AndyAndyAndyAndy - Slashdot User

Submission + - ICANN to allow .brandname top-level domains (reuters.com)

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AndyAndyAndyAndy

on Friday June 17, 2011 @03:42PM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: "Brand owners will soon be able to operate their own parts of the Web — such as .apple, .coke or .marlboro — if the biggest shake-up yet in how Internet domains are awarded is approved.
After years of preparation and wrangling, ICANN, the body that coordinates Internet names, is expected to approve the move at a special board meeting in Singapore on Monday.
Today, just 22 generic top-level domains (gTLDs) exist -- .com, .org and .info are a few examples — plus about 250 country-level domains like .uk or .cn. After the change, several hundred new gTLDs are expected to come into existence.
The move is seen as a big opportunity for brands to gain more control over their online presence and send visitors more directly to parts of their sites — and a danger for those who fail to take advantage."

Submission + - Facebook may bust up the SMS profit cartel (cnn.com) 3

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AndyAndyAndyAndy

on Monday March 07, 2011 @02:36PM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: " Fortune has a very interesting article today about wireless providers and their exorbitant profit margins for SMS handling, especially when looking at modern data plans.

'Under the cell phone industry's peculiar pricing system, downloading data to your smartphone is amazingly cheap — unless the data in question happens to be a text message. In that case the price of a download jumps roughly 50,000-fold, from just a few pennies per megabyte of data to a whopping $1000 or so per megabyte.'

A young little application called Beluga caught the attention of Facebook, which purchased the company yesterday.

The app aims to bring messaging under the umbrella of data plans, and features group messaging, picture and video messaging, and integration with other apps.

The author argues that, if successful, Beluga (or whatever Facebook ends up calling it) could potentially be the Skype/Vonage or Netflix-type competitor to the old-school cellular carriers and their steep pricing plans."

Submission + - Out of Egypt Censorship, US Tech Export Under Fire (c-spanvideo.org) 2

Submitted by AndyAndyAndyAndy on Friday February 11, 2011 @02:18PM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: After it was exposed that American firm Narus had sold Egypt the Deep Packet Inspection equipment used to spy and censor its citizens, the US House Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing where Reps. Chris Smith and Bill Keating 'grilled Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg on the sale of this Internet spying technology to an Egyptian Internet provider controlled by the Mubarak regime.' It seems that there is now a push for stonger controls and monitoring for technology exports 'that would provide a national strategy to prevent the use of American technology from being used by human rights abusers.'

Submission + - Google adds to Mozilla's push for "do not track" (blogspot.com)

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AndyAndyAndyAndy

on Monday January 24, 2011 @04:55PM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: "In a morning blog post, Google announced the release of a Chrome plug-in called 'Keep My Opt-Outs,' which hopes to block all tracking cookies. Interestingly, it is released as open-source with the hopes that it will gain quick deployment on non-Chrome browsers and find a robust foothold against ads.

The story is also covered in Computerworld, which has a more broad insight to the issue, looking at Google, Mozilla, and Firefox and seems to indicate more rapid change is looming — potentially from the FCC itself."

Submission + - Comcast-NBC merger approved by FCC 1

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AndyAndyAndyAndy

on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:35PM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: "It seems that the FCC has approved the proposed merger between Comcast and NBC, effectively kicking apart hopes for protection against "pipes and their water" frameworks. Pres. Obama's 2008 goal also goes ignored: "I strongly favor diversity of ownership of outlets and protection against the excessive concentration of power in the hands of any one corporation, interest or small group." The Dept. of Justice is also onboard, leaving little hope that this will be stopped."

Submission + - New York to get free Wi-Fi network via livery cabs (ny1.com)

Submitted by

AndyAndyAndyAndy

on Sunday August 08, 2010 @10:09AM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: "NYC may finally have a viable plan for free, ad-supported public Wi-Fi service. By next year, company LimoRes Car & Limo plans to roll out 20,000 vehicles with transmitters, providing in-car Wi-Fi with a radius of 200 feet. Each car will be able to support up to 16 separate connections. It may be a longshot to say this will provide complete coverage in Manhattan, but if each cab company in New York got onboard..."

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