Three key developments last week gave WiMAX a much needed boost as an viable option to cable or DSL broadband acccess:

1- WiFi vendor Proxim announced a partnership with Intel to market and develop WiMAX gear for fixed and portable wireless broadband systems.  Under the terms of the deal, the two vendors will cooperate in developing both fixed wireless base stations and wireless equipment intended for VoIP and data services.  Intel is expected to provide the base station architecture, whereas Proxim will deliver wireless software geared towards subscriber roaming.  Perhaps this is just the first of a flurry of similar WiFi vendor deals that is expected to happen in the WiMAX space.

2- Nokia opted to rejoin the WiMAX Forum, after departing from it just a month ago.  The Finnish vendor's original decision caught observers by surprise, because Nokia was after all one of the original founding members of the group.  However, due to the increased traction that WiMAX has enjoyed in the past few months, chances are Nokia had to reconsider its decision.  Despite that, the company's short term focus still remains primarily on WiFi and 3G.  Nevertheless, the re-integration with the group also signals the vendor's desire to stay on top of developments in a potentially disruptive technology.

3- IEEE has announced a new milestone in the 802.16 standard (revision 802.16-2004, announced this past Thursday).  This is an important blessing to WiMAX from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

SpaceShipOne took an important step yesterday in winning the coveted $10 million Ansari X Prize, an award given to the first privately financed three-seat spacecraft to reach an altitude of 62 miles and repeat the feat within a couple of weeks. The requirements are geared to allow for extra paying customers and reusability of the spaceship, respectively.

Space.com had many articles on the subject today. Pilot Mike Melvill achieved a bit more than 400 feet above the distance considered to be the boundary of space, namely 62.2 miles above the Earth. The flight duration was pegged at roughly 90 minutes. By contrast, in 1961, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, soared to an altitude of 115 miles, although the flight on that occasion only lasted for about 15 minutes.

After being knighted and receiving the coveted First Millenium Technology Prize, Scientific American reports that Tim Berners-Lee is working on a new form of WWW content.

The Semantic Web  will enable computers to perform more sophisticated searches and tasks for users.  The idea is to create an environment where software agents can actually go above and beyond simple web page parsing and be able to process the actual semantics of a web page.  For instance, Yahoo! Finance lists all the stock market information and the very first figure actually is a dynamically created GIF of the NYSE composite index.  The Semantic Web is going to be a powerful extension of the existing World Wide Web (WWW).  The above article offers great insights into the how this concept will be really disruptive, being able to even assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole.

The rarest of all eclipses took place this past Tuesday, as Venus moved directly between the Earth and the Sun.  Venus makes two passes across the sun, eight years apart, every 122 years.  The next transit is expected to be in 2012. 

NASA created a fantastic site that is highly educative and provides many shots taken by observatories from around the world: 

Venus Transit  2004: Sun - Earth Day