Articles by date
03 September 2010
Mobile phones and America's adults who text more, but voice calls the main reason (Pew Internet and American Life Project)
Overview: Texting by American adults has increased substantially over the past year, but still does not approach the magnitude of text messages exchanged by adolescents. Some 72% of adult cell phone users send and receive text messages now, up from 65% in September 2009. Fully 87% of teen cell users text. Teens text 50 messages a day on average, five times more than the typical 10 text messages sent and received by adults per day.
The future of the internet: The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it (The Economist)
The first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist. One, John-Perry Barlow, even penned "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace".
YouTube Ads Turn Videos Into Revenue (New York Times)
Last month, a YouTube user, TomR35, uploaded a clip from the AMC series "Mad Men" in which Don Draper makes a heartfelt speech about the importance of nostalgia in advertising.
Facebook: Teens want to unfriend their cyber-stalking mothers (Los Angeles Times)
More than three-quarters of parents on Facebook are friends with their kids -- to many of those kids' dismay
Number of Japanese internet crime cases hits record high in 1st half (Japan Today)
Police responded to a record 2,444 Internet crime cases nationwide in the first half of this year, a National Police Agency survey showed Thursday. The number, up 586 or 31.5% from a year earlier, represented a new high since the NPA started gathering statistics for Internet crimes, defined as crimes which use a computer network, on a half-year basis in 2004.
Apple, Google to clash in music space by Christmas (Reuters)
Google Inc is in talks with music labels on plans for a download store and a digital song locker that would allow its mobile users to play songs wherever they are as it steps up its rivalry with Apple Inc, according to people familiar with the matter.
BlackBerry should share data: UN (The Australian)
Blackberry's Canadian manufacturer should give law enforcement agencies access to customer data, the United Nations telecommunications chief said.
More U.S. Adults Embrace Texting, Pew Survey Finds (Tech Daily Dose)
A survey released Thursday found that U.S. adults are following teens in embracing text messaging, with 72 percent of adults saying they have sent or received text messages compared with 65 percent in a September 2009 survey. Adults, however, still have a ways to go to catch up to the 87 percent of teens who reported using their mobile phones for texting.
UN reveals global disparity in broadband access (BBC News)
The global disparity in fixed broadband access and cost has been revealed by UN figures.
Nigerian scam tops list of decade's online cons (CNET)
We've all received e-mails from deposed Nigerian princes asking for help in getting lots of money out of their country. But that's just one of several scams that made Panda Security's list of the most frequent online cons of a decade.
FCC asks for public comment on net neutrality proposals (BBC News)
American net users are being asked to help decide what ISPs can do to the web traffic flowing over their networks.
02 September 2010
China Will Require ID for Mobile Phone Numbers; Noncompliance Means No Service (New York Times)
The Chinese government on Wednesday began to require cellphone users to furnish identification when buying SIM cards, a move officials cast as an effort to rein in burgeoning cellphone spam, pornography and fraud schemes.
Blackberry loses more ground to Apple and Android (Computerworld)
In a continuing trend, more businesses are shifting loyalties from Blackberry to iPhones and Android devices as the relative newcomers make inroads into the corporate world. Three-quarters of the 200 businesses surveyed in the United States and the U.K in the study reported that their employees are choosing other than Blackberry, Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd. reported to Bloomberg. The number was 83 percent for U.S. companies.
NZ Police: Google committed no crime with Wi-Fi data grab (New Zealand Herald)
Police have found no evidence Google committed a criminal offence by gathering personal wireless internet data during its street view operation in New Zealand.
Will Russia's Bloggers Survive Censorship Push? (Der Spiegel)
With so many of their media sources controlled by the state or government-friendly oligarchs, Russians have turned to their bloggers to keep informed and give voice to their grievances and concerns. But many of those in power are now seeking to impose rigid limits on online freedom.
Cisco, Itron to jointly design US smart energy grid communications (IT World)
Networking giant Cisco today announced an alliance with Itron, a Liberty Lake, Wash.-based utility metering technology company, to develop secure Internet Protocol (IP) communications technology for so-called smart energy grids that connect wired and wireless networks.
01 September 2010
Is ICANN Handling Too Many Policy Issues? (ICANN Blog)
Responding to a Domain Name Wire article on whether there is "policy overload" at ICANN and whether they are "handling too many policy efforts at once", David Olive responds on the ICANN Blog saying the answer with a definitive "no".
Only in Japan, Real Men Go to a Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends (Wall Street Journal)
This resort town, once popular with honeymooners, is turning to a new breed of romance seekers -- virtual sweethearts.
India to Have 237 Million Web Surfers in 2015 (Wall Street Journal)
The number of Internet users in India is expected to triple in the next five years, according to a report from the Boston Consulting Group Wednesday but making money from them isn't going to be easy.
Opinion: Google's Earth (New York Times)
"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," said the search giant's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial interview. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." Do we really desire Google to tell us what we should be doing next? I believe that we do, though with some rather complicated qualifiers.
Internet access in emerging markets to double by 2015 (Network World)
The number of people with Internet access in Brazil, Russia, China, India and Indonesia will double by 2015, management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group said in a report released Wednesday.
To Win Over Users, Gadgets Have to Be Touchable (New York Times)
Whoever said technology was dehumanizing was wrong. On screens everywhere -- cellphones, e-readers, A.T.M.'s -- as Diana Ross sang, we just want to reach out and touch.
Sony Ericsson Says China Is Embracing Smartphones (Wall Street Journal)
Sony Ericsson Chief Executive Bert Nordberg said Tuesday that he expects smartphone use in China to expand to half of all mobile-phone users in the country within five years, as the company joins other global handset makers in shifting its focus to higher-end devices.
Huge Spamming Botnet Injured but Still Alive (PC World)
A botnet responsible for a significant amount of spam has been crippled but may reconstitute itself in a matter of weeks, according to vendor M86 Security.
1 in 3 Internet Users Think All Websites Are Equally Dangerous (ReadWriteWeb)
A third of all Internet users thinks that virtually every website poses a potential security threat. According to a new survey by German online security firm Avira, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of potential security issues online, but it looks like for quite a large population of Web surfers, this has turned into something akin to paranoia. Less than 5% of respondents suspect that big portals are especially vulnerable, while 27% (rightly) think warez sites pose major security risks, and 34.5% think that all websites are equally dangerous.
