Now that Fubra Limited has obtained RIPE membership, we are a step closer to become a full ISP and can now confirm that we are investigating the possibility of trialing an ADSL2+ service in the Farnborough and Aldershot areas.

Anyone who lives in those areas and would be interested in signing up to this pilot ADSL2+ service should contact paul at fubra d0t com.

This image is in fact a table: Make your own here JPG to ASCII.

Congratulations Fubra! Today we can add RIPE to our list of memberships, along with NOMINET and IT-NIC.

organisation: ORG-FL12-RIPE
org-name: Fubra Limited
org-type: LIR
address: Fubra Limited
address: Brendan McLoughlin
address: Managing Director
address: HILLSIDE ROAD THE CLOISTERS
address: GU11 3NB ALDERSHOT
address: UNITED KINGDOM
phone: +448701222600
fax-no: +448701222699
e-mail: ** removed to stop spammers **
mnt-ref: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT
mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT
changed: ** removed to stop spammers ** 20050727
source: RIPE

Since Google launched their maps website at the beginning of this year, developers all over the world have been "hacking" together their own interpretation of the map system, plotting everything from chicago crime scenes to farnborough hotels on top of the google map interface. At the time there was a bit of mystery as to how google would react to hundreds of third parties using their system for free.

However, as of the end of June, Google announced a Google Maps API, which effectively means that they are officially endorsing the use of their maps by third parties.

Strategically, this is an utterly brilliant move by Google. By embracing the developer community, and making their map system both free and extremely easy to implement into other sites, they will soon be the most widely used map service on the web. They will go from not having a map service, to become the world's leading online map service in less than a year. If that isn't a smart move, I don't know what is!