Articles by date
02 August 2007
UK teachers in websites closure call (BBC)
Teachers have called for websites such as YouTube to be shut down as part of efforts to prevent pupils and staff being bullied. Delegates at the conference of the Professional Association of Teachers said bullying can continue outside school and work hours. They said bullies can send abusive text messages or e-mails to victims.
How do you build a new internet? (The Guardian)
How do you cut online crime, tackle child pornography, halt crippling viruses and get rid of spam? The answers could lie in a £200m successor to the internet that computer experts are already referring to as the next rendition of the virtual world. Researchers in the US want at least US$350m (£175m) to build the Global Environment for Network Innovations (Geni), touted by some as the possible replacement for today's internet. In Europe, similar projects are under way as part of the EU's Future and Internet Research (Fire) programme, which is expected to cost at least £27m.
us: VeriSign Spent $570K Lobbying in 2007 (Forbes)
VeriSign spent US$570,000 in the first half of 2007 to lobby the federal government on Internet related issues, according to a disclosure form. VeriSign lobbied on issues related to privacy, taxation, e-mails and Web addresses, which are also known as domain names, according to the form posted online Monday by the Senate's public records office.
After the dot: the latest net revolution by Kieran McCarthy (The Guardian)
Ask someone to name a website and it's a virtual certainly they will say something ending with "dot com": Amazon.com, eBay.com, Facebook.com, it doesn't matter what, it's the same suffix. Dotcom is the internet for most people. But that may all change next year when the top level of the net -- the part after the dot -- is liberalised. From 2008, anyone wanting their own piece of the internet is welcome to apply for it. It won't be cheap (there will an application fee of around $100,000) and it won't be simple (you have to prove you are capable of running a complex piece of the net's infrastructure) -- but it could mean a change in the way the online world works.
Go Daddy & Afilias Announce Joint Venture Creating Alliance Registry in Support of usTLD Bid
GoDaddy.com, Inc. and Afilias USA, Inc., have teamed up to create The Domain Name Alliance Registry, LLC ("Alliance Registry"), a joint venture seeking to assume stewardship of the usTLD, America's sovereign space on the Internet. Yesterday, Alliance Registry submitted a proposal in response to the request for quotations issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for a registry operator for the usTLD.
Cruise operator wins rights to qe2.com (The Age)
Carnival, the world's largest cruise operator, on Tuesday won exclusive rights to "qe2.com" after the firm that registered the Internet site was found to have no link to its most famous ocean liner.
Domain names return hefty profits (The Boston Globe)
The Boston Globe has an article this week on the "global, multibillion-dollar industry" of buying and selling domain names. The article notes with the growth in online advertising, by nearly a third each year for the past three years, domain names have become a hot investment. The article gives an overview of the industry for the layman, and is also republished in the International Herald Tribune.
Lawsuit filed in Chicago over iPhone battery (International Herald Tribune)
Apple, which may have sold as many as 450,000 iPhones in its first two days of sales, is being sued by a consumer who says it did not immediately disclose the limited life of its batteries or their $86 replacement cost.
The suit, filed last week in Illinois state court, accuses Apple of consumer fraud and seeks class-action status. The plaintiff, Jose Trujillo of Chicago, also wants money damages.
The Simpsons Movie sparks spam blast (ComputerWorld)
Spammers are jumping on the success of The Simpsons Movie to trick e-mail users into validating their addresses, so they can then send them more spam. Since the launch of the movie on July 27, spammers have been sending messages with an embedded picture of Homer Simpson in his underwear. The text asks if the recipient plans to see the new movie and to fill out a related survey by following an embedded link. If the recipient clicks on the link, the Web site records the e-mail address -- now knowing that there is a valid user -- and sends the address more spam.
01 August 2007
InternetNZ Announces Election Results (InternetNZ)
InternetNZ announces official results in this year's InternetNZ Council elections. Peter Macaulay has been elected InternetNZ's new President, for a two-year term. Macaulay is a former InternetNZ Councillor and has served in the past as Executive Director.
ICANN seeks to better protect domain name registrants (IDG)
ICANN is asking for the public's input as it revises its accreditation process for registrars, the companies that register and sell domain names.
ICANN wants to improve oversight of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement to offer increased protection to people who register domain names, according to a statement.
Yahoo Testimony About Imprisoned Reporter Contradicted (Information Week)
A new document calls into question the extent of Yahoo's cooperation with Chinese authorities in the arrest and imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, sentenced in April, 2005, to 10 years in prison for revealing state secrets. An English translation of the Beijing State Security Bureau's Notice of Evidence Collection, issued to the Beijing Representative Office of Yahoo (HK) Holdings, says, "According to investigation, your office is in possession of the following items relating to a case of suspecting illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities that is currently under investigation by our bureau. ..."
uk: Food manufacturers target children on internet after regulator's TV advertising clampdown (The Guardian)
Some of the world's leading food manufacturers have begun marketing to children on social networking websites and internet chat programs. Brands such as McDonald's, Starburst, Haribo and Skittles are using the internet to target children now that new rules from the media regulator Ofcom have made it difficult to advertise during children's television. At the beginning of July, the sweet brand Skittles paid a six-figure sum to set up a profile on the social networking site Bebo which has already been viewed more than 50,000 times and attracted more than 3,500 "friends". In an interview with the Guardian, a Bebo spokesman described these "friends" as "brand ambassadors". Bebo users have to declare they are at least 13, but it is known that much younger children do use the site.
New Scrutiny for Facebook Over Predators (New York Times)
Facebook, the online social network, has stolen some of MySpace's momentum with users and the news media. Now, it is being subjected to the same accusations that it does not do enough to keep sexual predators off its site. Connecticut's attorney general, said that investigators in his state were looking into "three or more" cases of convicted sex offenders who had registered on Facebook and had "also found inappropriate images and content" on the service. The inquiry continues, he said, and state officials have contacted Facebook and asked it to remove the profiles.
Second Life Goes Legit (Forbes)
Players in Second Life break plenty of physical laws, flying and teleporting around their virtual world and crafting made-to-order bodies and buildings. Federal laws, however, aren't so flexible. Following an FBI investigation, Linden Labs has banned all forms of gambling from Second Life, according to a posting on the company's blog. Linden Labs had announced in April that it was cooperating with FBI scrutiny of the virtual world, including law enforcement officials' visits to the game's casinos.
Half of European calls to be mobile by 2008 (The Register)
Mobile calls are replacing fixed-line usage across Europe, according to a new report from Analysys, but people aren't talking more, they're just using fixed-lines less. The change has been most stark in Finland, where 2006 saw another 10 per cent of calls migrate onto mobile networks; bringing the total to 74.6 per cent at the end of the year.
Time-wasting staff given a slap in Facebook (The Times)
Tens of thousands of workers have been banned from using social networking sites such as Facebook by employers seeking to curb the wasting of office time. IT experts say that companies are asking for help in blocking access to Facebook, MySpace and Bebo after realising that they could not prevent their staff from surfing the sites in work hours.
Second Life Loses Gamblers But Finds God (Information Week)
An Italian Catholic priest is urging the faithful to participate in Second Life as a way to keep people from losing touch with the real world, though Linden Lab's decision to ban gambling may reconnect more people with reality than spiritual intervention.
Wikipedia launches DIY search engine (The Times)
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has said that just as internet users can contribute to articles on an open-source encyclopedia, so too will they be able to play a hand in the way the web is searched.
Dealing with disasters: Flood, famine and mobile phones (The Economist)
... As Mr Sokor's bemused London recipient points out, two worlds were colliding. The age-old scourge of famine in the Horn of Africa had found a 21st-century response; and a familiar flow of authority, from rich donor to grateful recipient, had been reversed. It was also a sign that technology need not create a "digital divide": it can work wonders in some of the world's remotest, most wretched places. "Technology completely alters the way humanitarian work is done," says Caroline Hurford of the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations body that is the single largest distributor of food aid. Once upon a time, when disaster struck, big agencies would roll up with grain, blankets and medicine and start handing them out. Victims would struggle to the relief camps, if they could. For aid workers (let alone recipients) there was no easy way to talk to head office.
Are we heading towards another internet crash? (The Independent)
Tudor Aw looks to history - the manias over the steam train revolution and the dot.com boom - for lessons on how companies can avoid becoming victims of a digital bubble: Stockton and Darlington may seem an unusual place to begin exploring the potential pitfalls of the digital revolution, but as the birthplace of the railway revolution, it provides a context for some alarming parallels to be drawn.
31 July 2007
Getting real about business in Second Life (The Sunday Times)
... The Sunday Times/PA conference, 'Getting real about business in Second Life' aimed to start a debate on whether, and how, businesses should take advantage of Second Life. The conference took place in front of a live audience of around 90 people. While numbers had to be capped for technical reasons the conference is believed to have been the largest event of its kind yet held in Second Life. Guests arrived from Shanghai to Surrey and from companies including ABN Amro, the BBC, BA, Cisco, Dell, FirstDirect, Shell and Reuters.
Notorious nobodies (The Sunday Times)
The internet allows anyone to become famous overnight. But is it incubating vacuous wannabes -- or the household names of tomorrow?
Surfing at Work? Join the Club (PC World)
Americans who feel bored and underpaid do work hard -- at surfing the Internet and catching up on gossip, according to a survey that found U.S. workers waste about 20 percent of their working day. An online survey of 2,057 employees by online compensation company Salary.com found about six in every 10 workers admit to wasting time at work with the average employee wasting 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5 hour working day.
30 July 2007
comScore Publishes Review of Latin American, French & German Internet Usage
comScore has published reviews of Latin American, German and French internet usage. Highlights include Brazil had the largest online population with 15.8 million users, 11% of the country’s population over 15. However Chile, with 45% of its population online, had the highest Internet penetration; the average Latin American Internet user spent 29 hours online during the month. In Germany Google was the most visited property, attracting 22.8 million unique visitors. Google reached 69% of the total German online population and recorded an average of 40 visits per visitor over the course of the month – almost double that of any of the other Top 10 ranked properties. Microsoft Sites and eBay remain second and third. In France, comScore found the French online population was 26.1 million in June, 2% up on May. The average visitor spent over 27.5 hours online in the month. Google remained the most visited property in France with 18.1 million unique visitors, and now reaches 70% of the French online population. Microsoft and France Telecom remained the second and third.
