Anyway, I was about to sign us up with FON, but at the last second I had to wonder if our ISP allowed it. Searching on the subject, I discovered a thoughtful post from Scott Bronson over at u32.net, about how FON doesn’t help customers determine if their ISP’s terms of service allows FON-style sharing. He makes the point that although it’s pathetic that nearly all ISPs in the US don’t allow such sharing, FON is also doing its customers a disservice by not clearly informing them that they may be violating their ISP contract.
I had to agree. Perhaps if FON was more upfront, they would help consumers realize that sharing is a factor they may want to consider when choosing an ISP. After all, if you share for free, you also get to roam on other FON users networks, and that’s quite valuable. Of course, the wireless carriers greatly prefer that we pay $20-50/month for wireless data services.
If consumers were more empowered with a little more knowledge that, in turn, might encourage a few ISP’s to distinguish themselves by allowing FON - as is occurring in Europe. Unlike in Europe, I don’t see much movement to free up (and reduce the cost of) our telecom. Having just moved back to USA from India & France, I’m shocked at the price of telecom here - and it’s no accident. I suspect (and hope) that we’ll eventually learn of collusion between the wireless telecoms and ISPs (and perhaps the FCC as well?). How else can you explain the lack of innovative service offerings as compared with Europe and Asia?

Unlike some, I don’t write anything unless I have something useful to say. But I also usually won’t take the time to share an idea if there isn’t some encouragement - and a link is often just the encouragement I need. I link being able to link to my blog, or to another website of mine or a clients if I feel like it. I wonder how many people are like me. Sure, allowing URLs to be placed on your site encourages spammy comments like “Great post!” but it also encourages people with good comments to take a moment out of their day.
The proof is in the pudding: if comment links didn’t serve a purpose we’d all have removed the “Website:” field from our blog comment systems long ago. Some have done this (like Engadget a few months ago), but perhaps they won’t just lose their spam; they may also lose some valuable comments (and readers). I certainly find myself going there less now that I know I can’t benefit from a link when I add a comment. I’d rather read (and contribute insights) on a site that gives me something in return.

In general, it feels like blogs and, especially, message boards that allow users to give themselves a link, become more popular than those that don’t. Has anyone noticed the same?

(Originally posted as a comment on The Undersigned)

The thing is, we’d think somebody would have already done this, but we can’t find anyone who has. Heck, we couldn’t even find anyone willing to sell us translated place names…and we think we’re pretty good researchers. We want to make sure we’re not duplicating another effort, so it’s time to start calling around and posting into the void:

DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A COMPANY OR PROJECT THAT PROVIDES TRANSLATED PLACE NAMES - WHETHER FOR SALE OR FREE? ……OR free?……or free?…
Let’s start moving ahead anyway. Here are some issues we would need to resolve:

• What license should we release our data under?
• Is Tripter sure it doesn’t want to sell data?
• What open license will Tripter accept?
• Will certain licenses prevent the data from being used in places we’d like it to be available?
• What format should we provide it in for download?
• Excel, TSV, CSV
• Wiki (think wiktionary)
• Will users have the option to download a subset of the data, especially as the DB grows?
• Will people be able to contribute, amend, and discuss the data (a wiki might help with that).
• etc.

We look forward to discussing these ideas with anybody who’s interested.