This morning, I responded to an invitation from the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council to participate in “The Official State of Arizona Internet Speed Test.”

The Digital Arizona Program:

… created an Internet Speed Test and Survey on the Digital Arizona web portal to measure the upload and download (connection) speeds at tens of thousands of locations (i.e. homes, offices, etc.) around the State. The combination of data from large quantities of speed tests along with answers from the related survey questions will be analyzed by the Digital Arizona team to determine potential areas and/or communities that may be poorly served. … This will assist us with our goal of facilitating access to better high-speed Internet service for ALL Arizonans, especially those residing in the rural areas of the State.

Here are my results:

 

Not bad service!  But, of course, I live in the city of Mesa, AZ, not in a rural area.  We’ll see what service we get during our family reunion in Pinetop-Lakeside, AZ, later in the summer.

This morning I read a tweet from Marc Davis that quoted a profound statement from Johannes Ernst:

@Johannes_Ernst: “We do not know yet what will be the ‘VisiCalc’ of Personal Clouds” #IIW #pcloud #personaldata.

I think Johannes hit the nail squarely on its head.  The concept of Personal Clouds is very intriguing, but still in the hobbyist stage.

If I recall correctly, the first time I saw Visicalc demonstrated was on a TRS- 80 machine.  It was crude by today’s standards, but revolutionary in what we could do with it.

Wikipedia quotes Thomas Hormby, who stated: 

VisiCalc … is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool.

What will be the application that turns Personal Clouds into a serious tool and triggers rapid growth? I would hope that universally accepted, personally managed Identity credentials and mobile payments will be early winners, but who knows?