Web

Digital Sovereignty and Internet Standards

There have been a number of occasions when the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has made a principled decision upholding users' expectations of privacy in their use of IETF-standardised technologies. (Either that, or they were applying their own somewhat liberal collective bias and to the technologies they were working on!) The first major such incident that I can recall is the IETF's response to the US CALEA measures. more

Nominet: 77% of British Consumers Prefer .UK Search Result over .COM

According to a report released today by Nominet, UK's domain name registry, 77% of British consumers prefer to use a .uk rather than a .com when searching for information on the Internet. The report also indicates that despite the current economic climate, the global domain name industry has seen an 8% growth with 187.6 million domain names registered worldwide. "Generic top level domains (gTLDs), such as .org and .com, have grown on average by 6% whilst the country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) including .uk and .de (the German registry) fared slightly better and together generated a 10% average growth in registrations," says Nominet. more

Gordon E. Moore, Co-Founder of Intel and Father of Moore’s Law, Passes Away at 94

Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder and former chairman of Intel Corporation, passed away on Friday at his home in Hawaii. He was 94. Moore was widely known for his 1965 prediction, which became known as Moore's Law. more

Report on Governments Involved in Edited DNS Responses

Earl Zmijewski reporting in Renesys Blog: "There's been sudden interest recently in a Chinese route hijacking incident that occurred way back in April, brought about by a new report to the US Congress that highlighted the event. A second Chinese event, also in the report, has received almost no attention despite being much more interesting (technically, anyway). A Chinese DNS censorship incident occurred just one month earlier, in March..." more

Cyberhygiene Requires Critical Thinking

At his farewell speech in August outgoing, Telstra CEO Andy Penn mentioned that the cyber threat has never been as serious as the present. He mentioned the deteriorating geopolitical situation and the big shift in how criminals operate in the cyber domain. One thing is for sure is that in order to enjoy all the positives resulting from the digital economy, we need to be far more vigilant about the barrage of information that we are receiving and/or have access to. more

Google Offers Shortcut to Open Web Technologies Within Internet Explorer

Google today announced an early-stage open source plugin called Google Chrome Frame that aims to seamlessly allow use of open web technologies and faster JavaScript engines within Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. In a blog post today Google says: "One challenge developers face in using these new technologies is that they are not yet supported by Internet Explorer. Developers can't afford to ignore IE -- most people use some version of IE -- so they end up spending lots of time implementing work-arounds or limiting the functionality of their apps." more

Reframing the Infrastructure Debate

Fast and reliable infrastructure of any kind is good for business. That it's debatable for the Internet shows we still don't understand what the Internet i -- or how, compared to what it costs to build and maintain other forms of infrastructure, it's damned cheap, with economic and social leverage in the extreme. Here's a thought exercise... Imagine no Internet: no data on phones, no ethernet or wi-fi connections at home - or anywhere. No email, no Google, no Facebook, no Amazon, no Skype. That's what we would have if designing the Internet had been left up to phone and cable companies... more

StopBadware.org and Consumer Reports Launch BadwareBusters.org

StopBadware.org and Consumer Reports WebWatch have announced today the full launch of BadwareBusters.org, a new online community for people looking for help preventing and countering viruses, spyware, and other "badware" on their computers and websites. Maxim Weinstein, manager of StopBadware.org at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, says the site is not only a useful destination, but also a piece of a bigger puzzle. "BadwareBusters.org is part of StopBadware's strategy to bring together the people, the organizations, and the data that allow us to fight back against the spread of badware," Weinstein said. "The collective wisdom of the BadwareBusters community will inform not only individuals, but the entire technology industry." more

Michael Kende Joins Internet Society As Its First Chief Economist

As the first Chief Economist of the Internet Society, Michael Kende has joined the organization to provide strategic insights into the economic dynamics of Internet issues, as well as current and emerging trends impacting the Internet. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, he will be responsible for leading economic research and analyses as well as key Internet development, policy, market, and technology issues. more

Malware Detection Declining, Anti-Phishing Filters Detect Less than 50% of Attacks, Says Report

A study comparing best-of-breed computer security vendors suggests more than half of active malware and phishing threats on the Internet go undetected, with an average detection rate of 37% for malware and 42% for phishing. "Given the dynamic nature of today's online threats and the traditionally reactive approach taken by today's malware and phishing detection technology, conventional signature-based solutions are inherently at a disadvantage to keep up," said Panos Anastassiadis, CEO and Chairman of Cyveillance. "Because the majority of damage occurs during the first 24 hours of an attack, early detection of attacks is crucial." more

A Look at How Retailers Handled the Online Rush as Black Friday Sales Hit $1 Billion Mark

This year Black Friday online sales reached $1 billion for the first time. Of course, Cyber Monday is the busiest e-commerce day of them all. Sales for Cyber Monday reached $1.5 billion this year, a 30 percent increase from 2011... Website providers have been moving to cloud computing so they can instantly scale to meet increased traffic. But what happens when everyone needs to scale at the same time? more

C-SPAN Interview: Internet and Cybersecurity

C-SPAN interviews professor Gene Spafford from Purdue University on the topic of cybersecurity and how the current Internet is a conduit for all types of "cybercrime". He also talks about the much discussed article "A New Internet?" by John Markoff in the February 14, 2009, New York Times in which he was quoted. The piece argued for a new type of Internet that is more secure with the trade-off of users giving up more of their anonymity. Professor Spafford talks about alternative solutions and he responded to questions via telephone calls and email. more

Using Data to Amplify Your Business

The digital realm is bursting with data. The buzz words of today are "big data," and I know you've heard them. There's a reason why. It can boost business in extraordinary ways. But how? Let's first look at what exactly big data is: enormous collections of information developed either internally from the company itself or from a vast array of new media. At times, this data is so large, it cannot be analyzed using standard means of examination. more

Open Web Foundation Launches to Push Data Portability

A new nonprofit organization called the Open Web Foundation (OWF) launched today with a mission to be an independent non-profit dedicated to the development and protection of open, non-proprietary specifications for web technologies. "The Open Web needs Open Data, Open Date needs Open Specifications," is one of the statements used in today's opening presentation. With backing from some of the biggest companies including Google, MySpace, Facebook, and Yahoo, the foundation plans to serve as a placeholder for "all the legal dirty work that needs to happen in order for data portability to become a reality." more

China’s Internet Users Pass Half a Billion

The number of Chinese Internet users has surpassed 500 million, with nearly half of them using microblogs, or Weibo, according to latest official figures. About 55.8 million Chinese people became new Internet users last year, bringing the country’s Web population to 513 million, representing an Internet penetration rate of 38.3 percent, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). more