The promise of being the test market for an ultra-fast broadband network has some Peorians in an online frenzy.

Now that Google Inc., the Mountain View, Calif.-based search company, has announced that the search is on for cities to take on the new fiber-optic project, efforts are under way to roll out a cyber-welcome mat in Peoria.

Google announced last week that it plans to build a handful of experimental networks around the country to connect consumers to the Internet, allowing for faster delivery of online video and other advanced applications the search company wants to deliver.

How fast is it? Google said the new system would be “many times as fast” as the DSL, cable and fiber-optic networks that connect most U.S. homes to the Internet today, at speeds typically ranging from 3 megabits to 20 megabits per second.

The Google project excites city leaders.

“We are putting together an application,” said Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis. “Access to high-speed data is the most important infrastructure in the 21st century. Our research indicates there are over 1,200 employers that would benefit from this technology immediately and over 13,000 small businesses that would benefit from this in the next few years.”

Peoria City Manager Scott Moore said the network could help Peoria market itself better, adding that the city would take a “regional approach” in applying to become a test market for the network.

Other city wheels also are beginning to move on the Google proposal.

“We’ve just started running with it,” said Renee Charles, spokeswoman for the Heartland Partnership. “We feel Peoria could be an ideal test market for the Google program. The infrastructure is in place here. We think we’re tech-ready for this concept.”

Tim Couillard, an Internet marketer who lives in Peoria and maintains an office in Peoria Heights, said he established a Facebook page in an effort to bring Google fiber to Peoria.

“We’ve already got 157 fans for it and I just put it up on Tuesday,” he said.

“The whole ‘how it plays in Peoria’ thing is a slam-dunk marketing campaign for Google.

“I see this as a grass-roots campaign for the community.”

A Google spokesman said the company isn’t looking to compete head-to-head with the phone and cable TV companies that dominate the U.S. broadband business.

Verizon Communications, one of those telecoms now providing broadband service in U.S. cities, said the Google network will mark “another new paragraph in this exciting story” of broadband growth. Verizon has been building a super-fast fiber-optic network, called FiOS, that offers speeds of up to 50 megabits per second and has run a field test experimenting with speeds of up to 10 gigabits – 10 times what Google is proposing.

Google said it is too soon to say how much the networks will cost to build. But the company said it is prepared to sell access directly to consumers at prices competitive with existing broadband services and would consider letting Internet service providers or local governments sell their own services over the Google network.

Steve Tarter can be reached at [email protected].

Read the original article from Journal Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

A WorkDigital Ltd adiantou-se ao próprio Google e criou um motor de busca que procura resultados dentro da informação submetida pelos utilizadores no Google Buzz e outras redes sociais.

“What’s Buzzin’?” é a questão colocada na caixa de pesquisa do motor de busca Buzzzy. Poderá filtrar os resultados através de uma timeline ou pela fonte de informação, como por exemplo Google Reader, Twitter, FriendFeed ou Google Buzz. É possível ainda separar os conteúdos por tipo de media, imagens ou vídeos.

Veja por exemplo uma pesquisa por “webtuga” no Buzzzy aqui.

WebTuga – Buzzzy – Pesquisa no Buzz

What is PHP?

PHP is a scripting language, primarily intended to generate dynamical websites on a webserver. PHP is designed in 1994, by a senior software engineer at IBM, Rasmus Lerdorf, and the language was clearly inspired by Perl. The letters PHP used to mean Personal Homepage (or more complete: Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter, PHP/FI). However, during the later developments, PHP became a recursive acronym, meaning “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”, which better suits what the language actually does: outputting hypertext (HTML or XHTML).
Since PHP is a server side scripting language, it means that the code is not compiled, but interpreted at the time of usage (by the interpreter, most often integrated in the webserver), and that the script runs on the server side, or the webserver. This way, the output is generated on the webserver, and sent to the client (your browser) as HTML.
PHP syntax is derived from many other languages, but mainly by C and Perl. However, since PHP5 also allows for object oriented programming, there is also an influence of Java noticeable. Despite all these different influences, PHP manages to remain simple and understandable.

The Source and the Tags

Although PHP is primarily intended as a text processor, it is often used as a pure programming language. However, to facilitate its text processor role, it can be inserted in a text file as well, by using the special PHP tags. Four different tags can be used to insert and execute PHP code in a text file:

• Standard tags, these are the most commonly used tags, and are the ones you should use:
  <?php
  …
  ?>

• Short tags, used to be the standard, but might interfere with XML headers, and therefor are used more rarely:
  <?
  …
  ?>

  One advantage is that they make really short syntax possible, such as <?=$variable ?> which prints the result of the variable straight to the output.

• Script tags were introduced for HTML editors. These editors are programmed to ignore JavaScript code (which uses the same script tags), but were unable to ignore PHP code, which is fixed by these script tags:
  <script language=”PHP”>
  …
  </script>

• ASP tags, don’t ask, nobody seems to know why these were introduced…
  <%
  …
  %>

Normally, the only tags you should use are the standard tags. Short tags, script tags and ASP tags are all considered deprecated.

The newline horror

Very important to remember is that the PHP interpreter outputs EVERY character outside the PHP tags as-is. This means every whitespace, every newline character. This is not an issue for whitespaces, but can be for newline characters, as they are used as a seperator between the header portion of the http response, and the actual data. This means that a newline character that is sent to the output before the headers are finished, will cause your script to fail. To help you prevent this problem, the PHP interpreter automatically strip the first newline character after the PHP closing tag (?>).

The body of a PHP script

The body of a PHP script consists of statements, which can be function calls, variable assignments, data output etcetera. Each statement, with only a few exceptions, needs to be terminated by a semicolon. One of the exceptions is for instance the last statement before a closing tag. However, for consistency’s sake, it is advised to always terminate your statements.

Comments are another almost vital part of any programming language. Yes, I know, they are not vital at all, but you should treat them like that. Make it a habit to write comments every function, class, method or property that you write in your code. If your code required some thinking to find how you will actually code it, it will require some thinking again later when you try to reread your code, and find out why you actually coded it that way. Comments can only make your life easier!
The different ways of inserting comments in a PHP script are these:

// a single line comment

# another single line comment

/* a multiline
comment
*/

/**
* another multiline comment
* Most often used to document API’s or functions, since they can hold large parts of structured text
* and still look… err… structured.
*/

Both single line comments (// and #) are closed by a newline character, or by the PHP closing tag.

Code blocks are a series of statements that must be executed all together, and under specific circumstances, such as a function call or a conditional statement. The statements inside code blocks are enclosed with two curly brackets ({}).

if ($whatimsaying == “yaddayadda”)
then
{
$takeanapforsometime = 5;
fall_asleep_for_how_long($takenapforsometime);
}

That’s all for today folks. More is coming up in the next lesson, which will start with Datatypes!

Related posts:

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2. PHP Lesson 2: Data types Today’s PHP lesson is about data types. Although PHP can…
3. Regular Expressions Cheatsheet ^ Start of string \A Start of string $…

In today’s Remainders: the truth. These entries get to the heart of the following matters: free speech on Facebook; what everyone’s Buzzing about on Google Buzz; the nature of infographics; and where we stand in Dante’s Internet Hell.

Freedom of Facebook
Back in 2007, a high school student in Miami created a Facebook group titled, “Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” The school did not like this and suspended the student. Since then, they’ve been fighting back and forth in court, the female student suing the school to expunge the suspension and the school trying to stop her effort to do so. Today, a judge ruled that the student’s Facebook posting is protected by the First Amendment, which seems like a no-brainer to me, especially considering the relative tameness of the initial barb (as someone who has written some weird stuff on RateMyProfessor, I’ve followed this case closely). On a serious note, it’s nice to see the law shifting to keep up with the times. Angry Facebookers, post away! [CNN]

The Internet
If the Internet is Hell, you might as well figure out where you stand. Full version here

Buzz Off
The funny dudes at Upright Citizens Brigade put together this funny video on Google Buzz’s defining feature: its ability to confuse. If over the past few days you’ve asked, “Wha…?,” “Why…?,” or “How…?” in relation to Google’s new social media service, then give this a watch. As they say, misery loves company. [UCB Comedy]

Important Infographic
What do we have here? A very important infographic, showing some very important trends. Note the normally undiscussed social and political issues it illuminates. It’s amazing to see this data visually, for a change—it really gives you perspective on things. For more insight on this matter, be sure to check out the full size version. [Digg]

Almost a year after the FCC first announced their National Broadband Plan, some new details have started to emerge. Specifically: A “100 Squared” plan to give 100 million households 100Mbps broadband. Just for starters.

Of course, there’s only so much of that process that’s actually in the FCC’s control, which is why the agency’s chairman gave Google a shout out in his presentation for their plan to deploy 1Gbps fiber internet to 500,000 lucky souls. But there are some steps the FCC can and will take to encourage broader, faster broadband adoption:

· A recommendation for improving the highly successful E-Rate program — which made Internet connections in America’s classrooms and libraries a reality — so that kids and teachers can have a 21st century educational experience that is the envy of the world.
· A recommendation to modernize the FCC’s rural telemedicine program to connect thousands of additional clinics and break down bureaucratic barriers to a telehealth future.
· A recommendation to take the steps necessary to deploy broadband to accelerate a smart grid.
· A recommendation to develop public/private partnerships to increase Internet adoption, and ensure that all children can use the Internet proficiently and safely — with programs like NCTA’s new A+ program playing a helpful role.
· A recommendation to free up a significant amount of spectrum in the years ahead for ample licensed and unlicensed use.
· A recommendation for lowering the cost of broadband build-out — wired and wireless — through the smart use of government rights of way and conduits.
· A recommendation for creating an interoperable public safety network to replace the currently broken system.

If that seems general and vague and imprecise, well, that’s because it is. Getting US broadband up to speed is going to be a huge undertaking, and it’s not going to happen any time soon. But just seeing the intent there is an incredibly important first step. Now it’s a matter of implementation. [FCC via Electronista]

Inspired by a question in a Facebook status, I decided to make a page on the IRC Improv Wiki for Upcoming Improv Festivals. I have started working on it and have gotten a few festivals on the list, but I hope to do some more work on it in the coming days. If you don’t want to add your festival directly to the list, you could also leave a comment here on the blog with the name, dates, location and link for your improv festival and someone will add it to the page.

Some improv groups were added to the wiki this week, Great Heights and Twenty Seven and some updates to Whisker Bliss, UCBW and Un-scripted Theater. We also had some updates to some performer pages including Shannon O’Neil, Julie Klausner, Jodi Skeris, and Rachael Mason.

Two years after Opera first attempted to get their browser on the iPhone, and it’s here. Sort of. Wired UK has seen it, gushed over it, and proclaimed it as being fast, yet missing that all-important pinch-to-zoom.

Instead, users have to adopt the double-tap method to zoom in on webpages, which will be a sore point for iPhone owners I’m sure—although Wired says “we didn’t find ourselves missing the feature at all.”

“Scrolling through webpages is silky smooth, with nary a glitch or stutter regardless of the size of the page. The interface is instantaneously responsive as well, just as you’d expect from the iPhone.”

Unlike Opera on other platforms, such as Symbian, the iPhone version actually remembers which website you were browsing last—it’s not news to non-Opera users, but the legion of fans will obviously want that feature incorporated on their phones.

While the hands-on experience seems to be overwhelmingly positive, they do acknowledge that there’s a good chance Apple will never allow it onto the App Store. It’s seen as a competitor to Safari, yet Opera told Wired “we are confident that Opera Mini will meet the requirements,” due to issues with their compression technology not rendering “rich, content-heavy documents like Safari does,” and because it doesn’t render HTML, instead using “a custom binary representation of the website.”

It sounds like they’re saying it could co-exist quite comfortably with Safari on the iPhone, with the user choosing between the two based on what site they want to visit. Until Apple actually allows Opera onto their handset though, this is just the stuff of dreams sadly. [Wired UK]

This is even cooler than it looks: Fav4.org starts your browsing off with your four favorite website’s icons already queued up. You can customize from among the 34 current offerings, and it looks as though they’ll be adding more soon.

That’s right: finally all you AOL/ffffound/MySpace/Linked In junkies will have a one-stop start page of your very own.

Let the write-in campaign for a Gizmodo icon begin! [Fav4 via NYTimes Bits Twitter]

Step 1: Announce a ridiculously fast gigabit fiber internet service. Step 2: Show everybody how much their internet sucks with the new YouTube speed dashboard.

Unlike most speedtests, it aggregates and shows your video download speed over time, and compares it to other people on the city, state, national and global level, so you can see how your broadband stacks up—and when it doesn’t.

It doesn’t? *RabbleRabbleRabbleRabbleRabble* [YouTube, Google via TechCrunch]

Erin Kutz wrote:

Paragon Lake, a jewelry virtualization and customization company, is looking to add a new layer of sparkle to its business. It’s renaming itself Gemvara and revamping its business model to to focus on allowing customers to personalize jewelry pieces directly from their own computers and not from computer stations inside retail stores as it had done originally.

The new Gemvara website (set to launch later today) looks to enhance the company’s “the-world-is-your-oyster” approach to jewelry design and customization. Customers will be able to browse designs from roughly 30 designers worldwide, and personalize their selections on the spot by swapping out a different gemstone or changing the metal.

“The focus for us is really about providing a consumer experience where shoppers have fun and get exactly what they want,” says Matt Lauzon, founder and president, who helps CEO Deborah Besemer run the company out of incubator space at Lexington, MA’s Highland Capital Partners.

Paragon Lake’s previous model hinged on the Virtual Display Case, an interface installed on computers in jewelry stores that allows customers to browse and customize inventory from different designers. They would then order their selection through the retailer, and Paragon Lake would take a cut. The company’s virtual display cases, launched with the first retail partner last March, were intended to lessen the physical inventory burden on jewelry stores and also allowed retailers to feature up-and-coming designers more prominently. The company had hoped to get its system into 50 retailers by the end of 2009, a target it hit by fall, Lauzon says. Now about 45 stores still have the computerized display cases, as some of the retailer partners are looking to adopt the online model that Gemvara will offer, he explained.

The new model pursued by Gemvara, a name that combines “gem” with the Sanskrit word for wish, furthers the customization concept, and adds a greater bit of convenience. Customers can do all their shopping and modifications directly on the Gemvara website. “It allows us to speak directly with the consumer,” Lauzon says.

Customers looking for advice as they’re about to personalize a certain piece of jewelry can contact Gemvara’s version of personal shoppers for feedback on their customization ideas. Initially this will be done on the phone, but future plans are to offer chat windows, and bring licensed gemologists into the mix to offer their perspectives. In the coming months, Gemvara plans to enlist more designers to showcase on the website, and even connect those designers with customers in the same way it seeks to connect them with the personal shoppers, Lauzon says.

Reflecting its enhanced focus on customer service, direct retail sales, and the Web, Gemvara has hired heads of merchandising, product management, and online marketing, bringing the office staff to just over 20. When Bob spoke with Lauzon and Besemer in May, they had already been planning to eventually shift the business model to Internet-based customizations for jewelry shoppers (what Besemer referred to as the Web 2.0 of online jewelry shopping), but they’ve actually done it sooner than their original target (which at that time was Mother’s Day of this year). The new site will also feature more affordable pieces than Paragon Lake’s store-based virtual display cases did. Jewelry in the previous model usually ran upwards of $1,000, but Gemvara will feature some designs as low as $250, Lauzon says.

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Gregory T. Huang wrote:

Seattle mayor Mike McGinn announced today that the city will respond to Google’s request for information from communities across the U.S. that want to partner with Google to build ultra-high-speed fiber broadband networks. The experimental idea is to connect homes to the Internet via ultra-fast fiber optics (100 times faster than a conventional broadband network), and see what effect it has on user behavior and innovation. The Google project plans to offer service to between 50,000 and 500,000 people. The deadline for submitting applications to Google is March 26.

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