat people well and don’t spend time developing the talent around you, then I would suggest you value rhetoric more than talent. Put simply, you can wax eloquent all you like, but your actions will ultimately reveal what you truly value. Lastly, the best leaders pursue being better leaders. They know to fail in this pursuit is nothing short of a guarantee they’ll be replaced by those who don’t. All leaders would be well served to go back to school on what I refer to as the science of pursuitology.
What’s been the best thing you’ve pursued? What pursuit has led you astray. Thoughts?