Is Google planning to offer nationwide WiFi? Business 2.0 is running a story touching many of the highpoints of the idea, but analysts covering Google have been following the company’s move in this area for a number of months.

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With Google’s recent fiber-optic purchases/leases and the rollout of Feeva, Google does appear to positioning itself to offer WiFi to the masses, at least in major cities.

Will “GoogleNet” be free? That is the next question. Google does offer some services/software for a fee and has continually told analysts that standard sales/licensing processes remain a viable option. However, it is much more likely that a WiFi offering by Google will be paid for, at least in part, via advertising similar to the majority of its services. Consumers often view searches on Google/Yahoo or even basic television as free, but it is not. These services are paid for from advertisers. While consumers may not pay initially, the advertising budget supporting these services come from consumers purchases online, in stores or from service centers. The business model is simply different.

Are you participating in that conference call or are you typing emails and talking with officemates? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has proposed a piece of software that can answer this question for others. The “Jerk-O-Meter” measures the stress levels in your voice and rates you between 0 and 100 to let you know how annoying you are being and your interest level in the conversation.

We would like to hear your comments. Whether good, bad or indifferent, your comments are important to us. They help us find bugs, improve existing features, look into new areas of technology.

Many of our regular visitors have asked what blogs, sites and webzines we read regularly. Rather than show a shortened list on our homepage, we wanted to create a separate page to feature the full list.

We follow a diverse list of sites quite regularly and hope you will take a few minutes to see what sparks your interest.

The U.S. Government is increasingly looking at requiring that the black boxes in autos collect more and more data. As telematics is beginning to reach substantial numbers in the market, it is realistic to assume that the industry will see regulations (of some type) on the data that telematics service providers must monitor/store/provide.

Wired.com recently ran an article entitled “Gadgets No Help for the Blind”. The article makes several overall comments on the mobile industry including:

Though many assistive devices are commercially available for the blind and vision-impaired, each has limitations and nearly all are expensive, produced in small batches by specialized companies. Even a software program [...]