In the March issue of World Radio, Alan Pickering, KJ9N, did a little speculating on the state of the Internet and why now might be a good time for ham radio folks to start recruiting young people, who have seemingly lost interest in ham radio in favor of the Internet. He says, that as far as the Internet is concerned, the bloom may be off the rose. The reason: SPAM.
He conjectures that now might be a good time to recruit young people so that they can have truly unfettered communications. I thought about this for a bit, and came up with this reply:
I just read your March column in World Radio. I must say that I like these ideas a lot! Now, what someone needs to do is develop a handheld with a small LCD screen that will allow instant messaging. Another idea would be to develop a little card like the wireless networking card that you can plug into a laptop, but instead of talking to wireless LANs, it communicates on VHF through a repeater somewhere. Maybe this is just the application that all those little-used 220 MHz repeaters out there are waiting for.
It does seem a bit far-fetched, but who knows?
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