Google Fiber's promise of Gigabit broadband is tantalizing for tech geeks like me, who dream of using the internet in a superfast way without any delays or waiting. But if it's to prove itself useful to the rest of the country, there's a big question that it has to answer: what can you do with superfast internet?
KC Digital Drive is taking a big step in that direction this weekend, with its "Hacking The Gigabit City" event. The group has partnered with the Kauffman Foundation, Mozilla Foundation and US Ignite to launch a contest for app developers to spend 48 hours developing apps that will take advantage of gigabit speeds. The event starts tonight at the Google Fiber space in Kansas City, and will continue tomorrow and Sunday at the Kauffman Labs.
There are already some interesting developer teams and ideas shaping up on the event's Wiki page. Here are a few of them that I find pretty interesting:
- Interactive MOOCs: There's a lot of chatter among education innovators about MOOCs - "Massively Open Online Courses" where people can take courses anywhere. The problem with current internet speeds is that these are pretty one way. You watch a video or a live lecture, but the interaction is limited. With gigabit speeds, however, this developer team imagines adding much more robust interaction
- Turnkey Access To Business Software: I'll just quote directly from the Wiki because it's pretty straightforward: "imagine setting up a business in KC gave you access to a turn-key computer setup that with a click provided access to software such as Microsoft Office, Excel, database software, automatic backup, customer relationship management software, etc., etc. All you need is a low-cost computer that can connect via high speed network to the cloud computing environment where all of this is running." The ultimate in cloud computing, basically
- Cloud 3D Modeling and Printing: 3D modelling is a pretty bandwidth intensive thing - anybody who does it knows you need a computer with some powerful graphics capabilities. But at gigabit speeds, the modeling can be crunched elsewhere while teams using lower-end computers can work on them interactively even though they're miles apart.
- Virtual Art Museums: With gigabit speeds, this team imagines that art museums could create high-resolution images of their collections, with robust ways to view them. And viewing those images could be supplemented with video, audio commentary, and more. That gives folks the chance who can't make it out to a museum a way to still experience those cultural treasures
That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to some of the interesting ideas that app developers are bringing to Kansas City today. Stay tuned later this weekend. I'll be at the hackathon on Sunday evening to take a look at product demos and see the judging. In the meantime, comment below: what ideas for apps do you think could take advantage of gigabit internet speeds?
