May 18, 2012 9:53 AM PDT
Lest you think the social + local + mobile (So/Lo/Mo) trend is just a fad, last week, Pew Internet released a new report that found that 18 percent of smartphone owners use a geosocial service to check in and share their location with friends. The report also found that 74 percent of smartphone owners get real-time location-based information on their phones -- up from 55 percent last May. Add to these impressive stats the finding from earlier this year... more
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By Erin Bush
May 04, 2012 11:40 AM PDT
Declan McCullagh reporting in CNET: "The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require the firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities..." more
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By CircleID Reporter
May 03, 2012 8:39 AM PDT
For the first time ever bankers have launched an EFTPOS advertising campaign. Could this be an indication that they are becoming worried about the competition they are getting from internet companies such as PayPal, Amazon, Google and Apple (iTunes)? The digital economy is growing much faster than the bricks-and-mortar economy and, while EFTPOS is not going away anytime soon, an increasingly large amount of money is now bypassing their systems. more
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By Paul Budde
Apr 26, 2012 11:23 AM PDT
The 'economies of scope' is an appealing concept implying that if we share knowledge in an open way we can create new, healthy economies that do not just depend on 'scale'. As we have seen, over the last decade in particular, some of the companies that are trying to achieve exponential growth can endanger the economy and society in general - the global financial crisis surrounding the large financial institutions, the scandals around News Corp, the political lobbying (bullying) by the super rich and the destruction of the environment by some developers. more
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By Paul Budde
Apr 24, 2012 2:20 PM PDT
Traditionally, top-level domains (TLDs) have been almost exclusively marketed by registries through their registrar channel. In a never-ending cycle of driving and sustaining sales, registries often resort to discounting and "promotional pricing." The competition for prime shelf space for a TLD is fierce, with sales and distribution largely controlled by the channel... In this chaotic and cluttered channel, it's not surprising that TLDs have traditionally been less than successful in defining their brand and delivering a unique value story for their product. more
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By Thom Kennon
Apr 23, 2012 1:31 PM PDT
The names of the inaugural Internet Hall of Fame inductees were announced today at the Internet Society's Global INET 2012 conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Internet pioneers and luminaries from around the world have gathered at the conference to mark the Internet Society's 20th anniversary. more
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By CircleID Reporter
Apr 17, 2012 2:59 PM PDT
A number of conversations have recently converged on a single problem: how to match applications to network access. Let's unpeel this issue... When I was Chief Analyst at Telco 2.0, we proposed there was a significant untapped market opportunity for network operators to bundle together access with content, applications or services. The revenue opportunity is to charge the providers of those services for delivering fit-for-purpose data at bulk wholesale prices. This is the "postage problem"... more
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By Martin Geddes
Apr 16, 2012 1:17 PM PDT
DNS is not something that most people think about when using the Internet. Neither should they have to: the DNS is just part of the infrastructure in the same way that IP addresses are. The only time a user ought to notice the DNS is when it breaks (and it should never break). If that's true, then we ought to expect any Internet client - including web browsers - to use the very same infrastructure as everything else and for the DNS resolution mechanisms to be the ones offered by the operating system. What makes browsers different? more
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By Andrew Sullivan
Mar 26, 2012 10:54 AM PDT
People are increasingly becoming aware of the emerging 'internet monopoly'. Companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and many the other (local) social network and media sites are becoming so large and powerful that they can dictate the use of their services in such a way that people lose control over their own information and their participation in these networks. ... These digital media developments certainly did happen, but they are not founded on the 'permission-based' principles that we advocated during all those years. more
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By Paul Budde
Mar 20, 2012 8:35 AM PDT
The Internet is contributing more to the American economy than the entire federal government, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group. The Internet accounted for $684 billion, or 4.7% of all U.S. economic activity in 2010, according to latest report released by Boston Consulting Group. more
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By CircleID Reporter