Miscellaneous
14 August 2012
Google: a paragon of internet virtue no more The Guardian
When the US Federal Trade Commission slapped a fine of $22.5m on the search giant Google last week, it was easy to dismiss as relatively insignificant against a worldwide profit of nearly $3bn. But it marks an important point in a shift in perceptions of Google, once seen as a paragon of internet virtue.
12 August 2012
Google's Opaque New Policy Lets Rightsholders Dictate Search Results Electronic Frontier Foundation
Earlier this summer, we applauded Google for releasing detailed stats about content removal requests from copyright holders. Now that we know how they are going to use that data, we are less enthusiastic. Today, Google announced that it would use copyright takedown notices made under the DMCA1 as what it calls a "signal" on search results. Specifically, those "signals" will demote certain websites in search results.
07 August 2012
Telecoms tipped to take 10 percent of global energy IT Wire
Alcatel-Lucent is calling for urgent action to improve the energy efficiency of telecommunications networks amid predictions that, on current projections, the Internet could consume as much as 10 percent of global energy supply by 2020.
04 August 2012
Who’s afraid of Huawei? The rise of a Chinese world-beater is stoking fears of cyber-espionage. Techno-nationalism is not the answer The Economist
Chinese companies have started to win first place in global markets. Huawei has just overtaken Sweden's Ericsson to become the world's largest telecoms-equipment-maker. Even though many foreigners still cannot pronounce its name (some call it "Hawaii", and the firm has even produced a video teaching people to say hwah-way), Huawei is becoming an increasingly powerful global player, capable of going head-to-head with the best in intensely competitive markets. It follows Haier, which is already the leading white-goods-maker; now Lenovo is challenging Hewlett-Packard as the world's biggest PC-maker. Plenty more will follow.
Is the dot com bubble about to burst? Wall Street's love affair with internet stocks has soured after a series of disastrous flotations The Independent
Sometimes, when a love affair ends, you can't remember what it was you ever saw in someone in the first place. That is the feeling right now of a lot of once-amorous investors who breathlessly wooed Facebook at its flotation in May and paid $38 for the privilege of a share in the social network. It is the feeling right now of Pandora Media investors, who paid $16 per share for a stake in the online radio business. It is the feeling, too, of investors in Zynga, who got shares in the online games maker at $10 a pop.
03 August 2012
Google passes Apple to become 'top global brand,' study says CNET
Google led global industry in attracting "media value" -- a measure that attempts to put a dollar value on buzz -- in the second quarter, according to data from social analytics company General Sentiment.
01 August 2012
US Senator Seeks Update From Apple On Workers' Rights in China Tech Daily Dose
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday, following up on the company's response to a March report from the Fair Labor Association that cited unsafe working conditions and worker rights violations. Apple and its leading Chinese supplier Foxconn then pledged to make improvements including complying with Chinese law with regard to overtime pay, the ability to form independent unions, accident reporting and insurance benefits.
28 July 2012
Sir Tim Berners-Lee stars in Olympics opening ceremony ZDNet
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, was greeted by cheers on Friday as the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games celebrated his work.
27 July 2012
With Facebook Earnings, The Second Internet Bubble Is Over Forbes
The logo of social networking website 'Faceboo...Facebook, the social-networking company that launched its IPO in May, reported quarterly earnings for the first time on Thursday afternoon. The numbers were so-so with earnings per share meeting expectations, but in no way resembling the kind of excitement that is usually associated with a huge growth story that is rocketing to the heavens.
Google Launches a Superfast Internet and TV Business MIT Technology Review
Google announced on Thursday that it will get into the cable TV business, saying its previously announced build-out of a fiber-optic network in Kansas City, Kansas, and neighboring Kansas City, Missouri, will include television as well as high-speed Internet services.
25 July 2012
Greece Ready for 100G Internet Cisco blog
One of the most interesting aspects of the Cisco Visual Networking Index is how the explosion of Internet traffic is taking place everywhere. We've talked before about how countries such as Iceland and Bermuda are leveraging high speed connections to the world to grow their economies. This time let's look at Greece and competitive carrier hellas online (hol) on how they are preparing for the zettabyte era. (A zettabyte is 1021 bytes, in case you had forgotten).
21 July 2012
As Google Changes, Its Revenue Keeps Rising New York Times
Google wants the world to know that it has grown into a new identity -- it is a mobile company now. The financial report it issued Thursday reflects the growing pains that have accompanied the transformation.
18 July 2012
Australians pay 50% more for music downloads, PC and console games The Australian
Australians are being slugged 50 per cent more for music downloads, PC and console games than US consumers, watchdog Choice has found.
No boom for telco equipment firms in 4G revolution Reuters
With data traffic from video downloads and on-the-go web surfers clogging up telecoms networks, mobile equipment makers such as Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks should be booming.
16 July 2012
The web needs more women builders The Observer
Digital Flash NYC, a marketing agency, recently published a handy infographic reinforcing what we already know: women are more active users of social networking sites than men, racking up 99m more visits than men every month. Buried among the stats revealing that 58% of Facebook users and 64% of Twitter users are female was one forcing us to give up lazy preconceptions of gamers as sweaty teenagers hunched over laptops in bedrooms, and older women as sad loners, shovelling in the oven chips while glumly watching the household budget disappear on bingo sites.
14 July 2012
Apple Backtracks on Withdrawal From Environmental Ratings New York Times
Apple has changed its mind about not participating in a government-backed rating system that assesses the environmental friendliness of electronic products.
Chinese telecom firm ZTE probed for alleged sale of U.S. surveillance equipment to Iran Washington Post
Federal investigators are probing a major Chinese telecom firm and its U.S. subsidiary for allegedly selling banned U.S. surveillance equipment to Iran, according to a newly disclosed document.
13 July 2012
Greenpeace Urges Apple to Think Cleaner New York Times
Greenpeace International said in a new report on Thursday that Apple was making progress with its clean energy efforts, but not enough to satisfy the environmental group.
11 July 2012
Apple Shuns EPEAT: Green Cash Trumps Environment? CIO
Nothing gets past the sharp-eyed geeks at iFixit, a Web site that provides free repair manuals and advice forums. They tore down the new MacBook Pro with Retina last month and found that the battery was stuck to the case with industrial-strength glue, meaning you can't replace an old battery with a new one.
06 July 2012
Apple's Appalling Ethics Huffington Post
Earlier this year, Apple announced that it had hired an outside organization to investigate charges of forced overtime, child labor, and other miserable working conditions at the Chinese factories that make many of its i-toys. Then, just a few days ago, came a New York Times investigation into the low pay of American workers at the company's chain of snazzy retail stores.
Friday's US east coast storms raise questions about safety of cloud computing Washington Post
Storm-related outages at an Amazon data center in Ashburn prompted some congressional officials on Monday to question whether the federal government is moving too swiftly to put important data on private-sector cloud computing servers.
Facebook invests in Asia Pacific Gateway underwater internet cable BBC News
Facebook has invested in a 10,000km (6,214 mile) Asian undersea cable project.
28 June 2012
Securing supercomputer networks (without disrupting 60Gbps data flows) Ars Technica
Thanks to super-charged networks like the US Department of Energy's ESnet and the consortium known as Internet2, scientists crunching huge bodies of data finally have 10Gbps pipes at the ready to zap that information to their peers anywhere in the world. But what happens when firewalls and other security devices torpedo those blazing speeds?
19 June 2012
Mergers of European Mobile Carriers Expected to Grow New York Times
European mobile telephone operators are primed to enter a long-awaited phase of consolidation.
09 June 2012
Bangladesh suffers internet disruption after cut cable BBC News
Internet users in Bangladesh are facing major disruption to their service after a submarine cable was cut.
