Articles by date
26 August 2010
Alexa Raad Resigns As President And CEO of .ORG/Public Interest Registry
In a shock announcement, the Board of Directors of .ORG the Public Interest Registry announced today that Alexa Raad, the President and Chief Executive Officer of PIR, has decided to resign from her positions with the company effective on September 24th, 2010. Her resignation concludes 3 1/2 years of service and leadership at PIR.
25 August 2010
Verizon Says Business Needs to Adopt IPv6 (Network World)
With IPv4 addresses running out rapidly, Verizon says businesses are better off adopting IPv6 sooner rather than later.
ICANN Publishes Draft Agreement on .XXX With 30 Day Comment Period
ICANN has published a revised proposed registry agreement with ICM, the controversial applicant for the .XXX Sponsored Top Level Domain (.XXX sTLD) as well as documentation submitted by ICM Registry in connection with the expedited due diligence conducted at the direction of the Board are being posting today for public comment. There is a 30 day public comment period that closes on 24 August.
US Defense official discloses cyberattack (Washington Post)
Now it is official: The most significant breach of U.S. military computers was caused by a flash drive inserted into a U.S. military laptop on a post in the Middle East in 2008.
Microsoft finally fueling Yahoo's search engine (Washington Post)
Microsoft Corp.'s technology is now processing all the search requests on Yahoo Inc.'s website in the U.S. and Canada, completing a long-awaited leap that creates a more formidable challenger to Google Inc. in the most lucrative part of the online advertising market.
Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime (New York Times)
... The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.
Technology industry faces chip shortage (The Guardian)
The technology industry faces a growing shortage of semiconductors and other high-tech components following a failure to invest in new manufacturing facilities during the recession, experts have warned.
Mobile-Phone Farming in India (Wall Street Journal)
Which pesticide will protect my crops? It's a question most farmers in insect-ridden rural India ask themselves or their neighbors. But it's also a question to which very few have the correct answer.
Final India decision on BlackBerry on Aug 30: source (Reuters)
India will take a final decision on August 30 on whether to block some BlackBerry services over which the country has security concerns, a senior government source said on Tuesday.
Rustock botnet responsible for 39 percent of all spam (ZDNet)
Botnets are now responsible for sending 95 percent of all spam, up from 84 percent in April, and almost half of that spam comes from a single botnet, Rustock.
Online Gambling Banned in South Africa (Business Day)
According to the Gauteng Gambling Board which has fought a long-running battle with online casinos, it is now illegal to gamble using digital products inside South Africa.
24 August 2010
Web scam hits iTunes and Paypal (BBC News)
iTunes accounts linked to PayPal have been hacked with a number of users complaining that they have been cleaned out.
Online football fails to score with British viewers (The Guardian)
New research shows a distinct lack of appetite for internet streaming of football matches, just as the Football League looks to the web for new revenue streams.
In the Living Room, Hooked on Pay TV (New York Times)
It is a fantasy shared by many Americans: dropping cable television and its fat monthly bills and turning instead to the wide-open frontier of Internet video. Some are finding that the reality is not that simple.
Hacker's Arrest Offers Glimpse Into Crime in Russia (New York Times)
On the Internet, he was known as BadB, a disembodied criminal flitting from one server to another selling stolen credit card numbers despite being pursued by the United States Secret Service.
Google Street View cars back too soon, says French watchdog (Computerworld)
Google said its Street View cars resumed their photography of French streets on Friday, annoying the French data protection authority, which launched an investigation into the privacy implications of the service earlier this year.
23 August 2010
Mobile operators predict app sales boom: Apps expected to outstrip voice services by 2013 (Financial Times)
Mobile operators expect app downloads to become their biggest source of income in developed markets within three years and want to charge content providers for preferential access to their networks, raising further questions about net neutrality.
Cyberactivists unblock Wikileaks for Thai Netizens (Washington Post)
A group of anonymous Internet activists has set up a website to display information about Thailand that comes from the whistle-blower site Wikileaks, which is blocked to some viewers in the Southeast Asian country.
German companies struggle to connect with customers online (Deutsche Welle)
German corporations are turning to social media to get their message out, but customers are disappointed by what companies have to say. They want a dialogue with businesses, not a steady stream of ads.
Pornographic videos flood YouTube (BBC News)
Video-sharing website YouTube has removed hundreds of pornographic videos which were uploaded in what is believed to be a planned attack.
Mobile phones in South-East Asia: In a saturated market, firms need customers to buy bells and whistles (The Economist)
Take a taxi in Bangkok and the driver's mobile phone is sure to chirp. A long conversation ensues, usually by speakerphone, since few cabbies bother with headsets. It is not just that cabbies are chatty; it is also that talk is cheap. Once reserved for the rich, mobile phones are now ubiquitous in South-East Asia.
Google photographing French streets again (Sydney Morning Herald)
Google said Friday it had resumed photographing France with its Street View bikes and cars but without gathering fragments of personal data sent over unsecured Wi-Fi systems for which it is being probed.
22 August 2010
Facebook Fights Privacy Concerns (Wall Street Journal)
The launch of Facebook Inc.'s Places location service this week sparked new privacy concerns about the popular social network, but the company's efforts to mollify critics before the launch stemmed some of the blowback.
The Google/Verizon framework by Jonathan Zittrain (Future of the Internet blog)
I've been trying to figure out what the Google/Verizon announcement means. It's not easy to do, in large part because the announcement doesn't precisely announce anything. It's titled a "legislative framework proposal." That is, on its own terms it's not an agreement between two companies -- neither is bound to do anything by it, which I guess is how they could deny last week's New York Times report about a "deal on web pay tiers" -- but it does represent a meeting of the minds between them about what ought to happen in the world, in particular what American (and presumably others') law should become here.
Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble (New York Times)
... But today, as an ever more wired and interconnected public visits the parks in rising numbers -- July was a record month for visitors at Yellowstone -- rangers say that technology often figures into such mishaps.
