Archive for August, 2009

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Downloaders of Internet Books Rejoice

Monday, August 31st, 2009

You may recall that in March of this year, Sony struck a deal with Google to make half a million public domain books from its digitization project available as free downloads on the Sony Reader in its e-book store. 

Wired.com told us that it was “a hefty blow to Amazon not only because it gives Sony a much larger e-book library than the Kindle store — more than 600,000 to Amazon’s roughly 245,000 — but also because Google’s books are in the open ePub format Amazon doesn’t support. On top of all that, Sony has also dropped the price of its PRS-700 to $350, slightly below the price of the Kindle.”

We know you love to read books that you can obtain with internet speed, which is why we told you about the Kindle from Amazon.  But of course, there are now even more options to read books via the internet, which we’ll tell you about in another post.  

Back in March, Google’s book digitization project had just been through a $125 million settlement in its lawsuit with the authors and publishers.  Now, this past week, Sony, stated that they thought the settlement between Google and the authors and publishers “may have a profoundly positive impact on the market for e-book readers and related devices.”

Sony expressed its support for a settlement that lets Google and the rights holders share revenues from commercial use of the company’s vast online database of digitized books.

Under the settlement, Google would be able to sell access to millions of books online, as well as offer for-pay subscriptions that would allow libraries, universities and other institutions unfettered access to the Google Books collection. Google would pay rights holders 67% of the revenues generated from the database.

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Pirate Bay and The Man

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Yahoo Tech Blogger Christopher Null gave us an update on what’s happening with The Pirate Bay, the latest haven for file-sharers, and it’s battles on the cyber-sea.  His post, “The Pirate Bay goes down, returns with a vengeance” gives us a good overview of the situation, explaining that though Swedish authorities (AKA The Man) imprisoned the ringleaders and then shut the site down, the site cleverly resurrected itself and is back online again with internet speed.

Apparently this contingency plan was put into effect after their offices were raided in 2006 and their hardware was confiscated.  When you’re fighting the power, backup plans tend to be important.  Since it was initially established in November 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån, meaning “The Piracy Bureau”, they’ve been involved in a number of lawsuits .

The Electronic Frontier Foundation –an organization that confronts cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights–has criticized the recording industry’s litigious approach to combating illegal file-sharing.  Instead it suggests a more sustainable system where the music industry would form “collecting societies” that would charge consumers a “reasonable regular” fee to download and share content across any platform.

Going to the Pirate Bay.org page, you’ll see that at the bottom that they say they “love free software” and recommend Mozilla’s Firefox and Miro video player, both of which are open-source programs.

So what it boils down to is that there’s a revolution underway, and each battle helps to fine-tune  the rights and responsibilities of the citizenry and leadership of cyberspace.

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Fastest and Slowest Internet Speeds in America

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Speed Matters.org released the third annual report on Internet Speeds in America, and it seems things haven’t improved much over the past year.  The report stated, “Between 2007 and 2009, the average download speed in the United States has increased by only 1.6 megabits per second (mbps), from 3.5 mbps in 2007 to 5.1 mbps in 2009. At this rate, it will take the United States 15 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea, the country with the fastest average Internet connections.”

It went on to say, “Only 20 percent of those who took the test have Internet speeds in the range of the top-ranked countries - South Korea, Japan and Sweden. 18 percent do not even meet the FCC definition for current-generation broadband: an always-on Internet connection of at least 768 kbps downstream.

The states with the fastest Internet connections are Delaware with 9.9 mbps, Rhode Island with 9.8 mbps, New Jersey with 8.9 mbps, Massachusetts with 8.6 mbps and New York with 8.4 mbps. Rounding out the top 10 are Maryland, Virginia, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Washington DC, with California coming in 11th place.

The slowest Internet connections were Mississippi with 3.7 mbps, South Carolina with 3.6 mbps,
Arkansas with 3.1 mbps, Idaho with 2.6 mbps, and Alaska with 2.3 mbps.

Clearly, location is everything at this point. The Speed Matters blog says, “With some exceptions, if you live in a Northeastern or Mid-Atlantic state, you are likely to have good high-speed Internet options.”  And they tell us that the United States is still the only industrialized country without a national policy to promote high-speed Internet  access.

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First Person Arrested Under New Cyberbullying Laws

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Cyberbullying laws came about largely in the fallout from the “MySpace Mom” case, and are proliferating with internet speed. 

Yahoo’s Tech Blog tells us about “another woman old enough to know better”– 40-year-old Elizabeth Thrasher, who is now the first person arrested under the state of Missouri’s new laws.  

Thrasher used Craigslist to post a sexual ad with the photos, e-mail address and cell phone number of a 17-year old girl, (who appears to be the daughter of a woman who is seeing Thrasher’s ex-husband). Thrasher was arrested and later freed on $10,000 bond, but is now preliminarily barred from having a computer or internet access in her home pending her trial. If convicted, Thrasher could face up to four years in state prison, a year in county jail, or a $5,000 fine.

While misdemeanor cases have been filed since the Lori Drew “MySpace Mom” case, Thrasher’s is the first felony issue to come before the courts.

Missouri’s new cyberbullying law is specifically designed to product those under 18 from the online antics of those 21 and older, and it seems young people need the protection. Nine states now have cyberbullying laws, according to Social Safety.org. Twenty other states have began to investigate and construct proposals that address bullying and cyberbullying, but do not have official legislation drafted or pending.

If you’re wondering what happened to the MySpace Mom, she was harassed via cyberspace, and her home was twice vandalized, so she had to close her home-based business and move out of state. A jury later found her guilty of three misdemeanor charges and she faced a maximum of three years in prison and $300,000 fine. The verdict was tentatively overturned but she’s still not allowed online without permission.

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Careful Jobseekers Think About Online Presence

Friday, August 21st, 2009

With greater competition for fewer jobs in these tough economic times, employers are using new media to weed out candidates with internet speed.  According to CareerBuilder.com, nearly half of the employers in the U.S. now do searches on job candidates on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and Twitter.  This is doubled from last year—45 percent in 2009 versus 22 percent in 2008.

Ars Technica reporter Jacqui Cheng says, “it turns out, many candidates are doing a great job of showing their potential bosses poor communication skills, inappropriate pictures, and even how many workplace secrets they can leak.”

According to the survey on CareerBuilder, Facebook was the most popular site for researching job candidates this year, with professional networking site LinkedIn coming in second at 26 percent. MySpace came in third at 21 percent, 11 percent read blogs, and seven percent followed candidates’ updates on Twitter.

More than a third of survey respondents said that they found reasons not to hire the person applying for the job, including content related to drinking or using drugs, making discriminatory comments, lying about their qualifications, or using text language such as GR8 instead of spelling out “great” in an e-mail or job application.

On the positive side, half of those who screened candidates via their social networking profiles said that they got a good feel for the person’s personality and fit within the organization. Other employers said that they found the profiles supported the candidates’ professional qualifications or that they discovered how creative the candidate was. Solid communication skills, evidence of well-roundedness, and other people’s good references (we assume this one came from LinkedIn) helped boost people’s credentials, too.

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The Small Carbon Footprint of Digital Music

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

A new study has found that the carbon footprint of downloading music is substantially less than buying compact discs.  But of course, there are many factors to consider. 

Green Inc., a New York Times blog about energy, the environment and the bottom line, offers a graph that shows the largest carbon footprint is created when CDs are sold in retail stores—taking into account the production of CD and the case, transportation to a retail store and sometimes a warehouse too that use energy themselves. The next largest footprint is created when someone orders a CD online and has it sent by air to their home, followed closely by ground shipping, which of course includes the additional shipping packaging. 

It would take less that half of the energy that retail sales take if someone were to download the music and then burn it onto a CD themselves. But if they were to only download it, the size of the carbon footprint is reduced by about 80% from retail. 

There are some variables that weren’t included in the study, but should be considered by those music lovers who want to be eco-friendly.  If a customer drives to the store, the carbon impace is greater than if he or she walks. Walking would create a footprint almost equal to downloading and burning your own CD. 

Other considerations include large file sizes, which can require extra energy for downloading, depending on your download speed. And then there’s the carbon impact involved with CD players and digital music devices like mp3 players to consider.  Ultimately, each of us needs to weigh the pros and cons of making the most of internet speed   and our personal carbon footprint for ourselves.

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Wikipedia Milestone Reached

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Congratulations to Wikipedia for reaching another milestone—it now has three million articles in English!  As a free encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to or edit, it has articles in more than 260 languages that number into the 13 millions. 

So what was the magic three millionth article, posted today? Read Write Web reports that it’s a biography of a Norwegian actress and director named Beate Eriksen. It’s available in several other languages too, but the English version was the one that tipped the scales to three million.

Since we know you’re curious now, the two millionth was about a Spanish television show, and their first million was completed with an article about a train station in Scotland.  So though they’re all in English, these articles span topics of interest to people around the globe.

If you go to Wikipedia.com, you’ll see how many articles have been posted in each language. Coming in a distant second place with over 943,000 articles is German, followed closely by French with over 843,000 articles.  Then comes Polish and Japanese in the 600,000’s, followed by Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese, all in the 500,000 range.  Russian has over 423,000. At the bottom of the page, it lists how many articles are available in the various languages. We wonder if this is an accurate representation of the digital divide. 

Apparently articles are added at quite a rate and with internet speed , so it took a bot written by a Wikipedia editor to determine which article was the three millionth.  But just as with any other posted, the bio of Norway’s Beate Eriksen may end up being deleted, as so many are, if they don’t comply with the site’s standards.  If that were to happen, the “runner-up” would be an article entitled “Portuguese Fireplace”.

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Ghostbusters Showing on a Computer Screen Near You

Friday, August 14th, 2009

“YouTube and Sony are crossing the streams” says David Sarno of The L.A. Times tech blog. Well put, we say!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of Sony’s comedy classic “Ghostbusters”, YouTube is now hosting a week-long showing. All you need is a computer and internet speed.

But don’t expect to watch it on the good ol’ YouTube jumbo HD player. Instead, you’ll see the film in a 16×9 aspect ratio at high quality resolution via Sony’s Crackle service.

YouTube has been showing videos via Crackle for months now, and just so you know, Crackle  is “a multi-platform next-generation video entertainment network that distributes digital content including original short form series and full-length traditional programming from Sony Pictures’ vast library of television series and feature films.”  Their “About Crackle” page goes on to say “Crackle reaches a global audience through its impressive online and mobile distribution network.” However, be warned that if you are  enjoying some global internet speed and trying to watch Ghostbusters online from outside of the U.S.,  may get you the following message: “This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions.”   :(

Also be prepared that the anniversary showing will include seven or eight in-stream commercials. A studio’s gotta make money somehow. Plus it’s a great chance to promote the upcoming Ghostbusters 3 film, which may start production by the winter, according to Ghostbusters co-creator, Dan Akroyd.  Earlier this year, the movie was released on Blu-Ray at the same time as the video game was launched.

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Pacemaker Monitored with Internet Speed

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Reuters reports that New Yorker Carol Kasyjanski has become the world’s first recipient of a pacemaker with Wi-Fi that allows her doctor to monitor her health over the Internet— and in real-time.

Three weeks ago the 61-year-old became the first person *in the world* to be implanted with a pacemaker that has a wireless home monitoring system that regularly transmits critical information to her doctor with Internet speed. So when she shows up for her routine check-ups at St. Francis Hospital in Rosyln, New York, her doctor will have logged into his computer, learned most of what he needed to know about his patient, and about 90 percent of the appointment will already be done.

Kasyjanski, who has suffered from a severe heart condition monitored by a pacemaker for more than 20 years, says the device has given her renewed confidence. Previously, a pacemaker malfunction was only noticeable when she passed out. Now, she can rest assured that someone would be alerted by the slightest change and could have it fixed quickly.

Dr. Steven Greenberg, the director of St. Francis’ Arrhythmia and Pacemaker Center, said the server and the remote monitor communicate at least once a day, downloading all the relevant information and will alert the doctor and patient if anything is unusual.  “If there is anything abnormal, and we have a very intricate system set up, it will literally call the physician responsible at two in the morning if need be,” he said.

The wireless pacemaker, made by St. Jude Medical Inc., received FDA approval in July.

Kasyjanski, an account clerk, said it was frightening initially to be the first person to be implanted with the device but her fears have slowly been replaced by a sense of relief, knowing that her heart is under constant watch.

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The Twitpocalypse May Have Come

Monday, August 10th, 2009

A few months ago, we ran a story about the Twitpocalypse, the end of the Twitter world as we knew it.  It didn’t occur when expected, but this week’s series of Twitter attacks has made it feel close. 

The New York Times BITS blog reported, “Twitter, the popular microblogging service, was crippled Thursday morning by a denial-of-service attack. The extended silence in a normally noisy Twitterworld began around 9 a.m. Twitter later posted a note to its status update page saying the site had been slowed to a standstill by an attack.” They went on to explain that a denial-of-service attack involves thousands of malware-infected home PCs that are directed to flood a targeted site with junk traffic. Once the site is overwhelmed, legitimate visitors cannot access the service.

Later posts to the BITS blog explain that the Twitter attack came in two waves. It seemed the point was to silence a blogger’s criticism on the behavior of Russia in the conflict over the South Ossetia region in Georgia, which began a year ago on Friday. The technique they used was intended to discredit the blogger by making it appear as though he was the source of a large amount of junk e-mails, causing all of his messages to be filtered out.

Saturday’s BITS blog gave more information as the attacks continued to keep people from Tweeting.

Only time will tell if we’ve become so attached to our real-time messaging that a few days without service will cause us problems. While Twitter was the only service that could get news out from Iran after their election a few months ago, it seems cyber-bad-guys have found ways to silence other dissenters with internet speed.

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