December 2004 Archives

Expect to hear more on this from the creators of Movable Type within the next couple of days...

We're in the process of identifying all the separate issues involved, coming up with some concise and effective recommendations, and then outlining our plan going forward. We're also going to be reaching out to the weblog community as a whole with information we've learned from both our experience with Movable Type and our background in running the TypePad service. There are a variety of ways to deal with spam, ranging from technical to legal to social methods, and we'll discuss them all.

Media RSS extends enclosures to handle other media types, such as short films or TV, as well as provide additional metadata with the media.

"Media RSS" is a new RSS module that supplements the enclosure capabilties of RSS 2.0. RSS enclosures are already being used to syndicate audio files and images. Media RSS extends enclosures to handle other media types, such as short films or TV, as well as provide additional metadata with the media. Media RSS enables content publishers and bloggers to syndicate multimedia content such as TV and video clips, movies, images, and audio.

Glenn makes sense of this "Wi-Fi in the air" story. The FCC didn't just suddenly decide to allow Wi-Fi on planes. Two years ago, the FCC lobbied the ITU to allocate global satellite spectrum specifically for the purpose of providing...

Want to start making actual products, without a factory? We've mentioned eMachineShop.com before as a good personal-fab resource for the artist or the engineer doing a one-off prototype, but what if your needs are more sophisticated (you use your own CAD software, you need more than just machining, you want a few hundred units made, etc.)? Then the place to go is MFGquote.com, a sort of a Ebay for fabbing-- you post your drawings, fabbers bid on them, you choose who you like. Besides just machining, you can get layup, extrusions, casting, welding, electronics, textile, just about any method you could want to make something; and not just individual parts, but assembly of units. Everyhing you'd need to make a real product and sell it, without having your own factory. It even has an automatic setup for making NDA's between fabber and client, which is of obvious importance. And while it's aimed largely at companies who want to outsource short runs of product, an individual can use it just as well for one-off prototypes or art.

Time Warner Boosts Cable Speeds

Time Warner has unwrapped a holiday gift for its cable Internet subscribers: faster downloads. The company plans to roll out increased speeds of 5Mbits and 8Mbits per second, a 2Mbit boost for its standard and premium RoadRunner cable offerings. Customers in New York will see the improved download speeds starting next Tuesday, while the rest of the country will reap the benefits come January. Time Warner says it will not increase prices for its 3.7 million broadband users.

Makes you wonder what they were doing with all this bandwidth before now? Oh.. I guess we know.

Good discussion over on Brad DeLong's site of Movable Type's culpability in the nasty comment spam problem out there. After all, neglected & spam-ridden MT blogs are analogous to the broadband-connected zombie PCs that issue so much spam and so many...

The Power architecture doesn’t get the attention it deserves. With Power5 servers finally shipping, even non-Big Blue shops should take look again [InfoWorld]

'-- There are so many ways in which Power5’s influence reaches beyond IBM’s primary base of well-heeled customers. Although IBM also sells Itanium 2, Opteron, and Xeon servers, the company seems clearly intent on putting Power5 systems in the hands of Linux and Windows administrators. --'

...John

Last week I was talking with a small business IT consultant who switches clients' servers to Linux (and Samba) all day long without any problems, but finds few clients interested in moving their desktops to Linux. The reason? "QuickBooks," he said. While there are many small business accounting packages that happily run on Linux, including GnuCash, Quasar, SQL-Ledger, and AccPac, QuickBooks dominates this market. And its loyal users don't want to switch to another package even if it's just as good as -- or possibly better than -- QuickBooks.

With all the talk about fiber to the home, fiber to the curb and fiber everywhere, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. reminds us that copper is the cockroach of telecom industry - just when you think its dead, you find that the bells have found a new use for it. In the mid 1990s, when everyone started talking about broadband, copper got a chance to thrive as DSL. Subsequent generations of chips from companies like Texas Instruments and Broadcom made sending high-speed data down copper easier, cheaper and of course faster. Still, no one thought it would be one day used to send television signals down this aging pipe.

Now Bells think they can use the copper loops and fiber in combination to stream digital television down to your living room. The article, which appeared in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (talk about being caught up in merger frenzy), compares Verizon’s all fiber strategy with the copper-hybrid strategies of SBC and BellSouth. I think in the long run, Verizon might have a better game plan, but SBC and BellSouth have a more budget option.

SBC figures 5,000 feet is sufficient to deliver next-generation services. Both a speedier rollout and keeping a lid on costs are obvious considerations here, but also the fact that rapid improvements in DSL are turning the copper “last mile” into a more valuable and useful asset than even the FCC seems to understand. Happily, the fine print in the commission’s ruling suggests to SBC that its investment will still be safe from confiscation by state regulators, who might otherwise use it to subsidize the company’s would-be competitors.

Jenkins has an interesting article, but he also makes some points, I wish he had gone into more details. And was not that reliant on a single company project - like SBC LightSpeed.

SBC is also betting on Microsoft to deliver a non-buggy software product (dubbed IPTV) on the first try. Don’t doubt that this is a big deal for Bill Gates too.

It would have been nice to see him write about the success or lack there off of IP-TV over copper in the US. We know its a hit in Korea and Japan and elsewhere in Asia.

I have taken a scorched earth philosophy to the big Sprint-Nextel merger and am trying to be as comprehensive as possible about this. I had some interesting email reactions to the merger, and there were others who sent me their thoughts. I have included some here, including a take that the merger could actually boost competition.

“Conventional wisdom on the Sprint-Nextel merger is that this will make the market less competitive,” says Nick Wray, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing for Control Point Solutions. “I believe this merger will actually make the enterprise market more competitive. This consolidation, particularly of the technologies, will create a true competitor for giants of the wireless industry like Verizon and Cingular. The resulting company would combine Sprint’s large corporate customer base and network and Nextel’s extremely loyal customer base.”

Merrill Lynch, on the other hand believes that big winner here is Qualcomm since CDMA is the technology of choice for the combined company. Finally, the operators are planning to launch PTT (push-to-talk) capability on their CDMA EV-DO network in 2008. “We think this essentially means that the 14mn strong subscriber base of iDEN will join the CDMA community,” Merrill analysts write. On the flip side, the iDEN gravy train is coming to an end for Motorola.

“The near-term implications of the merger on Motorola’s handset business will be quite limited. Sprint and Nextel announced they would ask Motorola to develop dual mode handsets and, in addition, the operators are planning to keep the iDEN network fully operational at least until 2007, rendering Motorola’s iDEN handset business viable for at least another 3 years. In the long term Motorola’s handset division could lose 7-8c of its profits due to Nextel’s migration to a new technology, the impact on near term performance is quite limited. On the positive side, we note that while Sprint currently does not buy handsets from Motorola, the merger with Nextel and the development of dual mode handsets could open this market and create new opportunities.” iDEN sales account for approximately 20% of division revenues but 25% of profits, reflecting higher margins given Motorola’s sole-vendor status at Nextel.

Other links.

• The New York Times
  
• The Daily Deal
• Gary Forsee, profile in The Kansas City Star
• Timothy M. Donahue profile in The Kansas City Star
• The San Jose Mercury News on tough integration challenges.
• Nextel Cup — but for how long? The New York Post

While the whole world is obsessing over a new bubble of sorts, and the titanic tussle for wireless domination, the Securities and Exchange Commission is letting the architect of Global “Double” Crossing, Gary Winnick go scot free. SEC has decided Winnick should not be fined for his crimes even though SEC’s own enforcement division had disgustingly negotiated a fine of mere million dollars. This man, took out more than $700 million out of the company which he and his cronies ran into ground, and he is not guilty!

There was been nary a whisper in the mainstream media? David Isenberg sums it up best when he writes, “You might not have noticed. USA Today put it on page 3B. The Washington Post ran it on 2E. The Financial Times gave it three paragraphs.” Makes you wonder doesn’t it.

The SEC commissioners rationalized that Winnick was non-executive chairman. But he was the founder, the spokesman, and the largest shareholder. Want to build an air castle, sucker investors and get rich? Green light is on at the SEC.

USA Today reports that

SEC’s two Republican appointees — Paul Atkins and Cynthia Glassman — disagreed with the case against Winnick. They argued that the company did meet the SEC’s minimum disclosure requirements. The two Democratic appointees — Harvey Goldschmid and Roel Campos — supported the enforcement division’s recommendations.In the end, SEC Chairman William Donaldson, who has often aligned himself with the Democrats on rulemaking issues, ultimately voted with his fellow Republicans, scuttling the deal. Donaldson’s reasoning, according to two people in the meeting, was that as non-executive chairman, Winnick wasn’t obligated to sign off on disclosure decisions.

Winnick is pretty thrilled I assume. Washington Post adds.

Winnick’s lawyer, Gary P. Naftalis, said his client was “gratified” by the agency’s decision. “We always believed that the evidence demonstrated that Gary Winnick acted lawfully and properly in connection with Global Crossing,” Naftalis said in a prepared statement.

You know what it tells me - Bernie won’t be needing his Cabana shirts because he won’t be going to Club Fed. Doesn’t matter - next time you want to run a scam, make sure you steal billions, hire the best attorneys and line the pockets of enough politicians, and SEC will take care of you. How quick everyone was to judge Martha Stewart, and throw her in jail.

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com Larry Ellison got his way - and what self-respecting billionaire doesn't? - but what are the prospects for Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft? Not good, says Silicon Valley's leading newspaper....

Cpyder writes "ICANN has decided to go forward with the implementation of two new top level domains, namely .mobi (for mobile use, sponsored by Nokia and T-Mobile) and .jobs (for job sites). The ICANN Board meetings regarding the approval are available. It is not yet known when these domains will be available for registration, as this decision merely starts the technical and business negotiations for terms under which these domains will be registered. Normally the domains should become active somewhere next year. Several other new TLDs are still up for discussion. These include .asia, .mail, .tel and .xxx. Last October, ICANN approved .travel and .post. More on these new TLDs at PCWorld and Google News."

Interesting piece threadlinked above over at Tech Review by the former owner of Front Page, Charles Ferguson. Front Page being the dreadful, code choking joke of the web-dev world.

Charles sold FP to M$ and made a bomb rather than see his company die. He likens that to the decisions now facing Google:

Google now faces choices as fundamental as those Netscape faced in 1995. Google, whose headquarters in Mountain View, CA—familiarly called the Googleplex—is only five kilometers from Netscape’s former home, needn’t perish as Netscape did, but it could. Despite everything Google has—the swelling revenues, the cash from its initial public offering, the 300 million users, the brand recognition, the superbly elegant engineering—its position is in fact quite fragile. Google’s site is still the best Web search service, and Gmail, its new Web-based e-mail service, Google Desktop, its desktop search tool, and Google Deskbar, its toolbar, are very cool. But that’s all they are. As yet, nothing prevents the world from switching (painlessly, instantly) to Microsoft search services and software, particularly if they are integrated with the Microsoft products that people already use.

Thoughts on M$ vs Google anyone?

MIT scientists have cultured small pieces of heart tissue which beat in the same way as the organ.

The approach involves seeding cardiac cells from a rat onto a 3D polymer scaffold, which slowly biodegrades as the cells develop into a full tissue.

The cell/scaffold constructs were bathed in a medium that supplies nutrients and gases, then were stimulated with electrical signals.

The key might be this electrical stimulation that helps condition the cells so that they communicate with each other and contract in a synchronized form.

The next stage will be to try to create samples of tissue that are the right thickness for potential use in transplants.

The work could lead to new ways of repairing heart damage since heart muscle cells cannot regenerate after injury and heart cells are difficult to culture by conventional methods.

Video of the heart tissue beating.

Via BBC News.

Cory Doctorow:
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has hundreds of free MP3s of Sherlock Holmes radio plays from the 1930s -- amazing!

Link

(via Ben Hammersley)

IT Observer: Skype - the most popular VoIP software in the world – is here. Already with 38 million downloads (around 5% of all Internet users), Skype is possibly the fastest growing free service ever offered on the web and it has just been bundled with the Kazaa Peer 2 Peer music swapping service that has 170 million users worldwide.

Reader ScrewTivo points to this Economist article on one of my favorite potential delivery means for high-speed Net access: stratosphere-dwelling airships. This version, from Sanswire Networks, is dubbed a "Stratellite," -- and one is scheduled to launch next month. As the submitter writes, "It's basically a blimp that thinks it's a geostationary satellite floating at 65K feet!"

abertoll writes "A federal judge decided that Google is able to sell ads under the GEICO trademark, claiming that this is fair use of the trademark. GEICO's contention was that competing insurance companies were using the name GEICO under which to buy Google Ads, so that when someone searches for GEICO, their ad would come up."

Dave Winer today points to an Scott Rosenberg's excellent take on Google's new library venture. Scott concludes:

The public has a big interest in making sure that no one business has a chokehold on the flow of human knowledge. As long as Google's amazing project puts more knowledge in more hands and heads, who could object? But in this area, taking the long view is not just smart -- it's ethically essential. So as details of Google's project emerge, it will be important not just to rely on Google's assurances but to keep an eye out for public guarantees of access, freedom of expression and limits to censorship. [Scott Rosenberg]

I agree. That's one of the reasons, by the way, that the evolving relationship between electronic texts and physical books fascinates me so deeply. For the generation now coming of age, Google defines a sort of continental shelf. Whatever is on that shelf is considered accessible. Whatever isn't fades into the murky unfathomable depths. But when we can beam the halogen light into those depths and search them, we'll be reminded that -- whatever online access can or cannot be offered now, and however long it takes to make complex and sensitive adjustments to the copyright system -- the physical books exist, and are available for our use.
...

Symantec is close to buying Veritas - for more than $13 billion. According to the New York Times this morning, negotiations between security giant Symantec and backup/storage giant Veritas that have lasted for more than a month are almost complete. If successful, they would lead to “the announcement of a possible deal as early as this week,” says the paper. Read more……

Direct and Related Links for 'Symantec To Buy Veritas: May Announce Deal “As Early as This Week”'

Linux Bangalore/2004, India's biggest tech-fest for free and open source software was held in Bangalore, the country's IT hub, last week. Attendees from many countries got to see more than 80 presentations delivered by 62 speakers in a span of three days.

The New York Times: Veritas has been singled out by Lawrence J. Ellison, the founder and chief executive of the Oracle Corporation, as an example of the kind of independent software company that is unlikely to survive industry consolidation. Say what you may about Larry, he was right, he still has a job and his billions. Pity one can’t say the same about those who jeered him when he said, tech industry has matured.

For many Americans, the end of the year is charitable contribution time. (The reasons are tax-related.) While there is no shortage of worthy causes around the world, I would like to suggest contributing at least something to EPIC. Since its...

I received an email from a Chinese wholesaler offering this USB powered Eye Massager.

To me this USB gadget looks more like a USB powered eye poker than a eye massager, but what do I know. We recently reported about the USB Massage Ball. Looks like USB gadget go big time in the health and wellness market.

Charles Ferguson writes a lengthy and clearly considered piece on Google for Tech Review, focusing on the Microsoft angle and concluding that the only way Google can truly "win" is by controlling a new architecture of computing through the time honored approach of proprietary APIs. Ferguson argues that the search wars are about to enter a major battle for control of standards which simplify the increasingly heterogeneous world of search, and in such a battle, Microsoft is far better suited.

I enjoyed reading this piece, and I am sure I will read it again and again, to more fully consider its argument. But I find myself disagreeing with the premise - why, in this world of the web, do we need to be bound by this winner takes all approach to the world? It works in a resource constrained world of homogenous PCs - once a consumer has purchased his Windows box, he's not going to easily purchase an emerging competitor - but somehow, it really doesnt' strike me as the right metaphor for a Web 2.0 world. I do agree that Google would be well served to make its service more of a platform, and that APIs are the way to go. But I'd really be interested in what Tim O'Reilly has to say about this piece, or Tim Bray, or any number of other folks. I'll keep my eye out...meanwhile, do read the piece. It's a worthy provocation.

Other POVs on this piece: TechDirt, Linden, SEW, Silicon Beat

Mirkon writes "The Register and Reuters report that the Motion Picture Association of America is planning to begin a legal assault on websites that host BitTorrent trackers for copyrighted movie files. An announcement is supposed to be made by the MPAA President/CEO today, along with help from CEO of private P2P network developer Red Swoosh, and the CEO of BayTSP, 'which offers file-branding and -tracking applications.' Not that they have any vested interests in this of course. Though the articles take care to mention that this action is not against standard users, how long is it until BitTorrent itself is targeted?" Apropos of nothing, I saw a movie in the theaters a few days ago. At the official start time, the lights dimmed. Then there were 14 minutes of commercials (Pepsi, hair mousse, cologne, etc.) followed by 13 minutes of movie trailers (which are also advertising), followed by a few minutes of junk, followed by a 100-minute movie. I can't imagine why people would want to download movies when they have that great theater experience to compare against.

Aziphirael writes "The MMORPG Project Entropia has just announced that its first treasure island sale via Auction has gone for a grand total of US$26,500. Project Entropia's unique selling point is the ability to convert real money into ingame cash and vice versa. The owner is Zachurm "Deathifier" Emegen who intends to develop the island into a place for the community." From the article: "A large island off a newly discovered continent surrounded by deep creature infested waters. The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property, an old volcano with rumors of fierce creatures within, the outback is overrun with mutants, and an area with a high concentration of robotic miners guarded by heavily armed assault robots indicates interesting mining opportunities."

In what some are calling "the new prohibition," the US government continues their efforts to stomp out all online gambling. Business Week has a good overview of the fight against online gambling, which many think will be as effective as the original Prohibition. The article covers the stories concerning the WTO ruling against the US in their efforts to stop gambling operations in Antigua and the questionable legality of threatening companies who sell ads to online gambling operations, but offer no online gambling themselves. Where the issue may get even trickier, however, is that the UK may start to put pressure on the US to stop being such a prude when it comes to online gambling, and (as you might imagine), the UK has a bit more clout than Antigua. Either way, it's pretty clear that plenty of Americans are still taking part in online gambling, and by refusing to admit this exists, they're much more likely to be driven to questionable sites while having fewer resources to help them out, should any online gambling reach the "problem" stage.

MediaFrame is an Open Source streaming media platform in Java which provides a fast, easy to implement and extremely small applet that enables over 97% of web users to view audio/video content without having to rely on external player applications or bulky plug-ins. MediaFrame does not require special servers, software or programming knowledge.



MediaFrame for Mpeg-4 has been in development for several years and was released today for the first time as public preview. The preview provides a full version of the software along with sample video and implementation files.



Mpeg-4 compatibility brings a wealth of new feature to the fore such as time based tracking, which allows users to track playback through a fully integrated JavaScript API and video smoothing which acts to remove artefacts from the video stream.



The technologies video scaling algorithm is also much improved, allowing a user to increase the size of the viewable screen by up to 500% that of the original movie file without a significant loss in quality.



Like the Mpeg-1 version before it, MediaFrame for Mpeg-4 is extremely light weight at only 56kb making it faster to initialise than both Real player and Windows Media Player. And unlike its competitors, MediaFrame does not require a plugin on the client machine.



MediaFrame for Mpeg-4 is available now.

Wouldn't it be great if someone made Skype interoperable with any or all of the Instant Messaging platforms?

I'm hearing reports that someone has. Care to guess who?

T-Mobile has its fingers on Delta, United, US Airways, and American, but Continental goes it alone and free: Continental will make free service available in its club lounge, Presidents Club, in 29 airports but not in Chicago. They may be bowing to O'Hare in terms of the upcoming Concourse Communications rollout in that airport, even though the FCC said that landlords can't control legal use of spectrum by tenants. Continental is the first airline of any scale to offer free Wi-Fi. JetBlue and AirTrans offer free Wi-Fi but only in a few of their national terminals, not everywhere they fly....

Remember just a few days ago when XM Satellite Radio was added to the NASDAQ-100 index of top capitalized non-financial firms? Now Sirius joins that club, too, showing the confidence that Wall Street places in the two companies. It’s a tricky proposition: if you add firms to an index that perform extremely poorly thereafter, you remove the utility of having an index that’s supposed to track the broader NASDAQ market. Thus, stocks that are added have to have the right capitalization—and the right moxy.

XM Satellite Radio’s stock is part of the NASDAQ-100 Index starting Monday. This is a bit of a vote of confidence, because the stocks are supposed to represent a range of the highest-capitalized non-financial stocks that reflects the stability not volatility of the NASDAQ market as a whole. It also means that XM will likely have more institutional long-term holders.

XM CEO Hugh Panero believes satellite digital radio will become just another feature on a cellular telephone.

Panero said he believed portable a satellite radio player would eventually be combined
with a digital music player.

”Clearly, convergence will occur at some point. It will happen even without our effort because people are beginning to build MP3 capability into a lot of consumer electronic devices,” he said.

The RIM messging opinion is out from the Federal District Court -- RIM lost on 11 of 16 counts in its appeal of a prior ruling in favor of NTP's patents for wireless messaging -- and it makes for harrowing...

MobileTracker points to a Wall Street Journal story which says that Verizon has gotten a thumbs up from partner, Vodafone to make a hostile bid for Sprint. If it happens the deal could make combined Sprint-Verizon the largest mobile carrier in the US with 65 million customers. The two use the CDMA technology and have laid out aggressive paths for an EV-DO upgrade. The Journal says that the deal is not going to pass the regulatory muster. I have a feeling Verizon is trying to slow down the deal between Sprint and Nextel, more than anything. But as they say, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. If Sprint and Verizon hook-up, Nextel’s only partner would be T-Mobile, which means by doing nothing, T-Mobile might actually be in a good spot.

: The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) predicts that search engine ad revenue will hit just over $4 billion in 2004. The number's included in "The State of Search Engine Marketing 2004" released today in Chicago at the group's meeting. Conducted by Executive Summary Consulting, Inc., the report is based on an extensive survey of 288 search engine advertisers and marketing agencies via IntelliSurvey, and in-depth interviews with 30 industry experts. Some other findings:
-- The spending breaks down in to several areas: $3.058 billion, search media companies; $618 million, related in-house expenses within advertising corporations; $380 million, search engine marketing agencies; $30 million, technology licensing fees.
-- Broken out by tactic, that's $3.342 billion, paid placement campaigns; $492 million, organic search engine optimization; $182 million, paid inclusion; and $72 million, related technology services.
-- Advertisers say they could afford to pay on average 33 percent more for price of keywords and remain rofitable, while they say prices have gone up 26 percent on average in the last 12 months
-- it's poaching budget share from shopping directory listings, web advertising, email and print ads
-- advertisers plan to increase their search-engine marketing 41 percent on average in 2005
Only 41 percent of respondents said their funding for paid placement and paid inclusion programs came from newly created budgets

: No, it's not the latest craze in holiday toys or a new party game, although the ZigBee Alliance does sound like something out of the next Star Wars prequel. ZigBee, based on 802.15.4, is a low-power, low-cost wireless protocol you'll be hearing more about as the standard is set and products emerge. A major target is home automation based on devices using alkaline batteries that can last for years, unlike Bluetooth devices that require constant charging. ZigBee can support unlimited nodes and has a range of 100-plus feet but it's too slow to transmit large chunks of data. A wireless ZigBee phone that can control household actions debuted a few days ago.
I don't any immediate impact on content distribution within the home but I can see how a ZigBee network could mix in.

where you'll find all manner of ladies wearing all kinds of headphones. You might wonder why such a strange fetish has a huge website devoted to it, well the answer is simple - it has lots of really devoted fans, who scour the internet day and night to find awesome pictures for the site.

The satellite radio market got a boost this week, as Toyota (the fourth largest automaker in the U.S. behind GM, Ford and Chrysler) announced this past Tuesday that it has selected XM Satellite Radio for factory-installations starting from 2006.  XM (Nasdaq:XMSR) already had an existing relationship with Toyota, in which the Japanese car manufacturer was offering XM as a dealer-installed option.  Another part of the deal is that Toyota also selected XM as its supplier for data services, such as XM’s NavTraffic real-time traffic information service.  The number of models offering XM as a dealer-installed option will increase in 2005, with new models such as the Toyota Avalon and the Lexus GS 330 being added to the already existing 10-model lineup. XM also has partnerships with Honda and GM.

On the same day, SIRIUS (Nasdaq: SIRI) also announced that Toyota has selected SIRIUS as a post-production (dealer installed) option beginning in February 2005 for the 9 models on which Toyota is already offering XM as a dealer-installed option.  It is widely believed that this deal came as a result of Sirus' relationship with Penske, the largest owner of Toyota dealerships in the U.S.  While the Toyota deal was a positive for Sirius, factory-installations still are the holy grail, and typically drive a substantially higher volume of activations, making things more difficult for the company to replace XM.  Moreover, XM is better entrenched due to the NavTraffic (the real-time traffic information service) portion of its deal with Toyota.  The company already offers NavTraffic on the 2005 Acura RL model, with service currently available in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas.

About two and a half years ago, I first started to describe the concept of a Wi-Fi enabled city, which also offered Located Based Services (LBS) to its residents. It turns out that such a place really does exists and...

: The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from Time Warner, Walt Disney and other media companies arguing that an appelate court was wrong when it ruled in favor of Grokster and StreamCast Networks. Bloomberg notes that the companies, in a brief, call this " one of the most important copyright cases ever to reach this court."

From AP (reg. req.) -- "The Supreme Court said Friday it will consider whether Internet file-sharing services are responsible for their customers illegally swapping songs and movies, a multibillion-dollar case testing the limits of copyright law in the digital age."
(From Napsterization via Scripting News)
More details: The case, known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster Ltd., No. 04-480, will be heard in March with a decision in late June. The NY Times' Linda Greenhouse writes that "friend-of-the-court briefs were filed on the industry's behalf by the attorneys general of 40 states; a group of 130 recording artists; and 15 national organizations, including professional sports leagues, that described themselves as dependent on "meaningful copyright protection." Grokster and StreamCast's allies include the Computer and Communications Industry Association and the Internet Archive.
From the tech journalism perspective, CNET's John Borland brings up another decision that changed the music landscape -- "all MP3 player makers, including Apple, owe their recent history to a 1999 decision in which a judge said MP3 players were capable of playing legally purchased music, and were therefore legal."
Morrison & Foerster attorney Jonathan Band tells CNET, "It's completely unpredictable. ...It could well be that the entertainment industry will rue the day when they went to the Supreme Court."
The EFF is keeping an archive of the case.

The Seattle Times article: MSN search engine has foot in door, takes a close look at how a search box in MSN Messenger 7.0 might reveal clues about MSN's "broader strategy in the search business." The rectangular box, embedded in...

Kris Oser at AdAge.com (free, sub req.) looks at the rising cost of keywords in: Search Engine Ad Term Prices Skyrocket. Because the method has proven to be such an effective marketing tool and also because record numbers of consumers...

A beta version of the MSN Desktop Search app has just been released. It's part of the MSN Toolbar Suite Beta. Here's the news release. A few notes: + A 4.8MB download + Does not index cached web pages +...

Dr. Preecha Tiewtranon, a pioneer in gender re-assignment surgery, performed a sex change operation live before of an audience of 35 other sex re-assignment surgeons, watching on video monitors across the world.

The famed Dr. Preecha, of the Preecha Aesthetic Institute in Thailand performed the surgery on a 27 year-old patient code-named "Pae", a tour guide from Bangkok. Preecha hoped to prove that his facilities and techniques were modern and up-to-date in an increasingly competitive world of gender altering surgery.

Via Reuters and China Daily.

smooth wombat writes "Asia Times has a nice article about why China is becoming the spam capital of the world. Steve Linford, of Spamhaus fame, is quoted several times in the article and offers some insight into how the Chinese ISPs operate. Steves quote at the end of the article pretty much sums up why China isn't doing anything to curb the hosting of spam website servers in the country: "They simply don't want to know - China Telecom doesn't care because they're government-owned and there is no pressure coming from the government. Meanwhile, our statistics on spam volumes and the number of spammers setting up in China are going up and up and up.""

reek writes "An Australian newspaper has reported that the contentious Surveillance Devices Act has been passed. The act will (according to the article) allow Federal Police to obtain warrants to secretly install spyware onto users computers enabling them to "monitor email, online chats, word processor and spreadsheets entries and even bank personal identification numbers and passwords.""

Jonathan Schwartz of Sun writes:

How much did your cellphone cost you? What's the average price of a handset? What's the average operating margin for a carrier's handset business?

The answers to those questions give you no clue whatever to the health of the handset industry. Why? Because the devices are sold to consumers as part of subscription calling plans, whose long term value is sufficient to drive some relatively crazy discounting in the carrier's retail outlets (go check them out, now that carrier's kiosks are popping up everywhere). The same handset from multiple carriers can range from free to $799. And as mobile data services increase in value (even if most folks over 30 don't even know what a ringtone or game download is), the insanity (or sanity) at the checkout counter will only quicken.

And as I was saying on Steve's Gillmor Gang, give it a year, I'll make a big bet, you're going to see the same thing begin to happen in the PC industry. Will the average selling price (ASP) of a PC continue to meander south? Yes. Unrelated to component cost. Will it go to free, like handsets? Absolutely. In exchange, consumers will sign up for network plans, DSL, cable, you name it. On PC's, or more likely equivalent dedicated devices branded by carriers - just as in the handset industry, where carriers are increasingly deploying 'branded' handsets. It's been a tad tougher on PC's when they didn't control the software load, but it's just a matter of time.

This is the foundation of the pricing distortion that occurs when networks, time and value blend. It's how Echostar and DirecTV subsidize satellite dishes, cable companies subsidize set top boxes, and how carriers sell handsets. Take out the network delivery part of the equation, it's how magazines sell subscriptions (first 6 months free). The spot margin is less interesting than the number of subs, ARPU, churn - and longer term EBITDA. Terms the PC industry will learn to respect, it's inevitable. Maybe not in the enterprise, where purchasing agents are fixed in their ways, but surely in the consumer marketplace, where "NO MONEY DOWN!" is popular signage.

So what's happening to the PC industry? It's moving from the old world, in which one buys a PC and cares a great deal about its comparitive hardware features (does it have a DVD player?), to one in which the hardware is nearly identical, and the value's moved to services available through the device. Over the network. Battery life matters more than processor speed. Size of display more than disk. Access to Yahoo! Personals matters more than all of the above.

This echoes what I wrote recently in my Business Standard column.

From the NewScientist.com.

“The construction of what will be the world's tallest building is set to begin in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The building contract was awarded to a consortium led by the South Korean Samsung Corporation on Thursday.

The Burj Dubai tower will stand 800 metres tall - just 5 metres shy of half a mile - once completed in 2008. That will be a full 350 metres taller that the tallest floored in the world today, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

The new tower’s unique, three-sided design will ascend in a series of stages, around a supportive central core and boast a total of 160 floors, accessible via a series of double-decker elevators. Its shape will be integral to its impressive size. The design is intended to reduce the impact of wind and to reduce the need for a stronger core - allowing for more space - as it ascends.”

The U.S. browser usage share of Firefox has grown by more than a third over the past month, according to the latest independent study from WebSideStory, a leading provider of on-demand Web analytics. In the one-month period from Nov. 5, 2004 to Dec. 3, 2004, Firefox’s online usage share grew from 3.03 percent to 4.06 percent. This compares to a gain of 13 percent during the previous month, from Oct. 8 to Nov. 5. You can of course read my story on Firefox at Business 2.0 website.

Nextel might be in talks with Sprint, but Chief Executive Tim Donahue is not waiting for his pot at the end of the rainbow. He has been like most other insiders selling his shares in Nextel for most of the year, and his total take is more than $32 million. Actually if you saw the insider sales, you knew something was up … the insiders were perhaps not feeling too confident about the future of the company as a standalone entity and perhaps it should have been a tip-off for rest of us? Hmm?

Wall Street Journal is reporting that the deal between Sprint and Nextel is going to be announced as early as Wednesday at New York’s St. Regis Hotel. But that doesn’t mean that some gatecrashers couldn’t crash the party: Verizon, Vodafone, Qwest and Alltel were some of the companies that could try and buy one of the two players. The New York Times has the story but it lacks the depth of the Journal piece.

Here is what some of the experts think about this deal. My old friend and former partner in chasing corporate crimes, Ben Silverman, now with FindProfit.com has a unique perspective:

The FON-NXTL marriage would be a negative for BellSouth (BLS), SBC Communications (SBC) and Verizon (VZ) (collectively, “The Bells”), and major competitive telecoms AT&T (T) and MCI (MCIP). The new FON would be positioned in the “sweet spot” of the battle between The Bells and cable operators (“MSOs”). FON is already carrying voice-over-Internet-protocol traffic for MSOs, and the company is now positioned to the be the number one wireless partner for the cable industry.

The potential FON-NXTL deal puts the spotlight on Sprint PCS affiliates Alamosa Holdings (APCS) and US Unwired (UNWR.OB), as well as independent carriers Western Wireless (WWCA), Rural Cellular (RCCC) and U.S. Cellular (USM). InPhonic (INPC), an online reseller of wireless services which recently went public, could also benefit as the remaining “big four”wireless carriers battle to protect market share.

Greg Gorbatenko of Marquis Investment Research has this to say:

The deal itself seems a little too cheap to us since NXTL can get a 5% bump in a normal day. Additionally, the PTT tech advantage would get lost in integration since the CDMA-PTT latency gap continues to be salient. Also, the line business at FON would languish due to absent love from the parent. Beyond obvious scale, we don’t see a big benefit since the iDEN premium would certainly seem to wane. The companies are quite different and the fit is not nearly as good as Cingular/AWE. We believe the success strategies get clouded. Sprint could lose focus on the wholesale biz and Nextel the iDEN biz.

Slow to unbundle DSL service. Some time ago Verizon promised users in a number of states they'd soon see "Naked DSL" - aka the ability to order a DSL line without bundling local phone service. The past few months we'd wondered what had become of the promise, and now Verizon offe..

Madison plans regional Wi-Fi. After 11 attempts in four years, SBC finally got laws passed in Wisconsin last July that restricted the development of municipal broadband. MuniWireless explores how Madison is trying to skirt those laws to give an entire county wireless broadband a..

I am regularly asked what average Internet users can do to ensure their security. My first answer is usually, "Nothing--you're screwed." But that's not true, and the reality is more complicated. You're screwed if you do nothing to protect yourself,...

Brian Flemming has two rules for your film. One: you can t spend any money making it. Two: you have to let everybody copy and make new things from it. Else, you have no part in his experiment. Or the future of film. Flemming is the filmmaker and mad scientist creator of Free Cinema, a film activism experiment inspired by the free culture and open source software movement. Essentially, the project's aim is to introduce independent filmmakers to the free culture business model (make it free > give it away) and observe the results.

Flemming is becoming notorious in Hollywood for this brand of salt. In 2002 he released Nothing So Strange, an uncomfortably realistic mockumentary on the assassination of Bill Gates, and made the 80-90 hours of footage open source. He recently kick-started the hype machine for his newest film, The Beast, which is also expected to be open source. The first official project of Free Cinema will be a film centered around a high-speed car chase on a San Diego highway. For most of the chase scenes Flemming is using free public-domain footage of high-speed chases shot by local police departments.


Free footage will naturally be a critical part of making free cinema. Consequently, the Prellinger Archives just became your new best friend. The archives host a collection of more than 48,000 “ephemeral” films (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) collected over a twenty year period that are available under a Creative Commons license. The material has already been successfully used in a number of films. Soul in Code briefly describes how The Corporation, a recently released film by directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, based on a book by Joel Bakan, intersplice footage from the archives to turn a critical eye on the corporate man. Another resource worth taking a look at is Common Content, which collects contributions of free content in all types of media. Also look out for the much hyped Open Media, which should be launching soon.


(Continued at octomoto)

Or so the The Wall Street Journal suggests in its latest magazine-like special section on technology. Some 19 million listeners tune in to Internet radio weekly compared to roughly 3.4 million satellite listeners; traditional radio swamps them both with an estimated weekly audience of 277 million.

The article suggests the lines "may soon blur." Actually, they've been blurring for quite some time. Hundreds of traditional radio stations are streamed online while Sirius satellite radio provides subscribers with streams of its commercial-free channels. One possible difference could be the creation of Internet-only "stations" by traditional radio owners like Clear Channel.

I listen to regular radio doing errands, Sirius on the road and various Internet options while online. Next step, activating the no-extra-charge Sirius streaming option.

Frank Barnako has more on Internet radio.

"The rectangular box, embedded in a preview version of the company's MSN Messenger 7.0, is a search field. Users will be able to launch Internet searches directly from that field, automatically opening a Web browser to display the relevant results on an Internet search site."

Many of you probably know this but here's a nice detailed post on getting deeper into the Firefox preferences that the normal menu will allow. The one i've been fond of for a while is turning off the referer headers :)

via geek news central

Msn has got their sights directly targetting Google on this one. Havn't managed to give it a go yet because download seems down atm.

Find anything on your computer
Documents, photos, music and more!
Find email messages in seconds

From Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express
Try the new MSN Search

Search the web smarter and better
Block those annoying pop-ups

Surf without interruptions
Fill out forms online F

Fill out forms and web site passwords in one click

Added: Official Announcement
David Dawson, the group program manager for MSN Desktop Search just blogged the official announcement.

Added: More.. blog coverage
Charline Li and Gary Price have just put out reports including additional information and a link to the press release - Ok, that's it for updates, im sure the rest of the search blogs will follow shortly, but this is old news to Threadwatchers now :)

Yahoo has acquired WUF Networks for an undisclosed amount reports Cnet. Although you may think so the newly aquired company does not sell dogfood. Instead they deliver solutions to distribute content to mobile phones:

"By leveraging WUF Personal Networking solution, you can offer your customers ubiquitous connectivity to their digital content. Let their devices automatically discover one another. Let them access all of their content remotely. Let them give their loved ones instantaneous access to their content. Let them experience this new lifestyle through you and you’ll see significant usage, adoption and retention in your products and services."

Sounds interesting - the company had planned to build on three applications of the technology:

"Photos To Go.

A solution that allow your consumers to access their digital
photos from any internet access devices such as PCs, mobile
phones and media centers.

Mobile Tunes. This solution will
allow your consumers to stream their digital music from their PCs (or
other internet access device) to their mobile phones.

Personal Network Community.
A solution that allows your consumers to participate in a virtual
community to post their Multimedia journals."



Quick snap - I wonder on what Yahoo based the valuation (peer group?).

Related entries:

Breaking the Information Technology Glass Ceiling... - Jan 19, 2004
Integrating Technology to Impove Student Learning... - Jul 08, 2004
Online Computer & Technology Degrees... - Jan 14, 2004
International Academy of Design & Technology... - Jun 07, 2004
RFID, the Disruptive Technology... - Nov 15, 2004
news in P2P technology... - Jun 10, 2003

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I have heard it
said that there are four sides to podcasting:

1. Content tools.


2. Readers and aggregators, iPods and iPod-alikes.


3. Content.


4. Bandwidth.

These are good things, however they are not the main thing. There is a fifth side, and it is also the only side.



The fifth side is links.



The web is made up of bags of links, documents containing barely-structured lists of pointers to other documents. Something about link bags is an uncanny mathematical description of knowledge, self and community. It is this something that allows the oracle at Google to know without thinking.



Podcasting is in a primordial stage as far as links go. It has two pieces: files containing audio of talk, and RSS feeds by the talker that contain pointers to their own audio files. The audio links are from and to the same person. There is a blog entry in text ("I love ice cream sandwiches"), and a blog entry in audio (http://example.com/I_love_ice_cream_sandwiches.mp3). Enclosure URLs are for self-links, and self-links do not have the something that makes hypertext go.



The really thorny problem with audio and video on the internet is not bandwidth, though bandwidth surely hurts, nor is it finding people willing to commit the sin of onan into a microphone connected to a computer. The really thorny problem is that the nature of audio and video files is to be linkless, and what they need to ascend to the internet is linkosity.

mozilla
is planning to release a version of Minimo (Mini-Mozilla browser for portable devices) for mobile phones.

"Due out in January of 2005, the 0.3 version of Minimo is already in use by two mobile phone companies, however they cannot release their names due to an embargo.

Mozilla Firefox has been taking over the share of Internet Explorer users very quickly, Minimo on the other hand, will be much harder to bring to market since manufacturers make the choice as to which browser to use, rather than consumers."

[MobileMag]

Our colleague and WNN's senior editor heads to Ireland: Nancy Gohring heads in a couple of weeks to Dublin, Ireland, for the indefinite future. Her husband successfully beat down the competition for a Dublin-based position with his multinational employer, and the two of them leapt at the opportunity to live in a place even colder in winter than Chicago, their home before Seattle. Nancy will be reporting from Europe for Wi-Fi Networking News and other publications, and we plan to expand our focus beyond our narrow provincial continental U.S. confines in the process. In celebration of her near-term arrival in Dublin, Eircom has added 50 free hotspots to the city. On a recent trip there, Nancy had some difficulty finding any locations at first, but received incredible help from residents who have cemented the friendly and sharing nature of that city. The Eircom hotspots are connected to payphones--45 of them of in that configuration--with five more to be turned on by the end of the year. The company has a goal of 250 hotspots nationwide in 2005. Eircom will be offering service for free in 14 Republic of Ireland McDonald's outlets. Service will be absurdly expensive in three to four months: €10 for one hour and €20 for 24 hours. The adoption curve remains low in Europe, apparently, and this is obviously one of the reasons. Comparable service in the U.S. typically varies from always free to US$4 or US$5 per hour up to US$10 per day for whole network access (T-Mobile). As the article notes, "A report by the Broad Group has said that even though prices in Europe are trending downwards they are still above those in other regions. The report has noted that hotspot use has increased as prices have decreased."...

The video archives of Pathe News are online, covering the late 1890s through to the 1970s. Pathe News was one of the earliest video news services in Britain and one of the best remembered.

I first began running Linux when SUSE 5.3 and Mandrake 6.1 were the latest distros. Since that time I can't count all the distributions of *nix/nux I've tried and worked with. For the last nine months, however, I've been a happy camper with my Slackware desktop.

Chris Holland: “Until SIP came along, it was only possible to easily get in real-time touch with somebody within closed, proprietary ecosystems: the traditional telephone system, ICQ, AOL Instant Messaging, Yahoo Instant Messaging, MSN Instant Messaging, Skype, CU Seeme, to name a very few.”

js7a writes "As reported in the Houston Chronicle, the sharply rising cost of natural gas and other fossil fuels has caused the cost of renewable energy to finally reach the price of nonrenewables. However, wind still has some catching up to do: 'a 10 percent wind- and 90 percent water-generated mix is about $9 per month less expensive than the 100 percent wind plan.' As more wind generation and grid transmission capacity is built, wind will eventually become more competitive than hydroelectric, but hydro and other sources will be required to balance grid demand in calm areas. Slashdot has been following this trend."

In the last week I've lost count of how many people have forwarded me an email claiming that everyone's mobile phone number is about to be handed over to telemarketers. I even have a reply which I cut and paste to people. It's not true. Some carriers are trying to offer numbers to a 411 service but it will be entirely opt-in, it won't be put in a book, will only be available on a per-request basis and it will still be totally illegal for telemarketers to call your mobile phone. To their credit, the majority of the people who forwarded it to me did so asking if it was real -- noting their own skepticism. However, it appears not everyone was so skeptical, as the national Do Not Call list received a sudden influx of 3 million new registrations in the past two weeks, which clearly beats the 200,000/per week they were used to receiving. There's nothing wrong with putting a mobile phone number on the Do Not Call list, but that phone number shouldn't be called whether or not it's on the list. And this potential directory isn't going to change that at all.

It isnt often that a group of scientists get together to offer their views before they reach the peer-reviewed literature. But now a group of nine ...

A new site launched this week with the goal of managing, measuring and monetizing your syndicated feeds.

Forresters Charlene Li takes a look at Syndicate IQ in the threadlink above as does John Battelle in this post

The system is able to accurately track the dailey circulation of an article by inserting a unique identifier in the feed url and tracking IP and browser type. Like Pheedo and RSSAds SyndicateIQ will be launching an ad network shortly.

From their monetization page:

Syndicate IQ leverages the unique characteristics of syndication while enabling the sophisticated targeting, customization, and optimization found in other marketing solutions such as ad serving and email delivery services. Our Trigon Engine allows content publishers to monetize syndicated content intelligently while deepening their relationships with their subscribers and growing their subscriber base.

That would seem to me to be a great next step for the monetization of feeds and the standardization of useful metrics for publishers - will be watching with interest for more from them...

The Consumer Electronics Association believes nearly 50% of all U.S. homes will own a HDTV set by the end of 2007 -- that's more than 50 million high-def sets. While the CEA's projection is a little too optimistic, some say the tipping point will come a lot sooner. When 15 million homes start tuning in with HDTV sets, you ll start seeing the shift, says John Hendricks, Discovery Channel founder. Everybody will be waking up. When that happens, everyone will be desperate for a feed, but they won t be able to get the bandwidth.

The Deadly Necklace. The current issue of the New Yorker has a fascinating story about Richard Lancelyn Green, a preeminent Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes scholar who died under mysterious circumstances in March. At the time of his death, Green had been looking into the provinence of an archive of Conan Doyle’s papers [reprint of a NYTimes article], which he believed (perhaps wrongly) had been stolen, and he'd hinted that there had been threats to his life. Soon afterward, he was found garroted by a shoelace in his room. The magazine does not provide the article online, but does offer this Q&A with the author. I cannot recommend it highly enough, but to get you started while you're still at work, here's some more about Green's death from a Holmes message board; a discussion of the curse of Conan Doyle, which holds that Holmes scholars can meet an untimely end; and info on Doyle's belief in the supernatural.

Update: I have been able to confirm Dr Li’s new gig at Cisco, where he started working December 6, 2004 as Technical leader in the IOS XR-Routing group. He will be reporting to Mike Volpi, the senior veep incharge of routing group.

Talk about the return of the prodigal son. The man who made Cisco routers the industry standard, aka Tony “RouteMan” Li is rumored to be back at Cisco. Now this is not an episode out of The Bold and The Beautiful, but its pretty close. Cisco, Juniper, Procket and now Cisco… lets talk about coming full circle. What this means is that Cisco will finally get around to fixing its software issues and basically re-energize out of the box thinking at Cisco. They certainly have big ambitions for the company going forward, as per yesterday’s analyst meeting. I think this is going to be a big deal for Cisco. Wonder what happens to the other Tony …Tony Bates. Now I have not been able to confirm this but couple of folks pinged me, and there is word coming out Cisco campus that the “Return of Li” is going to be announced soon. I am down in San Diego and still trying to nail down more facts. Remember where you heard it first!

Fertility researchers at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, have discovered that the heat generated from laptops could cause fertility problems for men. Just one degree of increased temperature in the testicles or scrotum can reduce healthy sperm production by up to 40% and a laptop balanced on a man's thighs can raise testicular temperature by several degrees.

Lead researcher Yefim Sheynkin recommends that young men who hope to have children some day limit their use of laptops or keep them off their laps.

Via Wired News.

Why do the Japanese get all the coolest gadgets, while the U.S. is left with the second-tier, less-innovative ones? The San Francisco Chronicle delves into this age-old mystery and provides a few explanations for those of us who don't live near Akihabara.

As expected, folks in the EU are realizing that there just isn't enough support to approve a measure that would all for software patents. So, in order to try to change some minds, a vote has been put off until sometime next year. Hopefully, the growing number of politicians deciding against such a plan is a trend, and not a temporary blip. Of course, for those of us in the US (where software patents are legal), it will be interesting to see how the software development community in both places change over time. If things stay as they are now, then we should see more interesting developments coming out of the EU, while US developers are bogged down in patent lawsuits or don't develop certain applications due to the chilling effects of software patent litigation threats. Hopefully, realizing that the US software industry is hindered by this setup will drive more to push for patent reform that recognizes that software patents are bad news.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review an Appeals Court ruling that can potentially force cable companies to give third-party ISPs access to their networks.  In October of 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco held that MSOs should allow competing Internet Service Providers on their broadband networks.  This ruling went against the FCC opinion made public in March 2002 - namely, that cable operators should not be regulated as telecom carriers, since High Speed Internet (HSI) over cable was just an "information service" that is different than a telecom service.

As a result of the FCC's classification, the MSOs would not be forced to share their networks with other ISPs (an obligation that they would need to comply with should HSI be ruled a "telecommunications service").  That was the de-facto standard until Brand X, a Santa Monica ISP challenged the FCC view in court, which eventually lead to the appeals court decision last October. 

The FCC and NCTA were granted a stay of the court decision pending a request of the Supreme Court to hear the case.  MSOs have in fact resisted the telecom service notion of "open access" for a long time, claiming that it would create a lot of constraints to the industry due to new regulation, and create technical issues. 

One interesting point about this case is that the courts often seek the advice of expert agencies when pondering upon complex policy nuances such as the current telecom versus information service debate.  But the Appeals Court in San Francisco chose its own interpretation rather than deferring the decision to the FCC. 

It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court will rule - just because it agreed to review the case, that does not imply that it cannot remand the case to the FCC for further clarification.  The FCC has been deliberating on the regulatory issue of how to classify VoIP for years, and thus far, it chose a rather friendly stance, in order to help the industry flourish.  The oral arguments are set to begin on March 23rd, 2005, with a ruling anticipated before the Supreme Court recess in June.

CBS News is reporting that two leading South Dakota blogs critical of former Senate party leader Democrat Tom Daschle were authored by two paid advisors to South Dakota Republican John Thune’s campaign without disclosure.

Google have apparently shelled out $300M on a new datacenter in a Georgia industrial park. About 100 employees in a non descript unmarked building with no windows - pffft! 007 eat your heart out hah!

This from the CRM Knowledgebase threadlink above:

Almost without notice, the Internet search company has tiptoed about 100 employees and a significant investment into a windowless building in a Douglas County industrial park near Six Flags Over Georgia.

There's no sign on the building, no logo on the locked glass door, nothing to indicate that an Internet icon has come to town.

A note taped to the door points visitors to a buzzer, which prompts a polite, but firm, female voice to shoo you away. The voice can't --- or won't --- confirm you've found Google, or even if you're in the right place.

It's all very mysterious.

So why the big hush hush? Sheesh, google are news, if sergey farts it hits the homepage of every major industry site on the net - did they think they'd be able to keep 100 people and all the people they know quiet for long?

You gotta love it... link via IG via SEWB

Sensory homunculus: "This model shows what a man's body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its sensory perception."

Motor homunculus: "This model shows what a man's body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the cortex of the brain concerned with its movement."

"Sensory Homunculus" would not be a bad band name.

Web surfing gets riskier all the time. Computer security guru Bruce Schneier outlines a 12-step plan to protect yourself. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

'-- If possible, don't use Microsoft Windows. Buy a Macintosh or use Linux. -- Don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer, period. --'

Byte the bullet and claw your way out of the tar pit. Your computing life will be better.

...John

The Center for Social Media has released Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers. Documentarians must gain clearance for "culture" in practically every second of their films. Often clearance means removal when the price is too high — removing mass culture from films meant to document it. Untold Stories also tells of the disappearance of existing documentaries due to clearance issues, such as the 1992 U. S. civil rights documentary, EYES ON THE PRIZE. [Creative Commons: weblog]

RSS Feed for Cinema Minima

Snippet from the Tim Wu interview you should be reading:

EM: You've written, basically, that copyright law is communications policy by other means. Can your last two answers be combined into a single coherent whole?

TW: Yes: Copyright law should limit itself to promoting authorship, and communications law should forget about content regulation. That may, again, not sound very radical, but the fact is that today the two areas of law moonlight for each other in fairly shameful ways. Copyright is used to do things that would be embarrassing to propose in communications policy circles. Meanwhile, the FCC is effectively implementing copyright laws that couldn't get through Congress.

The Economist writes:

Because VOIP service relies on software, rather than the traditional physical telephone infrastructure—voicemails, for instance, come into one's e-mail inbox and can be saved and forwarded—it upsets the entire telecoms industry, for two reasons.

First, while traditional telephony takes account of geography, distance, and time, says Michael Powell, America's telecoms regulator, “VOIP shatters all three”. In most cases it makes no difference to a VOIP caller where he is, how far away from the person he is calling, or how long they talk. VOIP phones can have traditional telephone numbers, yet still work no matter where they are, provided they are plugged in to a broadband internet connection. Lots of Indian mothers in Delhi have Vonage phones with the American area code 650 so that they can make cheap “local” calls to their sons in Silicon Valley.

Second, VOIP uncouples the two previously intertwined components of telephony: access to the network (via a wire running into your house, for example) and service (the ability to make and receive calls). Traditionally, both have been provided together. With VOIP you can buy broadband access from one firm and a telephony service from another—or even from a company in another country altogether.

Who will be the biggest losers? Not the fixed-line telcos, even though their revenues may fall by 25% by 2010 due to VOIP, according to Mr Mewawalla. The mobile operators are likely to be the big losers, with their revenues plunging by 80%. Together, VOIP and wireless broadband could fatally undermine their costly third-generation (3G) networks.

/>

Not that this is really gonna convince anyone that Apple is really working on a cellphone, but Tony Ricciardi from
TreoMac relates this story which jibes with what we’d heard from one of our
sources told us last week, namely that Apple has been showing off a cellphone prototype to potential partners:

I was on a train this weekend, watching an episode of the Simpsons on my Treo 600. The gentleman sitting across
from me asked me how I liked the phone. I told him I loved it and we began a tech conversation. He mentioned that he
worked for Motorola. I told him I was a Macintosh consultant, and then he dropped the bomb! “I’ve got a scoop for you”,
he teased.

Apparently some of his associates had been telling him earlier in the week about an Apple branded phone that had been circulating around the office at Motorola. The phone had Motorola components, but most certainly had Apple brandings on it. He said that he did not have a chance to handle the phone, but that his direct supervisor did. The phone was “sleek and sexy” in her words. He mentioned that there was talk amongst the people who had seen it that iTunes and iPhoto would factor into this device somehow. They also said that the phone had a slot on the top (media slot?) as well as what looked to be a USB 2.0 port on the bottom.

Anyway, like we said before, we’re fairly confident that Apple has at least been showing off a prototype for a cellphone, we just don’t know whether they’ll actually ever come out with one or not. Definitely sounds like they’re exploring their options, though. We’d kill for some spy pics.

Searchblog has posted some new Google metrics from Majestic Research. They include: + 98 percent of GOOG revs are from paid search. 65% of revs are domestic. + Overall US searches grew 6% quarter to quarter, Google powered searches grew...

The producers of a European reality pornography show are in talks to air a new program in the U.S.

The "Private Stars" show gives five "real world" men a shot at a contract to star in a porn film.

The winner of the show is the one who performs best on television with one of Private's top female pornstars.

The first 10 episodes were so successful that the cable network re-ran the show 76 times in Europe and the program jumped to No. 2 for the men's 24-35 age group in the United Kingdom on the Bravo channel.

Even though it's been withdrawn, the Lycos anti-spam screensaver is not forgotten. Rollie Hawk writes "And with this, the 'What's Good for the Goose...' award goes to all those people trying to install that notorious spam-attacking Lycos screen saver but ended up with a Trojan horse instead. This trojan is spreading via email with the subject line 'Be the first to fight spam with Lycos screen saver,' tucked in an innocent-looking file called 'Lycos screensaver to fight spam.zip.' According to F-Secure, this trojan contains keylogger elements but little more has been specified. The only question I have is how long until the 'I promise to clean that trojan disguised as a DDoSing Lycos screen saver.exe' virus gets released."

Forresters Charlene Li shares some snippets from a consumer survey conducted on US households. Some of the data is unsurprising but it does make for interesting reading.

• Google continues to lead as the site consumers use most frequently to search the Internet, while Yahoo! lost share from 2003.
• MSN gained substantial share as the default home page for online consumers. + Among Google's loyal searchers, many were likely to have MSN and Yahoo! as their default home pages, opening up the possibility that these portals will regain search loyalty.
• MSN has a slight lead in the percent of consumers who use its toolbar.
• Almost half of all toolbar users also use another toolbar.
• Google tops the list in terms of search effectives (as ranked by their own loyal searchers) but overall quality remains poor, leading consumers to use multiple search engines.

I find it very difficult to break the Google habbit (and there's mostly no reason why i should) but I have in recent months been turning to Yahoo! a significant proportion of the time.

I cant seem to take Clusty seriously, no matter what good things i hear :)

It seems to be that time of year again; the time for people to share their predictions for the year ahead. After reviewing the results from my foggy crystal ball, the following are my predictions for 2005. 1) 2005 will...

title="Podcast Alley - Your Podcast Library">
Podcast Alley is a place to find all information relating to podcasts and podcasting. Podcasting is a great way for professionals and individuals alike to create audio news files (podcasts) that people can download to their iPods and listen to when they are away from their computers. [Podcast Alley]

In the wake of the Jeopardy/Kottke incident, bloggers are starting to feel a little anxious about what protections the law affords them with regard to online speech. Here's another reason to worry: the question of whether a weblog writer can be held responsible for libel charges for simply re-posting potentially libelous material hasn't yet been definitively answered -- at least not in/by the state of California.

In a case pending before the California Supreme Court, two doctors are suing Ilena Rosenthal, a woman's health advocate, because she posted a controversial opinion piece in a Usenet forum. To be clear, she didn't write the piece. She simply passed it along for discussion -- just as countless bloggers do.

(Continued at Copyfight)

A panel at Wi-Fi Planet agrees that products with the final (but not necessarily ratified) version of 802.11n will hit the market by 2006 second quarter: The panelists from Atheros and Airgo, cited in this story, expect that the 802.11n task group will narrow from four to two proposals shortly and that the final proposal will be selected by 2006. Pre-ratification products will hit the markets. At issue is whether patents for the two remaining standards will be available royalty-free or on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (RAND). One of the panelists noted a problem we discussed on this site some weeks ago: pre-N products aren't being guaranteed as eventually 802.11n compatible. This is precisely what happened to Texas Instruments 802.11b+ (802.11b with PBCC) which offered raw throughput of 22 Mbps and no upgrade path to 802.11g. Renasis managers called these pre-N products "disposable."...

The Economist writes about one of the peer-to-peer technologies:

The most active P2P system, accounting for an estimated 35% of all internet traffic according to CacheLogic, is called BitTorrent. It is an open-source software project that is free to use and enables very large files to be stored and retrieved efficiently at essentially no cost. Though it is used for pirated music, it comes into its own when distributing really large files such as movies, games and large pieces of software such as the Linux operating system—things that would otherwise be very costly for companies or individuals to make available for download.

Part of BitTorrent's success stems from the way it creates incentives for users to give as well as to take. A study in 2000 on one P2P network showed that almost 70% of users never shared files, and around half of the files available were offered by just 1% of users. BitTorrent is designed to remedy this. It rewards those who share files with others by increasing the download rate at which generous users can receive content, explains Bram Cohen, the system's creator. More sharing means there are more potential locations where copies of a given file are located, which in turn increases access speed. BitTorrent uses a technique called swarming, in which files are broken into small chunks that are then passed between peers. Two peers downloading the same file at the same time can also swap chunks they have already received from other peers, increasing the efficiency of the transfer.

Although when it comes right down to it, whatever company wins the contract to provide the graphics silicon for Sony's Playstation 3 isn't that important to we end-users of the product, well, it's Nvidia. Rumors suggested that Nvidia hadn't finished its work on the original Xbox on good terms with Microsoft, which made the selection of ATI for the Xbox 2's video chipset unsurprising. However, it's arguably a much bigger deal for Nvidia to get a contract on the Playstation 3, if relative sales figures for the next generation consoles end up as disparate as they were in this generation, where the Playstation pretty much trounced everybody for the second time in a row.

Nvidia's been working on the chip for two years in secret. While it's certain that some nifty graphical tricks learned in the development of the new hardware will find their way to future Nvidia PC gaming products, don't take this news to signify in any way that Playstation 3 games will play on PCs with Nvidia hardware. Silly, I know, but people will ask.

Nvidia nabs PS3 graphics contract [TheRegister]

Related
Nvidia Making PS3 Graphics Chip [Kotaku]

The current New Yorker has a must-read Atul Gawande piece about the effect of data transparency on hospitals and healthcare. As the article's subhead puts it, "What happens when patients find out how good their doctors really are?" The answer:...

A lot of folks are talking about Jakob Nielsen's latest posting: The Most Hated Advertising Techniques. There aren't many surprises in there. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that he's telling many of us what we already knew--it's just that he's helped to quantify that knowledge.

Before I even had a chance to connect the two dots, though, Jeff Boulter decided to see which of the hated Techniques are in use on the Yahoo network. His findings are in Yahoo's worst advertising techniques.

His conclusion, after noting that Yahoo offers a free pop-up blocker for IE (as part of the Yahoo Toolbar):

Still, it’s time for Yahoo to clean up their act. A lot of these ads are for trashy sites which can’t be paying much anyway.

Oh, how I remember the arguments about pop-up ads at Yahoo. If you're a flame-lover those were good times. If you're anyone else, those were dark times indeed.

Consider Eliyon, a company that's gathered public information about more than 22 million people to support sales, recruiting, and other applications. As it turns out, I am several of those people. In addition to my current title, InfoWorld Test Center lead analyst, I show up as executive editor of Byte Magazine and contributor to Linux Magazine. And while those were once accurate descriptions of me, I have never been a member of Blue Titan's board of advisors, and I am not the inventor of RSS.



It's true I could register with the site, coalesce my correct identities, and purge the wrong ones. But authenticating with a credit card in order to update a profile that Eliyon owns is a nonstarter for me. Back in June, on my weblog, I suggested the alternative that would suit me: I'll maintain my own profile on the Web and syndicate my data to anyone who needs it.



Semantic Web naysayers think people and organizations can't be bothered to assert machine-readable facts about themselves. And, today, that is undoubtedly true. But when others assert facts about you -- as they increasingly will -- the tide could begin to turn. Individual acts of self-defense may ultimately combine to bootstrap the semantic Web. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

...

Monster Farming: The Creepy Solution to the Stem Cell Debate. MSN Slate's William Saletan: "The good news is that we may have figured out how to solve the moral problem that's been holding up stem-cell research. The bad news is that the solution will introduce a whole new kind of horror."

Sprint is splurging on gear - nearly $3 billion. Most of the money is going to go to Lucent, Motorola and Nortel, for a 3G buildout in the US. Lucent will sell Sprint softswitches for VoIP and other sundry gear worth $1.5 billion; while Nortel will get about a $1 billion over three years for new wireless base stations. Motorola is selling the company $450 million worth of CDMA 2000 IX base stations and other gear, according to this press release. All this money is in a bid to catch up with Verizon which is all set to rollout its 3G network sometime in 2005. (Its currently available in about 14 markets)

Gary blogged earlier about a Financial Times article on clickfraud. Here's a related one from CNN, inspired by Google CFO George Reyes telling an investor conference recently, "I think something has to be done about this really, really quickly,...

dunric writes "ZDNet is reporting that sales of servers using Linux will reach a whopping $9.1 billion by 2008. Annual revenue for Linux servers is expected to grow by a healthy 22.8 percent, compared to just 3.8 percent for the overall server market. Additionally, Linux servers will account for nearly 26% of all server shipments."

Last month, we mentioned that today was the day when Commerce One's very, very broad patents would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Many feared that whoever won would start a patent shakedown scheme, basically holding up all kinds of e-commerce and business-to-business transactions with these broad patents. Among those expected to bid was Nathan Mhyrvold's Intellectual Ventures -- a company that looks to take patent hoarding to new heights. Apparently Intellectual Ventures bid high, but not high enough. The winning bid went to a secretive company named J-G-R Acquisitions for a cool $15.5 million. At this point, it's unclear what they're going to do with these patents, but it seems likely that plenty of companies will be hearing from them shortly. Once again, it's not at all clear how this encourages innovation. It seems to discourage innovation by making companies who are actually doing something (without any knowledge learned from these patents) have to pay up or stop innovating. That's discouraging innovation.

Here's the CITY OF HEROES software:

City of Heroes is a "massive multi-player role playing game" that allows the user to create a superhero, using attributes in the software (mutant, fighting style, etc.).  It's unclear just how much the users' heroes can deviate from the templates supplied by COH.  The guy in the front with the helmet is a super hero named Statesman who walks the user through creating their own hero.  There's a bigger picture of Statesman in the flash animation here.

Marvel Comics says that City of Heroes infringes Marvel's trademarks and copyrights, and has filed this complaint. Marvel says that, for example, Statesman, is just like Captain America, except that COH put the helmet of Magneto (a Marvel villain) on him. Here is Marvel's Captain America:

And here's Magneto (the X-Men nemesis) wearing his helmet:



<

Here is a Greek Helmet from approximately 600 BC:

Marvel also argues that by allowing fans to create heroes whom are similar to Marvel's characters (for example, the software allows you to create a character who has claws and regenerative powers, just like Marvel's Wolverine (and the Phoenix of Egyptian, Greek and Roman myth)).

Here is a Law.com column by Fred von Lohmann discussing this case and Marvel's contributory infringement theory.  In addition to critiquing Marvel's legal theories, Mr. von Lohmann calls this case 'an assault on the basic expressive rights of the fans.'

Steve at MP in the threadlink above has the scoop on the New York Times putting out an internal call regarding the first site redesign in 4yrs with special attention given RSS and G news:

"Next year, the site will embark on its first redesign in four years in an Internet environment that has changed dramatically. Back then there were no Google News or RSS feeds, or even much broadband outside the workplace. Also, video's time on the Web hadn't really arrived. The growth of new technologies like Google News and RSS represent major challenges and opportunities for our storytelling. How we respond will be critical for the long-term health of NYTimes.com."

btw, untill i get a page up for this, anonymous rumour can be sent to rumours@threadwatch.org

SFGate.com columnist Mark Morford had an interesting column on Friday about uncensored photographs from the tragedy in Iraq. He notes the website Fallujahinpictures.com, which features horrific and sad images from Iraq's most war-torn city -- images often too controversial or shocking to make it past editors of mainstream news organizations.

Morford wrote: "The major media ... is often hamstrung and torn. They can rarely run such photos. Newspapers and TV are hemmed in by 'no-sensationalism' policies and are often paralyzed by the notion that if they ran such pictures, they would be called insensitive or inflammatory or anti-Bush and (...)

Entry continued...

London-based artist Stephen Rumney has set up a virtual gallery where art lovers can buy a piece of digital art that comes with its own unique web address and an art gallery installation of the image.

Prices of the installations range from £6,000 for Untitled.com, to £300,000 for www.MA.

For Rumney, the Domain Art series reflects "the madness of consumerism, the artworld and life in the 21st Century". "The person who buys a particular artwork will own a piece of global real estate. Not only do they buy the rights to a work of art to be shown in a gallery, they also own the website and can view their artwork on it."

Via BBC World.

The US Supreme Court has decided to decide whether cable companies must open up their high-speed lines to rivals.

Former Yahoo hacker turned Feedster hacker Ray suggests that search engines are missing out by not dropping in an affiliate code in their links back to sites like Amazon.com. Near the end of that post he says:

And when I do click the product link on Google's result page, they're missing out on any potential revshare. I don't think inserting an affiliate ID would be seen as doing evil or tarnish their credibility. It wouldn't even give me pause in clicking the link, and the majority of users wouldn't notice it.

Oh, now that's just funny.

Here's a reality check: If a search engine just started dropping those codes in their results, they'd be crucified. Crucified by the technical press, the SEOs, and a bunch of bloggers. Imagine the conspiracy theories!

"Are Amazon.com results really better, or are they first because the search engine makes $0.40 if I buy that DVD?"

Oh, it'd be quite the little PR crisis.

But they do notice the sponsored links, which are mostly affiliate links anyhow. So is that real reason why nobody's using affiliate links- they're afraid it will cannibalize their sales of sponsored links?

Those links are clearly labeled as "sponsored" links. If a search engine dropped in affiliate links in their untainted reuslts, they'd suddenly be lableing a lot of their links as "sponsored" or something similar, wouldn't they?

In the traditional publishing world (that is, print publishing) there's supposed to be a brick wall between the people who work to get advertisements and those who produce content. The former often report up through or work with the Publisher, while the others generally fall under the Editor in Chief.

The same thing is supposed to be true in large financial institutions. The "analysts" are separate from the underwriters--those who work to take companies through their IPOs. The SEC frowns upon any contamination.

Given the financial ecosystems created by search engines and pay per click advertising, a similar barrier has to exist between search results and "sponsored" results.

But feel free to test your theory on Feedster. :-)

Now how is this for an interesting piece of news if I ever read any. Internet Week is reporting that Firefox browser users do not click on ads near as often as Internet Explorer users do. Surprising to people, not really. I thought that it is almost a given in a sense. Firefox users are quite frankly much more likely to be attracted to well targeted Google ads in place of generalized banner ad placements….

Direct and Related Links for 'Firefox Users Don’t Click!'

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia, United States of America — Microsoft announced last week it would set up its second Asian research facility in India’s technology hub of Bangalore. “India’s growing international reputation for excellence in computer science research and engineering make it a natural choice,” said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research, the computer software leader’s research arm. Read more……

Direct and Related Links for 'Microsoft to set up second Asian research facility in India'

If you're more interested in searching for media than text, try the new search engine GoFish, which claims to search 12 million media files. Media in this case includes ring...

IBM, which is working on design of the advanced Cell microprocessor with Sony and Toshiba, is planning to produce many derivative designs for a wide array of consumer entertainment applications. The move will put it into more direct competition with...

Amidst the flurry of announcements about the acceleration of Project Lightspeed, the availability of residential VoIP services and the IPTV deal with Microsoft, SBC also publicized its plans about a new offering geared towards VoIP service providers.  Namely, in a filing made on November 24th, SBC made the FCC aware of its TIPToP (True IP to PSTN) service, which enables VoIP providers to connect IP traffic to circuit-switched network through a specially designed interface

This last announcement did not go unnoticed by folks like Jeff Pulver, Om Malik, or groups such as the Internet Innovation Alliance.  So what's the issue?  Well, FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who is known for his VoIP friendly stance, stated:

"Should we conclude that this tariff is being used to justify the imposition of traditional tariffed access charges on VoIP providers or to discriminate against SBC's competitors, the commission will take appropriate action."

Powell already has three decisions to make related to charges applicable to VoIP services.  One of the matters to be resolved is related to intercarrier compensation.  He remains committed to ensuring the commission avoids any action that might slow down the "IP services revolution". 

Even though SBC still has not made the tariff public, there is some concern that offerings such as TIPToP might block some competitors from using the tandem interconnection altogether - making it not a viable option.  These tandem connections allow the LECs (Local Exchange Carriers) to connect with each other.  Some players such as Vonage go through CLECs to tap into the RBOC networks.

SBC is claiming that TIPToP is a voluntary product that should not impact the FCC's ruling on intercarrier payments, and that it has already gotten some interest in the offering.  BellSouth (NYSE:BLS) has already been promoting a similar service since May of 2003 (although BellSouth's service converts the VoIP call into signaling traditional phone networks understand, a more complicated and costly process than what is provided by SBC), whereas Verizon (NYSE:VZ) offers a nationwide VoIP service, but it requires customers to maintain their local main lines with the company, marketing the service as a second-line replacement.

Soon, we will find out where Powell will draw the line.  The key issue is that even as a "voluntary" service, TIPToP can potentially become a back-door way to impose the access charges that were initially rejected by the FCC.

Just a rumour as yet but it does look like the BBC may offer the previous weeks programming for download online.

Full details in the post threadlinked above

Leonardo asks about how much bandwidth does one need for quality VoIP?

Well, I've made a Skype call sitting on the airplane and talking to James Enck of EurtelcoBlog of rather good quality via the Sprint 1xRTT network. The speeds are about 100k down and roughly half of that up. They key though is what happens to the voice packets after it gets on the network.

Beleive it or not, we're really only using about 8-10k of bandwidth. What's really going on is the priortization of packets and the routing that matters.

Unbound Spiral has a short review/preview of the Skype Answering Machine.

Clearly we are seeing the start of the Skype cottage industry being built and it a community without borders.

If anyone has a handle on the Skype community it's Stuart Henshall. He's been keeping tabs on it closely, possibly the closest of any blogger on the Net.

Slashdot points to a Reuters report: " The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President (1216.TW) group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan. Q-Ware will deploy at least 20,000 access points throughout Taipei at a cost of US$70 million... Q-ware is aiming for a basic monthly fee of T$150-T$400 (US$4.5-US$12), far less than the T$800-T$1,000 (US$24-US$30) that fixed-line broadband providers demand in Taiwan. It expects to sign up a third of the city's 3 million residents and break even within 5 years."

One of the elements of the Kyoto treaty is the use of carbon markets. This lets those countries either producing under the treaty limits of CO2 or not currently bound by the treaty (for now, mostly developing nations) sell carbon emission rights to treaty-bound over-producers. While this may seem like a way for over-producing countries to just keep spewing excess CO2, it's actually a very good idea: few countries are close to making the Kyoto limits without buying credits, so there's considerable demand; even as more countries get their emissions in order, the emissions allowed will gradually decline over time, making the remaining credits inevitably more expensive; countries will therefore have an economic incentive to be net carbon credit producers instead of consumers. It's definitely an incentive for developing countries to adopt cleaner technologies sooner, so as to continue being sellers and not buyers as they continue to grow. We're now starting to see how these markets will play out.

Reuters reports a partnership between a Norwegian firm and a Brazilian landfill to trap and burn methane emitted by the landfill; this will reduce the net addition of methane (21x more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2) to the atmosphere. Norway would get the credit -- equivalent to 670,000 tons of CO2 -- and Brazil the cash, currently €8.25 ($10.98) per ton. While this is one of the first deals signed, it's far from the only one around.

Elsewhere around the globe, Telnes [technical director of the Norwegian company, DNV] said about 200-300 clean energy projects were nearing certification in developing nations with perhaps another 1,200-1,300 on the drawing board.

"In the long term I wouldn't be surprised if we saw between 500 and 1,000 projects coming on every year," Telnes told Reuters. DNV, perhaps best known for checking ship designs, is a world leader in certifying environmental schemes.

e>

With the markets now underway, there's a real need for information about their function and efficiency. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development often gets stories from the for-pay Point Carbon, a website which collects information on carbon markets and the UN's "Clean Development Mechanism" which coordinates these developing world carbon-for-cash schemes. Point Carbon has abundant information about carbon markets, from news feeds to market analysis to explanations of just how it all works. Some of the explanatory pieces are free, but much of the material requires a subscription fee.

I'm still looking for a free source of carbon trading info. Any suggestions? This is a process which is definitely worth watching.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in Money as a Tool Finance, Venture Philanthropy, Trade and Economy at 02:57 PM)

Inventing Money: Plain and simple INTC has too much capacity and not enough demand, it can play the inventory games for a while but sooner or later it will catch up and that’s when you don’t want to be holding INTC. With all these questions its tough to say all is well with INTC.

Are tech insiders making a mad dash for the exits, using the current upsurge in the stock markets. Data shows that might be the case. In November 2004, technology insiders sold $1.5 billion worth of tech shares, a month-over-month increase of 94%. Tech selling has not been this strong since May 2001.

Fred has put together a perfect compilation of posts that speculate on where the money is in the blog world. Everyone will make money except the content creator, i.e. talent. How quickly we forget that blogging is a people’s revolution! Weblogs are more hollywood than Silicon Valley. Because SV sees it as a new way to do old things.

James Enck in The Broadband Daily » What happens later is open to question, but it’s probably one of two things: Skype stays independent and becomes a platform for distributing other services and content; (or) someone takes the company out, and I have always assumed the predator would be a large internet/media player. If that is the case, then why get into bed with KaZaA? Why not team up with someone who is also doing something truly revolutionary? Perhaps because some revolutions aren’t very easy to harness, but revolutions were never supposed to be easy. Take BitTorrent, for example.”

: Apparently broadband is growing a little too fast in the UK since British Telecom can't seem to find space for everyone who wants service. Seriously, after days of waiting for a hook-up, Adam Curry says a BT rep told him he can't have DSL at his new home in Guildford until someone else on his excange leaves. After telling him it would be installed yesterday, turns out there's a waiting list and not enough ports. He wasn't told there would be a problem when he inquired before moving.
Meanwhile Starbucks in Guildford will get some publicity as Curry will be recording and posting his daily podcast from there for the near future.
This goes further than Curry -- great content and life-integrated internet services don't matter if people can't access them. As he says, "it is unimaginable that this area, a mini silicon valley in its own right, can no longer supply DSL broadband to its thriving community of researchers, scientists, students and professors."
Curry's problem may be solved through publicity or through other providers (he was told a cable modem can't be found until Dec. 20) but I wonder how many people are on BT waiting lists. (Via Scripting News

: The online universe in Europe jumped 12 percent in 2004, passing the 100 million mark with some 54 million users -- up from 34 million -- on broadband, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Jupiter Research says much of that growth is at the expense of TV with 40 percent of the broadband-enabled respondents to one of their surveys saying they're skipping some TV in favor of the computer.
Related -- High-Speed Use Changing UK Habits (pdf)

Earlier I'd blogged how a forum poster said they were told by Google support that the Google Toolbar PR values are "for entertainment purposes only." Now GoogleGuy -- a Google employee who has long answered questions on search forums...

BoingBoing reader and accidental sex-spam-sleuth Alias observes:

"Because GMail (and other popular email clients these days) blocks images by default, porn spammers have now begun to use 1980s style ASCII art in order to get their message across.

This textfile contains one simple example, with the words HOT GIRLS in big letters - it cunningly gets past spam filters by not containing any actual words in the body text. As its content is only apparent to humans, it will be tricky to catch by any filters - as long as the whitespace remains intact, the actual text can just be any random garbage. In theory, every spam email could be totally unique.

I confidently expect to see a renaissance in erotic ASCII art in the coming months, until someone figures out how to filter out this type of spam..."

Reader Xopl replies,

"Well, ASCII text spam messages are actually pretty easy to filter. You just render the text, and then use technology similar to an OCR to see if it spells anything. Now, if they start doing actual ascii-porn images... that's difficult. But frankly, I'm not sure I'd mind."

Link to spam-specimen (*.txt)

GMill writes "Former CIA head George Tenet has called for limiting access to the internet to only those who take security seriously and that the industry should 'lead the way' in restricting access. Somehow I don't think that this is a call to ban Microsoft products from the internet. What exactly does he want?"

Earlier this year, Vibrant Media started heavily pushing their "embedded" text ad program that would automatically highlight words within the text of news articles and link them to ads. One of their big publisher wins was Forbes.com. However, after using them for a few months, Forbes has stopped the program, saying that its editors were concerned about the mixing of ads and editorial. Of course, it makes you wonder why Forbes didn't consult its editors before shoving these ads into their content. Also, somewhat surprisingly, Forbes claims that the reader response to the ads was more positive than negative. On something of a side note, when this program was first launched, we trashed it publicly, pointing out not so much that it was mixing ads and editorial, but that the user experience was dreadful. A few months after that, a sales person from Vibrant Media contacted us to tell us about this wonderful new advertising method that they were positive we would love at Techdirt. If you're approaching a publication to use your technology, doesn't it make sense to first search that publication to see what they've said about you? Even better than that, wouldn't it have made sense to keep track of what publications were saying about you when it happened so that you could respond right away, rather than looking silly a few months later?

This is definitely not the first time this has been rumored -- as similar rumors seem to appear every few years -- but the NY Times suggests that this time, IBM is serious about selling off its PC division. The most likely buyer is Lenovo, the huge Chinese computer maker, until very recently known as Legend. The company hasn't been that well known in the US, though they've been making an effort over the past few months to change that -- so this purchase would certainly be a high profile way to make themselves known. The real trick, especially with the Thinkpad laptop line, is whether or not any new owner would be able to keep up the level of innovation and quality that IBM has been recognized for in the space.

Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at U.C.L.A., who writes the Volokh Conspiracy blog, has a real provocative op-ed in today's New York Times. He writes that bloggers deserve the same first amendment protections the press is entitled to...

Because of the Internet, anyone can be a journalist. Some so-called Weblogs - Internet-based opinion columns published by ordinary people - have hundreds of thousands of readers. I run a blog with more than 10,000 daily readers. We often publish news tips from friends or readers, some of which come with a condition of confidentiality.

The First Amendment can't give special rights to the established news media and not to upstart outlets like ours. Freedom of the press should apply to people equally, regardless of who they are, why they write or how popular they are.

Apparently Newsgator needed more money to finance running expenses:

"NewsGator has closed a substantial second round of equity financing with Mobius Venture Capital, which also provided the company's Series A capital. "We're thrilled to continue to work closely with NewsGator to help expand them as the primary RSS platform company," said Mobius Venture Capital's Brad Feld. "They've accomplished a great deal in a small amount of time on limited resources; we're very excited to partner with a great team to accelerate that leadership in this exploding industry."

A second round without another investor - seems a bit unusual for me. However the site and the business seems to storm from new service to another...

Dr Karl Swann, and a team at the University of Wales College of Medicine in Cardiff, claim to have made a major breakthrough in overcoming opposition to stem cell research by creating human embryos which cannot develop into babies.

The "ethical" embryos were made with the help of an enzyme called the "spark of life" which tricks human eggs into believing they have been fertilised even without the presence of sperm.

These embryos contain two sets of chromosomes from the mother, but none from the father and so are unable to develop into babies.

The scientists believe that the new technique should allay the fears raised by pro-life campaigners opposed to stem cell research.

Via Scotsman.

Xeni Jardin:
In today's NYT, an interesting feature about China's animation industry -- which, like virtually everything else there, appears to be growing fast. Talent that has until now served mostly as outsourced labor for American TV and film projects won't remain nameless for long, as a string of new features are readied for release.

Seen from outside, there is nary a hint of the Magic Kingdom about this ambitious young animation studio nestled amid magnolias and palms on the campus of Shenzhen University. A glimpse inside one specially secured building, accessible only with a smart ID card that one swipes through a reader to gain entry and move about inside, soon gives up the game. The first clues are the Hollywood posters that hang from nearly every wall: "Star Wars," "Godzilla," "The Lost World," "The Matrix," "End of Days." Down one hallway, heavily air-conditioned computer rooms hum with the kind of processing power one might find in a high-tech laboratory. The giveaway is the army of artist-students slouched over their flat-screen monitors in one dimly lighted production room after another, drawing thousands of pictures for feature-length films.

Early next year, Global Digital Creations Holdings, a fledgling animation studio that has mostly labored in anonymity, is aiming for the big time with the worldwide release of its first 3-D feature film, "Thru the Moebius Strip," a science-fiction adventure about a determined boy's time travel to another galaxy to rescue his stranded father.

Link

My latest column in Business Standard:

A few years ago, the installed base of mobile phones and computers in India were about the same. Now, even as mobile phones march on to a figure of 50 million, the total number of computers in India nudges 12 million. Mobile phones are growing by about 2 million a month, while computers need about 6 months to touch the same figure. So, what caused this divergence in growth? Will computing take-off in India? Are there learnings for the computing industry from the cellphone world?

Let us start by looking at the utility of the two devices. After all, the decisions to buy (or not buy) are made by consumers. Cellphones in India filled a latent need of person-to-person voice communications. More than mobility, it gave people a phone which they sorely lacked thanks to outdated and incumbent-protecting telecom policies over the past decades. Communications is a basic need of people. And for long, this was stifled – some of us remember the long waiting periods for a phone connection. Into this environment came the mobile operators. With a willingness to make investments and using cutting-edge technologies, they were aided by a global telecom recession which made equipment available at much lower prices. All of this resulted in great value for money for consumers as prices fell to a couple of rupees a minute and cheap handsets from Chinese and Korean makers flooded the market, forcing others to compete on affordability. This created a positive feedback loop wherein it is the masses who have adopted mobile phones and continue to drive growth. Reliance Infocomm's entry acted as the dynamo for even greater affordability by lowering further the price barrier for the consumer.

Contrast this with the computer industry. Even though the device has general-purpose applicability in many scenarios, Indian consumers are caught between non-consumption of the hardware and piracy of software. A computer still costs about Rs 15-20,000 for the hardware, with basic software adding another Rs 20-25,000 to the cost. Besides affordability, the other challenge with computers is manageability. Viruses, Spam and Spyware have made life difficult for end-users. Put it all together and the net result is that the consumption of computing is a fraction of that of mobile telephony.

I would like to believe that we are today with computing where we were with mobile phones five years ago. There is a large potential market, but a few things need to be done to jumpstart consumption. Just like cellphones, computers too have the potential to grow by a factor of 10 in the next five years. What is needed to make this happen?

There are two key ideas from cellphones that computers need to adopt. The first is the creation of a zero-management user device, and the second is that of a subscription-based utility-like payment model. The underlying enabler for both will in fact be the broadband industry that is coming alive in India.

Total cost of ownership of computers can run into Rs 1,500-2,000 a month if one counts the cost of hardware, software and support. One way to bring down the hardware cost dramatically is to simplify the device. Think about the ease of using cellphones. That same simplicity needs to come to computers. The access devices can be thought of us “thin clients” or network computers, with processing and storage happening on the server. What does this is eliminate all support costs at the user end and also makes possible the delivery of applications and content without worry of piracy by the owners of the rights.

The subscription model is what the telecom industry is very good at. Investments in infrastructure are made upfront, and users are asked to pay a small monthly fee for basic services, with additional payments for value-added services. The pre-paid model has done very well in extending mobile phone usage to a mass market, even as the front-loaded computing industry model has limited it to the upper classes. Imagine if computing were also available like a utility. This can reduce the entry barrier and create a positive feedback that can then get software developers and content providers creating solutions for an ever-growing user base.

To bring the solution to fruition will require the creation of wireless broadband networks. In India, the last mile connectivity to homes and businesses has been a challenge. As of now, the two options are the copper line laid by the telephone company and the cable connection which carries television. In the first case, the incumbents (BSNL and MTNL) control most of the wired telephone lines across India and so far their broadband rollouts have been slow. The decision by the government to not unbundle the local loop has eliminated prospects of competition on this front. In the second case, the quality of cable along with the investments needed for upgrades have limited cable to carrying one-way content.

What India needs is a leapfrog to next-generation networks that can deliver broadband over the air to users creating a high-speed ubiquitous and pervasive data network. This can then enable deployment of network computers like cellphones connected to a centralised grid of servers which provide the compelling services that users need and are willing to pay for. In fact, given the digitisation that is happening in both voice and television, the network computer could in future be the converged device capable of providing a hybrid set of services to users.

To create a base of 100 million computing devices across India, there is, therefore, a need for thinking disruptively. The current model in the world of computing has gotten us so far, but will not take us further to make the vision of a connected computer accessible to every home, family and employee and build the digital DNA of India. We need to look at the other successful industry that has transformed communications in India in the past five years. Welcome to the world of “commPuting.”

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, created in 1917, has been named the world's most influential piece of modern art by a jury of 500 artists, curators, critics and dealers commissioned by the sponsor of the Turner prize, Gordon's.

According to art expert Simon Wilson, "the Duchampian notion that art can be made of anything has finally taken off. And not only about formal qualities, but about the 'edginess' of using a urinal and thus challenging bourgeois art."

Top 10 in The Guardian.

: Easly the most written about tech subject in the last 24 hours. Here's a mix of reaction and related news.

--"MSN Spaces will make blogs communication tools" says Forrester analyst and blogger Charlene Li, who set up her own spaces blog as soon as the service went live. "The next wave of bloggers is going to look very different from today’s blogger – their motivation will be on sharing experiences rather than having a place for their ideas and opinions."

-- Mike Wendland: Ballmer talks up links to the Net A Dec. 1 interview in Detroit.

-- First blogosphere reaction to MSN Spaces From Robert Scoble, who also describes all the reasons MSN Spaces won't work for many current bloggers, including him.

-- 2 Giants to Introduce Enhanced Data Sharing Services on Net John Markoff shoehorns the MSN launch and Google's second version of its Usenet service into one heavy-handed story.

-- Bambi Francisco's take: How Microsoft is trying to avoid a lot of blog corspes ... "MSN hopes its ready audience base of 145 million (and) instant messaging users 187 million Hotmail users will keep people interested in their MSN Spaces blogs."

-- Microsoft sees blogs for the masses but analyst Matt Rosoff tells the Seattle P-I he doesn't see it attracting a huge market.

-- MSN Spaces, Microsoft's new, free service, courts bloggers Yahoo tells the Seattle Times "it has no announcement" to make about blogging tools.

-- Feedster announces new service that allows searching of just MSN Spaces. Still a work in progress. (via Scoble)

techstar25 writes "Coming soon reports that video game giant Nintendo is going to Hollywood by creating an in-house unit to develop animated features based on the numerous properties owned by the company. The plan calls for Nintendo to create a movie based on one of its own franchises for theatrical release in 2006. The original story is from Variety (reg. required)." It doesn't really say what properties to expect, but obviously it's Excite Bike.

In a surprise move on the SEW forums Googles unofficial representative and Threadwatch member GoogleGuy, a well known figure on some of the bigger search marketing forums has granted Amnesty to Spammers in order to get help.

Google have called for examples of the now infamous Google Results Hijacking scandal that has been buzzing through the Search community this week and last. In a thread where members have tried to get help with this problem the unnamed Google search engineer said:

I'll promise that no spam-related action will be taken based on the reports. If months later, the domain comes up for review for an unrelated reason, then that's a different matter, but I'll instruct whoever collects the feedback to only use it to check out how we pick canonical pages.

The reason for the amnesty is due to the fact that when GG called for examples of the hijack problem none were forthcoming - the technique is known to but a few and is being used almost exclusively in highly competitive categories such as pharma and casino. Nobody in that industry plays by googles guidelines as to do so would be a waste of time in such a cut throat environment.

The results of a page hijacking involve the victim site's position in Google being taken over by another competing site through use of 302 redirects and meta refreshes.

We will update you the story unfolds.

News just in: Lycos have been told (figuratively speaking) to f**k right off by internet backbone providers:

Some major internet backbones are preventing access to the new Lycos "anti-spam" screensaver web site at www.MakeLoveNotSpam.com. This controversial site provides Internet users with the ability to participate in distributed attacks against web sites used by spammers, leaving the spammers with slow connections and high bandwidth costs.

We have been talking about Lycos's DDoS attack scheme and how later it was hacked recently and i must say that im glad to see it failing - what a stupid little stunt...

Yahoo are reporting that MSN will launch their rival to blogger, blogspot, livejournal and typepad this week by taking the dust sheets off of MSN Spaces which has been in beta since August.

My oh my, the blog market just gets hotter by the minute doesnt it? - Put this together with the recent beta launch of the new MSN Search and I'd say M$ are starting to look like contenders rather than clowns in this space.

Blake Ross, one of the main architects of the Firefox revolution in an open letter to Netscape, says that they still don’t get the broswer business. After releasing one swarthy and obese product after another, the company continues to make browser missteps, he writes. “You have a chance to win back some users, but it’s going to take some internal reflection. I don’t think the world will stand for another misstep. By all rights, a company with this record should have been relegated to the Silicon Valley recycle bin years ago. Please don’t miss this final chance at redemption; deliver what your users want.” Ross’ posting comes close on the heels of news that AOL’s Netscape is going to release a new browser that melds IE and Firefox browser technologies. Call it browserstein. Ross’ line, “In fact, we then offered you Firefox and you made another poor decision—perhaps your worst yet—in rejecting it,” just might be too prophetic.

We've learned that about two weeks (November 18, 2004) ago, Google filed a patent infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court (San Francisco). The case pits the search leader against Skyline Software Systems Inc, a Massachusettes company that provides digital earth/3-D...

colonist writes "Russian space officials unveiled a full-scale model of the Kliper spaceship. If funding is provided, Kliper will replace the Soyuz space capsule as Russia's human space vehicle. The spaceship, designed by RKK Energia, is twice the size of the Soyuz and will carry a crew of six. It has two main parts: a reusable re-entry craft with a lifting body design, and an orbital module. Like the Soyuz, it has a rocket to pull the spaceship away from the launch vehicle in an emergency. See this photo gallery, Encyclopedia Astronautica and RussianSpaceWeb.com."

FierceWiFi has come out with it’s list of the top 15 WiFi Startups of 2005 aka “The Fierce 15.” Editor Ben Frankel said that the selection process included companies that offer solutions and products that addressed areas such as network infrastructure and architecture; extensions of the range of existing WiFi technologies; network security; and roaming between WiFi and cellular networks. In addition, the list contains companies that are active in emerging technologies such as ultra wideband and RFID.

The Fierce 15—The Top 15 WiFi Startups of 2005

AeroScout

Airespace

Airgo Networks

Alien Technology

Aruba Wireless Networks

Azaire Networks

Bandspeed

Clearwire

Fortress Technologies

GlobeRanger

Propagate Networks

Pulse~Link

ReefEdge Networks

Staccato Communications

Tatara Systems

Philadelphia and Verizon are nearing an agreement Tuesday that would allow the city to provide city-wide WiFi as a municipal service for a fee, according to KYW-TV and

WNEP-TV. If an agreement is signed, it would relieve pressure on Governor Ed Rendell to veto House Bill 30 that would ban it. November 30th was the final day he could veto it. The bill becomes law without his signature.



Verizon helped draft
House Bill 30, which would have essentially killed the plan to build a free wireless "hot zone" in Philadelphia. Both Verizon and the city of Philadelphia have beet discussing a compromise that would allow the city's Wi-Fi plan to go forward, but would still ban other similar efforts in the state.

Spore 1.1, by Douglas Easterly, makes visible the artificiality of our immediate reality by showing the impact of the business market on the ecosystem.

Easterly bought a plant at the Home Depot superstore and inserted it in a mechanized installation wirelessly connected to the Internet and programmed with open source software.

The installation periodically checks the value of Home Depot’s stock over the internet, and activates a watering system: if share values are up the plant gets watered. The underlined paradox is that Home Depot guarantees the well being of the plant for one year and, if the plant dies due to either falling or rising share values it has to be replaced by the multinational, —a contract relating life and death.

Movie.
The works won the first prize of Telefonica's Art & Artificial Life International Competition.

Via El Mundo.

Some speculation here and there that Google is revving up to start a major marketing push. This seemed more like wishful thinking to me - Ad Age (print only) was the source, and lord knows the advertising world would luuuuv to slurp up some of Google's lucre via some splashy 30 second spots. But it seemed totally off base to me, so I lobbed a call into some folks I know over at Google, and they confirm, this report is off base. Yes, Google talks to agencies now and again, and yes they use them for relatively minor stuff like placing B2B stuff in support of AdSense and the like, but no, there is no major review for a branding campaign.

I mean, think about it. Google makes its hay with pure ROI advertising. Google, spending on brand advertising, in TV and print? Don't make no sense.

Xeni Jardin:

If only it were the result of a Fark photoshop contest. Link (Thanks, dave davies)

News.com writes that " Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, foreshadowing a high-stakes technology arms race in the battle for control of consumers' living rooms."

Google's effort, until now secret, is arguably the most ambitious of the three. According to sources familiar with the plan, the search giant is courting broadcasters and cable networks with a new technology that would do for television what it has already done for the Internet: sort through and reveal needles of video clips from within the haystack archives of major network TV shows.

The effort comes on top of Google's plans to create a multimedia search engine for Internet-only video that it will likely introduce next year, according to sources familiar with the company's plans. In recent weeks, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has demonstrated new technology to a handful of major TV broadcasters in an attempt to forge alliances and develop business models for a TV-searchable database on the Web, those sources say.

Video is in the spotlight as the Internet begins to mature into an entertainment platform and becomes a viable companion for television, convergence devices that combine PC and TV features, and the networked home. As nearly 30 million U.S. households get wired with broadband Internet, more people are getting comfortable using multimedia online, giving TV audiences more choices than ever about how and when they consume programming.

That's poised to open up access to vast new video libraries that will require new search technology to organize and make content relevant to viewers, much like Internet search engines have made sense of billions of disorganized Web pages.

Ramesh Jain adds: "Media search is going to be a dominant theme because all the ingredients for the convergence of Content, Communication, and Computing are now ready."

Okay, so this is just weird, but it is interesting. It's an electric car -- the Eliica, short for Electric Lithium-Ion battery Car -- that can do 0-60 in four seconds is faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and accelerates at 0.8 Gs. It's also around 5 meters in length, 2400 kg in weight, and has eight wheels. Yes, it's made in Japan. The 10 hour recharge (and the price, over $300,000) are the primary drawbacks.

I, for one, am now waiting with bated breath for the inevitable showdown between the all-electric Eliica and Toyota's hybrid-electric supercar, the Alessandro Volta, which also boasts 0-60 in 4 seconds acceleration. Gentlemen, push your Engine On buttons...

(Thanks, Jet!)

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 04:19 PM)

Secure Sockets Layer, the fundamental security service for the world's websites and many networks is at risk in the face of a new spyware application, Marketscore, an application that promises to speed up web browsing. The software is bundled with iMesh P2P (peer-to-peer) software and is popular with university students.

Marketscore is a descendent of the Netsetter spyware application. The application forces requests for web pages to be passed through proxy servers, allowing cached (previously downloaded) copies of pages to be served, rather than the most current, copies. Because Marketscore creates a trusted certificate authority on computers running the application, it's possible for Marketscore's proxy servers to extract sensitive data by using the certificate authority to unencrypt the data during it's transmission from the website to the user's computer. Credit card, banking, and online purchase data are just some of the data users routinely encrypt using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), a service that normally operates in the background, away from most users' eyes.

Dave's Opinion
There is a fundamental rule that we should all remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is (too good to be true). The online corollary to this rule is: there's no way to improve download speed, except to connect to a line with greater bandwidth; proxy server caching doesn't really work.

Call for Comments
What do you think? Leave your comments below.

References
Marketscore