Controversial copyright violator provision struck down in New Zealand
The world continues to wrestle with the problem of who is truly responsible for copyright infringement over the Internet, if it is allowed to persist. Over the years, Internet service providers have fought for, and won, protections from liability for the conduct of customers they can't always monitor. In the US, ISPs have an interest in limiting online file-sharing, mainly because the heaviest perpetrators are also the ones using the most bandwidth. Here, legislation under consideration by Congress would prohibit ISPs from taking bandwidth-throttling actions against customers based solely on their perceived online behavior.
But in New Zealand, the opposite approach was about to be tried and then, yesterday, failed in Parliament: A provision of an amendment to the country's Copyright Act, based on language that it appeared to have intentionally omitted, would have enabled authorities to instruct ISPs to disconnect customers on the mere suspicion of illicit file trafficking. That provision -- now known notoriously throughout the country as Section 92A -- was struck down yesterday, in a move that ended up being heralded by someone once thought to have supported the idea, Prime Minister John Key.
DialUsername seeks your identity here and there
It's allegedly designed to help folk manage their online identities by spotting where "their" usernames might be in use without their knowledge, but DialUsername can also provide some amusement for a slow day at work. Find all the services you never even heard of among their list of 68, then rush to them and register your preferred username, just in case the service becomes popular. We can call it Land Rush Tuesday or something.
Novell intros SuSE Enterprise Linux 11, with Windows and data center support
At the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco today, Novell is releasing the final version of SuSE Enterpise Linux 11, its first set of Linux software products to be based on the Linux 2.6.27 kernel.
Aside from Enterprise Server 11 and Enterprise Desktop 11, two operating systems that run on x86 PC hardware, the release includes three other products: Mono Extension, for Windows application support; High Availability (HA) Extension, for server cluster management; and the mainframe-based Enterprise Server for System z.
Sprint to provide 3G connectivity to Ford in-dash PC
Sprint Nextel's iDEN network has a special place in job site communication. The network's push-to-talk feature is ideal for maintaining constant contact with multiple individuals in separate locations, and its familiar "chirp" is a sound heard echoing across construction sites throughout the country.
Today, Sprint has gone further into the field and announced its partnered with Ford Motor Company in its Ford Work Solutions in-dash PCs. The lineup of Ford F- and E-Series vehicles offering the computers will be available this spring, according to the company.
Chinese Internet is 'open enough,' says foreign minister
Yesterday evening, YouTube reportedly became inaccessible in most of China, possibly due to the presence of graphic videos of violence against Tibetan separatists in Lhasa. The site is normally filtered for content, not only for intellectual property violations, but also for videos deemed subversive or critical of the Communist Party.
Last week, in the Vatican's continuing efforts to utilize the Internet to spread the Catholic church's message, it released a Chinese site, which many expected will be blocked, since observation of the Pope as an authority figure defies Communist rule.
Sony Ericsson takes a merciless beating
Mobile phone joint venture Sony Ericsson has faced dwindling profits for more than a year as its main markets strain under economic pressure. In the third quarter of 2008, the company dropped to a €25 million loss. Just one year prior, by contrast, the company reported a profit of €267 million. Last quarter, Sony Ericsson's earnings slipped to a €73 million loss.
On Friday, the joint venture announced that it could post a loss of between €340-390 million for the first quarter of 2009.
Mozilla experiments more with 'New Tab' in Firefox 3.1
The engineer behind the ambitious Ubiquity project, Mozilla Labs' Aza Raskin, is already on record as not being too keen on the completely blank "New Tab" feature in current production editions of Firefox 3.0.
"Right now, when you open a new tab, you get a blank screen," Raskin wrote on his laboratory's blog last August. "While clean, it has a 100% probability of not getting you where what you want to be. While it's good to not intimidate with an explosion of information, we can get a much more streamlined workflow -- thereby saving huge amounts of aggregate time-- by showing something. The question is, 'What?'"
ExecuTweets sees the C-level side of Twitter
Twitter-populated and Microsoft-sponsored, ExecTweets may be the first step on the path toward -- depending on your point of view -- a revenue stream for the microblogging model or a sign that the service is selling out. That's the conversation inside the Twitterati beltway; most of the rest of the world, on the other hand, will probably just be amazed to hear that actual C-level execs tweet.
Yes -- 77 of them so far, according to the list on ExecTweet's About page. According to that page, ExecTweets "empowers the community to surface the most insightful, business-related tweets," though one may well ask how Guy Kawasaki's tweet Monday that "Cassettes Are Cool Again: Jimi Hendrix Tape Portrait" fits into that vision.
The big squeeze: JPEG to jpeg to jpge to jphzepxpg
David Elliott has an interesting video that demonstrates just how lossy the JPEG format really is. The UCLA MFA candidate chose an image and saved it repeatedly -- 600 times, to be exact -- ratcheting up the compression each time. He's posted the results as a 20-second clip on Vimeo. Very cool; check it out. (HT Laughing Squid)
Cox to roll out tru2way, new UI this summer
Cox Communications may finally be making tru2way a reality. Tru2way is a common software platform that allows software developers, cable companies, or in this case set top box DRM maker NDS, to create interactive software and Web-based applications for use on the TV.
The initiative, which began as the OpenCable platform over ten years ago, has enjoyed only a moderate push from a few big names, like Panasonic, but hasn't yet made a tremendous splash. Cox announced today that tru2way services -- which will include integrated voice communications, e-mail, news, weather, and entertainment gadgets -- will be rolled out, along with a new user interface, this summer.
Sprint and Verizon take top wireless quality honors
CDMA for the call-quality win? The annual J.D. Power & Associates survey of wireless service quality has been released, and Verizon, US Cellular, and Sprint Nextel -- that's right, Sprint -- took top honors. The survey evaluated wireless call quality as measured in the number of problems (dropped connections, echoes and distortion, slow voice mail / text notification, static, or failure to connect) per 100 calls.
Service is, for J.D. Power's purposes, divided into six regions, and US Cellular stands alone in the North Central part of the country, winning its seventh consecutive nod there. Verizon won everywhere else (including its ninth consecutive best-of nods in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions), tying in the West with Sprint Nextel.
Vodafone and Telefonica partner up in 4G progress
European mobile telecommunications giants Vodafone and Telefonica today announced that they will consolidate much of their 2G and 3G network transmission infrastructure in Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the UK as the two companies roll out their 4G technologies.
As a cost-saving and environmentally conservative measure, the companies have agreed to consolidate their existing cellular masts and antennas where opportunity allows, and also by building new sites that will house the equipment of both carriers.
Salesforce.com cloud adds Twitter, stirs privacy concerns
Today's rollout of a new customer relationship management application for Twitter follows Salesforce.com's already contentious announcement of its Facebook- and Google-enabled Service Cloud in January.
Known as Salesforce.com for Twitter, the new CRM application will work as a plug-in to Service Cloud, a cloud-based customer service channel that gives business workers access to Facebook connections, Google search, and other communications and discussion tools and forums.
Bye-bye, Microsoft adCenter Analytics
In a blog post over the weekend Mel Carson, community manager for Microsoft's adCenter Analytics, announced that the project will not be leaving beta. The project, which began its pilot stage in France back in 2005, will remain online through the end of the year, and the associated blog will continue as "Insights & Analysis" -- indicating that perhaps Microsoft's not entirely done thinking about the Web numbers problem.
Carson called the beta program a success, despite the failure to launch. "The insights you've contributed through your feedback and your use of the tool have served an invaluable purpose in shaping Microsoft's future in this space. You've helped us work towards making an informed decision about building a general Web analytics solution," he wrote. He added that Microsoft in this case is now looking more closely at addressing specialized markets, as opposed to the more general small- and medium-sized "self-serve" clients that adCenter Analytics served.
One game console per child: Zeebo
Today, video game companies Capcom, EA Mobile, THQ, Namco, and PopCap Games announced their support for Zeebo, the first video game console designed especially for emerging markets.
It's an interesting concept indeed. Zeebo is a home video game console based on cell phone technology; it runs on Qualcomm's BREW platform and MSM chipset, consumes only 1 watt of power, and offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band UMTS/HSPA connectivity.
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