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24
June 2008 |
The new "force" is the Internet, and it should be "with" every child.
Essentially, that was the message of Star Wars creator George Lucas, who was on Capitol Hill Tuesday to help fight the funding wars for universal broadband and to make the case for the importance of making high-speed Internet access for students, schools and libraries a national priority.
At a House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee hearing Tuesday on universal broadband service and its funding, "The Future of Universal Ser... |
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24
June 2008 |
Villagers in the rural areas of Uganda that have no direct access to telecommunications have relied on village phone operators for their communications needs. Bringing information and communication technology (ICT) to rural and isolated communities in Uganda has been made possible through an MTN and Grameen Foundation project established in 2003. This project facilitates the purchase of specialised mobile phones by rural entrepreneurs through microfinance loans to enable them to serve as village phone opera... |
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24
June 2008 |
The technological advances, however, are limited primarily to mobile phones.
"The African mobile (telephone) market has been the fastest-growing market of all regions, growing at twice the rate of the global market," says a new U.N. report released here.
The number of subscribers leaped from 16 million in 2000 to a staggering 250 million last year, according to the latest available figures.
Mobile now outnumbers fixed (phone) lines by nearly five to one in Africa, although it may not be evenly spre... |
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24
June 2008 |
Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable operator in the United States, announced today that it has backed off a plan to monitor customers' Internet transmissions.
The data collection effort would have protected personal information and would have only helped tailor Internet advertising to customers, Charter officials said. But critics likened it to wiretapping.
Other smaller Internet service providers have experimented with or are using the new method, known as "deep packet inspection," but C... |
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24
June 2008 |
Is bandwidth similar to oil? Yes, in one important respect, says Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law.
“Production is controlled by a tiny cartel that sets prices high and keeps them there,” Wu said today at a press conference about broadband access at the Personal Democracy Forum.
The analogy impressed fellow speaker Vinc Cerf, widely credited as the father of the Internet. “Wow. That’s cool, Tim,” he responded.
Both were speaking at the launch of Internetfor Everyone.org, a Web site that aims “to ... |
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24
June 2008 |
The Dallas Morning News reports that American Airlines passengers traveling between New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles Wednesday will have the opportunity to browse the Internet along the way in a dress rehearsal for inflight broadband provided by American and technology provider Aircell LLC.
A broader customer trial on flights between New York and San Francisco, and New York and Miami is expected to begin in the next couple of weeks and the carrier is considering expanding... |
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24
June 2008 |
Talk to anyone about what little technology company has a chance at being the Next Big Thing in social media, and chances are you'll hear the name "Twitter." Everyone's twittering about Twitter, even my mom knows all about it. News of the platform's $15 million funding round has been making the rumor rounds for over a month,
Today the rumors were confirmed with news of the funding on the Twitter blog, and a new nugget: Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is one of the funders, through his personal... |
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24
June 2008 |
Google misappropriated technology, developed by two entrepreneurs with whom it was working, to help it compete with Microsoft’s dominance of the business software market, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. Economic damages resulting from Google’s actions are calculated to be nearly one billion dollars.
The suit was filed on behalf of LimitNone, a Chicago-based company that had been part of the “Google Enterprise Professional Program,” a program where Google partners with in... |
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23
June 2008 |
Motorola and Kodak on Monday launched the ZN5, a new candy bar-style mobile phone with a 5.0-megapixel camera, the first device from its new Zine line.
Developed in cooperation with Kodak, the ZN5 is aimed at users who don't want to carry a separate camera for photos.
The handset allows users to take photos in several modes, including multi-shot and panorama. The panorama mode guides users across a scene with three boxes, then uses Kodak's Perfect Touch Technology to stich the three photos together in... |
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23
June 2008 |
If you love music festivals, but can’t bear the thought of your mobile phone running out of juice, Orange has the answer. The network operator’s designed a phone charger powered by your ability to do The Monkey, The Robot and The Worm.
The Orange Dance Charge is a portable phone charger powered through the kinetic movement of a system of weighs and magnets, which move as you groove. The system’s contained within a jogger-style MP3 arm strap, which also contains a storage battery for holding all the dance... |
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20
June 2008 |
The department of telecom (DoT) has acknowledged the failure of its broadband policy and is seeking industry inputs to rescript the sector’s growth path.
Broadband and internet is one of the worst performing sectors under the DoT, contrasting sharply with the tremendous success achieved in mobile telephony which is clocking a near 8 to 10 million subscribers every month.
The policy collapse is illustrated by the fact that at the end of 2007 India barely reached 10.36 million internet subscribers again... |
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20
June 2008 |
China has emerged as the world’s largest and fastest growing telecom market, says RNCOS in its new report, “China Telecom Analysis (2008-2012)”.
The report identifies that the Chinese government has played a vital role in the expansion of domestic telecommunication industry. The government of China has been supporting growth in the Chinese telecom market by introducing reforms to break monopolies and crank up competition. And to heat up the competition level, the government has asked the operators to com... |
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20
June 2008 |
Nokia introduced today the Nokia E71 and Nokia E66.
The Nokia Eseries are the email-optimized devices from Nokia that are competing directly with BlackBerry phones.
The Nokia E71 comes with a full QWERTY keyboard and features include 2.36 inch QVGA screen, 3.2MP camera, music player, media player, Wi-fi, GPS, FS-USB, IrDA, Bluetooth 2.0, 2.5mm AV connector, S60 platform, and HSDPA 3G connectivity.
Measurements of the E71 are 114 mm x 57 mm x 10mm (quite thin!).
The new Nokia E66 slider features a ... |
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20
June 2008 |
From 1 July, the operator will cut its charges to £1.50 per megabyte for those using a phone or data modem to surf the internet while travelling in Europe
T-Mobile has announced a cut of 80 percent in its European data-roaming charges, in time for the 1 July deadline imposed on operators by the European Commission.
Information society and media commissioner Viviane Reding told operators in February that they would have to make their data-roaming rates more reasonable by the start of July, otherwise th... |
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20
June 2008 |
Last week, we covered Verizon's agreement, with other Internet providers, to stop providing access to Usenet newsgroups carrying child pornography.
This week, details about how Verizon will do that emerged. The broadband provider, one of the two biggest services in the Washington area, will not just drop the relatively small number of newsgroups used to distribute this garbage, but every other group in their neighborhood.
Even more surprising, Verizon customers are noticing and taking objection to the... |
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