Thought Garage

Link to USCIS Page                                                           http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/services/tempbenefits/cap.htm

For fiscal year 2007, that starts from Oct 2006, USCIS has received 39,445 H1B applications and approved 6,465 cases by 15th May, 2006 update.  That leaves 18755 applications before it reaches the cap for this year. So if anybody is planning to apply for a H1B, better hurry up.

Update: The cap for H1B for fiscal year 2007 was reached on 26th May, 2006 itself. It is suprising since USCIS issued a notification on 25th that they have received around 50000 applications by 25th may, 2006.  And for a long time, they did not update the above link. Even on 3rd of June, it was still showing numbers around 50000. But there is this notification on their home page.

http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/newsrels/FY07H1BCap_060106PR.pdf

Cellular Music Services Overpriced says Strategy Analytics http://www.mobiletechnews.com/info/2006/05/19/093256.html

Kevin Nolan, Director, Advanced Wireless Laboratory, added, “Our research suggests that users are willing to pay a premium of around 35 percent for the convenience of downloading tracks to both their wireless devices and PCs – subject to reliable network performance. In our view, the current 100 to 150 percent premiums charged by the main operators make adoption of these services highly unlikely.“

http://en.fon.com/ : FON is the largest WiFi community in the World
Join FON, share excess bandwidth at home and roam the world for free

FON is a community based WIFI network, where each individual joins FON network shares their WIFI with other FON members. In return, members can use WIFI whereever FON network(members) is/are available. It is now available in most cities all over the world.

Ever afraid of Telcos/ISPs don’t respect net neutrality and force to use the network the way they want, not how you like it, check it out. FON is the best alternative and answer to most important questions about internet access and net neutrality. Gives a comfort feeling that it will survive against huge telco lobbying and market forces with funding from likes of Google, Sequoia and Skype.

Apple filed for a patent of an LCD Monitor that has microscopic image sensors embedded into it that can act as a high resolution camera.

Link on Engadget : ” … Apple for an LCD display embedded with thousands of microscopic image sensors that would allow users to video-conference while looking straight into the “camera.” Data accumulated by the individual sensors would be stitched into actual images using special software, which will probably be bundled into future versions of iLife. Since the patent specifies almost as many sensors per screen as there are pixels, some of those sensors could have different focal lengths, with a defacto zoom lens created by switching between them. Apple goes on to suggest portable uses for the technology, such as employing the displays in cellphones and PDAs ..”

A report by UK Firm Informa Telecoms & Media suggests PSTN operators loose $100B of their reveneue to VOIP services between 2005 and 2011.

“After 2010, PSTN will no longer be the main revenue generator in developed countries,” report author Malik Saadi said in a statement. “There will be no justification for big operators to reserve a whole network for traditional PSTN voice traffic. This trend will increasingly push operators and network owners to gradually migrate their subscribers from traditional PSTN to VoIP.”

Link to news item at Information Week

I bet PSTN phones will become a history very soon. Skype recently introduced free skype out calls to any phone in US and Canada. There will be less use for having a PSTN phone these days. Almost everyone in family carries a cell phone and when they are at home, they have skype, which is much richer than a traditional pstn phone. Remember the PSTN phone still charges $2.99 each for services like Call waiting, Calling Name etc, and charges more for long distance calls.