We have received word from our partnership vendor that Verizon has put a halt on their deployment of their Fios Product. This means if your county has not signed a Franchise agreement with the telecom giant. You will not be seeing Fios in your area anytime soon. They are claiming to be running on a tight budget and do not see a profit in the coming months. They are hoping for some stimulus funds to keep things moving.

As for Philly, This agreement was signed back in 2009 with a rollout in Chestnut Hill, followed by Brewerytown, East and West Mount Airy, South Philadelphia and Kensington.
(side note)
It seems to be that Verizon is skipping over the minority sections of Philadelphia. After searching online I found this post in a forum
“I have had conversations with several Verizon construction crews going around South and West Philly and they tell me they are having problems with laying fiber in those West Philadelphia alleyways with all that trash and trees and obstructions. They told me 3-5 years minimum. I work for Comcast. I am not a fan, I just work for them.”

This is very disturbing news if this is true.

At the time of this writing they have removed Pennsylvania from their community section on http://www22.verizon.com/about/community/ . The link is still there but seems to be broken now. We managed to file the pdf which shows the Pa locations to received Fios.

Alternate link just in case VZ removes the pdf

The pdf gives a general area and does not going into much details. But lets takes E Woodland ave since this is in the pdf file. Verizon completely skips southwest philly on the south side of Baltimore Ave. E Woodland is Sharon Hill. This does not include 65th and Woodland at all. This areas will continue to have DSL instead.

Verizon has also ended its Wholesale fiber to the home in which Powserve.com was effected by this. Powserve was working on a deal with a vendor to roll this out to their customers in early 2011. Powserve currently offers DSL services using the Verizon network to customers in the tri-state area.

Other references

Baltimore was completely skipped over. Rumors has it that Baltimore was skipped due to their low incoming communities and they did not see a profit in the entire city. But Verizon has denied this rumors and says they the city could not agree on a Franchise Agreement.

The Baltimore sun reports on this

Reported by Mas for Openkb

Confidential powerpoint slides have been leaked onto the internet. The slides seem to show that M$ is continuing to eyeball Apple and Linux in more ways then one. We are unable to post the material on our website due to copyright laws. But we found a interesting breakdown at MSFT Kitchen .

Researchers say that the end of the keyboard and mouse may be near. I don’t believe this is a good idea and hope this is just a rumor. I cant see me using a touchscreen to code up a program or troubleshoot a network issue.

Another thing i am seeing is a increase in laptop sells. With the reduce cost on laptops these days more people are dumping desktops for a laptop in the home. While laptops can provide a convenience during American Idol or Big Brother. Nothing beats a desktop with a movable mouse and larger keyboard. How can you be productive if you always have to touch the screen to type up your resume or contract. The consumers need to stop buying these units so we can keep the production of keyboards and mouse up.

Mas

Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider.

To try it out:

* Configure your network settings to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as your DNS servers

Google FAQ on the new service

News Snippet:

Fedora 12 have been renamed to Constantine and set to be released on November 3rd.

The alpha release is set for August.