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Declan McCullagh reporting in CNET: "The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require the firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities..." more
For the first time ever bankers have launched an EFTPOS advertising campaign. Could this be an indication that they are becoming worried about the competition they are getting from internet companies such as PayPal, Amazon, Google and Apple (iTunes)? The digital economy is growing much faster than the bricks-and-mortar economy and, while EFTPOS is not going away anytime soon, an increasingly large amount of money is now bypassing their systems. more
The 'economies of scope' is an appealing concept implying that if we share knowledge in an open way we can create new, healthy economies that do not just depend on 'scale'. As we have seen, over the last decade in particular, some of the companies that are trying to achieve exponential growth can endanger the economy and society in general - the global financial crisis surrounding the large financial institutions, the scandals around News Corp, the political lobbying (bullying) by the super rich and the destruction of the environment by some developers. more
Traditionally, top-level domains (TLDs) have been almost exclusively marketed by registries through their registrar channel. In a never-ending cycle of driving and sustaining sales, registries often resort to discounting and "promotional pricing." The competition for prime shelf space for a TLD is fierce, with sales and distribution largely controlled by the channel... In this chaotic and cluttered channel, it's not surprising that TLDs have traditionally been less than successful in defining their brand and delivering a unique value story for their product. more
A number of conversations have recently converged on a single problem: how to match applications to network access. Let's unpeel this issue... When I was Chief Analyst at Telco 2.0, we proposed there was a significant untapped market opportunity for network operators to bundle together access with content, applications or services. The revenue opportunity is to charge the providers of those services for delivering fit-for-purpose data at bulk wholesale prices. This is the "postage problem"... more
People are increasingly becoming aware of the emerging 'internet monopoly'. Companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and many the other (local) social network and media sites are becoming so large and powerful that they can dictate the use of their services in such a way that people lose control over their own information and their participation in these networks. ... These digital media developments certainly did happen, but they are not founded on the 'permission-based' principles that we advocated during all those years. more
Over the last year the world has been virtually buried under news items describing hacks, insecure websites, servers and scada systems, etc. Each and every time people seem to be amazed and exclaim "How is this possible?" Politicians ask questions, there is a short lived uproar and soon after the world continues its business as usual. Till the next incident. In this blog post I take a step back and try to look at the cyber security issue from this angle... more
A new study reveals close to 466,000 jobs have been created in the "App Economy" in United States -- up from zero in 2007. The total number of Apps Economy jobs includes jobs at 'pure' app firms such as Zynga as well as app-related jobs at large companies such as Electronic Arts, Amazon, and AT&T, as well as app 'infrastructure' jobs at core firms such as Google, Apple, and Facebook. In addition, the App Economy total includes employment spillovers to the rest of the economy. more
Global internet usage through mobile devices, has almost doubled to 8.5% in January 2012 from 4.3% last year according to a new report from web analytics StatCounter. While this stat excludes tablets, firm's research arm highlights the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet with market share doubling year on year since 2009. Nokia leads worldwide, most probably driven by its dominance in India. Apple is second globally but leads the US and UK markets. In the UK RIM is second only to Apple. more
"Internet protocols simply aren't adequate for the changes in hardware and network use that will come up in a decade or so," says Professor Dave Farber who was recently interviewed by Andy Oram. "Dave predicts that computers will be equipped with optical connections instead of pins for networking, and the volume of data transmitted will overwhelm routers, which at best have mixed optical/electrical switching," writes Oram. more
Danny Sullivan has been the go-to guy for understanding the world of search for over 15 years. This week he published a really good story on Google Plus Your World. A group of engineers have launched a site called Focus on the User that shows exactly how the new Google service could be including other social media content listings besides only Google Plus, but is not. more
As part of its efforts to speed up the delivery of web content, Google has proposed changes to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), "the workhorse of the Internet." Yuchung Cheng who works on the transport layer at Google wrties: "To deliver content effectively, Web browsers typically open several dozen parallel TCP connections ahead of making actual requests. This strategy overcomes inherent TCP limitations but results in high latency in many situations and is not scalable. Our research shows that the key to reducing latency is saving round trips. We’re experimenting with several improvements to TCP." more
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
This debate never got heated during the NewDomains.org conference in Munich last month. One might speculate that it was largely because most in the audience and on the panel, support and believe in the existence of both. There is no need to make a direct either/or comparison. What sets Facebook and Apps apart from existing popular Top-Level Domains (TLDs) is the concept of a closed environment in which users can interact with the technology and each other in a dedicated space. more
Recent articles in the press have outlined how sites including MSN and Hulu are now using an advanced version of the old cookie file to track user behavior. These "supercookies" are very hard to detect and delete, and can track user behavior across multiple sites, not just one. These tricky little trackers have lawmakers pressing the FTC to investigate, and the IAB scrambling to defend industry practices. more
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