Month: December 2010

In a 3-2 vote today, a divided FCC passed net neutrality regulations aimed at preventing broadband providers from discriminating against certain content and services or favoring their business partners.

Genachowski said the regulations will prohibit broadband providers from abusing their control over the on-ramps that consumers use to get onto the Internet. He said the companies won’t be able to determine where their customers can go and what they can do online.

“Today, for the first time, we are adopting rules to preserve basic Internet values,” Genachowski said. “For the first time, we’ll have enforceable rules of the road to preserve Internet freedom and openness.”

The three Democrats voted to pass the rules, while the two Republicans opposed them. Those opposed say that these are “unnecessary regulations” as broadband providers have already pledged not to discriminate against Internet traffic on their networks. Republicans and others opposed to the regulations insist that these new rules are intended to fix a problem that does not exist.

“The Internet will be no more open tomorrow than it is today,” said Meredith Attwell Baker, a Republican.

Still, those for the regulations don’t feel enough was done today to ensure true “net neutrality.” Wireless providers were given more leeway in how they manage their networks because of their limited bandwidth. Providers were also given some considerations to “experiment with routing traffic from specialized services such as smart grids and home security systems over dedicated networks as long as these services are separate from the public Internet.”

via Yahoo! News

With the impending launch of LTE, many early backers of WiMAX are worried. By the end of 2010, WiMAX will have 11 million subscribers worldwide. Still, LTE will be launched by carriers in 55 countries over the next 2 years, which should accelerate growth of the new 4G technology.

WiMAX might have gotten a head start when it comes to the next generation wireless broadband sweepstakes, but the technology is beginning to feel the heat from its rival, Long Term Evolution aka LTE. New data from research firm Telegeography shows that by 2015, LTE will have seven times as many users as WiMAX.

Not only does LTE bring speed, but it also has some potential drawbacks. Louis Carrara, VP of business development at Gemalto, told PC Mag that allows for openness, sure, but it also makes provisions for networks to be totally locked down. Gemalto is the world’s No. 1 maker of SIM cards.

Verizon LTE phone users will most likely be able to swap SIM cards between Verizon devices, Carrara said. That’s a key part of the LTE spec.

But there’s also a feature in the SIM cards which reports back to the network what device the SIM is in. (That’s not true of most GSM SIMs.) That means Verizon could choose to lock out non-Verizon LTE devices, or require that a device logging in have a specific service plan.

So, while we will see mobile technology get faster and more advanced with features like NFC for secure mobile payments, LTE may give carriers more ability to monitor and control what we do with our beloved mobile devices.

via PCMag.com, GigaOM

Google recently told manufacturers to hold off while they tweak the Google TV software. Roku has finally moved one million units, but they’ve had much longer to do it than Apple. As a matter of fact, Roku CEO Anthony Wood confessed that Roku sales doubled since the new $99 Apple TV was launched.

CUPERTINO, California—December 21, 2010—Apple® today announced that it expects sales of its new Apple TV® to top one million units later this week. The new Apple TV offers the simplest way to watch your favorite HD movies and TV shows, stream content from Netflix, YouTube, Flickr and MobileMe?, all on your HD TV for the breakthrough price of just $99. iTunes® users are now renting and purchasing over 400,000 TV episodes and over 150,000 movies per day.

Just as the iPhone has had a huge effect on the smartphone market, Apple TV is influencing your TV screen. Not only that but, just as the iPhone helped average consumers understand what a smartphone could do, Apple TV will educate them on what these third-party set-top boxes are for.

I’m not really an Apple fan, but that $99 price point combined with the ability to watch stuff like Netflix has me interested. What about you?

via Apple, Engadget

Foursquare has just unleashed a couple of features that change the landscape of location-based services. Gowalla has always been a service with the visual appeal users crave, but lacking the most important factor in social networking: your existing friends. In response to this, Gowalla launched an update to their apps that allowed users to check-in on Gowala, and Foursquare, and Facebook from one place. It seemed counter-productive to link up with the competition, but it’s what users wanted.

Now, Facebook is firing back with the addition of photos and comments. You can now attach photos to your check-ins and Tips. In addition, you will be able to post photos through a few high-profile photo apps and have them automatically check you into Foursquare. These include Instagram, PicPlz, and Foodspotting.

Currently, commenting and posting photos are only supported on the Foursquare website or in the iPhone app with support coming for Android and Blackberry in the coming weeks. If you’re an Android, you can start using PicPlz now to post/check-in.

via TechCrunch, Foursquare

Mark Zuckerberg began his China trip in Beijing, where he met with China’s top search engine Baidu. China still blocks Facebook, shutting out around 300 million potential Facebook users of their 1.6 billion population. This is a high-priority for the social network, so much so that Zuckerberg has taken Mandarin lessons “for a while now.”

Twitter was buzzing with rumors of a possible acquisition of Facebook by Baidu, but these rumors were squashed when Baidu’s director of international communications Kaiser Kuo responded that they were “greatly exaggerated.”

Zuckerberg is definitely mixing business with pleasure, traveling with his longtime Chinese-American girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, who has family in China.

via Forbes

Blockbuster Now Makes You Wait Just As Long As Netflix

Blockbuster put a lot of energy into their “Why Wait?” campaign, going in on competitors like Netflix and Redbox for having a 28-day delay on new release DVDs. Now, Blockbuster has agreed to a similar deal with the big movie studios. NCR, which operates Blockbuster’s Redbox-like kiosks, will be offering new releases with the exact same 28-day delay. So much for not having to wait. While it seems that Netflix actually opted for the 28-day delay to reduce operating costs, Blockbuster is in a different situation.

“Blockbuster didn’t stay with new releases by choice,” explained the source at the time, who is very familiar with the studio agreements with Netflix and Blockbuster. “Movie studios have Blockbuster where they want them–they know Blockbuster is not in any position to negotiate because of their financial position. The studios are getting huge payments for new releases from Blockbuster because they know the company needs them.”

via FastCompany

Opera 11 Out Of Beta

It was only a month ago that we talked about some of the awesome new features of Opera 11 beta. Now, the bugs have been exterminated, the training wheels are off, and Opera 11 is here. The browser looks amazing and has a bunch of features we’ll probably see copied in browsers like Firefox and Chrome. Opera 11 also boasts some enhancements to the Carakan JavaScript engine, which they say “makes Opera 11 the fastest browser on Earth in many performance tests.” Opera Turbo boosts your browsing speed on crowded networks or when tethering with your mobile phone. Are you ready for a browser that goes to 11?

via Opera

Dropbox 1.0 Brings the New Hotness

The Dropbox folks have been in the lab putting in work and now have a shiny new version of their file sync software. Dropbox 1.0 fixes “hundreds (yep, hundreds)” of bugs and adds a few features that make it worthy of a 1.0 release.

• Performance enhancements – The client-side sync engine has been completely re-built. Dropbox is smaller and faster.
• Better User Experience – Installer on all platforms has been redesigned to be more user-friendly.
• Selective Sync – Highly requested feature that will let you pick which files sync to what computer. You probably don’t want that video your downloaded of Miley Cyrus syncing up with your work computer.
• Extended Attributes Sync – Dropbox now handles syncing resource forks, which are hidden parts of files that most sync programs ignore, resulting in file corruption.

Dropbox 1.0 is the perfect excuse for you to revisit your use of Dropbox or start figuring out how it can help you get stuff done. Check out our previous coverage of Dropbox.

via The Dropbox Blog

Let Someone Else Check Your Email

Gmail now lets you grant access to others to manage your email. After getting things set up, the other party will be able to manage your email inbox and send mail on your behalf. You can easily switch between accounts or keep them open in separate tabs. Great if you have an assistant who handles your mail. I wonder if Diddy has a Gmail account.

We’ve offered email delegation for Google Apps accounts for a while — it’s super useful for people who want their assistants to have access to read or respond to mail on their behalf. Now this functionality is available for anyone using Gmail. To grant access to another account, click the Settings link in the top right corner of Gmail. On the “Accounts” tab, you’ll see a new section where you can “Grant access to your account.”

via Gmail Blog

Twitter Raises $200 Million. Now Valued at $3.6 billion.

Twitter has completed its latest round of funding, receiving $200 million. The popular microblogging and communications platform is now valued at $3.7 billion. This latest round comes with Kleiner Perkins as the lead investor, say sources close to the situation. As Kara Swisher reports, this infusion of cash will help with Twitter’s efforts to “upgrade its management and business model” and “essentially declares it is not for sale to bigger companies such as Google (quite yet, that is).”

Earlier this week, rumors circulated about potential Yahoo layoffs. Eventually, the rumors were confirmed in a leaked internal email memo from CEO Carol Bartz to staff. Here is an excerpt from the letter, posted in full at All Things D:

Yahoos,

I want to share some tough news with you. Today, we began notifying some Yahoos that they will lose their jobs. Most of the reductions will come from the Products org and, when completed, will affect about 4% of the company.

I know this has been rumored for some time. It’s disappointing when things like this leak, and it certainly doesn’t make it any easier for anyone involved. This was a tough call, but a necessary one. We need to make these changes now to ensure that Products is structured and running the way we want as 2011 begins. And that means we need fewer Yahoos in some areas, and different types of Yahoos in others.

Soon after the layoffs, an internal presentation slide was leaked which showed a list of Yahoo services that they planned to “sunset.” Some of the services that we won’t see anymore: MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Picks, AltaVista, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Buzz, and (GASP!) Delicious. There are also some products that will be merged, including: Upcoming, FoxyTunes, Sideline, FireEagle, Yahoo Events, and Yahoo People Search.

Yahoo has been going through troubled times and it looks like they are trying to drop some dead weight. Not a good look for those who will be unemployed. A sad day for many avid Delicious users. For those old-school geeks who remember using Altavista, you know it was time.

via All Things D

If you thought the Gawker password hack was limited to blog commenting, you would be sadly mistaken. The data now freely available covers “about 1.5 million usernames, e-mails, and passwords.” The hack is affecting users across a myriad of sites and services including LinkedIn, Yahoo, Twitter, and Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft.”

This growing problem illustrates the issue with using the same email and password across multiple services. Hackers and any malicious person can simply take your Gawker credentials and try to use them on whatever service tickles their fancy. Even if you change your password on Twitter, did you remember to do so on Facebook? Flickr? Your bank? Things can get complicated and tedious really fast.

The easiest and most obvious solution here is to use a password manager. They come in all flavors, but using one at all should put you leaps and bounds ahead of most users. Here are a few that you might want to try.

LastPass

LastPass, which recently acquired Xmarks, will generate and store you passwords across all major browsers and operating systems for free. It will also give you access to your passwords on your mobile device for a fee, but they offer a 14-day free trial. One-click login is supported.

PassPack

We’ve actually covered PassPack a few times here. It’s a cloud-based solution for businesses and workgroups. Free accounts are limited to 100 passwords and 1-click login is supported via a bookmarklet. Passpack does not seem to have a mobile solution at this time.

KeePass

While not as polished or easy to use as other services, KeePass is my solution of choice. It gives me secure access to my passwords across all screens and it’s free and open-source. The desktop app stores your passwords in a database on your computer. There is no direct browser integration, but you can easily auto-fill forms on any website with a simple key combo. By storing your database on a service like Dropbox, you can access the same KeePass database from your mobile phone using the KeePass app.

This is an extremely limited list as there are a gang of password management, storage, and generation services out there. The goal is to make sure you’re actually using one. Instead of trying to memorize a million passwords, let the software generate them for you and, usually, securely login for you as well.

What’s your solution for keeping your passwords secure?

via PC Magazine

Popular music sharing and MP3 download website Soundclick.com, is down with no resolution in sight. Confused users woke up this morning unable to reach or even view the site. Many took to Twitter to voice their concerns, resulting in a terse response from @Soundclick saying, “The site is currently down, sorry. We’re working on it!” This tweet came about an hour ago and we haven’t heard anything since.

Established in 1997, SoundClick is one of the original social media music services. They boast nearly 3.4 million members and 70+ million monthly pageviews. The site is popular among marketers, artists, and music fans for sharing and discovering new music.

CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has been named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. This decision comes despite the fact that Assange of WikiLeaks won the reader poll, causing some to say Assange was robbed.

What just happened? In less than seven years, Zuckerberg wired together a twelfth of humanity into a single network, thereby creating a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest, behind only China and India. It started out as a lark, a diversion, but it has turned into something real, something that has changed the way human beings relate to one another on a species-wide scale. We are now running our social lives through a for-profit network that, on paper at least, has made Zuckerberg a billionaire six times over.

It cannot be argued that Facebook has major implications in our lives today. Whether you actually use the site or not, it still changes the dynamic of how we do things and brings to light privacy, technology, and social issues that we would otherwise not think about.

The photo chosen for the cover is pretty creepy, especially when you consider the privacy issues Facebook has struggled with. As RWW points out, “TIME obviously wanted to imply something about Facebook’s privacy issues by choosing a photo where the young CEO seems to gaze right into your soul, as if he knew all your deepest, darkest secrets.”

Does Zuckerberg actually deserve Person of the Year? That’s still up in the air as far as many are concerned. What do you think?

According to a former government contractor who worked on the OpenBSD operating system, the FBI installed back doors into the encryption algorithms. This would have given them access to snoop on data that would have otherwise been near impossible to access. The allegations were made public on Tuesday by the lead developer in the OpenBSD project Theo de Raadt.

In a message sent to Raadt by George Perry, he states:

My NDA with the FBI has recently expired, and I wanted to make you
aware of the fact that the FBI implemented a number of backdoors and
side channel key leaking mechanisms into the OCF, for the express
purpose of monitoring the site to site VPN encryption system
implemented by EOUSA, the parent organization to the FBI. Jason
Wright and several other developers were responsible for those
backdoors, and you would be well advised to review any and all code
commits by Wright as well as the other developers he worked with
originating from NETSEC.

Very serious accusations that could completely undermine the OpenBSD Operating system. It seems interesting that Raadt would go public with this and not try to handle it discretely. OpenBSD is a popular OS for many critical systems. In a message to the OpenBSD discussion list, Raadt says:

“The mail came in privately from a person I have not talked to for nearly 10 years. I refuse to become part of such a conspiracy, and will not be talking to Gregory Perry about this. Therefore I am making it public.”

via Computer World

Google Latitude is the service to use if you want people to be able to track your location wherever you go. Rather than requiring you to check in at every stop, Latitude continuously shares your location in the background as you move. The perfect tool for keeping tabs on your kids, loved ones, or significant other (with their permission, of course).

Since launching last year, Latitude’s focus has always been on one goal: make it simple to stay in touch with friends and family by sharing where you are with each other. Simple setup. Simple sharing without fumbling for your phone. Now, you can use Latitude on your iPhone just like the more than 9 million people actively using it from Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile smartphones. Use the app to:

• See where your friends are
• Share your location continuously with whomever you choose
• Contact friends by phone, text message, or email
• Control your location and privacy

Google even takes a jab at the current crop of location-based services when they mention not having to fumble for your phone. While the ease of having my phone automatically share my location is enticing, I’m not sure if I’m that much of an oversharer.

It’s important to note that Latitude is complete apt-in and you have complete control over your privacy settings. You can download Latitude for iPhone in over 15 languages and 45 countries.

via Google Mobile Blog

Nokia has announced that their flagship E7 slider phone will be delayed until early 2011. “to ensure the best possible user experience on the E7 we have decided to begin shipping it in early 2011,” a spokesman for Nokia said on Tuesday. The E7 is similar to the Nokia N8, which experienced a similar rollout delay earlier this year.

According to Engadget, the delay was caused by a “minor durability issue.” It makes sense for Nokia to ensure they’re launching a quality product, but missing the holiday season is definitely not good for business, especially with the competition going full steam ahead.

“This rounds out a miserable year for Nokia with regards getting the new generation of Symbian phones out the door,” said Ben Wood, research director at British consultancy CCS Insight.

via Reuters

By now, most of us are familiar with the WikiLeaks website and Julian Assange who runs it. The site recently leaked a large number of documents and was basically forced out of the US. The story of WikiLeaks became bigger than the content they had leaked, a situation which former number two at WikiLeaks Daniel Domscheit-Berg will try to avoid by creating OpenLeaks. The goal is to create a conduit of information and avoid the messenger becoming more important and popular than the message.

One of the big things that Openleaks will do away with is any sort of person becoming synonymous with it. When you think of Wikileaks you naturally think of Julian Assange, which is not how Openleaks wants to go about doing things. It doesn’t want a public “face” lest ego get involved, nor does it want any perceptible single point of failure.

OpenLeaks “aims to provide the technological means to organizations and other entities around the world to be able to accept anonymous submissions in the forms of documents or other information.” Rather than being a source of information, OpenLeaks will only be the gateway. A hands-off approach will put the burden of vetting the information on the media and users.

via CrunchGear

Gawker has been under attack this weekend. Most have falsely lumped these attacks in with those from the Anonymous 4Chan group that went after the RIAA/MPAA and more recently defended WikiLeaks by going after sites like Paypal and Amazon. The group of hackers call themselves “Gnosis” and offered exclusive commentary to Mediaite as to the reason for these attacks. In short, Gnosis found that Gawker was saying things that they couldn’t let slide:

We went after Gawker because of their outright arrogance. It took us a few hours to find a way to dump all their source code and a bit longer to find a way into their database.

We found an interesting quote in their Campfire logs:

Hamilton N.: Nick Denton Says Bring It On 4Chan, Right to My Home Address (After
The Jump)

Ryan T.: We Are Not Scared of 4chan Here at 210 Elizabeth St NY NY 10012

I mean if you say things like that, and attack sites like 4chan (Which we are not affiliated to) you must at least have the means to back yourself up. We considered what action we would take, and decided that the Gawkmedia “empire” needs to be brought down a peg or two. Our groups mission? We don’t have one.

The Gawker attacks and subsequent release of usernames and passwords has larger implications than just a blog network. It’s speculated that the recent Acai berry “worm” reported by Mashable is actually related to this attack. Those using the same login and password for Twitter that they use for Gawker sites like Lifehacker, may have been compromised. The Next Web details what data has been released by the hackers so far.