Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on May 15th, 2012
The Netherlands' Pirate Party has been ordered to stop publicising ways to circumvent blocks to The Pirate Bay.
The ruling by a court in the Hague follows a complaint by the anti-piracy group Brein.
It had said that the political party was helping users overcome a previous ruling that had ordered two of the country's biggest internet service providers to prohibit access to TPB.
A subsequent order instructed a further five ISPs to block access to the site
The rulings mark the latest action to prevent users from illegally sharing films, books, music and other copyrighted material via TPB's magnet links.
At the end of April the UK also ordered several of its ISPs to prevent users from accessing the Swedish site.
The court also upheld an order banning the Dutch Pirate Party from offering a proxy to let users obtain TPB's links without directly visiting the file-sharing site's pages.
The original order had spurred on the Pirate Party to post suggestions for alternative ways to access TPB.
A message posted on the Dutch Pirate Party's homepage described the most recent rulings as "a slap in the face for the free internet".
"The judge decided to give the Netherlands another nudge on the gliding scale of censorship," it said.
"More and more bits of the internet will have to be censored because they might be used to get access to 'infringing' sites, until eventually most of the internet will be unreachable."
Brein could not be reached for comment and the organisation's website appeared to have been taken offline following the verdict.
The UK's Pirate Party continues to offer a proxy-based workaround to TPB despite the High Court ordering five ISPs to prevent access to the site on 30 April.
The party's campaigns officer, Andy Halsall, told the BBC that it had received two million hits to the service over a recent 24-hour period.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) – which has pursued TPB in the UK – declined to comment about whether it planned to follow Brein's lead and take similar action against the local Pirate Party.
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on May 9th, 2012
Story By: Tell Me More
Five years ago, Twitter was hardly a blip on the political radar. Now, it’s a social media giant. President Obama recently urged college student to take to Twitter and pressure their representatives on student loan interest rates. Host Michel Martin discusses the role of Twitter in politics with NPR’s Don Gonyea and SocialFlow’s Frank Speiser.
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on April 27th, 2012
In the lucrative and competitive world of smartphones, Apple‘s
iPhone is the most popular device and Google‘s
Android—used by phone makers like Samsung and Motorola—is the most widely used operating system. With Palm gone, and the BlackBerry staggering, most smartphone buyers and app developers now think of it as a two-horse race.
However, Microsoft and Nokia, two former thoroughbreds of the smartphone market in the days before the iPhone changed the game, are determined to change that. They’ve teamed up in the hope of offering an appealing third choice. So far, Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system has struggled to attract either buyers or app developers. But on April 8, Nokia and AT&T will begin selling the first high-end, 4G LTE, Windows Phone model released in the U.S., the Lumia 900.
The Lumia 900 looks rather different from other smartphones. It’s a solid, sturdy, single slab of rounded blue plastic—yes, blue—with a large, thin, bright screen that appears to lie on top, instead of being inset. (For the less adventurous, it also comes in black, and, in a few weeks, white.)
Microsoft and Nokia have teamed up for the latest entry in the lucrative and competitive world of smartphones. The Nokia Lumia 900 is the first high-end 4G phone to run on the WIndows operating system. WSJ’s Walt Mossberg looks at how it stands up to the competition.
Plus, for an unspecified “limited time,” it costs just $100, half the typical $200 price of most other top-of-the-line competitors. That price requires a two-year AT&T contract whose fees start at $80 a month for a very minimal amount of data and voice minutes, plus unlimited texting. (It’s $60 without the texting plan.)
I’ve been testing the Lumia 900 and found that it provides the best home yet for the attractive Windows Phone software, but still doesn’t measure up to rival smartphones.
![[PTECHjp]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-BG345_PTECHj_DV_20120403204231.jpg)
Nokia
The Lumia 900′s screen is much larger than the iPhone’s, but the phone isn’t as big and bulky as some recent Android models.
The screen is a roomy 4.3 inches—much larger than the iPhone’s—but the phone itself, while larger than an iPhone, isn’t as big and bulky as some recent Android models. I found it comfortable in the hand and the pocket.
When on an LTE network, the phone delivered download speeds of between 10 and 15 megabits per second in my tests, faster than most home Internet connections. Voice calls were clear and reliable, and the rear camera delivers 8 megapixel resolution.
Also, the Lumia 900 features the three biggest advantages of the Windows Phone platform—a handsome, distinctive, tile-based user interface; a mobile version of Microsoft’s Xbox Live gaming network; and a mobile version of genuine Microsoft Office, which allows you to edit documents and share them with PCs and Macs, or store them in the cloud.
But, overall, I consider the Lumia 900 a mixed bag. Unless you are a big Windows Phone fan, or don’t want to spend more than $100 upfront, I can’t recommend the Lumia 900 over the iPhone 4S, or a first-rate Android phone like Samsung’s Galaxy S II series.
I was underwhelmed by the battery life, the browser, and the quality of its photos.
Plus, the Windows Phone platform has only a fraction of the third-party apps available for its rivals—about 70,000, versus nearly 600,000 for the iPhone and more than 450,000 for Android.
It also has a weaker content ecosystem. For instance, there is no way to buy TV shows or movies directly from the phone, and far fewer magazine and newspaper apps are available.
Nokia’s Lumia 900 is an improved version of a Windows phone, but it has some flaws, Walt Mossberg reports on digits.
And if LTE—which I consider the only true 4G network in the U.S.—matters to you, bear in mind that AT&T offers that service in just 31 markets, versus 203 for Verizon. In most places, the Lumia, like other AT&T phones, including the AT&T version of the iPhone, delivers a slower version of 4G, which is really just a souped-up version of 3G.
The Windows Phone software itself on this new phone hasn’t changed. Instead of multiple pages of icons, as on iPhone and Android, it offers a scroll of tiles that show information. And it still has “hubs” that combine information like contacts and social-media updates for people you know.
Still, despite its flaws, including the likelihood of a lot of scrolling to get to apps, it remains a refreshing change from the dominant competitors.
My biggest problem was with the Web browser, a mobile version of Internet Explorer.
Back in January, when I tested the same browser on an entry-level Nokia Windows Phone, it worked fine on both the cellular network and on my Wi-Fi network. But the Lumia 900 stalled frequently when rendering websites on my fast, home Wi-Fi network, though the phone did fine on LTE.
To make sure my Wi-Fi wasn’t faulty, I tried some of the same sites, in the same spot, on an iPhone, an Android phone and even an older Samsung Windows Phone. All worked perfectly. Nokia had no explanation for this problem.
I found that, in light use, the battery lasted through a typical day. But in heavier use, including lots of email usage and Web browsing, streaming a one-hour TV show via Netflix, and conducting an hour-long phone call, the battery drained more quickly and was almost gone by late in the afternoon. This was especially true if I was using LTE much of the time.
While the Lumia 900′s processor is single-core, not the common dual-core found on other high-end phones, I found the phone worked smoothly and quickly, and played videos fine.
The screen resolution of 800 by 480 is lower than the iPhone’s, and I found the display generally less sharp than the Apple’s. The screen visibility was a bit better outdoors than most other phones I’ve tested, but not dramatically so.
The camera, despite having the same resolution as the new iPhone, took notably worse pictures of the same scenes in my tests. To my eye, colors were oversaturated, and details were less sharp.
There were a few other issues. The Mac version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone syncing software wouldn’t recognize the Lumia 900, though the PC version did. The on-off button isn’t labeled, or easily distinguishable, from the dedicated camera button.
Bottom line: If you’re looking for a $100, high-end smartphone, or are a Windows Phone fan who has been waiting for better hardware, the Lumia 900 is worth considering. But the phone had just too many drawbacks in my tests to best its chief competitors.
—Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared April 4, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: It’s Big, It’s Blue, It’s Windows, But Can It Beat Rival Phones?.
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on April 13th, 2012
A new personalised news stream service has been launched by some of technology's most respected developers.
Wavii searches the net – including tweets, news stories and blogs – to offer a customised feed.
It is offered via the web or as a smartphone app, and was created by engineers who had previously worked for Amazon and Microsoft.
It is likely to compete with Facebook's news feed, prompting speculation that it could become a takeover target.
Mark Zuckerberg's social network made headlines on Monday when it announced it was buying 18-month-old rival Instagram for $1bn (£629m).
While Facebook's feed is mainly based on status updates and content shared by friends, Wavii highlights what's happening in the world at large by creating personalised news streams based on data taken from across the web.
According to Adrian Aoun, Wavii's founder and chief executive, his service offers a more complete experience.
"Facebook is aggregating all this structured data about your friends, and we are aggregating all this structured data about the world – the other half that Facebook doesn't have," he told the BBC.
"We are looking at everything and mapping it into story types. We try to look for patterns."
Wavii detects users' likes and interests based on their previous Facebook activity and by asking them to select at least 12 topics or people of interest. These range from celebrities and politicians to business acquisitions and gadgets.
Then the startup's "learning" algorithms kick in to crawl the real-time web, and turn plain facts and unstructured content into something endowed with context and order.
The technology, which processes up to 1,000 articles a minute, can detect rumours and story duplicates, ultimately streaming the most important and relevant nuggets of information into new feeds.
Wavii gets rid of the "fluff", said Jim Pitkow, a technical advisor to the Seattle-based venture.
"We live in a sea of information, it's really hard to decide what to pay attention to.
"With Wavii you can access more information with less effort."
Although other apps such as Flipboard and Pulse have attempted to blend together RSS-feeds and other news sources, one industry watcher believes Wavii is a game-changer.
"I haven't seen anyone do anything close," Oren Etzioni, a semantic search expert and professor of computer science at the University of Washington, told the BBC.
"Wavii is tackling an incredibly hard problem. Google and Microsoft's Bing have worked on this for years."
He said that could make it a takeover target with social media companies which already have news feeds – such as Twitter, Facebook, Google and Linkedin – all a potentially good fit.
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on April 10th, 2012
WASHINGTON |
Fri Apr 6, 2012 5:19pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Friday proposed a rule that would move television broadcasters’ public files to the Internet, making it easier to access information about political spending on TV advertising.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it would host the files on its website, allowing people to easily track information about their local TV stations.
Spending on TV ads is forecast to reach historic levels in 2012 ahead of the U.S. presidential election, as candidates blanket airwaves with commercials promoting their virtues or bashing their opponents.
The flood of political money in part reflects a response to a landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling that ended most restrictions on political donations from corporations and unions.
The ruling sparked the creation of “Super PACs”, or political action committees, that have focused almost exclusively on spending tens of millions of dollars on ads.
But finding data on who spent what, and where, is a tricky endeavor. TV stations have been making these records public since 1938, as well as information on other community-related issues like children’s programming.
But the records are kept on paper, in filing cabinets directly at stations’ offices. Driving to each station and making copies can take hours, and relying on media analysis companies that aggregate the data is often expensive.
“What this proposal is about is taking that paper file and catching it up with the 21st century,” an FCC official said.
Initially, the rule will only apply to affiliates of the four biggest TV broadcasters in the top 50 media markets.
The four biggest broadcasters are ABC, operated by Disney Co, CBS Corp, News Corp’s Fox, and NBC, controlled by Comcast Corp.
In all, these top 200 stations represent about 60 percent of the money spent on political TV ads in an election year, the FCC said.
Smaller stations would have another two years to begin complying with the rule. The FCC said it would cost about $1,000 for stations to begin uploading large paper files.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and the full Commission must still sign off on the proposal at a rule-making session at the end of April, after which it must be approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
However, the FCC said it expects the requirement to go into effect before the presidential election in November.
(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on April 9th, 2012
Stretching along the peninsula southwest of San Francisco Bay, Silicon Valley is a breeding ground for high-tech startups. But in its early years, the area was nurtured by something relatively new: venture capital. A look at the innovators and key moments that shaped Silicon Valley.
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on March 23rd, 2012
<span class="articleLocatio
n”>(Reuters) – Zynga Inc is buying OMGPOP, maker of the popular video game “Draw Something” for about $200 million in its biggest acquisition to date as the company moves to expand its lineup of games on mobile devices and Facebook.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Zynga bought the New York-based company for $200 million. The company declined to comment on the deal’s financials or say whether it was accretive on a conference call on Wednesday.
Zynga, which raised $1 billion in an initial public offering last December, makes some of the most popular games on tablets and smart phones such as “Words with Friends” and “Scramble with Friends.” The $200 million deal is its largest to date and the second-biggest purchase since 2010 when it bought Newtoy Inc, the publisher of “Words With Friends” for $53.3 million.
OMGPOP makes the game “Draw Something” where players make digital sketches of items or pop culture figures such as Lady Gaga and then compete to guess what the drawings are. All 40 employees will join Zynga and the company’s headquarters will remain in New York, according to a statement.
Hudson Square analyst Dan Ernst said Zynga could easily afford a deal worth $200 million because, since its IPO, it has a market capitalization of $11 billion and $2 billion of cash on its balance sheet.
But it is always a risk acquiring a company that has only produced one well-known game in recent months, he said.
“The big risk is how long do they last? But it seems like a high quality team though and doesn’t feel like a one-hit wonder,” Ernst said.
In the six weeks since “Draw Something” has been the market, it has garnered more than 35 million downloads and risen to the top of the app charts on Apple and Android in 84 countries, according to Zynga.
Its popularity on mobile devices could be a boon to Zynga, which investors are watching closely to see if it can diversify outside of Facebook, where it makes 93 percent of its revenue. Zynga said in February that it ended last year with 15 million daily mobile users, a five-fold increase from a year earlier.
Zynga shares closed about 2.5 percent, or 33 cents higher, at $13.72 per share on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride in San Francisco and Liana B. Baker in New York; editing by Andre Grenon)
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on March 19th, 2012
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hedge fund manager Philip Falcone’s LightSquared lost its main business partner, Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N), but gained $65 million from the breakup that may help its last-ditch effort to get regulatory approval to establish a high-speed wireless network.
Sprint said on Friday it would exercise its right to scuttle the $9 billion agreement that would have allowed LightSquared to use a network Sprint is building to sell its own high-speed wireless services.
Sprint had the right to back out of the deal if LightSquared failed to get regulatory approval by a deadline that was twice extended, first by a month from its original December 31 date and then to mid-March.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission last month proposed to indefinitely suspend the authority it had previously given LightSquared to use its satellite spectrum for a ground-based cellular network.
The agency cited tests showing LightSquared’s network would interfere with the Global Positioning System used by airlines, the military and others.
LightSquared urged the FCC to reconsider on Friday, the deadline for comments, and said the agency proposal violated the company’s contractual and constitutional rights.
“If the FCC reverses its decision to permit LightSquared to move forward, it will be a bait and switch by the federal government of historic scale,” the company said in a statement.
After the FCC’s proposal, the company said it would lay off nearly half of its 330 employees. Sanjay Ahuja, a telecommunications industry veteran, also stepped down as chief executive.
The loss of the Sprint partnership is another blow.
“We remain open to considering future spectrum hosting agreements with LightSquared, should they resolve these interference issues, as well as other interested spectrum holders,” Sprint said in a statement.
LightSquared said previously it has just several quarters worth of cash left.
“For LightSquared, Sprint’s decision will enhance our working capital and provide more flexibility,” the company said in a statement on Friday.
FCC URGED TO RECONSIDER
LightSquared has lofty ambitions to create a national network that could serve roughly 260 million people using satellites and land-based signals.
It would expand mobile broadband service at a time when the government is urging investment in mobile infrastructure, and wireless carriers are scrambling for airwaves to improve their networks.
LightSquared, in comments it said it will file to the FCC on Friday, argued that the FCC must exhaust reasonable alternatives before reaching for the most extreme remedy, as the current suspension proposal is a violation of LightSquared’s rights.
The company also asserts that the FCC’s proposal is not legally supportable, and that government testing of its network was deeply flawed and biased.
“When you have a situation where significant investment was made on longstanding rules, you cannot then have a decision that is completely antithetical to that,” Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared’s executive vice president for regulatory affairs and public policy, said on a call with reporters.
“On the law, on the technology and on the public policy here, those factors should compel the FCC to reexamine the assumptions it made in the public notice,” he added.
When asked if LightSquared may pursue legal action against the FCC, Carlisle said the company is prepared to examine all options.
The company’s fate is critical to investors in Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners, which once controlled $26 billion in assets but is now down to about $4 billion.
A little more than half of Harbinger’s money is tied up in LightSquared. The hedge fund is the company’s single largest equity investor.
A spokesman for Harbinger said the hedge fund has no separate comment from the one issued by LightSquared.
BATTLE RAGES ON
“Clearly LightSquared is focused on spinning out resources as long as possible, and this gives them more cash,” Tim Farrar, a veteran industry analyst and principal at TMF Associates, said about Sprint’s return of $65 million.
“But at the same time, by pushing this situation out further, some of the ability to recover assets in the event of a potential bankruptcy also drain away.”
Some industry analysts have speculated that bankruptcy might be LightSquared’s only option, but Falcone has steadfastly ruled that out, telling clients he is working on a solution but failing to give many details.
The company has hired prominent conservative litigators Theodore Olson and Eugene Scalia – a sign it could be preparing to take the FCC to court.
Olson served as President George W. Bush’s solicitor general and was recently named the No. 1 lawyer in the U.S. capital by Washingtonian magazine. Scalia, the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has several victories under his belt in corporate challenges to government policies.
(Additional reporting by Svea Herbst; Editing by Andre Grenon, Gary Hill and Tim Dobbyn)
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on March 11th, 2012
Fri Mar 9, 2012 3:35pm EST
<span class="articleLocatio
n”>(Reuters) – Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook and a former online strategist for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, has purchased a majority stake in The New Republic, the magazine said on Friday.
Hughes, 28, will become publisher and editor-in-chief of the nearly 100-year old magazine which covers American politics.
He is also expected to apply his expertise in digital technology in his new role.
The New Republic currently publishes a daily Web magazine. The New Republic did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction or the exact size of the stake.
Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004 at Harvard with his then- roommates Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz.
Since working on the Obama campaign Hughes founded Jumo.com in 2010, a non-profit site that aimed to help people find ways to help each other. It was later combined with GOOD in 2011, an online content and social engagement platform.
As well as his new role Hughes will continue to invest independently and work with non-profits like the Knight Foundation.
(Reporting By Yinka Adegoke, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
Posted by TerranceV | Technology | Posted on March 10th, 2012
By Olivia Oran
Thu Mar 8, 2012 4:45pm EST
<span class="articleLocatio
n”>(Reuters) – Facebook Inc added several women- and minority-owned investment banks to the roster of underwriters for its initial public offering, following in the footsteps of General Motors Co and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which did the same during their own offerings.
The No. 1 online social media network, which filed an amended IPO registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, has hired 31 banks as underwriters for its $5 billion IPO, expected to value the company at up to $100 billion
Among the women- and minority-owned firms included in the deal are New York-based banks CastleOak Securities, Williams Capital Group and M.R. Beal & Co, and Chicago-based Loop Capital Markets.
“Wall Street tries to do what looks good on high-profile IPOs, and it will not go unnoticed that Facebook has chosen to bring in minority underwriters,” said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique.
“It’s not going to make or break the deal, but it will show that they’re not nonchalant about the opportunities that smaller firms can offer distribution-wise.”
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
The addition of these firms comes after Facebook was criticized by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System for not including women on its board of directors. CalSTRS, the second largest pension fund in the United States, holds some ownership in Facebook and expects to be a public shareholder.
In Facebook and other IPOs, these firms are only getting joint bookrunner positions, with the large Wall Street banks taking the lead spots.
Women- and minority-owned investment banks have been underwriting more equity deals in recent years. They helped underwrite 20 IPOs in 2011 that raised $1.5 billion, almost double the amount raised in 2007, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
In 2010 Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, spoke out against General Motors’ decision not to include any underwriters from minority- or women-owned financial institutions. The Detroit automaker eventually added a handful of these banks as underwriters.
Goldman Sachs also gave boutique firms Utendahl Capital Partners and Muriel Siebert & Co a more lucrative position in its IPO after discussions with civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to a 1999 report from the Associated Press.
Jackson had been pushing for minority businesses to have more of a presence on Wall Street. Goldman declined to comment.
(Reporting By Olivia Oran)
