Tim Higgins

Just before Monday broke here on the East coast, Qualcomm (which minutes later announced that it was acquiring Airgo) "announced the availability of the world's first chipset offering full support for Draft 2.0 of the IEEE 802.11n standard". As Glenn Fleishman points out in his post, since Draft 2.0 won't be voted on until March of next year, this announcement is pitching a chipset that is based upon a "draft of a draft".

We all knew that at some point Airgo would come off its mountain and wallow in the pre-standard mud along with Broadcom, Atheros and Marvell. So I guess if you're going to get dirty, you might as well set a new standard. Congratulations to both Airgo and its proud new owner Qualcomm for establishing a new low in WLAN marketing practices.

Those of you who have been following me since I hit the web back in 1997 know that I seem to change sites every few years or so. This might be due to some deep-seated personality flaw, but I think it's more just the nature of the web—or at least my approach to it.

This is actually the second time around for SmallNetBuilder, which first went up after my adventures with PracticallyNetworked and internet.com finally wound down. SNB was a fresh start from PracticallyNetworked and ran on what became a highly-modified version of PostNuke. It wasn't long after SNB was launched that my association with Omid Rahmat and TG Publishing began—a great partnership that continues today.

When Tim Higgins first started Tom's Networking Guide for TG Publishing (TGP) I was not sure what would happen. But I did know that Tim was a unique voice on the Web, and we would not fail by being associated with him. Today, he launches SmallNetBuilder, and TGP is forunate to be a part of his vision. Tom's Networking always implied that it was a networking mirror of Tom's Hardware; Small Net Builder is a more accurate reflection of what the site is truly all about.

If you've been following powerline networking, you know that the wireless LAN industry isn't the only one capable of screwing up a market in the name of "consumer choice".

Panasonic today "announced" upcoming retail availability (in Japan only) of the BL-PA100 powerline Ethernet adapter that it actually announced at January's CES.