Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced the start of the first “sunrise” phase of the roll-out of the .nyc web address, beginning a five-month countdown towards the full-scale public launch in October 2014. Through .nyc, the city plans to generate revenue, help residents take advantage of government services, encourage local businesses to thrive, market and promote tourism, and spread the dynamic image of New York City around the world. more
Releasing new statistics today, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced that by end of 2014, there will be nearly three billion Internet users -- two-thirds of them from the developing world -- with mobile-broadband penetration approaching 32 per cent. Moreover, people from developing countries make up for more than 90 per cent of those who are not yet using the Internet. more
Lily Hay Newman reporting in Slate: "You may associate the sound of the Internet with the sound of a computer fan or the extinct song of dial-up. But the real sound of the information super highway is the whir of hard discs and fans spinning inside servers and creating a powerful white noise. It seems like it might be a soothing din, but workers report that it's a problem." more
The Internet Society announced today the appointment of Kathryn C. Brown as its new Chief Executive Officer effective 1 January 2014. Ms. Brown succeeds Lynn St. Amour, who will be stepping down after 15 years with Internet Society. Ms. Brown most recently served as a Senior Advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group, an international consulting firm, and as Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility at Verizon. more
Google today announced an initiative called "Project Shield", aimed at using its infrastructure to protect free expression online. "The service currently combines Google's DDoS mitigation technologies and Page Speed Service (PSS), which allow websites to serve their content through Google to be better protected from DDoS attacks." Google is currently seeking "trusted testers" and people with sites that serve media, elections and human rights-related content. more
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
In a story ran by the New York Times over the weekend, the viability of introducing hundreds of new top-level domains in the market has been criticized by individuals including Esther Dyson, a technology investor who served as the founding chairwoman of ICANN. Dyson likens ICANN's plan for the introduction of new gTLDs to creating derivative-like businesses on Wall Street that have no value. "You can charge people for it, but you are contributing nothing to the happiness of humanity." more
Worldwide internet traffic plunged by around 40% as Google services suffered a complete black-out, according to web analytics experts. The tech company said all of its services from Google Search to Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive went down for between one and five minutes on Friday. more
Google is now serving close to 25 percent of all consumer internet traffic running through North American ISPs, according to a report from Wired. "That's a far larger slice of than previously thought, and it means that with so many consumer devices connecting to Google each day, it's bigger than Facebook, Netflix, and Instagram combined. It also explains why Google is building data centers as fast as it possibly can. Three years ago, the company's services accounted for about 6 percent of the internet's traffic." more
The Internet Society Board of Trustees has retained the executive search firm Odgers Berndtson to help identify qualified candidates for the position of President & CEO. Lynn St.Amour, the Internet Society's current President & CEO, announced her plans earlier this year to step down in February 2014 at the conclusion of her contract. more
The Internet Society has announced the names of the 32 individuals who have been selected for induction into the Internet Hall of Fame. Last week, the Internet Society announced plans to change the location of its 2013 Internet Hall of Fame awards ceremony, originally scheduled for Istanbul, due to the recent protests and unpredictable environment. The ceremony is now scheduled for 3 August in Berlin, Germany. more
Aaron H. Swartz, a computer activist, co-founder of Reddit and co-author of the "RSS 1.0" specification, died in New York on Friday. Swartz, 26 years of age, committed suicide in New York City on Jan. 11, according to his uncle. more
In the spirit of shining more light on how government actions could affect users, Google Inc. in early 2010, began periodically sharing number of government requests received in what it calls the "Transparency Report." more
Internet Society has released a paper today highlighting the importance of understanding what is important and unchanging about the Internet. more
GoDaddy.com has reported today that the Web hosting outage that involved thousands and possibly millions of websites on Monday was due to internal issues and did not involve any attacks by hackers. The outage lasted for about four hours and affected mainly small-business sites. GoDaddy.com hosts more than 5 million websites. more
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