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Porn on a plane: Flight attendants want filters

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 13.09.2008 | Category Internet News

Coffee, tea or porn? “I don’t think so,” say American Airline flight attendants.

Leaders of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents some 19,000 workers including American Airlines flight attendants, asked American Airline’s management this week to consider adding filters to its in-flight Wi-Fi access to prevent passengers from viewing porn and other inappropriate Web sites while in-flight.

A union representative told Bloomberg News that attendants and passengers have raised “a lot of complaints” over the issue.

American Airlines is one of several airlines testing in-flight Internet access as a way to lure more passengers. American has been offering the service on a limited basis since August 20th on some flights between New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and between New York and Miami. The cost of the service on cross-country flights is $12.95, and it’s $9.95 on the New York to Miami route.

The current program is in a 3- to 6-month trial period, and the airline plans to review usage and feedback on the service at the end of that period, an American Airlines spokesman told Bloomberg.

The controversy has stirred up an ongoing debate about whether Internet access in public places should be restricted. Earlier this year, the Denver International Airport took a lot flack for blocking access on its free Wi-Fi network to Web sites that officials deemed offensive.

The argument was made by Denver airport officials that users must abide by their rules because they are providing the service for free. But that case is harder to make for in-flight passengers, who are paying for Internet access.

Given that people are packed onto planes literally elbow to elbow, it’s often hard not to at least glance at the laptop screen of the person sitting next to you. But airlines have not banned people from reading pornographic magazines or watching their own DVDs on flights. And it’s just as easy for someone to view a DVD of an adult video on a laptop or flip through Hustler as it is to surf porn Web sites.

The truth is that it hasn’t been a major problem on flights thus far. In fact, American Airline’s spokesman Tim Smith told Bloomberg that the “vast majority” of customers already use good judgment in what’s appropriate to look at while flying versus what’s not.

And he added, “Customers viewing inappropriate material on board a flight is not a new scenario for our crews, who have always managed this issue with great success.”

What do you think? Should airlines filter Internet access at 20,000 feet? Or should they just stay out of the censoring debate?

Software Piracy falls in Pakistan & Top 12 Countries

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 19.05.2008 | Category Internet News

The software piracy rate has slightly dropped in Pakistan from 86 per cent to 84 per cent, after remaining unchanged over the past two years, which would benefit the country in many ways, a latest international study states.

The software piracy rate in Pakistan has come down at a time when globally it recorded a three per cent increase to 38 per cent in 2007, which has increased piracy-related losses to nearly $48 billion against $40 billion in 2006.

The Fifth Annual Global Software Piracy Study, released by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) here on Friday, noted that piracy-related losses had gone down to $125 million in Pakistan against $143 million in 2006.

With 84 per cent piracy, Pakistan now ranks 13th among top 25 countries with the highest piracy rates against No 7 last year.

It followed

1. Armenia (93pc)
2. Bangladesh (92pc)
3. Azerbaijan (92pc)
4. Moldova (92pc)
5. Zimbabwe (91pc)
6. Sri Lanka (90pc)
7. Yemen (89pc)
8. Libya (88pc)
9. Venezuela (87pc)
10. Vietnam (85pc)
11. Iraq (85pc)
12. Indonesia (84pc)

Source: Ahmad’s Blog

“Atom” as name for Intel’s new chip family

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 04.03.2008 | Category Internet News, Other

Intel Corp has picked “Atom” as the new brand name for its latest microprocessor, the world’s largest semiconductor company said.

The Intel Atom processor is the name for the new family of low-power processors, the brains of digital devices, that will power mobile Internet devices and ultra low-cost and small notebook and desktop personal computers.

Intel sees a big market for the Internet-connected devices that can fit in one’s pocket and for what it is calling the netbook, a low-cost PC costing around $250.

The Intel Atom processor is based on a new microarchitecture designed for small devices and low power consumption, Intel said. The chip is less than 25 square millimeters, and 11 of the chip’s dies — the slivers of silicon with 47 million transistors each — would fit in an area the size of a U.S. penny.

The new chips, previously code-named Silverthorne and Diamondville, are made on Intel’s 45 nanometer chipmaking technology and slated for introduction toward the middle of this year.

“Diamondville and Silverthorne both represent an attempt by Intel to sell chips profitably for a whole lot less,” said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at market research firm Insight 64. “This is the first new processor design coming out of Intel since the Pentium Pro in 1995.”

China to Overcome USA in Internet usage

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 21.01.2008 | Category Internet News

Chinese Internet Users Up to 210 Million

NEW YORK (AP) — The Chinese government said Friday its Internet population has soared to 210 million people, putting it on track to surpass the U.S. online community this year to become the world’s largest.

The official China Internet Network Information Center, also known as CNNIC, said the online population grew 53 percent, from 137 million reported at the same time last year. According to the government’s Xinhua News Agency, China is only 5 million behind the United States online, a figure consistent with some American estimates.

China still lags the United States in many respects, however.

Xinhua placed China’s online penetration rate at 16 percent — the point Americans were at in the mid-1990s. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 75 percent of American adults are now online; penetration is even higher when teens are included. (China’s stats cover Chinese 6 and older.)

“We’re two countries at very different points along the adoption curve,” said John Horrigan, Pew’s associate director. “China is approximately 15 years behind.”

Several other differences between the two markets mean Internet penetration has different meaning in China and the United States.

First, cybercafes serve as the main entry to the Internet for many Chinese unable to afford a computer at home. One-third of Chinese Internet users surf through cybercafes, according to Xinhua, while Pew found that 93 percent of U.S. Internet users have access at home.

Also, China is notorious for censorship. Although the government promotes Internet use for education and business, it tries to block the public from seeing material it deems pornographic or critical of communist rule, including new rules promulgated this month covering online videos.

And China’s government imprisons people who mail, post online, or access politically sensitive content from within China. Reporters Without Borders says 50 Chinese “cyberdissidents” are currently in prison.

Nonetheless, China’s online growth is significant.

“Users do a lot to shape the Internet and not only by directly posting content but (by) their behavior,” Horrigan said. “It tells other people what the demand is. As you get more Chinese, that increases demand for Internet content in Mandarin and other Chinese languages.”

Horrigan also said many Chinese users are accessing the Internet through mobile devices, offering China “a distinct opportunity to shape the Internet” with usage everywhere.

Quotation
“God help the world when China awakes”
- Napoleon
Some Facts
China has about a 90% literacy rate.
Standard Chinese or Mandarin is the most prevalent but there are plenty of dialects.
SEO in China is at a fairly low standard. Competition is sparse so its a good time to get into the market.

W3C Pushing for Better Web on Mobile Devices

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 16.11.2007 | Category Internet News

Launches new website testing tool for presentation on mobile devices

Berners-Lee said that the W3C is working on defining a set of standards that developers can use to build websites that work with mobile devices, as well as with desktop computers, so that the mobile Web doesn’t break apart from the World Wide Web.

This week, the W3C also launched a new tool that developers can use to test their websites for compatibility with mobile devices.

The W3C’s new tool, called the mobileOK checker, will look over code to see how well it follows the W3C’s guidelines.

Today, W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium) provides new means for people to create and find mobile friendly content. W3C invites Web authors to run the alpha release of the W3C mobileOK checker and make their content work on a broad range of mobile devices. The checker runs the tests defined in the W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 Candidate Recommendation.

http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item244

W3C mobileOK checker

German official says ‘no’ to Google-DoubleClick deal

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 02.10.2007 | Category Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords, Internet Marketing, Internet News

The data protection commissioner of the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has come out against Google’s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.

Such a merger would “lead to a massive violation of data privacy rights” for consumers in the European Union if the databases of the two companies were combined, says Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner for Germany’s northernmost state.

In a letter to the European Commissioner for Competition, Weichert writes that search engines in general already violate consumer rights to “informational self-determination” by retaining data for so long, among other things.

A Google spokesman provided this statement: “We believe that this acquisition will increase competition and benefit both consumers and advertisers, and that it will ultimately be approved by government regulators.”

In response to concerns that the companies will combine their databases, Google and DoubleClick have pointed out that DoubleClick does not own, and has limitations on its use of, the data it processes for its publisher and advertiser clients.

In addition, the European Consumers’ Organization has lodged a complaint with the European Competition Commissioner, arguing that the merger would lead to a monopoly in the online advertising market, and Yahoo is challenging it there as well.

Some privacy groups in the U.S. oppose the Google-DoubleClick merger, and Microsoft testified at a U.S. Senate hearing last week that a Google-DoubleClick merger would be anticompetitive.

Yahoo opens up social networking site MASH

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 18.09.2007 | Category Internet News, Yahoo

San Francisco (CA) - Yahoo has launched a beta version of Mash, its latest attempt at social networking.

According to the site’s official blog, the service allows users to create their own profile using a variety of custom design tools, and they are able to interact with their friends’ profiles as well. These are the same basic features that outline Myspace and Facebook. Yahoo Mash also lets users create “starter profiles” for their friends to make it easier for them to get started with the service.

“Of course, there are extensive privacy controls in Mash and you set the boundaries that you’re comfortable with,” said Yahoo Mash developer Will Aldrich.

Currently Mash is in a beta stage and it is open only to people who have received an invitation. Those enrolled in Mash can also send invites to any other Yahoo user, much in the same fashion as when Google’s Gmail service first launched.

This is not the first entry into social networking for the online company. Yahoo 360 in the early part of 2005, but it failed to capture much of the fire that spread into Myspace and Facebook. Yahoo has not announced any plans to shut down Yahoo 360, so for now both it and Mash are actively supported.

MASH

Mash is currently an invitation-only beta service.The odds are good that one of your friends is in here already. Hit them up for an invite!

Already Mashing? Sign in.

You need invitation to use it in Beta

Bebo Adds Yahoo as a Friend

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 13.09.2007 | Category Internet News, Yahoo

Yahoo’s corporate culture is about caution and measured risks. And so it is perfectly in keeping with the way the company has been run that it announced today that it has been chosen to sell advertising in the United Kingdom and Ireland for Bebo, the most popular social network in Britain.

These days the competition to sell ads for big Web sites is a very dangerous game. Google right now can earn more selling ads on a given site than any of its rivals. It has better technology, more sites and more advertisers bidding, which creates a virtuous circle bidding up prices. The only way for Microsoft and Yahoo to break in is to build better advertising systems — which they are doing — and get bigger networks, which in turn will draw more advertisers.

Google knows that its rivals have an incentive to lose money on some big deals just to get scale, so it too has been overbidding to keep plum sites out of their hands. The biggest example was MySpace, where Google promised $900 million over three years, far more than it expected to earn, according to people involved in the negotiations. Microsoft, which has more cash than Fort Knox, later won the contract to sell ads on Facebook.

Yahoo looked at these deals, but just couldn’t face saying goodbye to so much money. It’s hard to imagine that the underlying economics are any different in the case of Bebo — I’m sure both Google and Microsoft would bid. The terms were not disclosed, but the scale is smaller, so what I assume will be a loss for Yahoo will be easier for it to swallow.

Free iPhone unlocking solution released for download

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 13.09.2007 | Category Apple, Internet News

A team of hackers attempting to unlock Apple Inc.’s iPhone for use with GSM-based wireless carriers other than AT&T appear to have finally succeeded in their efforts, and last night began distributing their solution as a free download via several websites.

Dubbed “iUnlock,” the SIM unlocking tool represents the fruits of a multi-month effort on the part of the unofficial “iPhone Dev Team” — a community of independent contributors who’ve banded together to discover and develop additional uses for the inaugural Apple handset.

Unlike commercial efforts from groups such as iPhoneSIMfree and UniquePhones, iUnlock was released Tuesday evening as a free download, and has since begun to spread rapidly across the web. Several iPhone owners and members of Apple online communities claim to have tested and verified the solution as genuine.

In its current state, however, the iUnlock solution is not for the technically-challeneged or faint-of-heart. It requires a “jailbroken” iPhone, rudimentary knowledge of using a unix terminal, experience with SFTP and some patience. Some tutorials on how to apply the hack have also begun to crop up, but they’re currently rough around the edges.

Several more user-friendly installation guides are believed to be under development at the present time, as is a version of iUnlock that will be based around an installer for the less technical savvy.

Unlocking mobile phones for one’s own use, for instance to place calls with a different carrier, appears to be legal under an exemption of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, the same may not be true for the specific steps taken by the iPhone Dev Team’s unlocking solution, which has not been scrutinized in that regard.

Because the iPhone is GSM-based, U.S. consumers who unlock the phone will be limited in their alternative wireless carrier choices to just T-Mobile, the only other national GSM-based service provider outside of AT&T. Internationally, however, the unlocking solution would seem more compelling due to the proliferation of GSM-based networks and carriers overseas.

AppleInsider assumes no responsibility for any damage or legal issues caused by readers who install iUnlock, and is providing links to the downloadable files and associated tutorials strictly for information purposes. AppleInsider is also not linking directly to the iPhone Dev Team’s wiki site in this article per its request that publications refrain from doing so out of server stability concerns. Readers can find the website easily by searching Google.

Unlock application

-Giz Mirror (Associated Report)iUnlock tutorials

-ModMyiPhone version
-Hackint0sh version
-FreeiPhoneUnlock version
-iphone.unlock.no version

-iphone.unlock.no version

Sun and Microsoft Team on Windows Server, Virtualization

Autor Internet Marketing & SEO | 13.09.2007 | Category Internet News, Microsoft & MSN

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems announced a new agreement this morning whereby Sun will serve as an official Windows Server manufacturer. That’s not too earth shattering, considering Sun customers can already run Windows on the company’s x64 servers. Nevertheless, the new agreement supposedly expands that interoperability, with both companies providing additional software and support for each others’ server systems.

Additionally, the two companies will work together on Mediaroom, Microsoft’s IPTV software platform. According to Sun, AT&T’s U-verse digital TV service has selected the company for one of world’s largest deployments of the Microsoft Mediaroom platform, which will include both server and client software.

John Fowler (pictured right), Sun’s Executive Vice President of Systems, said that because the company’s server business is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, it simply made sense for Sun to sell and support pre-installed Windows Server 2003.

“One hundred percent of our customers use Solaris and Windows, so it was a very natural thing for us to work together on,” Fowler explained during a teleconference this morning. In addition to the tech aspect of the agreement, Fowler also said that an interoperability lab will be established on the Microsoft campus.

The purpose of the lab will be to ensure that Solaris runs well as a guest on Microsoft virtualization technologies and that Windows Server runs well on Sun’s virtualization technologies. Windows Server 2003 will be available on Sun x64 systems within 90 days, both companies said.