Mereja

Category: Internet

  • Rep. Greg Walden To Introduce Internet Freedom Bill

    The Internet came under attack far too many times in 2012, but the biggest threat came from the United Nations and its ITU branch. If the group had its way, the Internet would have come under control of the U.N. instead of the current multi-stakeholder approach. A number of nations, including the U.S., rejected the treaty on the grounds of Internet freedom. Now one lawmaker is wanting to make that position the official policy of the U.S.

    The Hill reports that Rep. Greg Walden, chairman of the House Communications and Technology subcommittee, has proposed a bill that would make it the official policy of the U.S. to promote Internet freedom around the world. The bill was introduced during a hearing this week that’s looking into the ITU and its attempts to control the Internet.

    Walden talked up the legislation during the hearing by saying that the “traditional hands-off approach” is key to the continued growth of the Internet:

    “Governments’ traditional hands-off approach has enabled the Internet to grow at an astonishing pace and become perhaps the most powerful engine of social and economic freedom and job creation our world has ever known.”

    The proposed legislation features a number of findings that Internet freedom proponents will find most gratifying:

  • Given the importance of the Internet to the global economy, it is essential that the Internet remain stable, secure, and free from government control.
  • The world deserves the access to knowledge, services, commerce, and communication, the accompanying benefits to economic development, education, and health care, and the informed discussion that is the bedrock of democratic self-government that the Internet provides.
  • The structure of Internet governance has profound implications for competition and trade, democratization, free expression, and access to information.
  • Countries have obligations to protect human rights, which are advanced by online activity as well as offline activity.
  • The position of the United States Government has been and is to advocate for the flow of information free from government control.

    • Walden’s bill is well intentioned, but it can’t really do anything to stop the U.N.’s Internet power grab. All it can really do is make Internet freedom the official stance of the U.S., but it can’t make that the official stance of other nations voting at ITU negotiations.

    For that, the U.S. and its allies must continue the argument that the current multi-stakeholder approach to the Internet is the right one. That argument may not be a popular one at a meeting of nations featuring the likes of Russia and China, both of which want unprecedented control of the Internet, but it’s about the only thing we have.

  • The Super Bowl Stole Eyes Away from the Internet

    Although it may have felt like your Facebook news feed, Twitter streams, and other social media networks were flooded with updates about Beyonce, the big blackout, ads, and Joe Flacco – Super Bowl XLVII didn’t drive people online. In fact, it pulled them offline in a big way.

    Broadband traffic analysts Sandvine is reporting that this year saw a return of the Super Dip, a phrase they coined last year to describe the plunge in internet traffic during the Super Bowl.

    Sandvine looked at a sample of internet traffic across the eastern U.S. and saw that overall network usage was down roughly 15% during the Super Bowl. The biggest dip in Internet use occurred right at the game was getting underway.

    But that doesn’t mean that web traffic was dead. Cordcutters made a significant impact on total traffic as CBS internet stream of the big game accounted for over 3% of total network traffic on Sunday evening.

    Still,

    “At Sandvine’s we’ve long maintained that the biggest screen is always the best screen to consume content, and for the Super Bowl it makes sense that most people would prefer to watch the game on their large HDTV. Since the only option to stream the game was via a web browser, getting the game streaming to their TV would have been a challenge for most people, so unsurprisingly viewers opted to tune in via their cable or satellite provider (in record numbers).”

    Are you a fan of the “second screen,” in that you follow big television events like The Super Bowl or The Oscars on social media? Or do you find yourself forgetting about the internet when you have something big to hold your attention on the big screen?

  • Gain A New Appreciation For The Internet By Checking Out This Underwater Cable Map

    In today’s modern world, the Internet connects us all with each other. That used to be a much harder task before the advent of fiber optic cables in the 1980s. Now cables are being laid all over the world, including under the ocean, to connect us all to the magic of the Internet.

    Of course, we should never take the Internet for granted. We should also appreciate all the hard work that went into making the world an interconnected community with the Internet. A new map from TeleGeography and Telecom Egypt should help puts things into perspective as it lays out all the underwater Internet cables that are currently in existence on this earth. It’s awe-inspiring stuff. Here’s a few of the major underwater thoroughfares:

    Internet Under Water

    underwater internet

    underwater Internet

    You can check out the full interactive map here. It contains a number of interesting stats that should make you really appreciate all the hard work that went into making sure you could communicate with people from all around the world. If you want to learn more about submarine communications cables, check out the Wikipedia article on the subject.

  • In China, Business Is War

    Last week we learned that the computers systems of The New York Times had been attacked by Chinese hackers following publication of its story on Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s accumulation of wealth over the period of his administration. Then it quickly came out that The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal had also been hacked.

    This follows in the wake of the Chinese hacking of Google and a variety of other companies. The hacking seems to be tied in some way to the Chinese government and apparently has various motives, ranging from identifying sources for stories on China to distorting markets in favor of native Chinese companies.

    In the case of Google, the attacks resulted in significant destruction of its business and its displacement as the leader in the Chinese market by the Chinese company Baidu.

    The enthusiasm over the past decade of foreign businesses to invest, produce, and sell in China has been fueled primarily by two assumptions. One is that China has truly chosen the capitalist road and that business is a matter of free market competition without government intervention and interference. The other is that the costs of doing business are extraordinarily low in China and therefore, to be globally competitive, a company has no choice but to produce there.

    It is now clear that both of these assumptions are false. China is only halfway onto the capitalist road. Government has not withdrawn from the economy and especially not from control of information. Moreover, the government wants Chinese companies to succeed and predominate in a wide variety of industries. A consequence of all this is that the hidden cost of doing business in China can be very high. Indeed, far from having to produce in China to be globally competitive, it may well be the case that in order to survive globally a company must avoid producing in China.

    Certainly any significant business needs to be extremely careful in how it deploys and operates in China. It will almost inevitably become, if it already isn’t, a target for hacking and electronic espionage. It must understand that even more than in other environments, in China, business is war.

    It must also understand that business is often a matter of national strategy and of nationalist sentiment in China. That means it will be under observation not only by business competitors but perhaps also by the government or government-linked entities. In calculating the true costs of producing and doing business in China, it is important to incorporate these factors into the equation. The true costs may be much higher than the estimates made by the business accountants based simply on normal business costs.

  • CitizenWeb Project Is The Newest Internet Freedom Fighter On The Block

    In recent years, a number of digital rights advocacy groups have sprung up to fight against what they see as government and corporate interference into their private lives on the Internet. Today, we can add one more to the bunch with the CitizenWeb Project.

    So, what is the CitizenWeb Project? It’s a group founded by Jacob Cook that fights for a “free, open, and above all a decentralized Internet.” In short, the group wants to take back user data that has been collected by services like Facebook and put it back in the hands of the user. The project’s other goal is to protect the people – like journalists, activists, muckrakers and whistleblowers – that they feel are under threat by massive data collection.

    The CitizenWeb project has three missions that are “focused on giving the tools to each individual user to become an independent “citizen” of the Web – to decentralize their social networks and platforms, to become the TRUE owners of their data, and to communicate and network in security.” These three missions are:

    Agitate – The CitizenWeb Project is dedicated to spreading the word about the practices of the large and centralized web services industries, and exactly how they are dangerous for security, privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of ownership. It aims to reinforce the importance of online privacy to the general public, because you never know who could be watching or profiting off of your actions online.

    Educate – It is important to bring these issues to light, but it is equally important to provide individuals with the keys to help fix the problem. The proliferation of free, open source and federated alternatives for the closed and centralized services we rely on is paramount. With proper education and access to the resources they need, users will have all they need to stand up for their digital rights and for a decentralized Internet.

    Organize – The information and resources that we provide would be nothing without a strong and supportive community. We seek to bring like-minded individuals together to spread the word about the tools we provide and to help add and edit information based on the skills they have. We will work to provide technical support when possible for those who wish to reclaim their digital sovereignty. CitizenWeb also seeks to highlight and support independent developers that create open source tools that help build a decentralized web.

    Other digital rights advocacy groups fight for many of the same things that CitizenWeb stands for, but this one may be a little more interesting. You see, the other groups call on Google, Facebook or other services to change their ways, but CitizenWeb is all about ditching those services. It’s working to provide open source alternatives to the Internet services you use everyday.

    Will it be easy to convince people to stop using Facebook or Google? Of course not, but it’s a challenge that could very well produce some very interesting results in the coming year.

  • Three Elements of a Successful Platform Strategy

    We typically think of companies competing over products — the proverbial “build a better mousetrap.” But in today’s networked age, competition is increasingly over platforms. Build a better platform, and you will have a decided advantage over the competition.

    In construction, a platform is something that lifts you up and on which others can stand. The same is true in business. By building a digital platform, other businesses can easily connect their business with yours, build products and services on top of it, and co-create value. This ability to “plug-and-play” is a defining characteristic of Platform Thinking.

    Consider the market for smartphones. Nokia and Blackberry today are a shadow of their former glory. Their technology and products lag Apple and the Android ecosystem. But the triumph of Apple and Android is not from features and functions. It is from the app store on which external developers create value. Microsoft has gotten excellent reviews for the technology in its new phones, but it is the ability to create a successful platform that will determine its ultimate success.

    The use of platform thinking extends beyond the tech sector. Retailers are shifting from distribution channels selling products, to engagement platforms co-creating value. Online retailers like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon led the way, and now traditional retailers are following.

    JC Penney has made platform thinking a pillar of its reinvention strategy. Its stores are featuring more and more “boutiques” managed by others. It is no coincidence that JC Penney’s CEO, Ron Johnson, was previously at Apple. Johnson has said, “All those boutiques are the apps. What J.C. Penney is creating is a new interface.” While JC Penney’s pricing strategy has been controversial, analysts have been very positive about the in-store platform.

    Nike is also shifting from products to platforms. Building on the success of its Digital Sport products, Nike recently launched its Nike+ Accelerator to help companies build on the Nike+ platform. Nike’s announcement reflects platform thinking. “We are looking for people who want to create companies that build upon the success of [Nike+] to make the world more active.”

    The rise of platforms is being driven by three transformative technologies: cloud, social, and mobile. The cloud enables a global infrastructure for production, allowing anyone to create content and applications for a global audience. Social networks connect people globally and maintain their identity online. Mobile allows connection to this global infrastructure anytime, anywhere. The result is a globally accessible network of entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers who are available to create businesses, contribute content, and purchase goods and services.

    Readers will recognize a number of intellectual foundations to platform thinking. These range from Geoffrey Moore’s ecosystems to John Hagel and John Seely Brown’s focus on “pull.” Where traditional ecosystems push, these new platforms pull. Platforms also rely on the power of network effects — as they attract more users, they become more valuable to those users. And there’s a growing academic literature that explores the unique quality of value creation on what are called “multi-sided platforms.”

    In our view, the success of a platform strategy is determined by three factors:

    1. Connection: how easily others can plug into the platform to share and transact

    2. Gravity: how well the platform attracts participants, both producers and consumers

    3. Flow: how well the platform fosters the exchange and co-creation of value

    Successful platforms achieve these goals with three building blocks:

    1. The Toolbox creates connection by making it easy for others to plug into the platform. This infrastructure enables interactions between participants. For example, Apple provides developers with the OS and underlying code libraries; YouTube provides hosting infrastructure to creators; Wikipedia provides writers with the tools to collaborate on an article; and JC Penney provides stores to its boutique partners.
    2. The Magnet creates pull that attracts participants to the platform with a kind of social gravity. For transaction platforms, both producers and consumers must be present to achieve critical mass. Apple needed to attract both developers and users. Similarly, eBay needed both buyers and sellers. Platform builders must pay attention to the design of incentives, reputation systems, and pricing models. They must also leverage social media to harness the network effect for rapid growth.
    3. The Matchmaker fosters the flow of value by making connections between producers and consumers. Data is at the heart of successful matchmaking, and distinguishes platforms from other business models. The Matchmaker captures rich data about the participants and leverages that data to facilitate connections between producers and consumers. For example, Google matches the supply and demand of online content, while marketplaces like eBay match buyers to relevant products.

    Not all platforms place the same emphasis on all three building blocks. Amazon Web Services has focused on building the Toolbox. Meanwhile, eBay and AirBnB have focused more on the Magnet and Matchmaker role. Facebook has focused on the Toolbox and Magnet, and is actively building its Matchmaker ability.

    In the future, we will see more and more companies shifting from products to platforms. Even those in the extermination business may worry less about building better mousetraps, and more on building mousecatching platforms. For example, imagine a smart mousetrap with sensors that wirelessly communicate to a cloud-based MouseCatcher service. Homeowners and exterminators could monitor the status of the trap on their smartphones, receiving a text message when it is out of bait or needs checking. Smart traps already exist. But the shift from products to platforms would focus on building the service (the Trapp Store?) that enables anyone with a smart trap to connect and communicate.

    Every business today is faced with the fundamental question that underlies Platform Thinking: How do I enable others to create value? Building a better mousetrap still might not have the world beat a path to your door. But the right platform might just do the trick.

  • SLAYER, BASSHOLE, LOLWTF, and Other Banned Vanity Plates

    Well this is just hilarious.

    Government Attic has been hard at work open-records-requesting states across our great country to divulge their lists of banned license plates.

    And it’s just as much fun as you would imagine.

    Many states have caught on to you kids and your internetting. In Arizona, you can’t get a vanity plate that reads “LOLWTF.” Also prohibited – ROFLMAO.

    If you look deeper into the data request for Arizona, let’s say, you find their general rules and regulation regarding what’s prohibited. Terms that connote breast, genitalia, buttocks, sexual functions, and eliminatory functions are banned – to nobody’s surprise. But banning a term for “superiority” is kind of strange. I guess that’s why you can’t register the plate “ALEXFU,” even if Alex deserved it.

    You also can’t call yourself a “BADBICH” or a “BAMF.” You can’t even call yourself the “BESTLAY.”

    Some of the banned plate tags are perplexing, others are just damn funny.

    We’re looking at you, “BLZDEEP.”

    You can check out each state here or download a huge PDF with all the banned plates for about 20 states here.

    [via BoingBoing]
    [Photo via Miss Shari, Flickr]

  • Eight Brilliant Minds on the Future of Online Education

    The advent of massively open online classes (MOOCs) is the single most important technological development of the millennium so far. I say this for two main reasons. First, for the enormously transformative impact MOOCs can have on literally billions of people in the world. Second, for the equally disruptive effect MOOCs will inevitably have on the global education industry.

    While at Davos, I was fortunate to attend an amazing panel — my favorite of the conference — with a murderer’s row of speakers. Moderated by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, the list of speakers: Larry Summers, former president of Harvard; Bill Gates; Peter Theil, a partner at Founder’s Fund; Rafael Reif, president of MIT; Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Udacity; Daphne Koller, CEO of Coursera, and a 12-year-old Pakistani girl who has taken a number of Stanford physics classes through Udacity. Below is a collection of some of the highlighted comments from this remarkable panel as well as a couple from audience members who were given an opportunity to comment.

    Why this disruption is happening:

    Peter Thiel, partner, Founders Fund
    “In the United States, students don’t get their money’s worth. There’s a bubble in education as out of control as the housing bubble and the tech bubble in the 1990s. Education costs have gone up 400% since 1980. That’s the highest escalation of costs–higher than health care. There’s now a trillion dollars in student debt. And thanks to the way bankruptcy laws were restructured under George W Bush, you can’t get out of the college loan even if you become bankrupt. This is deeply broken.

    “You have to ask yourself, ‘What is the nature of education as a good?’ Ideally you want it to be learning. But it also functions as insurance. Parents will pay a lot of money for insurance against cracks in our society. Education as insurance has something to be said because it connects to the economy. You know computer science, you can get a job. But education also functions as a tournament. You do well if you go to a top school but for everyone else the diploma is a dunce hat in disguise. People need to understand what they’re trying to do? Is it insurance? A tournament? Learning?”

    Where we are in the evolution of this change:

    Larry Summers, former President of Harvard
    “It’s important to remember this really wise quote when thinking about the transition to online education: ‘Things take longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you think they could.’ If you had a discussion with dentists on tooth decay in 1947 it would have been about brushing your teeth and dental care, but the most important thing to happen with fighting tooth decay was fluoridated water and this is similar. It’s hard to know when it will happen but at some point this will be transformative. The first stage is when it does what was being done before but better. That’s what is happening now. But we’re going to where we don’t need to have two semesters, classes of same length, grading on the basis of things called exams. You can’t think of another industry where a list of top 10 providers is perfectly correlated to what it was in 1960.”

    Daphne Koller, founder of Coursera
    “We’re at 2.4 million students now. The biggest lesson I’ve learned on this is I underestimated the amount of impact this would have around the world. I really didn’t envision this scale and this impact this quickly.”

    Raphael Reif, president of MIT
    “We manage this transition very carefully. How can MIT charge $50,000 for tuition going forward? Can we justify that in the future? We see three components to MIT- first there’s the student life, then there’s the classroom instruction, but for us, the projects and labs activity is where real education occurs. But I don’t think we can charge that much for tuition in the future and it’s a big pressure point for us.”

    Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft
    “When people first put courses online people thought they could charge money and no one bought them. They put them online but from a global perspective, all these high numbers of students we’re hearing about today, the effective number of people who use them is zero. It’s not widely used as a percentage of the global population. Our whole notion of ‘credential’, which means you went somewhere for a number of hours, needs to move to where you can prove you have the knowledge and the quality of these online courses need to improve. Over the next few years the quality will improve. 90% of these courses will be long forgotten and never viewed. Over the next five years this transformation will be phenomenal but only through a pretty brutal winnowing out process.”

    On what an online education world means for hiring and talent for educators:

    Rafael Reif
    [On the question of how to hire professors in the MOOC era] “Can you hire MIT professors who know that they need to teach 150,000 people and not 150? We have spectacular researchers who are lousy teachers. That’s sad. A teacher in the future will become more like a mentor. The model of on campus education will be more about mentorship and guidance with research as an important factor.”

    We can’t presume to know what format will work in the future:

    Larry Summers
    “It’s important to remember that we’re not so good at understanding the subtleties of environments that make them attractive to people. Look at football for example. One way to watch a game is to sit on a cold bench with no good food and bad bathrooms, the other is in your own living room, with replay, and food you like at your convenience. And then ask yourself- which would you guess people pay for? Which do people cheer for? You’d get it wrong. There are aspects of bringing people together in groups that we can’t quite understand and judge. The working out of this will depend a lot on formulas for making it attractive and collaborative. And as football example suggests, it won’t be immediately obvious what those models are.”

    What’s next in this space?

    Bill Gates
    “Who is going to jump first into granting a degree that doesn’t have the seat time requirement that we do today that employers will see as credible? Where does the credibility come from?

    Sebastian Thrun, CEO of uDacity
    “I think the question is how do you make the credential have currency that an employer knows? We’ve had good success. We have 350 companies who have hired our students. Employers worry about soft skills and we can measure that and it’s on equal performance with hard skills. The credential thing is interesting- we launched a class for credit with California schools for remedial math. We priced them at 10-15 percent of what college costs. There are lots of improvements to be made, but the outcome tends to be better today with us.”

    Jimmy Wales, founder, Wikipedia
    “The overall quantity and quality of formal education hasn’t changed whereas the informal education has skyrocketed in the last 30 years. People used to go to library and now go to Wikipedia. We haven’t really begun to understand the impact on that.”

    Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Founder Grameen Bank
    “What does this all mean? The technology gives us tremendous power to solve this stark problem all around us. We need to design these so no child is left out of this. What need to ask, what is education after all? We need to resolve that. What are we getting our young people ready for? It’s for the purpose of our life. And we need to make sure we give people a purpose to their life. It won’t be done by current system. It will be done by people who have nothing to do with current system.”

  • A brief guide to tech lobbyists in Europe

    In the last few years, lobbying by web giants like Google and Facebook has increased dramatically on both sides of the Atlantic. As noted by the Financial Times, Facebook’s spending in Washington trebled in 2012 — and similar expansion has also been seen in Europe. That’s no surprise, perhaps: with COO Sheryl Sandberg intimately familiar with the way power works, both from her time with the Department of the Treasury and then at Google.

    There’s an obvious reason they’re concentrating their energies, too. Technology companies are incredibly powerful, which draws a lot of attention, and a lot of anger in many cases. Unfriendly administrations can be powerful enemies: from Microsoft’s drawn-out conflict with European officials — effectively running for 20 years — to the vast fines levied on companies like Intel who break competition rules, conflict with governments can be costly and distracting. So what better way to try and smooth the path than try to head off that conflict earlier in the process?

    But lobbying is furtive, and tends to happen behind closed doors: only dragged into the open when big issues emerge, such as the recent furore over American tech companies paying little or no tax in the U.K.. The European Commission does run a transparency register that companies are meant to report for, but the truth is that many — including, for example, Apple — have not signed up. Shouldn’t the extent of lobbying be more visible?

    What follows is a short overview to some of the power players working to influence Brussels, or other governments in Europe, on behalf of the world’s big internet and hi-tech companies. It’s not meant to be comprehensive — there are lots of companies missing, and lots of individuals not named. But consider it more of a starting place: If you know more lobbyists, and their roles, then please leave them in the comments. Eventually, maybe, we can produce a map of their activities.

    Google

    Google has one of the most complex European lobbying operations among Internet companies. It operates a significant team in Brussels, but also has staff in most other major European capitals — including Berlin, where it opened a new office housing seven lobbyists. Their job? To try and influence the German government over issues like privacy and copyright, where it is far stricter than most other nations.

    Key players:

    Antoine Aubert, head of Google’s Brussels policy team, is listed in the transparency register as the liaison between EU and Mountain View. He is a policy wonk who previously spent three years working for the Commission itself.

    Simon Hampton, GoogleSimon Hampton, the company’s director of public policy in Europe, is a former AOL and Time Warner policy chief. He took up the role with Google four years ago, which he describes on his LinkedIn profile like this: “His team of 45 evangelise the economic and social potential of the Internet, and work on the regulatory agenda to help Europe tap the full opportunities of the Internet.” The transparency register claims seven people working at European level.

    Annette Kroeber-Riel, European policy counsel, heads up the German lobbying effort, which has built a network of operations, including think tanks and a research institute. Her background includes VeriSign and Jamba! (the company behind Crazy Frog, which was notorious Samwer brothers).

    Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel based in Paris, is a long-time hand at the company who works on international policy efforts around data and privacy. Largely operating behind the scenes, Fleischer’s profile was raised when he was one of those named, tried and convicted in an Italian court over a YouTube video of a boy being bullied. (The ruling was overturned just before Christmas.)

    Sarah Hunter, head of UK public policy, was a senior policy adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

    Facebook

    Erika Mann, FacebookFacebook’s rocket-like trajectory in the last few years has rapidly increased its interaction with governments — rarely positive — and it is staffing up its lobbying efforts to reflect that. It seems keen to pick those with inside knowledge of the system gained from active political positions, rather than from the academic or bureaucratic side like most of its peers.

    Key players:
    Erika Mann, managing director of public policy (pictured) has helped build Facebook’s Belgian lobbying engine since joining in 2011, but knows Europe very well: the German was a Member of the European Parliament for 15 years.

    Richard Allan, the director of policy in Europe, also has political ties. He spent eight years as a Member of Parliament in Britain (and then acted as campaign manager for Nick Clegg, the current Deputy Prime Minister) and sits in the House of Lords after being made a Baron in 2010. Before moving to Facebook in 2009, he worked as a lobbyist for Cisco.

    Apple

    Jaymeen Patel, AppleApple is one of those companies which has no presence in the transparency register, but clearly has a lobbying operation in Brussels. Steve Jobs himself was known to join meetings with European officials, and EC documents show he took part to get regulatory approval of Europe-wide pricing for iTunes. Still, its lobby effort does seem underpowered compared to rivals like Google.

    Key players:

    Claire Thwaites, director of Apple’s EMEIA government affairs previously helped lead Vodafone lobbying in Brussels and Washington.

    Jaymeen Patel, senior government affairs manager (pictured), is another telecoms veteran, with five years at Telefonica.

    Amazon

    Andrew Cecil, AmazonAmazon is one of a number of American technology companies that is lobbying Brussels in order to weaken restrictions on data collection. It is not listed in the joint transparency register. And yet it does have a Brussels presence to help try and secure itself a good deal across the single market.

    Key players:

    Andrew Cecil (pictured) has been Amazon’s director of public policy in Brussels since 2009, after he jumped from the same role at Yahoo!. Became temporarily notorious for refusing to answer a range of questions when when giving evidence to British MPs over Amazon’s tax avoidance strategies.

    Saskia Horsch, the company’s senior public policy manager, previously worked for the European Casino Association.

    Microsoft

    Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has put a vast amount of effort into Europe over the years. according to the transparency register, it currently has 17 lobbyists working in Brussels, spending at least €4.5 million ($6 million) last year — though experts suggest that few companies accurately report their true lobbying spend.

    At a national level, it operates governmental lobbying of various kinds — such as warning the British government over the adoption of open standards. And it has also funneled some of its lobbying effort through Burston Marsteller, the PR consultancy: opposing the purchase of DoubleClick by Google in 2007, for example.

    John Vassalo, MicrosoftJohn Vassallo, a former Maltese ambassador to Europe, has been vice president of EU Affairs for more than four years. He also worked in a similar position for General Electric.

    Stephen Collins, the head of EU policy, recently gave evidence to British parliament over plans for a new communications bill.

  • Woman Makes Fake Facebook Profile for Ex, Calls Him Wayne Syphilis, Gets Arrested

    Here’s one way to get back at your ex – create a Facebook page in their name and make it seem like they totally love little boys and incest.

    Or, maybe you should just buy a bottle of wine and chill out. The latter won’t get you arrested.

    A 24-year-old Totowa, New Jersey woman has been arrested and charged with impersonation and harassment after she created a fake Facebook profile in her ex-boyfriend’s name. Well, kind of his name. The fake profile used real pictures, but the name was listed as “Wayne Syphilis.”

    As you may expect, the posts coming from Wayne Syphilis’ account suggested that he suffered from multiple sexually transmitted diseases. Some posts also suggested that he loved to have sex with young boys and family members, according to police.

    Unfortunately for all of us, the profile has been deleted.

    Police became involved in the case when Wayne reported the page, claiming that he was pretty confident that he knew who was behind it. Police subpoenaed the ISP for the IP address, and traced the fake Facebook page of Wayne Syphilis back to the jilted woman.

    According to police, the Facebook page wasn’t the only form of harassment that the 24-year-old (name withheld because it’s technically a domestic violence case) was guilty of. Apparently, she’s been making phone calls to Wayne’s sister.

    No word on whether or not Wayne actually has Syphilis, and what that information will do to his reputation. From our perspective, Wayne Syphilis isn’t a moniker you really want to be associated with – true or not. Sorry, bro.

    [NJ.com]

  • The Internet Is Essential to Life and a Civil Right, According to German Court

    In Germany, people can request compensation when they’ve been deprived of things deemed essential to life. And now, thanks to a court ruling, the internet is part of that class.

    A Federal court in Karlsruhe has made a pretty important decision with implications for the future of internet law: the internet is an “essential” part of life. German press is calling it a “landmark ruling.”

    The case that produced the ruling involves a man whose DSL service was interrupted for a period of two months in 2008-2009. He had already been compensated for having to use his mobile phone, instead of the landline/fax services provided by his DSL connection. But that wasn’t enough in his mind. He also wanted to be compensated for the inability to access the internet.

    A court agreed that he should be compensated, saying:

    “The Internet plays a very important role today and affects the private life of an individual in very decisive ways. Therefore loss of use of the Internet is comparable to the loss of use of a car.”

    They went on to say that the internet is a “civil right” and that it is fundamental to life.

    Speaking of the internet as a human right, a recent ruling in a U.S. court, although stemming from a much different type of case, also used language like this when talking about internet access. An appeals court has overturned an Indiana law barring registered sex offenders from accessing the internet, saying that it’s “unconstitutionally overbroad.” The ACLU had argued that communicating on the internet was too integral to functioning in a modern society to be restricted, as it was a First Amendment issue. The appeals court agreed.

    [ARD TV via Reuters via The Verge]

  • Digital by default – a new reality for development?

    A few weeks ago I went to see the new James Bond film Sky Fall. Without giving away too much, at one point in the film James Bond goes to a remote part of the UK. The area is portrayed as far away from the hustle and bustle of London and as remote from government as possible. Living in Scotland, I immediately recognised the location as the beautiful Glen Coe. But what I found slightly at odds was that although Glen Coe is remote, the fact is that in this day and age I could probably still stay connected to all my government work from there.

    This “new reality” hit me this week when I participated in a flagship event called SPRINT13, organised by the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS). GDS are a new team that have embarked on a huge set of projects with a range of government departments. The aim of these projects is to go beyond providing open data to make what government does more responsive to citizens, and cheaper.

    The old has left town and a new digital reality is coming to you – January 2012

    For instance, as I heard at the conference, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is planning, in less than two years, to administer all support to UK farmers online. This will slash costs at the same time as breaking up the work so that small and medium companies can bid to create and manage the IT system for the payments. Generally, as outlined in this Economist article, transaction costs can be brought down by 20 times if departments “go digital” rather than use paper, by 30 times if they go digital rather than use post, and by 50 times if their online services replace face-to-face transactions.  There are many other examples on the GDS blog, all equally inspiring.

    All this inspiration got me wondering to what extent DFID incorporates these ideas when we work with governments in developing countries.

    We all know the stats – the fact that Africa’s mobile phone market has expanded so much it’s become larger than the EU or US markets with over 650 million subscribers. Hundreds of new broadband cables have been laid across African countries, as this presentation outlines. This infographic provides a great illustration of this transformation, and there is more up-to-date data in this report from the African Development Bank, African Union and World Bank.

    The transformation is something governments in developing countries recognise. Take Kenya, which has a multi-pronged digital strategy. Over 60 villages and schools are benefitting from digitisation, through an initiative known as “Pasha” Centres. A new “sillicon valley” of East Africa called “Konza” is being built. Government data is increasingly being published online. Such changes are happening elsewhere too, and some of the top global apps that help reduce poverty have benefited from UK aid.

    At the same time, there’s a long way to go.  According to World Bank data, here in the UK, 82% of people have access to the internet. So it makes sense that the government is aiming for all of our services that handle over 100,000 transactions per year to be “digital by default” by 2015 – from making farm payments to collecting road taxes, to using the internet to update health records after treatment.  Only 12% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa currently have internet access – the rationale is not the same.  But it is also changing rapidly. A new form of satellite broadband is being developed to bring millions more online. Chinese and UK/France companies are partnering to launch a new browser, cleverly tailored to low-cost smartphones to provide quick access to very familiar apps like Facebook and Twitter in English and Arabic.  This will increase demand. The key, as with the changes GDS has made, is to make the technology “locally relevant” – keeping the citizen, the end user, in mind.

    At SPRINT13, it slowly dawned on me that any government that doesn’t keep up with this new digital reality will not only be left in the dark, it will also face mounting costs.

    A few weeks ago, DFID launched our Digital Strategy, along with several other government departments, which outlines all the work we are doing to take on board this “new reality”. Unlike James Bond, even if we work in remote places, we really don’t want to be difficult to reach.  In fact, we want your creative ideas on how going digital can help us do more for development. So please do feedback below!

  • The State of Wikipedia

    I have recently viewed an excellent video “The State of Wikipedia” produced by Jess3.com.  Wikipedia just celebrated its 10th anniversary with a collection of more than 17 million articles in over 270 languages.  Wikipedia has undoubtedly become one of the most successful wiki and the most visited encyclopedia online.  “The State of Wikipedia” explores the rich history and inner-workings of the web-based encyclopedia.

    Filed under: Internet, Web 2.0 Tagged: infographics, state, statistics, wiki, wikipeida

  • Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

    This is a thought provoking video presentation produced by TED in last September.  In this video, education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education — the best teachers and schools don’t exist where they’re needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.

    Filed under: 21st Century Education, Educational Technology Tagged: child-driven, education, internet, schools, web

  • Feedjit, Survey Analytics, SEOmoz Climb Web Ranks

    Internet, startups, IT

    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Seattle 2.0’s monthly startup index reports that Cheezburger Network and Zillow still lead the pack of local Internet startups in terms of traffic estimates. Feedjit, Survey Analytics, SEOmoz, and Smilebox moved up the ranks in the top 10, while Sporcle, Entertonement, AppStoreHQ, Evri, Zulily, and Onehub made strong upward moves in the top 50. Seattle 2.0 CEO Jennifer Cabala noted that April was a good month for entertainment sites and information discovery services.

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  • An Easy Way To Make Comcast Spell Your Name Right

    A fellow whose last name is Ernst — or is it “Earnest?” — says he’s annoyed with Comcast misspelling his name on its billing statements. He writes:

    I recently started service with Comcast for my cable and internet. I just received my first invoice and they absolutely butchered my last name, Ernst, spelling it Earnest. When I called customer service to have it corrected, I was told I would physically have to go to the Comcast Office to have their mistake fixed. Is there any way around this, or do I have to take time from work to fix the spelling of my own name? Thanks.

    I brought up the issue to Mark Casem from Comcast Customer Connect, who said it would be no problem to spell customers’ names correctly. Write him at: [email protected] (doesn’t seem like a personal email, so no lolcat forwards.

    This news should please Jamie, another Comcast misspelling casualty.

  • Under the Radar Financings in the Northwest: Foodista, PhotoRocket, EnergySavvy, and More

    deals, startups, funding

    Under the radar deals
    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    OK, usually when we pull out our monthly “under the radar” deals, it’s companies we haven’t heard much about before. Not so this time.

    I’ve been lamenting the relative dearth of financing deals for early-stage software startups around Seattle lately. This month’s news won’t really change that, but at least there are a few intriguing companies on the list that we’ve had our eye on. We define “under the radar” deals as financings worth less than $1 million, in innovation areas like software, Web services, networking, medical devices, diagnostics, and energy. The latest stats, which list six companies for April, were provided by our partner CB Insights, a New York-based private company intelligence platform.

    One of the familiar companies on the list is Seattle-based Foodista, a wiki-based online encyclopedia for cooking, which has raised $750,000 in equity funding from undisclosed investors. The company was founded by Amazon veterans Barnaby Dorfman and Sheri Wetherell, and rolled out its website in December 2008. It raised $550,000 from Amazon and angel investors in 2009.

    Another company we’ve been watching is PhotoRocket, the new stealthy photo-sharing company led by Scott Lipsky of Amazon, aQuantive, and GalleryPlayer fame. PhotoRocket has raised more than $377,000 on its way to a $1.25 million first-round close.

    EnergySavvy (formerly called Evoworx) is an energy-efficiency startup focused on home energy use. It raised about $320,000 in debt financing last month, according to CB Insights. The company is led by CEO Aaron Goldfeder, a former Microsoftie and newly named “Pivotal Leader.” It also has Leo Shklovskii and Karl Siebrecht involved as co-founders.

    Last but not least, I wanted to mention Shelby SuperCars of West Richland, WA. Normally we probably wouldn’t report on a car maker. But these are supercars (they look pretty cool).

    So here’s the list of our “under the radar” company financings from April:

    CoCo Communications Seattle,              WA A maker of software for interoperability between radios, cell phones, and computers Debt* $953,453
    Foodista Seattle,               WA A provider of an editable, online cooking encyclopedia Equity $750,000
    PhotoRocket Seattle,              WA A stealthy photo-sharing startup Equity $376,917
    EnergySavvy Seattle,              WA A Web company that aims to improve home energy efficiency Debt $320,450
    Shelby SuperCars West Richland, WA A maker of supercars Debt $200,000
    StreamiT Bend,                  OR A stealthy online video company Equity $135,000

    *Includes options and/or warrants

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  • Venture Mechanics, Led by Ron Wiener, Opens “Berkubator” for Tech Startups, Introduces Three New Companies

    startups, innovation, Software

    Venture Mechanics
    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Looking to start a technology company in this era of small teams, lean cost structures, and fast times to market? You might want to check out Venture Mechanics in Seattle. It’s basically an outfit of four experienced startup executives who are trying to reinvent the process of launching tech companies. They held an open-house launch party last night in downtown Seattle, and they’ve just started to spill the beans about what they’ve been working on for almost a year now.

    Venture Mechanics is not an investment fund. It’s also not an incubator, an accelerator, an angel investor network, or a mentorship program for entrepreneurs. That makes it different from Founder’s Co-op, TechStars, Founder Institute, Northwest Entrepreneur Network, or any number of angel groups around town that are also focused on early-stage companies.

    It’s more like a “sandbox for serial entrepreneurs,” according to the website. But what does that mean? Forced to describe his new organization in one word, Venture Mechanics head Ron Wiener calls it a “Berkubator.” That means it takes some key elements of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway investment model, and applies them to a portfolio of startups rather than acquisitions of established companies, he says.

    Here are a few words of wisdom from Buffett that are applicable, says Wiener. “Buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.” And, “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” And lastly, “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.”

    Wiener, the co-founder and former CEO of Earth Class Mail (and five other tech companies), has assembled a team of “mechanics” that includes Peter Weiss, a 30-year veteran of finance and a prominent angel investor (he invested in Earth Class Mail); John Vogel, a longtime senior engineer with GoAhead Software, Tideworks Technology, and OneCommand; and Doug Choi, a lawyer and entrepreneur with leadership experience from Isilon Systems, F5 Networks, and Concur Technologies.

    The word “mechanics” implies two things about the new venture. The first is that it will …Next Page »

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  • Ye Olde Mailer Daemon [Humor]


    Click here to read Ye Olde Mailer Daemon

    What I like most about this? That if Mailer Daemon were an actual person, you’d be able to take out your frustration much more satisfactorily than bashing your head against your keyboard. [Buttersafe via The Next Web] More »










    Recreation – Microsoft – Linux distribution – Application programming interface – Upstart

  • Republican Party discovers the scourge of Internet trolls on new Web site: ‘Stop teaching about heliocentric universe, it contradicts the Bible’


    Who let the trolls out? (They are trolls, right?)

    There’s just no hope anymore. The GOP, one of the two great political parties in the United States, recently requested people submit ideas to be incorporated into the party’s platform this fall. A Web site was created. And then, predictably, people starting trolling the site. “A ‘teacher’ told my child in class that dolphins were mammals and not fish! And the same thing about whales! We need TRADITIONAL VALUES in all areas of education. If it swims in the water, it is a FISH. Period! End of Story.” Well, I’m assuming that’s a troll. You never can tell anymore.

    The Web site censored obscenities, but didn’t make any attempt to filter out nonsensical ideas. How about this gem: “End Child Labor Laws. We coddle children too much. They need to spend their youth in the factories.”

    Or maybe this: “Don’t let the illegals run out of Arizona and hide… I think that we should do something to identify them in case they try to come back over. Like maybe tattoo a big scarlet ‘I’ on their chests — for ‘illegal’!!!”

    These are trolls, right? Surely no one is suggesting we end child labor laws?

    My favorite part of the story is that congressmen are pointing to their number of Facebook friends as some sort of indicator of being “connected.” There’s nothing wrong with using Facebook or Twitter to keep in touch with your continuants, but please don’t think that makes you some sort of technology expert. I don’t expect Tom Brady to know how to play shortstop, and I don’t expect my congressman to know the difference between an @ and a d on Twitter.