The FCC release follows an FCC meeting in September where officials said that actual speeds were estimated to lag by as much as 50 percent during busy hours.

“The FCC’s new digital tools will arm users with real-time information about their broadband connection and the agency with useful data about service across the country,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.

The FCC is also collecting information about where broadband is not available. Consumers can email the FCC at fccinfo@fcc.gov or call the FCC.

Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013, according to a new forecast by research firm Gartner.

That’s an even more aggressive outlook than Morgan Stanley’s projection that the mobile Web will outstrip the desktop Web in five years.
Gartner estimates the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will surpass 1.82 billion units by 2013, eclipsing the total of 1.78 billion PCs by then.

But the firm warns that many sites still are not optimized for the mobile Web, even though cell users expect to make fewer clicks on their phones than on a PC. To successfully expand into mobile, publishers will have to reformat sites from the small form-factor of handheld devices.

This is why one of my goals this year is to learn how to program the iPhone.

At the Web 2.0 Summit, Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker did a presentation of the economic and technology trends she’s been following. Her presentation this year spent a lot of time looking at mobile trends. Mobile, apparently, is the next “computer cycle” (think Mainframe, Mini, PC, Internet).

It’s time to learn some new skills, and it looks like learning how to program the iPhone is what I need to do.

There are moves, however to kill off IE6 once and for all. A recent article in IEEE Spectrum, “We Come to Bury IE6,” makes the case that companies are holding back their scientists and engineers from getting full value from the Web by forcing them to use outdated Web browsers. They also point out that running IE6 can actually be a security risk because it’s the browser that hackers love to hack.

The article also links to the website, IE6 No More. This website includes code that developers can use to alert users that they’re using an out-of-date browser. It also includes a page that discusses why corporations should upgrade.

Enough’s enough. Let’s move on.

The site will not only serve to inform members of the professional society’s events, but also help them manage their membership list. Current members can renew their memberships online and prospective members can join. Members will have access to an exclusive members’ section that will enable them to network with other members.

The Institute of Professional Nursing (IPN) was established in August 2006. Its mission is to be a premier non-profit nursing organization dedicated to promoting and sustaining the profession. IPN is the organization for all nursing communities where nurses can be involved in charting their future and strengthening their leadership skills.

The number of Indian PHP developers has been growing at a large pace in the last few years, when compared to other countries. A few years ago, India was just one of the top ten countries with more PHP developers. Now India is number 2 and is almost surpassing United States, which is still number 1.

This article presents a reflection about why this growth happened just in the latest years, as well what it means for the PHP world.

Hack #5, “Open search bar results in new tab,” and Hack #8, “View source code in an external editor,” are the two best, as far as I’m concerned. Now, I can open up a page’s source code in Smultron, the text editor I use. Editing the file doesn’t let you test changes—as it does in Opera—but it still provides a consistent way of looking at source code.

One of the “features” that I always hated about viewing source with Firefox is that the default configuration doesn’t wrap long lines. Now, with Smultron, I get wrapped lines.

While poking around, I did find a way to wrap long lines of source code without loading it into an external editor. Search for the parameter view_source.wrap_long_lines and set it to true. That works like a charm, too.

Fortunately, the admin screens were working. I first upgraded to version 2.8 (the new automatic upgrade feature of WP is really fantastic!), but that didn’t fix the problem. Next, I checked out the theme page. There, it was reported that my theme was missing the template file. I re-installed the theme, and it looks like things are working again.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that somehow the template file was corrupted or deleted, effectively taking my website offline. I notified tech support at my web hosting company, but I’m not sure that there’s anything they can really do about it.

What this points out is the importance of monitoring your website. If you’re like me, you rarely check to see that a website is up and running, but failing to do so could reflect poorly on you and your business. Worst case, you could miss out on business opportunities.

My priorities just got re-arranged. This morning, I’m going to research website-monitoring services and sign up with one that will make sure that this website stays online.

Using the first approach, you could get something wildly creative, but the risk is that you get something that’s completely off-base, too. Using the second approach you’re more likely to get something that you can use, but it takes a lot of work on your part to give the freelancer the direction he or she needs.

The worst-case is when the freelancer is put in a situation somewhere between the two. That is, he or she is not given much direction yet expected to produce something that pleases the client. This rarely happens because the client doesn’t really know what he wants until he sees what you’ve produced.

That’s why I always try to work with a client before taking on a project to define the project as much as possible. If we can do that upfront, then both of us will be happy when the project is complete.