Expect an order from the FCC today that improves the regulatory environment for WiFi unlicensed wireless services. The agency is expected to change its spread-spectrum rules to reduce the potential for interference between WiFi and Bluetooth. It’s also expected to amend its rules be more friendly to high-speed variants of 802.11 in the 2.4 Ghz frequency band. (Thanks to my friends at Legg Mason for the tip.) Everyone pays attention ...

Eli’s arrival unfortunately coincided with several conferences I was invited to speak at. I’m particularly bummed that I’m missing the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, which has been going on this week. Sounds like a great confluence of people and ideas. As usual, Doc, Cory, Dave and Dan are blogging it live.

Keith Teare, former CEO of RealNames, pointed me to his new Weblog, where he explains how Microsoft effectively shut down his company. I assume most readers of this site have seen pointers to Keith’s site elsewhere. If not, check it out. It’s not often that you get such an insider view of these developments. I can only imagine what an analogous Napster Weblog would include….

Two years ago, I wrote a column about Napster which appeared in the Industry Standard with the headline, “It’s Not Dead Yet.” A federal court had just granted an injunction against Napster, which was thought to be on its last legs. As I predicted, Napster wasn’t done in 2000, because it and the music industry needed each other. Bertelsmann’s investment was the surest indication of that fact. In the end, ...

Radio Userland now has a built-in comments feature, something I’ve been waiting for. Let’s see if I can get it to work.

After taking off about a week to be with my new son, I’m now back at work. Give me a little time for active posts to resume on the Werblog, since I’ve got a whole lotta catching up to do.

I think Eli must be the youngest person in the world to have his own Weblog.

Born: May 6, 2002, 2:42pm8 lbs., 7 oz. Mom, dad and son are all doing fine. Stay tuned for more details soon, including the Little W Weblog!

Thank goodness Radio (which I use to manage this Weblog) is a network-enabled desktop application, rather than a hosted Web-based one. Userland has been experiencing a major outage for the past two days, but it hasn’t affected me at all.

This chart shows the daily closing price of the AMEX Internet Index since I joined EDventure Holdings in April 1998. At the time, I suspected we were at the end of the Internet boom, which started with the 1995 Netscape IPO. I thought that as stock mania subsided, energy would shift to figuring out what had changed and how to build real businesses. If you look closely at the chart, ...