blogginess

Ever the gim­micky city Port­land, OR—at the behest of our fear­less leader, Mayor Sam Adams—is going to try for the world record for the longest game of tele­phone in a move that Port­landi­ans hope will sway Google into giv­ing us the hyper-speed Google fiber we so obvi­ously deserve.  From the Port­land Busi­ness Jour­nal:

The tech com­pany indi­cated that “cit­i­zen involve­ment” would play a key fac­tor in its decision.

To that end, Port­land Mayor Sam Adams and mem­bers of the city’s cre­ative ser­vices indus­tries devised the “Tele­phone” scheme to attract Google’s atten­tion. The game will fea­ture par­tic­i­pants stretch­ing from the Rose Gar­den arena over the Steel Bridge and end­ing in Pio­neer Cour­t­house Square. “Tele­phone” is the game in which par­tic­i­pants try to relay a mes­sage from person-to-person, the amuse­ment com­ing from how the final mis­sive devi­ates from the orig­i­nal message’s word­ing and intent.

The event begins at 9 a.m. Par­tic­i­pants are asked to meet at North­west Naito Park­way and Couch Street. Adams will be the last par­tic­i­pant in the event.

High-speed Beer

UPDATE:  Ever the gim­micky city’s gim­micky brew­ery, Hop­works Urban Brew­ery has crafted a “Giga­bit IPA”, as another bar­gain­ing chip in our quest for the coun­tries fastest inter­net connection!

Described by Hopwork’s Brewer Ben Love, “this fresh & edgy IPA honorsPortland’s new giga­bit net­work project pio­neer­ing a con­nected future with Google fiber-to-home.  Embrace the band­width with a mas­sive NW hop aroma, with rich cit­rus and pine accents aggres­sively bal­anced with clear malt caramel fla­vor, and a deep, clean, sat­is­fy­ing fin­ish. From Hop­works, the world’s first carbon-neutral artis­nal brewery.”

The Giga­bit IPA is being bot­tled and labeled in a lim­ited run and shipped to Google to sip on while they review appli­ca­tions for their Giga­bit offer.  Hope it’s got that trade­mark NW bit­ter­ness (and ridicu­lously high alco­hol con­tent).  More, includ­ing back­story at Taplis­ter.

What’s Google Inter­net? Well, in their own words.…

Google is plan­ning to build, and test ultra-high speed broad­band net­works in a small num­ber of trial loca­tions across the coun­try. We’ll deliver Inter­net speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Amer­i­cans have access to today with 1 giga­bit per sec­ond, fiber-to-the-home con­nec­tions. We’ll offer ser­vice at a com­pet­i­tive price to at least 50,000, and poten­tially up to 500,000 people.

As a first step, we’re putting out a Request for Infor­ma­tion (RFI) to help iden­tify inter­ested com­mu­ni­ties. We wel­come responses from local gov­ern­ment, as well as mem­bers of the public.

Our goal is to exper­i­ment with new ways to help make Inter­net access bet­ter, and faster for everyone.

If this doesn’t excite you then you prob­a­bly printed this blog out to read later while on the bus or some such.  In which case, i under­stand we won’t be expect­ing your sup­port on this issue…  If this does excite you.  Well, ME TOO!  So go ahead, let your voice be heard!

Also, check out PDX Com­mu­nity Fiber — Bring Google high-speed inter­net to Port­land, OR. Fol­low the blog to stay in the loop. And while you’re at it, fill out the form to offer your own thoughts.