RIP Chris Kalaveras - Killed By Alleged Drunk Driver

Back in October of 2009 at The National Science Foundation ATE 2009 Principal Investigators Conference in Washington, DC I had the chance to talk on camera with DeAnza College students Chris Kalaveras and Paul Nguyen. 

Students that attend the conference spend three days in a variety of seminars, demonstrating and sharing their work with other colleges. These students are the best of the best - it's a competitive and thorough process involving nomination by a professor and selection by a committee in Washington. 

Chris and Paul were nominated and selected. At the conference they displayed and demonstrated how they were taking donated computers, fixing them up and donating them to DeAnza students. Couple of impressive young guys doing great stuff.



On Thursday Chris was killed riding his motorcycle. The driver of the car involved in the accident has been booked on felony DUI charges. Here's the obituary from the Mercury News in San Jose. 

The Santa Clara County Coroner on Friday identified the motorcyclist who died Thursday (January 19, 2012) evening after a collision with an alleged drunken driver as 25-year-old Christopher Kalaveras of Santa Clara.
Santa Clara police identified the driver as Aaron Keith Taylor, who was booked into jail on felony DUI charges.
Police said the motorcycle and another vehicle collided in a residential neighborhood near Francis and Santa Maria avenues, east of Lawrence Expressway, at 8:45 p.m. Santa Clara paramedics pronounced Kalaveras dead about 10 minutes later.
Police said it was not immediately clear if other factors, such as a slick road, could have contributed to the crash.

Chris was a great kid doing great things and on track to do even greater things. Such a sad and unnecessary loss. If you get wasted - stay off the road.

In Protest of SOPA and PIPA 1/18/12

Like many others, I personally and strongly oppose SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), also known as House Bill 3261 and the Senate version PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) or S. 968.

Supporters believe the bills, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. 

Opponents, like myself, believe that they violate the First Amendment, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions.

Here's a statement from Google - like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet

I encourage you to form your own opinion. If you do agree with Google, Wikipedia and thousands of other companies, tech activists, entrepreneurs and myself -  contact your congressman to tell them you're against the bills, either by calling their office, writing a letter, or sending a prepared message through http://americancensorship.org/

Verizon Buying "Netflix like" URLs

Back from a couple of great conferences in San Francisco and Frisco, Texas - great content, college faculty, admins and staff from around the country doing some amazing work! I get jealous - there are so many great career choices and opportunities for technology students at community colleges!

It's nice to be home though and get back on more of a regular schedule. I've been watching and talking about a few things at the conferences - one of the biggest things is video, especially in the mobile space. It's hot and it's growing - Morgan Stanley reports that approximately half of all mobile traffic today is video and this is expected to grow to 70% in the next four years.

With the rollout of Internet Protocol (IP)-based 4G services like LTE and the move to smart phones, providers are looking for something to replace revenue specifically from SMS (text messaging designed for cell phones). With the conversion to an all IP infrastructure and smart mobile devices, SMS (and text plans) will be rapidly replaced with free IP-based smart phone services like Apple's iChat.

About a month ago there were  rumors going around about Verizon moving into the online video space. What's lacking when it comes to a company like Verizon offering video? The stuff Netflix is doing - content, streaming  technology and subscription plans. So there were also rumors last month that Verizon was considering a bid for Netflix.

Where's it at today? It's still just rumors but Fusible did report that Verizon registered four new domain names on January 12:

http://whois.domaintools.com/verizoninstantvideo.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/verizoninstantmovies.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/verizoninstantmusic.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/verizoninstanttv.com

It will be interesting to watch where this goes.

Back From Vacation!

We had a really nice ten day break and now it's back to reality.

I'm out on San Francisco now for our fourth National and Mid-Pacific ICT Centers Winter Conference. This conference runs January 5-6 and features excellent presentations from ICT industry and ICT education representatives. Even in this period of high unemployment, quality ICT education leads to quality ICT employment, and that has a positive impact on the economy – at many levels. We're sharing quality ICT education information, resources and practices, improving ICT education, helping people find good ICT jobs and improving our current economy. I'd like to thank the City College of San Francisco, Microsoft and San Francisco State University for all the work involved in setting up and running this conference.

We leave San Francisco on Saturday morning, flying to Dallas for the Winter Working Connections Conference we are co-sponsoring with the Convergence Technology Center at Collin College. We'll have two fast-paced networking opportunities and conference presentations followed by two days of an in-depth faculty institute at the Collin College Preston Ridge Campus in Frisco, TX.

Great cutting edge content, good people and always lots of fun!