A Better Connected World

US judge orders hundreds of sites "de-indexed" from Google, Facebook

2011-11-30T17:02:00.001+11:00

After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites" - explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to "de-index" the domain names and to remove them from any search results.Source: Ars Technica

Amazon's lengthy cloud outage shows the danger of complexity

2011-05-01T22:14:00.001+10:00

As major vendors continue to push for greater use of cloud computing, incidents such as this are sure to raise many concerns. This is not the first time Amazon has suffered a substantial outage—an uncorrected transmission error caused several hours of downtime in 2008, for example—but it was particularly severe, with prolonged unavailability and a small amout of data loss. The disruption to services that depended on the stricken Availability Zone was substantial.

Source: Ars Technica

Landmark anti-piracy case set in Australia

2011-02-25T08:21:00.003+11:00

The giants of the film industry have lost their appeal in a lawsuit against ISP iiNet in a landmark judgment handed down in the Federal Court today.

The appeal dismissed today had the potential to impact internet users and the internet industry profoundly as it sets a legal precedent surrounding how much ISPs are required to do to prevent customers from downloading movies and other content illegally.

The film studios had sued iiNet (an Australian ISP) arguing that, by not acting to prevent illegal file sharing on its network, it was essentially "authorising" the activity.

"I have concluded that the appeal should be dismissed," Justice Arthur Robert Emmett said in court this afternoon. But he said it was fair to say that the film studios were successful in a number of areas in their appeal.

Read the Full Judgement Here

Source: The Age

20 Predictions for the Next 25 Years

2011-01-03T15:46:00.002+11:00

From the web to wildlife, the economy to nanotechnology, politics to sport, the Observer's team of experts prophesy how the world will change – for good or bad – in the next quarter of a century

1 Geopolitics: 'Rivals will take greater risks against the US'

No balance of power lasts forever. Just a century ago, London was the centre of the world. Britain bestrode the world like a colossus and only those with strong nerves (or weak judgment) dared challenge the Pax Britannica.

That, of course, is all history, but the Pax Americana that has taken shape since 1989 is just as vulnerable to historical change. In the 1910s, the rising power and wealth of Germany and America splintered the Pax Britannica; in the 2010s, east Asia will do the same to the Pax Americana.

The 21st century will see technological change on an astonishing scale. It may even transform what it means to be human. But in the short term – the next 20 years – the world will still be dominated by the doings of nation-states and the central issue will be the rise of the east.

By 2030, the world will be more complicated, divided between a broad American sphere of influence in Europe, the Middle East and south Asia, and a Chinese sphere in east Asia and Africa. Even within its own sphere, the US will face new challenges from former peripheries. The large, educated populations of Poland, Turkey, Brazil and their neighbours will come into their own and Russia will continue its revival.

Nevertheless, America will probably remain the world's major power. The critics who wrote off the US during the depression of the 1930s and the stagflation of the 1970s lived to see it bounce back to defeat the Nazis in the 1940s and the Soviets in the 1980s. America's financial problems will surely deepen through the 2010s, but the 2020s could bring another Roosevelt or Reagan.

A hundred years ago, as Britain's dominance eroded, rivals, particularly Germany, were emboldened to take ever-greater risks. The same will happen as American power erodes in the 2010s-20s. In 1999, for instance, Russia would never have dared attack a neighbour such as Georgia but in 2009 it took just such a chance.

The danger of such an adventure sparking a great power war in the 2010s is probably low; in the 2020s, it will be much greater.

The most serious threats will arise in the vortex of instability that stretches from Africa to central Asia. Most of the world's poorest people live here; climate change is wreaking its worst damage here; nuclear weapons are proliferating fastest here; and even in 2030, the great powers will still seek much of their energy here.

Here, the risk of Sino-American conflict will be greatest and here the balance of power will be decided.

Ian Morris, professor of history at Stanford University and the author of Why the West Rules – For Now (Profile Books)

2 The UK economy: 'The popular revolt against bankers will become impossible to resist'

It will be a second financial crisis in the 2010s – probably sooner than later – that will prove to be the remaking of Britain. Confronted by a second trillion-pound bank bailout in less than 10 years, it will be impossible for the City and wider banking system to resist reform. The popular revolt against bankers, their current business model in which neglect of the real economy is embedded and the scale of their bonuses – all to be underwritten by bailouts from taxpayers – will become irresistible. The consequent rebalancing of the British economy, already underway, will intensify. Britain, in thrall to finance since 1945, will break free – spearheading a second Industrial Revolution.

In 2035, there is thus a good prospect that Britain will be the most populous (our birth rate will be one the highest in Europe), dynamic and richest European country, the key state in a reconfigured EU. Our leading universities will become powerhouses of innovation, world centres in exploiting the approaching avalanche of scientific and technological breakthroughs. A reformed financial system will allow British entrepreneurs to get the committed financial backing they need, becoming the capitalist leaders in Europe. And, after a century of trying, Britain will at last build itself a system for developing apprentices and technicians that is no longer the Cinderella of the education system.

It will not be plain sailing. Massive political turbulence in China and its conflict with the US will define part of the next 25 years – and there will be a period when the world trading and financial system retreats from openness.

How far beggar-my-neighbour competitive devaluations and protection will develop is hard to predict, but protectionist trends are there for all to see. Commodity prices will go much higher and there will be shortages of key minerals, energy, water and some basic foodstuffs.

The paradox is that this will be good news for Britain. It will force the state to re-engage with the economy and to build a matrix of institutions that will support innovation and investment, rather as it did between 1931 and 1950. New Labour began this process tremulously in its last year in office; the coalition government is following through. These will be lean years for the traditional Conservative right, but whether it will be a liberal One Nation Tory party, ongoing coalition governments or the Labour party that will be the political beneficiary is not yet sure.

The key point is that those 20 years in the middle of the 20th century witnessed great industrial creativity and an unsung economic renaissance until the country fell progressively under the stultifying grip of the City of London. My guess is that the same, against a similarly turbulent global background, is about to happen again. My caveat is if the City remains strong, in which case economic decline and social division will escalate.

Will Hutton, executive vice-chair of the Work Foundation and an Observer columnist

3 Global development: 'A vaccine will rid the world of Aids'

Within 25 years, the world will achieve many major successes in tackling the diseases of the poor.

Certainly, we will be polio-free and probably will have been for more than a decade. The fight to eradicate polio represents one of the greatest achievements in global health to date. It has mobilised millions of volunteers, staged mass immunisation campaigns and helped to strengthen the health systems of low-income countries. Today, we have eliminated 99% of the polio in the world and eradication is well within reach.

Vaccines that prevent diseases such as measles and rotavirus, currently available in rich countries, will also become affordable and readily available in developing countries. Since it was founded 10 years ago, the Gavi Alliance, a global partnership that funds expanded immunisation in poor countries, has helped prevent more than 5 million deaths. It is easy to imagine that in 25 years this work will have been expanded to save millions more lives by making life-saving vaccines available all over the world.

I also expect to see major strides in new areas. A rapid point-of-care diagnostic test – coupled with a faster-acting treatment regimen – will so fundamentally change the way we treat tuberculosis that we can begin planning an elimination campaign.

We will eradicate malaria, I believe, to the point where there are no human cases reported globally in 2035. We will also have effective means for preventing Aids infection, including a vaccine. With the encouraging results of the RV144 Aids vaccine trial in Thailand, we now know that an Aids vaccine is possible. We must build on these and promising results on other means of preventing HIV infection to help rid the world of the threat of Aids.

Tachi Yamada, president of the global health programme at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

4 Energy: 'Returning to a world that relies on muscle power is not an option'

Providing sufficient food, water and energy to allow everyone to lead decent lives is an enormous challenge. Energy is a means, not an end, but a necessary means. With 6.7 billion people on the planet, more than 50% living in large conurbations, and these numbers expected to rise to more than 9 billion and 80% later in the century, returning to a world that relies on human and animal muscle power is not an option.

The challenge is to provide sufficient energy while reducing reliance on fossil fuels, which today supply 80% of our energy (in decreasing order of importance, the rest comes from burning biomass and waste, hydro, nuclear and, finally, other renewables, which together contribute less than 1%). Reducing use of fossil fuels is necessary both to avoid serious climate change and in anticipation of a time when scarcity makes them prohibitively expensive.

It will be extremely difficult. An International Energy Agency scenario that assumes the implementation of all agreed national policies and announced commitments to save energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels projects a 35% increase in energy consumption in the next 25 years, with fossil fuels up 24%. This is almost entirely due to consumption in developing countries where living standards are, happily, rising and the population is increasing rapidly.

This scenario, which assumes major increases in nuclear, hydro and wind power, evidently does not go far enough and will break down if, as many expect, oil production (which is assumed to increase 15%) peaks in much less than 25 years. We need to go much further in reducing demand, through better design and changes in lifestyles, increasing efficiency and improving and deploying all viable alternative energy sources. It won't be cheap. And in the post-fossil-fuel era it won't be sufficient without major contributions from solar energy (necessitating cost reductions and improved energy storage and transmission) and/or nuclear fission (meaning fast breeder and/or thorium reactors when uranium eventually becomes scarce) and/or fusion (which is enormously attractive in principle but won't become a reliable source of energy until at least the middle of the century).

Disappointingly, with the present rate of investment in developing and deploying new energy sources, the world will still be powered mainly by fossil fuels in 25 years and will not be prepared to do without them.

Chris Llewellyn Smith is a former director general of Cern and chair of Iter, the world fusion project, he works on energy issues at Oxford University

5 Advertising: 'All sorts of things will just be sold in plain packages'

If I'd been writing this five years ago, it would have been all about technology: the internet, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social tools allowing consumers to regain power at the expense of corporations, all that sort of stuff. And all these things are important and will change how advertising works.

But it's becoming clear that what'll really change advertising will be how we relate to it and what we're prepared to let it do. After all, when you look at advertising from the past the basic techniques haven't changed; what seems startlingly alien are the attitudes it was acceptable to portray and the products you were allowed to advertise.

In 25 years, I bet there'll be many products we'll be allowed to buy but not see advertised – the things the government will decide we shouldn't be consuming because of their impact on healthcare costs or the environment but that they can't muster the political will to ban outright. So, we'll end up with all sorts of products in plain packaging with the product name in a generic typeface – as the government is currently discussing for cigarettes.

But it won't stop there. We'll also be nudged into renegotiating the relationship between society and advertising, because over the next few years we're going to be interrupted by advertising like never before. Video screens are getting so cheap and disposable that they'll be plastered everywhere we go. And they'll have enough intelligence and connectivity that they'll see our faces, do a quick search on Facebook to find out who we are and direct a message at us based on our purchasing history.

At least, that'll be the idea. It probably won't work very well and when it does work it'll probably drive us mad. Marketing geniuses are working on this stuff right now, but not all of them recognise that being allowed to do this kind of thing depends on societal consent – push the intrusion too far and people will push back.

Society once did a deal accepting advertising because it seemed occasionally useful and interesting and because it paid for lots of journalism and entertainment. It's not necessarily going to pay for those things for much longer so we might start questioning whether we want to live in a Blade Runner world brought to us by Cillit Bang.

Russell Davies, head of planning at the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather and a columnist for the magazines Campaign and Wired

6 Neuroscience: 'We'll be able to plug information streams directly into the cortex'

By 2030, we are likely to have developed no-frills brain-machine interfaces, allowing the paralysed to dance in their thought-controlled exoskeleton suits. I sincerely hope we will not still be interfacing with computers via keyboards, one forlorn letter at a time.

I'd like to imagine we'll have robots to do our bidding. But I predicted that 20 years ago, when I was a sanguine boy leaving Star Wars, and the smartest robot we have now is the Roomba vacuum cleaner. So I won't be surprised if I'm wrong in another 25 years. Artificial intelligence has proved itself an unexpectedly difficult problem.

Maybe we will understand what's happening when we immerse our heads into the colourful night blender of dreams. We will have cracked the secret of human memory by realising that it was never about storing things, but about the relationships between things.

Will we have reached the singularity – the point at which computers surpass human intelligence and perhaps give us our comeuppance? We'll probably be able to plug information streams directly into the cortex for those who want it badly enough to risk the surgery. There will be smart drugs to enhance learning and memory and a flourishing black market among ambitious students to obtain them.

Having lain to rest the nature-nurture dichotomy at that point, we will have a molecular understanding of the way in which cultural narratives work their way into brain tissue and of individual susceptibility to those stories.

Then there's the mystery of consciousness. Will we finally have a framework that allows us to translate the mechanical pieces and parts into private, subjective experience? As it stands now, we don't even know what such a framework could look like ("carry the two here and that equals the experience of tasting cinnamon").

That line of research will lead us to confront the question of whether we can reproduce consciousness by replicating the exact structure of the brain – say, with zeros and ones, or beer cans and tennis balls. If this theory of materialism turns out to be correct, then we will be well on our way to downloading our brains into computers, allowing us to live forever in The Matrix.

But if materialism is incorrect, that would be equally interesting: perhaps brains are more like radios that receive an as-yet-undiscovered force. The one thing we can be sure of is this: no matter how wacky the predictions we make today, they will look tame in the strange light of the future.

David Eagleman, neuroscientist and writer

7 Physics: 'Within a decade, we'll know what dark matter is'

The next 25 years will see fundamental advances in our understanding of the underlying structure of matter and of the universe. At the moment, we have successful descriptions of both, but we have open questions. For example, why do particles of matter have mass and what is the dark matter that provides most of the matter in the universe?

I am optimistic that the answer to the mass question will be found within a few years, whether or not it is the mythical Higgs boson, and believe that the answer to the dark matter question will be found within a decade.

Key roles in answering these questions will be made by experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider, which started operations in earnest last year and is expected to run for most of the next 20 years; others will be played by astrophysical searches for dark matter and cosmological observations such as those from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.

Many theoretical proposals for answering these questions invoke new principles in physics, such as the existence of additional dimensions of space or a "supersymmetry" between the constituents of matter and the forces between them, and we will discover whether these ideas are useful for physics. Both these ideas play roles in string theory, the best guess we have for a complete theory of all the fundamental forces including gravity.

Will string theory be pinned down within 20 years? My crystal ball is cloudy on this point, but I am sure that we physicists will have an exciting time trying to find out.

John Ellis, theoretical physicist at Cern and King's College London

8 Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'

When experts talk about the coming food security crisis, the date they fixate upon is 2030. By then, our numbers will be nudging 9 billion and we will need to be producing 50% more food than we are now.

By the middle of that decade, therefore, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically. The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both.

Developed countries such as the UK are likely, for the most part, to have attempted to pull up the drawbridge, increasing national production and reducing our reliance on imports.

In response to increasing prices, some of us may well have reduced our consumption of meat, the raising of which is a notoriously inefficient use of grain. This will probably create a food underclass, surviving on a carb- and fat-heavy diet, while those with money scarf the protein.

The developing world, meanwhile, will work to bridge the food gap by embracing the promise of biotechnology which the middle classes in the developed world will have assumed that they had the luxury to reject.

In truth, any of the imported grain that we do consume will come from genetically modified crops. As climate change lays waste to the productive fields of southern Europe and north Africa, more water-efficient strains of corn, wheat and barley will be pressed into service; likewise, to the north, Russia will become a global food superpower as the same climate change opens up the once frozen and massive Siberian prairie to food production.

The consensus now is that the planet does have the wherewithal to feed that huge number of people. It's just that some people in the west may find the methods used to do so unappetising.

Jay Rayner, TV presenter and the Observer's food critic

9 Nanotechnology: 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession'

Twenty years ago, Don Eigler, a scientist working for IBM in California, wrote out the logo of his employer in letters made of individual atoms. This feat was a graphic symbol of the potential of the new field of nanotechnology, which promises to rebuild matter atom by atom, molecule by molecule, and to give us unprecedented power over the material world.

Some, like the futurist Ray Kurzweil, predict that nanotechnology will lead to a revolution, allowing us to make any kind of product for virtually nothing; to have computers so powerful that they will surpass human intelligence; and to lead to a new kind of medicine on a sub-cellular level that will allow us to abolish ageing and death.

I don't think that Kurzweil's "technological singularity" – a dream of scientific transcendence that echoes older visions of religious apocalypse – will happen. Some stubborn physics stands between us and "the rapture of the nerds". But nanotechnology will lead to some genuinely transformative applications.

New ways of making solar cells very cheaply on a very large scale offer us the best hope we have for providing low-carbon energy on a big enough scale to satisfy the needs of a growing world population aspiring to the prosperity we're used to in the developed world.

We'll learn more about intervening in our biology at the sub-cellular level and this nano-medicine will give us new hope of overcoming really difficult and intractable diseases, such as Alzheimer's, that will increasingly afflict our population as it ages.

The information technology that drives your mobile phone or laptop is already operating at the nanoscale. Another 25 years of development will lead us to a new world of cheap and ubiquitous computing, in which privacy will be a quaint obsession of our grandparents.

Nanotechnology is a different type of science, respecting none of the conventional boundaries between disciplines and unashamedly focused on applications rather than fundamental understanding.

Given the huge resources being directed towards nanotechnology in China and its neighbours, this may also be the first major technology of the modern era that is predominantly developed outside the US and Europe.

Richard Jones, pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the University of Sheffield

10 Gaming: 'We'll play games to solve problems'

In the last decade, in the US and Europe but particularly in south-east Asia, we have witnessed a flight into virtual worlds, with people playing games such as Second Life. But over the course of the next 25 years, that flight will be successfully reversed, not because we're going to spend less time playing games, but because games and virtual worlds are going to become more closely connected to reality.

There will be games where the action is influenced by what happens in reality; and there will be games that use sensors so that we can play them out in the real world – a game in which your avatar is your dog, which wears a game collar that measures how fast it's running and whether or not it's wagging its tail, for example, where you play with your dog to advance the narrative, as opposed to playing with a virtual character. I can imagine more physical activity games, too, and these might be used to harness energy – peripherals like a dance pad that actually captures energy from your dancing on top of it.

Then there will be problem-solving games: there are already a lot of games in which scientists try to teach gamers real science – how to build proteins to cure cancer, for example. One surprising trend in gaming is that gamers today prefer, on average, three to one to play co-operative games rather than competitive games. Now, this is really interesting; if you think about the history of games, there really weren't co-operative games until this latest generation of video games. In every game you can think of – card games, chess, sport – everybody plays to win. But now we'll see increasing collaboration, people playing games together to solve problems while they're enjoying themselves.

There are also studies on how games work on our minds and our cognitive capabilities, and a lot of science suggests you can use games to treat depression, anxiety and attention-deficit disorder. Making games that are both fun and serve a social purpose isn't easy – a lot of innovation will be required – but gaming will become increasingly integrated into society.

Jane McGonigal, director of games research & development at the Institute for the Future in California and author of Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Help Us Change the World (Penguin)

11 Web/internet: 'Quantum computing is the future'

The open web created by idealist geeks, hippies and academics, who believed in the free and generative flow of knowledge, is being overrun by a web that is safer, more controlled and commercial, created by problem-solving pragmatists.

Henry Ford worked out how to make money by making products people wanted to own and buy for themselves. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are working out how to make money from allowing people to share, on their terms.

Facebook and Apple are spawning cloud capitalism, in which consumers allow companies to manage information, media, ideas, money, software, tools and preferences on their behalf, holding everything in vast, floating clouds of shared data. We will be invited to trade invasions into our privacy – companies knowing ever more about our lives – for a more personalised service. We will be able to share, but on their terms.

Julian Assange and the movement that has been ignited by WikiLeaks is the most radical version of the alternative: a free, egalitarian, open and public web. The fate of this movement will be a sign of things to come. If it can command broad support, then the open web has a chance to remain a mainstream force. If, however, it becomes little more than a guerrilla campaign, then the open web could be pushed to the margins, along with national public radio.

By 2035, the web, as a single space largely made up of webpages accessed on computers, will be long gone.

As the web goes mobile, those who pay more will get faster access. We will be sharing videos, simulations, experiences and environments, on a multiplicity of devices to which we'll pay as much attention as a light switch.

Yet, many of the big changes of the next 25 years will come from unknowns working in their bedrooms and garages. And by 2035 we will be talking about the coming of quantum computing, which will take us beyond the world of binary, digital computing, on and off, black and white, 0s and 1s.

The small town of Waterloo, Ontario, which is home to the Perimeter Institute, funded by the founder of BlackBerry, currently houses the largest collection of theoretical physicists in the world.

The bedrooms of Waterloo are where the next web may well be made.

Charles Leadbeater, author and social entrepreneur

12 Fashion: 'Technology creates smarter clothes'

Fashion is such an important part of the way in which we communicate our identity to others, and for a very long time it's meant dress: the textile garments on our body. But in the coming decades, I think there'll be much more emphasis on other manifestations of fashion and different ways of communicating with each other, different ways of creating a sense of belonging and of making us feel great about ourselves.

We're already designing our identities online – manipulating imagery to tell a story about ourselves. Instead of meeting in the street or in a bar and having a conversation and looking at what each other is wearing, we're communicating in some depth through these new channels. With clothing, I think it's possible that we'll see a polarisation between items that are very practical and those that are very much about display – and maybe these are not things that you own but that you borrow or share.

Technology is already being used to create clothing that fits better and is smarter; it is able to transmit a degree of information back to you. This is partly driven by customer demand and the desire to know where clothing comes from – so we'll see tags on garments that tell you where every part of it was made, and some of this, I suspect, will be legislation-driven, too, for similar reasons, particularly as resources become scarcer and it becomes increasingly important to recognise water and carbon footprints.

However, it's not simply an issue of functionality. Fashion's gone through a big cycle in the last 25 years – from being something that was treasured and cherished to being something that felt disposable, because of a drop in prices. In fact, we've completely changed our relationship towards clothes and there's a real feeling among designers who I work with that they're trying to work back into their designs an element of emotional content.

I think there's definitely a place for technology in creating a dialogue with you through your clothes.

Dilys Williams, designer and the director for sustainable fashion at the London College of Fashion

13 Nature: 'We'll redefine the wild'

We all want to live in a world where species such as tigers, the great whales, orchids and coral reefs can persist and thrive and I am sure that the commitment that people have to maintaining the spectacle and diversity of life will continue. Over the past 50 years or so, there has been growing support for nature conservation. When we understand the causes of species losses, good conservation actions can and do reverse the trends.

But it is going to become much harder. The human population has roughly doubled since the 1960s and will increase by another third by 2030. Demands for food, water and energy will increase, inevitably in competition with other species. People already use up to 40% of the world's primary production (energy) and this must increase, with important consequences for nature.

In the UK, some familiar species will become scarcer as our rare habitats (mires, bogs and moorlands) are lost. We will be seeing the effects from gradual warming that will allow more continental species to live here, and in our towns and cities we'll probably have more species that have become adapted to living alongside people.

We can conserve species when we really try, so I'm confident that the charismatic mega fauna and flora will mostly still persist in 2035, but they will be increasingly restricted to highly managed and protected areas. The survivors will be those that cope well with people and those we care about enough to save. Increasingly, we won't be living as a part of nature but alongside it, and we'll have redefined what we mean by the wild and wilderness.

Crucially, we are still rapidly losing overall biodiversity, including soil micro-organisms, plankton in the oceans, pollinators and the remaining tropical and temperate forests. These underpin productive soils, clean water, climate regulation and disease-resistance. We take these vital services from biodiversity and ecosystems for granted, treat them recklessly and don't include them in any kind of national accounting.

Georgina Mace, professor of conservation science and director of the Natural Environment Research Council's Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London

14 Architecture: What constitutes a 'city' will change

In 2035, most of humanity will live in favelas. This will not be entirely wonderful, as many people will live in very poor housing, but it will have its good side. It will mean that cities will consist of series of small units organised, at best, by the people who know what is best for themselves and, at worst, by local crime bosses.

Cities will be too big and complex for any single power to understand and manage them. They already are, in fact. The word "city" will lose some of its meaning: it will make less and less sense to describe agglomerations of tens of millions of people as if they were one place, with one identity. If current dreams of urban agriculture come true, the distinction between town and country will blur. Attempts at control won't be abandoned, however, meaning that strange bubbles of luxury will appear, like shopping malls and office parks. To be optimistic, the human genius for inventing social structures will mean that new forms of settlement we can't quite imagine will begin to emerge.

All this assumes that environmental catastrophe doesn't drive us into caves. Nor does it describe what will happen in Britain, with a roughly stable population and a planning policy dedicated to preserving the status quo as much as possible. Britain in 25 years' time may look much as it does now, which is not hugely different from 25 years ago. Rowan Moore, Observer architecture correspondent

15 Sport: 'Broadcasts will use holograms'

Globalisation in sport will continue: it's a trend we've seen by the choice of Rio for the 2016 Olympics and Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. This will mean changes to traditional sporting calendars in recognition of the demands of climate and time zones across the planet.

Sport will have to respond to new technologies, the speed at which we process information and apparent reductions in attention span. Shorter formats, such as Twenty20 cricket and rugby sevens, could aid the development of traditional sports in new territories.

The demands of TV will grow, as will technology's role in umpiring and consuming sport. Electronics companies are already planning broadcasts using live holograms. I don't think we'll see an acceptance of performance-enhancing drugs: the trend has been towards zero tolerance and long may it remain so.

Mike Lee, chairman of Vero Communications and ex-director of communications for London's 2012 Olympic bid

16 Transport: 'There will be more automated cars'

It's not difficult to predict how our transport infrastructure will look in 25 years' time – it can take decades to construct a high-speed rail line or a motorway, so we know now what's in store. But there will be radical changes in how we think about transport. The technology of information and communication networks is changing rapidly and internet and mobile developments are helping make our journeys more seamless. Queues at St Pancras station or Heathrow airport when the infrastructure can't cope for whatever reason should become a thing of the past, but these challenges, while they might appear trivial, are significant because it's not easy to organise large-scale information systems.

The instinct to travel is innate within us, but we will have to do it in a more carbon-efficient way. It's hard to be precise, but I think we'll be cycling and walking more; in crowded urban areas we may see travelators – which we see in airports already – and more scooters. There will be more automated cars, like the ones Google has recently been testing. These driverless cars will be safer, but when accidents do happen, they may be on the scale of airline disasters. Personal jetpacks will, I think, remain a niche choice.

Frank Kelly, professor of the mathematics of systems at Cambridge University, and former chief scientific adviser to the DfT

17 Health: 'We'll feel less healthy'

Health systems are generally quite conservative. That's why the more radical forecasts of the recent past haven't quite materialised. Contrary to past predictions, we don't carry smart cards packed with health data; most treatments aren't genetically tailored; and health tourism to Bangalore remains low. But for all that, health is set to undergo a slow but steady revolution. Life expectancy is rising about three months each year, but we'll feel less healthy, partly because we'll be more aware of the many things that are, or could be, going wrong, and partly because more of us will be living with a long-term condition.

We'll spend more on health but also want stronger action to influence health. The US Congressional Budget Office forecasts that US health spending will rise from 17% of the economy today to 25% in 2025 and 49% in 2082. Their forecasts may be designed to shock but they contain an important grain of truth. Spending on health and jobs in health is bound to grow.

Some of that spending will go on the problems of prosperity – obesity, alcohol consumption and injuries from extreme sports. Currently fashionable ideas of "nudge" will have turned out to be far too weak to change behaviours. Instead, we'll be more in the realms of "shove" and "push", with cities trying to reshape whole environments to encourage people to walk and cycle.

By 2030, mental health may at last be treated on a par with physical health. Medicine may have found smart drugs for some conditions but the biggest impact may be achieved from lower-tech actions, such as meditation in schools or brain gyms for pensioners.

Healthcare will look more like education. Your GP will prescribe you a short course on managing your diabetes or heart condition, and when you get home there'll be an e-tutor to help you and a vast array of information about your condition.

Almost every serious observer of health systems believes that the great general hospitals are already anachronistic, but because hospitals are where so much of the power lies, and so much of the public attachment, it would be a brave forecaster who suggested their imminent demise.

Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of the Young Foundation

18 Religion: 'Secularists will flatter to deceive'

Over the next two and a half decades, it is quite possible that those Brits who follow a religion will continue both to fall in number and also become more orthodox or fundamentalist. Similarly, organised religions will increasingly work together to counter what they see as greater threats to their interests – creeping agnosticism and secularity.

Another 10 years of failure by the Anglican church to face down the African-led traditionalists over women bishops and gay clerics could open the question of disestablishment of the Church of England. The country's politicians, including an increasingly gay-friendly Tory party, may find it difficult to see how state institutions can continue to be associated with an image of sexism and homophobia.

I predict an increase in debate around the tension between a secular agenda which says it is merely seeking to remove religious privilege, end discrimination and separate church and state, and organised orthodox religion which counterclaims that this would amount to driving religious voices from the public square.

Despite two of the three party leaders being professed atheists, the secular tendency in this country still flatters to deceive. There is, at present, no organised, non-religious, rationalist movement. In contrast, the forces of organised religion are better resourced, more organised and more politically influential than ever before.

Dr Evan Harris, author of a secularist manifesto

19 Theatre: 'Cuts could force a new political fringe'

The theatre will weather the recent cuts. Some companies will close and the repertoire of others will be safe and cautious; the art form will emerge robust in a decade or so. The cuts may force more young people outside the existing structures back to an unsubsidised fringe and this may breed different types of work that will challenge the subsidised sector.

Student marches will become more frequent and this mobilisation may breed a more politicised generation of theatre artists. We will see old forms from the 1960s re-emerge (like agit prop) and new forms will be generated to communicate ideology and politics.

More women will emerge as directors, writers and producers. This change is already visible at the flagship subsidised house, the National Theatre, where the repertoire for bigger theatres like the Lyttelton already includes directors like Marianne Elliott and Josie Rourke, and soon the Cottesloe will start to embrace the younger generation – Polly Findlay and Lyndsey Turner.

Katie Mitchell, theatre director

20 Storytelling: 'Eventually there'll be a Twitter classic'

Are you reading fewer books? I am and reading books is sort of my job. It's just that with the multifarious delights of the internet, spending 20 hours in the company of one writer and one story needs motivation. It's worth doing, of course; like exercise, its benefits are many and its pleasures great. And yet everyone I know is doing it less. And I can't see that that trend will reverse.

That's the bad news. Twenty-five years from now, we'll be reading fewer books for pleasure. But authors shouldn't fret too much; e-readers will make it easier to impulse-buy books at 4am even if we never read past the first 100 pages.

And stories aren't becoming less popular – they're everywhere, from adverts to webcomics to fictional tweets – we're only beginning to explore the exciting possibilities of web-native literature, stories that really exploit the fractal, hypertextual way we use the internet.

My guess is that, in 2035, stories will be ubiquitous. There'll be a tube-based soap opera to tune your iPod to during your commute, a tale (incorporating on-sale brands) to enjoy via augmented reality in the supermarket. Your employer will bribe you with stories to focus on your job.

Most won't be great, but then most of everything isn't great – and eventually there'll be a Twitter-based classic.

Naomi Alderman, novelist and games writer

China's Tinahe-1a now World's Fastest Supercomputer

2010-11-01T22:48:00.003+11:00

Tianhe-1a kicks an American computer out of the top spot. The Jaguar supercomputer built by Cray at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is now only the world's second most powerful computer. That machine, powered by its thousands of Opteron cores, posted 1.75 petaflop LINPACK performance.

The system has 2.507 petaflops of computing power, draws 4 MW of power - enough to power several suburbs!

With the addition of the new supercomputer, China now has two of the three most powerful supercomputers in the world. The third most powerful one - previously in second place -- was the Nebulae supercomputer located in Shenzhen, which also uses NVIDIA's Tesla GPUs. It has a peak capacity of 1.271 petaflops in LINPACK.

Source: DailyTech

TED: Tim Jackson's economic reality check

2010-10-08T01:43:00.000+11:00

As the world faces recession, climate change, inequity and more, Tim Jackson delivers a piercing challenge to established economic principles, explaining how we might stop feeding the crises and start investing in our future.

Intel 3rd generation SSD coming soon!

2010-10-06T12:51:00.002+11:00

Smaller process nodes means higher density chips and better GB/$ value. Intel's 3rd generation SSDs will continue to use the existing moniker (ie. X25-M & X25-E) but support densities up to 600 GB, faster speeds, greater durability and support for AES-128 encryption.

Source: Anandtech

LCD monitor calibration website

2010-09-15T21:59:00.004+10:00

So I recently purchased a DELL U2410 24" LCD display to complement the existing DELL 2209WA 22" LCD. As I do a lot of graphics / web design work that requires very accurate colour representation, the DELL monitors certainly come up with the goods! They are both h-IPS (In Plane Switching) panels, as opposed to the cheaper TN (Twisted Nematic) type which is most commonly found these days.

The main benefit of IPS panels is that it provides excellent viewing angles, and this particular DELL U2410 also provides full coverage of the sRGB colour space with 10bit colour processing, meaning that it's capable of displaying lots of colours accurately!

I calibrated these displays, and you can also do this with your monitor. Firstly, install the WCS colour profile which is supplied by the manufacturer (also available via Windows Update). Then calibrate the brightness, contract, and gain levels for each channel, Red, Green, and Blue - Windows 7 users can use the Monitor Calibration tool found under the Control Panel area (or type "dccw.exe" in the start bar). I found this website provided some valuable tests: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ also.

AMD Displays Die-Shot of Upcoming Eight-Core "Orochi" Processor for the First Time

2010-09-03T15:38:00.003+10:00

Based on the upcoming Bulldozer architecture, it's 2 years behind schedule but we're looking forward to it just the same!

AMD "Orochi" design is the company's next-generation processor for high-end desktop and server markets. The chip will feature eight processing engines, but since it is based on Bulldozer micro-architecture, those cores will be packed into four modules. Every module which will have two independent integer cores (that will share fetch, decode and L2 functionality) with dedicated schedulers, one floating point unit with two 128-bit FMAC pipes with one FP scheduler. The chip will have shared L3 cache, dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and will use HyperTransport 3.1 bus. The Orochi chips will use new AM3+ form-factor and will require brand new platforms.

Source: X-bit Labs

Seven Keyholders to the Internet

2010-08-01T20:45:00.002+10:00

Did you know that the fate of the internet rests in the hands of seven individuals dispersed around the globe? Well it’s a fact and not a well known one for sure. In the event of a cataclysmic event that disrupts the internet, they are the ones that gather to restart it. In the event of a terrorist or other attack on the Internet, the key holders will be flown to an undisclosed location in the USA. Each key contains a fragment. If at least five are united, they will form a master key that can restore the Internet.

The keyholders come from USA, Canada, Britain, Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, China, and the Czech Republic.

Source: Tom's

Silicon Photonics - The Future of Interconnects

2010-07-29T12:20:00.005+10:00

Imagine all that copper cabling replaced with high speed optic fibre. Intel have announced chips that can do just that - with 4 light sources capable of 50 Gpbs transfer.

Light is a wonderful medium as it's not affected by electromagnetic interference, unlike traditional copper cables which carry electric current.

By adding more light sources this technology can scale into the Terabit/second range towards truly high-speed computing.

Source: Tom's Hardware

Latency maps

2010-06-03T21:25:00.002+10:00

Could this be a new frontier in digital art?

When I/O latency is presented as a visual heat map, some intriguing and beautiful patterns can emerge. These patterns provide insight into how a system is actually performing and what kinds of latency end-user applications experience. Many characteristics seen in these patterns are still not understood, but so far their analysis is revealing systemic behaviors that were previously unknown.

Source: ACM

Interview with Intel re 48-core SCC chip (codename Larrabee)

2010-06-01T13:03:00.003+10:00

Intel's shipping samples of its experimental 48-core processor (codename Larrabee). They are calling it a SCC "Single Chip Cloud computer". Some notable design features no floating point processor and clock speed around 1.6 GHz. It's interesting to see the future of this design, it seems highly suited for server consolidation / virtualisation applications. See the link below.

Of course the graphics card companies have been moving towards programmable architecture, their chips are highly suited for parallel applications also. Perhaps the CPU that we know of today (highly optimised single threaded) will become a "co-processor" of the future, much like the "math co-processor of the 80s).

Source: X-bit labs

Some very interesting heat transfer technologies

2010-05-30T18:08:00.002+10:00

Article features a many carbon based nano technologies, very promising!

Source: FrostyTech

iPhone hacked to run Android OS

2010-04-25T12:10:00.002+10:00

Video the video preview at: Builder AU

Web developers get the first taste of IE9

2010-03-18T03:35:00.003+11:00

Hi, I haven't had much time to post here lately.

Latest news is IE9 browser is in the works, includes hardware accelerated rendering, faster Javascript engine, better standards support (Acid3 test) and support for new standards (CSS3 / HTML5).

Source: Ars

Landmark case: ISP wins against Hollywood

2010-02-04T11:04:00.002+11:00

The giants of the film industry have lost their case against ISP iiNet in a landmark judgment handed down in the Federal Court today.

The decision had the potential to impact internet users and the internet industry profoundly as it sets a legal precedent surrounding how much ISPs are required to do to prevent customers from downloading movies and other content illegally.

But after an on-and-off eight-week trial that examined whether iiNet authorised customers to download pirated movies, Justice Dennis Cowdroy found that the ISP was not liable for the downloading habits of its customers.

In a summary of his 200-page judgment read out in court this morning, Justice Cowdroy said the evidence established that iiNet had done no more than to provide an internet service to its users.

He found that, while iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring and did not act to stop them, such findings did not necessitate a finding of authorisation.

Source: The Age

Presentation: A Crash Course in Modern Computer Hardware

2010-01-18T14:20:00.001+11:00

In this presentation from the JVM Languages Summit 2009, Cliff Click discusses the Von Neumann architecture, CISC vs RISC, the rise of multicore, Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP), pipelining, out-of-order dispatch, static vs dynamic ILP, performance impact of cache misses, memory performance, memory vs CPU caching, examples of memory/CPU cache interaction, and tips for improving performance.

Source: InfoQ

Site's terms still enforceable even if users never read them

2010-01-12T12:57:00.000+11:00

We're all guilty of skipping over a site's terms and conditions, but don't go crying to the courts if there's something in there that comes back to bite you. Another US court has upheld a site's "browserwrapped" terms of use, saying that they were displayed prominently enough that it's the user's fault for not reading them.

Source: Ars

Google's book scanning technology

2010-01-10T10:39:00.003+11:00

An interesting article on Google's book scanning technology and how it works.

Source: Scitedaily

Happy New Year

2009-12-31T13:38:00.003+11:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I just wanted to share well wishes to everyone out there. May 2010 bring you greater certainty, happiness and fulfilment in the New Year.

Domain name disputes with Google

2009-12-31T13:34:00.002+11:00

Here's an interesting article looking at how two domain operators stopped Google from shutting them down: www.froogles.com and www.groovle.com

However, Google does win the majority of cases.

Source: Ars

Autonomous TTS coupe to compete at 2010 Pikes Peak

2009-12-05T00:16:00.000+11:00

A remote control car that can drive itself will take part in one of the world's most challenging - and treacherous - motor races.

Using advanced electronics and a sophisticated internet link the driverless Audi TT is set to compete as a technological showcase in motorsport races next year, including America's renowned Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

The Autonomous Audi is currently controlled by a computer fitted inside its boot, and from 2010 will run using Java real-time programming updates received via telemetry from up to 32km away.

Source: Drive.com.au

Google proposes new transfer protocol for the web

2009-11-14T17:29:00.003+11:00

Addressing the inherent limitations of HTTP protocol, Google researchers are proposing a new transfer protocol. SPDY uses a single SSL-encrypted session between a browser and a client, and then compresses all the request/response overhead. The requests, responses, and data are all put into frames that are multiplexed over the one connection. This makes it possible to send a higher-priority small file without waiting for the transfer of a large file that's already in progress to terminate. Compressing the requests is helpful in typical ADSL/cable setups, where uplink speed is limited. For good measure, unnecessary and duplicated headers in requests and responses are done away with. SPDY also includes real server push and a "server hint" feature.

Long established protocols like HTTP are resistant to change, but the ideas proposed are a good way forward in terms of making the web more secure and faster for everyone.

Source: Ars

AMD "Bulldozer" architecture to sport 8 cores and 128 bit floating point unit

2009-11-13T20:20:00.001+11:00

Advanced Micro Devices this week disclosed the first details about its next-generation Bulldozer processor that is due in 2011. Although specifications of the chip seem to be rather promising at this point of time, in about one and a half years from now the central processing unit (CPU) may face a too strong rival and repeat the history of its predecessors.

Based on the information provided by AMD during its annual Analyst Day in November, the first Bulldozer chip code-named Zambezi (which belongs to Orochi family, according to the firm) will feature eight x86 processing engines with multithreading technology, two 128-bit FMAC floating point units, shared L2 cache, shared L3 cache as well as integrated memory controller. AMD also states that the new CPU will feature “extensive new power management innovations”.

The implementation of 128-bit FMAC is quite logical: AMD’s SSE5 set of extensions do feature 128-bit multimedia instructions as well as 128-bit three-operant instructions. In fact, there is a trend of increasing of precision of floating point instructions, as we can observe from the last decade.

What is important to note is that Intel Corp.’s forthcoming Sandy Bridge processor features Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), which support 256-bit FP operations, something very progressive. Both AMD and Intel have already released documentation regarding AVX and SSE5 for developers, but Intel managed to unleash a new compiler supporting AVX in June ’09, whereas AMD has not managed to roll-out an SSE5-supporting tool. As a result, the vast majority of developers are already capable of creating AVX-capable software; however, almost no designers can make SSE5-capable programs at the moment.

Nevertheless, based on the diagram that AMD demonstrated, the company intends to dramatically improve multithreading performance of its CPUs: two INT schedulers, an FP scheduler and separate data caches for each of four cores should do the job very well.

AMD has not released any data regarding performance of Bulldozer chip, unfortunately, but since the chip designer positions the unit as a solution for desktop and server solutions in 2011, it does expect this 32nm SOI with high-k metal gate power-house to be a high-performer.

Invention for collecting water from trees

2009-10-30T14:55:00.003+11:00

Ingenious little invention... takes 4 hours to collect water from trees.

Source: Inhabitat

US Judge Rules Metadata Public Record

2009-10-30T14:51:00.001+11:00

The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself a public record. Given the frequency with which metadata outs lobbyists' and corporations' efforts to mask their own contributions to public debates, this is a good thing.

Source: Ars Technica

Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own

2009-10-28T21:46:00.001+11:00

A town in the USA has decided to roll out its own 50 Mbps broadband network with positive results.

Source: Ars

Model confronts 'skank' blogger

2009-08-20T19:47:00.002+10:00

The Vogue Australia covergirl who successfully sued Google to reveal the identity of a blogger who called her a "skank" has phoned and forgiven her online nemesis.

Source: The Age

PayPal's recent fee hikes revealed

2009-08-20T19:37:00.002+10:00

PayPal made some policy changes in June, but it's likely that you haven't heard much about them until very recently. That's because the company quietly slid in extra fees that will affect nearly all users but failed to be transparent about the changes. Now, the Internet is slowly discovering what happened, and no one is happy about it.

Source: Ars Technica

Google working on response to Binghoo! threat

2009-08-12T12:09:00.003+10:00

Recently announced that Microsoft's new Bing search engine will be powering Yahoo websites, that brings the balance to approx 30 / 70 of the search market (in the USA) with the majority to Google.

But we all know too well how quickly the landscape can change in the web world, Google has announced changes to its search algorithms. Most of the changes are under-the-bonnet and should bring better search experience to users.

You can experiment with the new Google search: www2.sandbox.google.com

Please comment your thoughts and ideas below.

Chinese teenager beaten to death at internet addiction boot camp

2009-08-05T09:59:00.002+10:00

A teenager was reportedly beaten to death by trainers at a rehabilitation camp in China where his parents had sent him to cure his internet addiction.

Deng Fei said he paid 7000 yuan ($A1190) to give his son a month's training at the Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to rid him of his addiction to the internet.

But instead, the boy's father alleges, that the boy was put in solitary confinement shortly after his arrival and then beaten to death by his trainers who scolded him for running too slowly.

"My son was very healthy and was not a criminal. He just had an internet addiction when I left him at the camp," Deng Fei told the paper. "We can't believe our only son was beaten to death."

China has the world's largest number of internet users with 338 million - more than the entire population of the United States.

More than 10 million of the country's 100 million teenage web surfers are internet addicts, the China Daily said, citing a survey by the China Youth internet Association last year.

There is controversy over the treatments for internet addiction and how it is diagnosed. The health ministry last month banned the use of electroshock therapy to treat internet addiction, the China Daily said.

Source: The Age

Tenenbaum case: jury awards RIAA $675k (or $22k per song)

2009-08-02T13:06:00.001+10:00

Boston student Joel Tenenbaum was found guilty of infringement for illegal file-sharing and was ordered to pay $22,500 per song for a total of $675K. Even the defense presented by Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, who joined Tenenbaum’s legal team early in the case, wasn’t enough and the verdict came down from the jury after less than 3 hours’ deliberation.

"I'm disappointed, but not surprised, but I'm thankful that it wasn't much bigger, that it wasn't millions," Tenenbaum told Ars after the verdict was announced. We asked him if he regrets not settling earlier on in the process. "Ask me in a couple of months," Tenenbaum replied. He also told Ars that he doesn't have the ability to pay the judgment and said that he'd be filing for bankruptcy if the award stands.

Source: Ars Technica

Chinese stop building Green Dam

2009-07-30T14:32:00.001+10:00

The PRoC has apparently listened to the voice of its workers and decided to rethink its cunning plan to impose censorship on PCs.

The regime has announced it will delay the requirement that all computers sold in the country carry a specific software application known as "Green Dam Youth Escort".

The Green Dam software works like an Internet filter and spyware and is said to be capable of blocking access to any sites or information that the Chinese government doesn't like.

However the move has been about as popular in China as forgiving the late Japanese Emperor for war crimes. There were considerable objections voiced to the Chinese government by manufacturers and internal groups.

Part of the problem might have been that the software did not actually work all that well, and the part that did was nicked from a US company.

This reduced its ability to be spun to the public as a national effort to protect China's children and workers.

Source: L'Inq

Microsoft and Yahoo! for search alliance: powered by Bing

2009-07-29T20:16:00.001+10:00

Microsoft and Yahoo have reportedly signed a new deal, which will give the pair a third of the search market. Microsoft's Bing search engine will power Yahoo's search, reportedly, while Yahoo will switch to a supporting role, deploying Microsoft's advertising technology.

Source: TG Daily

OLPC: "Sugar was a mistake" - Negroponte

2009-07-24T01:42:00.001+10:00

The noble goal of a $100 laptop for developing nations has come to fruition -- but of course at a higher cost and later date than expected. One Laptop Per Child has succeeded in delivering 900,000 XO laptops into the hands of kids, but that's a far cry from the many millions expected and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte is pulling no punches in describing what went wrong. He's still bitter at Intel, claiming it worked to "spoil the market," and angry about many nations cutting back on large deals. But, he isn't just lashing outwardly, calling the custom Linux-based operating system that runs the XO, a "mistake," saying "Sugar should have been an application" of the sort it has now morphed to be with Sugar on a Stick. Too little too late? OLPC has already made massive staff cuts and sales from the Give One, Get One program dropped 90 percent last year. With machines like the EduBook selling for $160 to institutions and able to run common operating systems, we're not seeing the future get any more bright for this little green guy.

Source: ZDNet

Google announces Google Chrome OS

2009-07-08T15:53:00.003+10:00

Designed for x86 and ARM architectures, Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year Google will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010.

Google Blog

Jammie Thomas challenges "monstrous" $1.92M P2P verdict

2009-07-08T11:19:00.000+10:00

It was only a matter of time: Jammie Thomas-Rasset has asked the federal judge overseeing her file-sharing lawsuit to toss the $1.92 million damage award, reduce it to the statutory minimum of $18,000, or grant her a new trial.

The motion, filed today in Minnesota federal court, is blunt. "The verdict in this case was shocking," it begins. "For 24 songs, available for $1.29 on iTunes, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per song—a ratio of 1:62,015. For 24 albums, available for no more than $15 at the store, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per album—a ratio of 1:5,333. For a single mother's noncommercial use of KaZaA, and upon neither finding nor evidence of actual injury to the plaintiffs, the judgment fines Jammie Thomas $1.92 million. Such a judgment is grossly excessive and, therefore, subject to remittitur as a matter of federal common law."

Source: Ars Technica

Goldman's black box trading source code is out

2009-07-08T11:15:00.002+10:00

A Russian programmer named Sergey Aleynikov was picked up this past Friday by the FBI for allegedly stealing and passing along code that, if circulating out in the wild, could expose US markets to manipulation and cost Aleynikov's former employer, Goldman Sachs, millions.

If you have your hands on the code that runs on Goldman's trading platform—again, one of the largest in the world—then you know with 100 percent accuracy which trades Goldman's computers are going to make in response to a given set of inputs. All you need then is even faster hardware so that you can get to those trades just a few milliseconds before Goldman, and you'll always beat the bank and therefore be able to sell to Goldman at a slight premium. Goldman will therefore make less on every trade, since you'll essentially be usurping their place in the pecking order.

The NYSE puts out a weekly list of the top program traders by volume, and Goldman typically tops this list by a country mile. Then last week's list came out, and Goldman's name was shockingly absent. And today, now that the code theft story is out, the NYSE has put out a statement claiming that Goldman's absence on the list was the result of a "system error;" it has also released a revised list showing Goldman once again dominating program trading activity.

Source: Ars Technica

CompuServe Classic shut down

2009-07-06T21:27:00.002+10:00

Another chapter in internet history closed on 30 June, 2009.

Online shopping? Stock quotes? Worldwide weather forecasts? CompuServe was providing all of that in the 1980s. Who needs color graphics, music and streaming videos? CompuServe could provide users with what they needed with plain text on a slow dial-up connection.

Source: Paper PC

Australian gamer blackballed over virtual world 'fraud'

2009-07-06T11:24:00.002+10:00

Facing real world debts, a trusted figure in a popular online game stole money from the virtual bank he ran and exchanged it for cash through the black market.

It happened in EVE Online, where more than 300,000 subscribers pay $US15 a month to play. They gain wealth through hard work, manipulating the market, or killing rivals in a distant future where humans have colonised the stars in an online game similar to World of Warcraft and Second Life.

"I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it. But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation," he said. EBank survived the crisis. But Richard will not be returning to EVE anytime soon.

Source: The Age

Just goes to show human nature reflects similarly in the virtual world (EVE) as it does in the real (Wall St). Perhaps the problem is not just people but also the governing systems, the "game rules", which create unbalanced power and incentives which does not deter its abuse. Trust cannot exist in a monetary society therefore we need another solution - any comments?

Palm Pre Spoofs iPhone

2009-06-18T21:03:00.002+10:00

The new Palm Pre cellphone has a “media sync” feature which lets the device sync with iTunes in a fashion identical to an iPod. The Palm Pre reports its Product ID as iPod and Vendor ID as Apple with a few other changes. With Palm already pulling tricks like this presumably through software we wonder if this will become a full-on arms race.

Source: Hack a Day

Update: Chinese security software now optional

2009-06-18T09:36:00.003+10:00

China's latest attempt at mass censorship has taken another turn. Reports that the "Green Dam" software can allow hackers to easily control the host PC, as well as accusations from US-based security company (Solid Oak) that Green Dam software stole their IP. Chinese government announced on 16 June 2009 that Green Dam will now be optional.

Source: Toms Guide

Update: Chinese security software full of security bugs

2009-06-12T21:02:00.001+10:00

Every PC in China could be at risk of being taken over by malicious hackers because of flaws in compulsory government software. The potential faults were brought to light by Chinese computer experts who said the flaw could lead to a “large-scale disaster”.

Source: ZitZot

Chinese government requires all new PCs to include censorship software

2009-06-10T18:40:00.000+10:00

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ordered that all personal computers, whether made in China or imported from abroad, must include specific software to filter inappropriate information. Rebecca MacKinnon, assistant professor at the Journalism & Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong, has posted a copy of the Chinese government order on her Web site.

According to her translation, Web filtering software called Green Dam Youth Escort must be installed on all PCs sold in China as of July 1. The software also must be included on a hard-drive partition or on a CD included with the computer to allow for reinstallation.

Source: ZitZot

Dell Bans E-waste Export to Developing Countries

2009-05-14T11:22:00.002+10:00

Dell - which scored pretty poorly in the latest Greenpeace report - has just officially adopted a ban of the export of e-waste as part of its policy. The company, which also has a recycling program, says it's been holding its partners to high standards for several years, but has revised its policy to conform to the Basel Convention, an international treaty that governs e-waste handling. E-waste is growing, toxic problem in developing countries like China and Ghana.

Source: Engadget

Oracle Only Interested in Java, What to do with Sun Hardware?

2009-05-14T11:05:00.001+10:00

The Financial Times today reports that when Oracle planned to buy Sun it was more interested in the software part of the company. Remember back in April, when the deal was announced, Oracle made a huge deal about Java? Well, apparently, that’s because initially that was all the company wanted!

Source: Financial Times

Eu Fines Intel For Anticompetitive Practices

2009-05-14T10:59:00.004+10:00

The European Commission has imposed a fine of €1.06 billion on Intel Corp. for violating EC Treaty antitrust rules on the abuse of a dominant market position by engaging in illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for x86 central processing units (CPUs).

Rebates such as those applied by Intel are recognized in many jurisdictions around the world as anti-competitive and unlawful because the effect in practice is to deny consumers a choice of products.

Update: Intel is appealing the decision. Russia recently initiated anti-trust enquiries against Intel.

Source: X-bit Labs

Hackers Holding Database Data for Ransom

2009-05-09T10:08:00.002+10:00

The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program has reportedly been compromised, with those responsible deleting records and now wanting $10 million before the records are restored.

Hacker's message: “I have your [expletive] In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions,” the hacker said in a ransom note. “Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”

The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program website is used to help pharmacists track prescription drug abuse, and has the records of 8 million state residents available through the network. The network, along with other portals connected to the Virginia Department of Health Professions, is still unavailable at the moment.

Source: Zitzot

Goodbye Geocities

2009-04-27T22:15:00.000+10:00

Another chapter in the history of the web.

Yahoo announced Thursday that it will shut down GeoCities, the Web site building business it acquired a decade ago. “We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways,” Yahoo said in a statement. “We will be closing GeoCities later this year.” The closure is part of an effort to streamline operations at Yahoo, a plan that chief executive Carol Bartz outlined in more detail during the company’s Tuesday earnings call. “We are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others,” according to a spokeswoman. “For example, after careful consideration, we recently discontinued products such as Yahoo Briefcase, Farechase, My Web, Yahoo Audio Search, RSS ads, Yahoo Pets, Yahoo Live, Kickstart and Yahoo For Teachers, and outsourced Launchcast radio to CBS. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with our consumers and partners in the months ahead.”

People with existing Geocities Web sites can still access and add content to their sites, but they will be shut down by the end of the year. “You don’t need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible,” Yahoo said in a FAQ on the Geocities site. “We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time.” The company urged users to upgrade to Yahoo Web Hosting service. Yahoo purchased GeoCities in January 1999 for $5 billion.

Source: PC Magazine

Landmark Pirate Bay Case : 4 Found Guilty

2009-04-18T10:37:00.003+10:00

Four men behind a Swedish file-sharing Web site used by millions to exchange movies and music have been found guilty of collaborating to violate copyright law in a landmark court verdict in Stockholm.

The four defendants — Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstrom, three founders and one patron of The Pirate Bay — were sentenced to one year in jail and also ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to several major media companies including Warner Brothers, Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony BMG and EMI.

The Pirate Bay allows users to exchange files including movies, music, games and software, but does not host the files itself. It claims more than 3.5 million registered users.

The court case, which involved both a criminal case and a civil claim brought by the media companies, marks a key victory for anti-piracy campaigners, who had long targeted the Web site. Should the perpetrators of Internet piracy be punished? Have your say

The year-long prison terms are for violating Swedish law, while the damages are compensation to the media giants in the civil case — though the court ordered the men to pay just one-third of the 110 million kronor ($13 million) which the companies had asked for.

Friday’s verdict did not include an order to shut down The Pirate Bay site.

Its owners have consistently shrugged off legal threats and police raids, posting letters from entertainment industry lawyers on their Web site with mocking responses.

When Dreamworks studio demanded that the site act over file-sharing of Dreamworks’ movie “Shrek 2,” The Pirate Bay threatened to sue for harassment and lodge a formal complaint “for sending frivolous legal threats.”

“It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are … morons,” the response continued, suggesting that studio representatives perform a sexual act. The response closed with an obscenity.

Site owners dismissed the effects of a police raid in 2006, saying the site had been down longer on other occasions due to illness or drunkenness than when “the U.S. and Swedish government forces the police to steal our servers … yawn.”

But Magnus Eriksson, who in 2003 co-founded the “loosely formed group of theorists, artists and programmers” that spawned The Pirate Bay, says there are serious issues at stake.

He does not think copyrighted material should be free for everyone, “but that it already is.”

“The control over what people communicate is lost and we have to adapt to this new state of things,” he said via e-mail. “To monitor all communications, fight all new digital technologies and spread a culture of fear in what should be a free and open communication network is not a desirable option.”

Entertainment companies claim The Pirate Bay has hurt their box office profits, part of an annual loss the Motion Picture Association of America claims to be about $6 billion a year worldwide.

“Hollywood studios are businesses. They’re there to make money,” said association lawyer Thomas Dillon. “It costs $100 million to make a feature film, so of course they’re quite keen to get some back. So I don’t accept this argument that there’s some benefit to culture in allowing people to make copies of commercial films and getting them for free.”

Monique Wadsted, a Swedish lawyer for the MPAA, said The Pirate Bay was also harming individual artists.

A victory for the entertainment companies “will, of course, be for all authors all around the world, some kind of redress… because what is going on now is actually a plundering of the author’s works,” she said via e-mail.

“If some authors find it good to market their products using file-sharing or whatever, they are free to do that,” she added. “But that is not what is happening at the moment. What’s happening at the moment is that authors’ and rights holders’ works are file-shared against their will and that is not acceptable.”

She argued that The Pirate Bay “is specifically tailored for copyright infringement.”

The prosecution claims the site provides a search engine that helps people find and download copyrighted material including movies, music and games — in effect, enabling copyright theft.

The site’s supporters say they’re doing nothing wrong under Swedish law because the site doesn’t actually put the copyrighted material on the Web site.

Internet piracy and illegal downloading from peer-to-peer systems are some of the biggest piracy problems in Europe, the MPAA argues.

Internet piracy is growing at a faster rate in Europe than anywhere else in the world, the MPAA says, because of increased broadband use, weak laws, and lenient public perceptions.

Sweden’s official efforts to battle online piracy have been weak, the MPAA says.

Eriksson, the co-founder of the group that led to The Pirate Bay, says the MPAA’s argument that file-sharing hurts movie studio revenues is “nonsense.”

“Cinema is doing better than ever,” he said by e-mail. “They only claim this because they calculate losses by looking at the number of downloads and imagining that all of them would have been a purchase if they hadn’t been downloaded first.”

Eriksson said what was at stake in the Swedish courtroom was the future of the Internet itself.

“The Internet revolution meant that we created a global network where any digital entity could connect and exchange information with any other,” he said. “Anti-piracy efforts must be seen in the light of a counter-revolution against this that goes all the way to the very infrastructure of the net.”

He suggested that even if The Pirate Bay is convicted of facilitating making works public through its indexing service, which he does not expect, Internet piracy will not stop.

“The prosecution can’t understand that The Pirate Bay is just one stratification of a social and technological change that is decentralized,” he said.

“Piracy does not have a head that you can cut off, and The Pirate Bay is just a technology allowing communication, a part of the Internet infrastructure.”

Source: CNN

Microsoft to Discontinue Encarta Encyclopedia

2009-04-01T18:03:00.003+11:00

Microsoft is shutting down its Encarta encyclopedia Web sites and will also discontinue its Student and Premium Encarta software products. Microsoft says “The category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed ... People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.” The Encarta Web sites worldwide will shut down on Oct. 31 and Microsoft will stop selling the software products by June this year. One exception is the Encarta Japan Web site, which will stay live until the last day of this year.

A win to Wikipedia.

Source: Encarta

UK Govt Databases Slammed as Illegal

2009-03-23T23:34:00.001+11:00

The report entitled Database State was prompted by the catastrophic incompetence of a number government departments which lost huge amounts of data, including the entire child benefit database in October 2007.

Of the 46 databases investigated, only six were found to conform to current human rights and data protection laws. Nearly twice as many are described as: "Almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned." The remaining 29 databases all have significant problems.

Major cock-ups were found in the NHS summary care record, the national childhood obesity database, the national pupil database, and the automatic number-plate recognition system.

The report estimates that £16 billion a year is being spent on IT projects, of which only a third end up being of any use.

Source: Inquirer

ISOHunt in Pivotal Lawsuit - Could Make Google / Other Search Engines Illegal

2009-03-19T23:36:00.001+11:00

The owner of the ISOHunt search engine website (used specifically to find Bittorents submitted by users) is fighting the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) in court against claims that his site pirates music. The company’s president, Gary Fung, wants Canada’s Supreme Court to rule on the legality of search engines being used to identify material which may ultimately be used illegally to determine if they, too, are culpable.

Fung has reported receiving numerous legal threats from the CRIA, the Canadian equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). In response, he is fighting back in court, launching a lawsuit of his own.

The ruling could have very significant implications. Google, for example, can be used today to find pornography very easily — as can Yahoo, MSN, etc. In most states, viewing pornography below a certain age (typically 18) is illegal, yet it is very easy to bypass those kinds of security features on websites linked directly from Google searches. So is Google culpable for presenting material which may be used illegally? That’s essentially the very question Fung wants addressed.

Fung believes that using ISOHunt in a similar way to find Bittorrent sites (which may or may not carry materials that could be used illegally, and which may or may not ultimately result in illegal materials use) is no different. And his argument is that a search engine capable of finding potentially illegal material does not a crime make. In this way, he is forcing the issue to be resolved by the highest court in Canada.

Fung’s argument is very straight-forward — that his website never touches any of the files exchanged via Bittorrent applications, which are peer-to-peer and must be setup or launched externally to his page’s search results. And while his site is used to find the files, his participation in the experience ends there. A similar comparison could be drawn from asking some guy down the street where to buy drugs. That person might know, might even tell you, but until you actually go and buy drugs there no crime has been committed because having information is not illegal.

Fung is currently engaged in lawsuits with the Motion Picture Association of America, with court proceedings there lasting over a year.

Source: TGDaily

Google to Serve Targeted Personalised Ads

2009-03-12T14:04:00.000+11:00

Google has entered the sometimes controversial arena of behaviour-based advertising. It has launched a system that will serve up ads to web users based on their previous online activities. The search giant is offering users the chance to see and edit their profiles and it will also offer them the choice to opt out of the service. But privacy campaigners are outraged by the move, with Privacy International calling for a parliamentary enquiry. The trial service launches on YouTube and Google from 11 March but advertisers will not be able to display advertisements until April. Initially a handful of advertisers will be invited to take part. The system uses a cookie - a small piece of text that lives inside a web browser - to track users as they visit different websites that show ads through its AdSense program. Users will be assigned to categories based on the content of the pages they visit.

“If a user is a keen traveller and visits lots of travel sites, Google could show them more travel-related ads,” the search giant said in a statement. “We believe that ads are a valuable source of information that can connect people to products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, we can create more value,” it said. But Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, has his doubts. “Google might well hype their targeting system as a boon to pet owners, but the reality is that the service will track just about everything you do and everything you’re interested in, no matter how personal or sensitive. Some privacy campaigners believe Google should have offered its advertising service on an opt-in rather than an opt-out basis. “The cookie doesn’t show up any personally identifiable information so that is why we think opt-out is the right way to go,” said a Google spokesman. Information on YouTube , such as the videos people have been watching, will “be factored into” the system, said the spokesman.

Source: BBC

100 Oldest .com Domains

2009-03-08T09:48:00.001+11:00

Below list of domains ever first registered, the first some 24 years ago at the birth of the internet. List also shows current ranking:

Ranking / Registered / Current Ranking
001 symbolics.com 03/15/85 288052
002 bbn.com 04/24/85 210628
003 think.com 05/24/85 n/a
004 mcc.com 07/11/85 423261
005 dec.com 09/30/85 n/a
006 northrop.com 11/07/85 n/a
007 xerox.com 01/09/86 9561
008 sri.com 01/17/86 100494
009 hp.com 03/03/86 191
010 bellcore.com 03/05/86 n/a
011 ibm.com 03/19/86 411
012 sun.com 03/19/86 484
013 intel.com 03/25/86 1018
014 ti.com 03/25/86 11757
015 att.com 04/25/86 336
016 gmr.com 05/08/86 n/a
017 tek.com 05/08/86 71044
018 fmc.com 07/10/86 688877
019 ub.com 07/10/86 n/a
020 bell-atl.com 08/05/86 n/a
021 ge.com 08/05/86 11629
022 grebyn.com 08/05/86 n/a
023 isc.com 08/05/86 n/a
024 nsc.com 08/05/86 n/a
025 stargate.com 08/05/86 183064
026 boeing.com 09/02/86 15882
027 itcorp.com 09/18/86 n/a
028 siemens.com 09/29/86 4802
029 pyramid.com 10/18/86 804133
030 alphacdc.com 10/27/86 n/a
031 bdm.com 10/27/86 503674
032 fluke.com 10/27/86 113826
033 inmet.com 10/27/86 n/a
034 kesmai.com 10/27/86 n/a
035 mentor.com 10/27/86 86074
036 nec.com 10/27/86 38938
037 ray.com 10/27/86 n/a
038 rosemount.com 10/27/86 n/a
039 vortex.com 10/27/86 502710
040 alcoa.com 11/05/86 104909
041 gte.com 11/05/86 n/a
042 adobe.com 11/17/86 56
043 amd.com 11/17/86 2001
044 das.com 11/17/86 n/a
045 data-io.com 11/17/86 n/a
046 octopus.com 11/17/86 775704
047 portal.com 11/17/86 n/a
048 teltone.com 11/17/86 n/a
049 3com.com 12/11/86 33649
050 amdahl.com 12/11/86 n/a
051 ccur.com 12/11/86 n/a
052 ci.com 12/11/86 196502
053 convergent.com 12/11/86 n/a
054 dg.com 12/11/86 n/a
055 peregrine.com 12/11/86 n/a
056 quad.com 12/11/86 n/a
057 sq.com 12/11/86 n/a
058 tandy.com 12/11/86 n/a
059 tti.com 12/11/86 n/a
060 unisys.com 12/11/86 23969
061 cgi.com 01/19/87 102209
062 cts.com 01/19/87 n/a
063 spdcc.com 01/19/87 n/a
064 apple.com 02/19/87 66
065 nma.com 03/04/87 n/a
066 prime.com 03/04/87 n/a
067 philips.com 04/04/87 2810
068 datacube.com 04/23/87 n/a
069 kai.com 04/23/87 n/a
070 tic.com 04/23/87 n/a
071 vine.com 04/23/87 n/a
072 ncr.com 04/30/87 46207
073 cisco.com 05/14/87 1329
074 rdl.com 05/14/87 n/a
075 slb.com 05/20/87 11557
076 parcplace.com 05/27/87 n/a
077 utc.com 05/27/87 135686
078 ide.com 06/26/87 n/a
079 trw.com 07/09/87 224218
080 unipress.com 07/13/87 n/a
081 dupont.com 07/27/87 24676
082 lockheed.com 07/27/87 n/a
083 rosetta.com 07/28/87 266032
084 toad.com 08/18/87 n/a
085 quick.com 08/31/87 n/a
086 allied.com 09/03/87 111176
087 dsc.com 09/03/87 351550
088 sco.com 09/03/87 76724
089 gene.com 09/22/87 108440
090 kccs.com 09/22/87 n/a
091 spectra.com 09/22/87 776373
092 wlk.com 09/22/87 n/a
093 mentat.com 09/30/87 n/a
094 wyse.com 10/14/87 313648
095 cfg.com 11/02/87 n/a
096 marble.com 11/09/87 113962
097 cayman.com 11/16/87 n/a
098 entity.com 11/16/87 n/a
099 ksr.com 11/24/87 n/a
100 nynexst.com 11/30/87 n/a

20 Tips for Getting Started in e-Commerce

2009-02-28T00:26:00.004+11:00

Credit goes to Actinic Software for posting this sobering article, replicated below. Although EU-centric, principles apply equally if you are wishing to engage e-Commerce Down Under.

The wild west of the internet has been largely tamed and lots of people are succeeding online these days. Sadly, there have been numerous casualties, but the good news is that you don't have to follow in their footsteps. Here are some of the good practices that have been extracted from the last few years of turmoil.

1. It's not the technology
Internet technology has enabled the whole ecommerce revolution to happen. But if we focus on technology, we will never succeed commercially. The rules of ecommerce are like those for any other business. You have to have something that customers want, at a price that they can afford and where you can make money. Then you have to let your prospects know about it. It's as simple as that.

2. Marketing, marketing, marketing
If your great idea is ever to be profitable, people have to know about it. You need to find out how people search on the internet. What are the key words that they use for your type of product? What other ways do they look online? Talk to lots of people and try to understand a bit more about it all. Here are some sites that can help: www.searchenginewatch.com, www.overture.com, and www.webmasterworld.com (look under 'Ecommerce' and 'The Marketing World').

3. Market offline
It's true that all of your prospects are online, but it also true that they are all offline more of the time. Some very successful internet companies built initial awareness almost exclusively offline. You need to ask whether traditional marketing like advertising, PR or direct mail can help.

4. Remember your existing customers
Once you are up and running, remember that existing customers are your best customers. Make sure that you encourage them to return by making special offers and letting them know what you are doing at your store.

5. Use stuff that already works
Use technology that works, not stuff that’s a masterpiece in progress. Why bother debugging software from some start-up or paying thousands for a bespoke solution that leaves you reliant on the designer ever after, when you could be using stuff that is already working on thousands of online stores.

6. Sell from the second they arrive
Once someone arrives at your site, marketing is over and selling begins. So leave the smooth talk out, and make it easy to find your products. Have a clear link like "Shop Here". And don't ask them to register before they can look at your catalogue. There will be plenty of time to get their name and address once they have decided to buy.

7. Make sure your site works for you, not your designer
Don’t let a fantastic design spoil your business because, for instance, the design stuff takes so long to load that everyone just clicks away. Make everything the servant of the business objective, which is to make sales.

8. Get a good online payment provider
You need to be able to take payments online, and it makes sense to team up with a good one.

9. Sign up with a good hosting company
Your online store needs to be hosted somewhere, and there are plenty of great deals around for good, low cost web hosting. Look for a company that is a hosting specialist, rather than one trying to be a jack of all trades.

10. Make arrangements for the shipping of orders
Arranging for shipping is not so daunting as you might think, because there are many specialist firms to help. Many ecommerce merchants ship abroad without any problems. The big boys are UPS, Fedex, DHL and ParcelForce, but there are many others. Ask for advice from other local businesses that already ship their goods.

11. Don't miss opportunities abroad
Surprisingly, it's fairly straightforward. If you're eating out in France and you pay by credit card then the restaurant will be paid in euros. The opposite is also true, so when foreign buyers visit your site you can be paid in pounds and they will be charged in their local currency.

12. Be legal and decent
Like every area of business these days, ecommerce is surrounded by a maze of red tape, rules and regulations. In fact, selling online tends to be worse because of the international dimension. And any slip-ups you make are there for the world to see, so it's doubly important to be legal and decent. The following five tips try to pull together some of the areas that you need to think about and understand. They shouldn't be taken as definitive – it's your job to comply with the law – but they are a good place to start.

13. Comply with the EU Distance Selling Directive
Under the EU Distance Selling Directive, you must make clear who you are by providing full contact details including an address and phone number. This is also good practice for building trust.

Under the same Directive, you must accept goods for return within 7 working days. Why not make this a selling point?

14. Get your tax right
As of 1 April 2006, you must be VAT registered if your annual sales exceed £61,000. If you're not VAT registered, you don't have to worry about charging VAT and it would actually be against the law to do so.

Selling to the EU, you should charge VAT at your usual rate. But there are some exceptions. If you exceed the individual VAT threshold for Germany, France, etc. then you should charge VAT at the appropriate country VAT rate when selling into that country, not the usual UK 17.5% rate. Also, if your customer is a non-UK business in the EU and is registered for VAT in its own country, the buyer is allowed to quote their VAT registration number to you in order to be exempted from tax.

Finally, you don’t have to charge VAT when selling outside the EU, such as to the US.

15. Allow for disabled visitors it's the law!
Make sure that you comply with the disability law which is effective from late 2004. The key requirement is that you have to take "reasonable" steps to provide access to people with disabilities, and this includes your online store. One way of doing that is to make sure that all images have alternate text tags so visually impaired people can still navigate your site.

16. Privacy matters
You will probably need to register with the Information Commissioner's Office at www.ico.gov.uk. Registering takes just a few hours of careful thought and work.

17. Comply with the rules on sending email
You are only allowed to send direct email marketing to individuals who have agreed to receive it from you by directly opting in. It is not sufficient simply to provide an opt out.

However, if you obtained their details in the course of making a sale, or in the course of a sales enquiry, the rules are different. You are allowed to continue communicating with them provided there is a free method of opting out each time you send them an email. This can be by email.

18. Turn burdens into a benefit
Assuming that you are legal and decent, let the world know. Anything that adds to your credibility will help online. So why not list all of the things that you have done under the heading "We comply with the following legal and tax regulations"?

19. Avoid Fraud
One potential problem when selling online is fraud. Don’t get things out of proportion, there are problems with any business and no one has managed to entirely eliminate shoplifting yet. Unfortunately it's true that foreign orders from some countries seem to be much more likely to be fraudulent than others. If in doubt, stick to ones from Western Europe and North America.

To help avoid fraudulent orders look out for these indicators:

They tend to use the most expensive shipping method available
They tend to choose the most expensive products
They tend to use free email addresses such as Yahoo or Hotmail.
In addition you can check whether an order is fraudulent by asking for a fax of a copy of the back strip of the credit card; asking for proof of name and address to be faxed; or you can telephone to make sure that the number is genuine. Most fraudsters give up at the first hurdle and you don't hear from them again.

20. Go for it
Finally, you may have been wondering for a while whether ecommerce would be worth it. Well the results are now firmly in, and it’s very clear. Ecommerce is really on the rise, while conventional retail is relatively static. In the UK, around 6% of all retail sales are made across the web. What’s stopping you getting your share of this growing pie?

Source: Actinic Software

Living in a (Mis)information Society

2009-02-13T10:39:00.002+11:00

As reported on Slashdot:

Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.

What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia.

Source: Slashdot

Intel 32nm Process, a Hint of Good Things to Come

2009-02-12T21:40:00.003+11:00

The new 32nm lithography process allows smaller, more highly integrated chips. The next generation due late 09 / early 10 include CPU (dual core), graphics processor and memory controller (dual channel) in a single package. The new chips are codenamed Clarkdale and Arrandale.

Benefits include reduced power consumption and heat dissipation thereby allowing portable devices with relatively high levels of performance, longer battery life and thinner / light weight designs. Can't wait to see these in laptops!

Source: Xbit Labs

India's "$10 Laptop" Huge Disappointment

2009-02-05T11:09:00.004+11:00

The news no doubt had Nicholas Negroponte and the lads over at the OLPC foundation quaking in their boots. The XO Laptop was already getting its ass kicked by the barrage of netbooks that hit the market shortly after its launch and Intel’s rival educational notebook, the Classmate PC was winning over governments and filling more classrooms than the OLPC’s laptop.

Fortunately for the OLPC and unfortunately for everyone else, it seems like there’s less to the $10/$20 laptop than we originally thought--considerably less. With "megabytes" of onboard memory and wi-fi capabilities we (rather optimistically, we’ll admit) pictured something that resembled the netbooks we’re seeing now but a little more primitive. What we saw, was not a laptop, nor was it $10, or even $20. And why it was being touted as a laptop still remains a mystery

Times of India reports that the Sakshat is a 10-inch by 5-inch plastic box which, despite an official unveiling at India's Sri Venkateswara University yesterday, still contains only mystery parts. It appeared more like a storage device than anything else. As for the $10 price, the expected price is closer to thirty bucks. Bummer. It feels like being promised a car and getting a single rollerskate.

Source: TG Daily

Touch Recognition from SMART

2009-02-04T02:05:00.001+11:00

FYI, nothing new, but well implemented:

HD Playback Experience on Modern Graphics Cards

2009-02-02T23:22:00.002+11:00

For those of you who are considering a HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer) the graphics processor will be one of your most crucial decisions. Not only does it affect visual quality, overall system noise and performance levels, it also determines audio capabilities of your setup.

Check out the Xbit Labs article.

Mr. Putin Angry at Mr. Dell

2009-01-29T18:26:00.001+11:00

I guess Dell irked Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin. How did Dell piss off the PM? What did he say that was so insulting? Mr. Dell simply offer help with IT expansion.

Putin went off saying: "We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity." The slapdown took many of the people in the audience by surprise.

Source: CNN Money

US Supreme Courts Declined to Extend Software Patents to Cover Algorithms

2009-01-29T01:15:00.003+11:00

Read further in the recent Ars article.

Google's Gdrive Arriving in 2009

2009-01-21T10:05:00.003+11:00

The service has the potential to eclipse even Gmail, Google’s second best-known product after their google.com search engine. That said, it’s no wonder users have been ripe with anticipation for years - yes, that’s how long the rumors have persisted. Gdrive is basically online storage where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. It will likely also come with enough brains to do cool tricks now with bigger things down the road - like booting your computer from online drive to load the Google operating system.

Gdrive is basically a cloud-based storage that should have two faces: A desktop client that keeps local and online files and folders in two-directional sync via a web interface for accessing your desktop files anywhere and anytime, using any network-enabled computer. In addition, it will come tightly integrated with other Google services to enable editing of supported document types, like spreadsheets and presentations via Google Docs, email via Gmail, images via Picasa Web Albums, etc.

This opens powerful possibilities. For instance, you could start working on a spreadsheet at home and continue via Gdrive web interface accessed in an Internet cafe. When you arrive back home, changes to the spreadsheet have already trickled down from the cloud to your desktop. The idea, of course, is all but revolutionary, but Google’s execution could set it apart.

Source: TG Daily

Study: Filesharing Creates Positive Economic Effect

2009-01-20T10:52:00.004+11:00

In a study conducted by TNO for the Dutch government the economic effects of filesharing are found to be positive. According to the 146 page report, filesharing is good for the prosperity of the Dutch: with filesharing more media are available, even though this costs the media industry some profit.

One of the most noticeable conclusions is that downloading and buying are not mutually exclusive: downloaders on average buy just as much music as non-downloaders, but they buy more DVD's and games then people who don't download. They also tend to visit more concerts and buy more merchandise.

Source: TNO (Translated Dutch -> English)

Apple Announces Mac Book Wheel

2009-01-07T19:45:00.000+11:00

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

What will they think of next?

Microsoft Patents "Metered Pay as you go Computing Experience"

2008-12-28T19:49:00.003+11:00

It was going to happen sooner or later, Microsoft recently patented Metered Pay as you go Computing Experience taking the SaaS (Software as a Service) business model to the next level.

The plan, as Microsoft explains it, involves charging students $1.15 an hour to do their homework, making an Office bundle available for $1/hour, and billing gamers $1.25 for each hour of fun. In addition to your PC, Microsoft also discloses plans to bring the chargeback scheme to your cellphone and automobile — GPS, satellite radio, backseat video entertainment system.

Deployment and Billing is going to be an administrative challenge!

Enabling hardware accelerated h264/x264 Video Decoding using Media Player Classic

2008-12-26T12:49:00.002+11:00

Media Player Classic Home Cinema is a fantastic little open sauce app. It is light weight, fast and provides great picture quality and customisation.

I use it on my PC (Vista, Radeon HD4850). It also eliminates the "screen tearing" problem many users encounter with Radeon display cards.

You can also set up video decoding using external filter via WMP-HC, for example using the Cyberlink decoder, which enables h264/x264 hardware assisted video decoding. Just visit this handy post by Blogo for instructions!

25%+ Google Search Queries Related to Youtube

2008-12-21T22:42:00.002+11:00

An astounding figure, and phenomenal growth (114% y-on-y). Wow!

Christa Quarles, an analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners, writes in a report: YouTube continues to be a standout contributor for Google generating 2.73bn searches in the U.S., up 8.5% from 2.52bn last month and up 114% from 1.28bn in November 2007. YouTube currently represents 25.4% of U.S. Google site searches compared with 17.4% in November 2007 and is larger than all of Yahoo based on total U.S. queries in November.

Source: Techcrunch

Windows for Submarines

2008-12-21T18:27:00.002+11:00

Windows for Submarines is the programme undertaken by the Royal Navy and BAE Systems to equip the nuclear-propelled and nuclear-armed warship fleet with a Windows-based command system. The transition to the Windows for Submarines command system on HMS Vigilant, a Trident nuclear missile submarine, was completed in just 18 days.

OK ... let the BSOD jokes begin!

Source Microsoft UK Blog

Google Earth Updated : With Virtual Cities

2008-12-19T21:29:00.004+11:00

Google has introduced virtual cities into Google Earth. The Google Earth Blog estimates that the new New York City (captured here with Google Earth Pro) has seen an update with hundreds, if not thousands of new buildings. Sure, this is just one city, but it's a sign of where Google Earth is going!

Source: Gizmodo Australia

Youtube Becoming Profitable for Records Companies

2008-12-19T21:27:00.001+11:00

Record companies are seeing returns on Youtube videos.

For the first time, there are signs that YouTube is driving significant revenue for itself and some of the video site's partners. In an interview with CNET News this week, Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal Music Group's eLabs, said the largest of the top recording companies is bringing in "tens of millions of dollars" from YouTube. "(YouTube) is not like radio, where it's just promotional," said Caraeff, who heads up Universal's digital group. "It's a revenue stream, a commercial business. It's growing tremendously. It's up almost 80 percent for us year-over-year in the U.S. in terms of our revenue from this category."

Source CNet

10 Reasons to Choose Dragon CMS

2008-12-19T17:14:00.004+11:00

Here's a spiel for my company's new website.

There's no better time to develop an e-Commerce website if you don't already own one. Even if you do, gain a significant competitive edge by upgrading to Dragon CMS! Here's 10 good reasons why you should choose Dragon CMS.

10 Dragon CMS is serious about e-Commerce
We have successfully delivered e-Commerce website for over seven years. Through countless hours of reasearch & development, Dragon CMS is evolved into a scalable, powerful and high performance e-Commerce platform with all the features you'd expect (and some pleasant surprises too) of such a modern system.

9 The easiest way to start your online store
Get online within a matter of days, start by requesting a free quotation for our services. Furthermore, we offer a plethora of support resources and at a click of your mouse, you will have access to the product manual, training guides, FAQ and online support.

8 Most useful features available in the marketplace
Not only do you get state-of-art hosting, the Dragon CMS' features and capabilities are second to none and oftentimes superior compared to the competition. Because we offer these as all-in-one solutions, you have a wealth of website management and productivity-enhancing capabilities at your finger tips.

7 Accept credit card payments online
Dragon CMS includes integrated payment processing with PayPal gateway. PayPal allows your customers to pay using credit card (MasterCard and Visa), bank transfer and PayPal credit. Dragon CMS also allows you to accept credit card payments which you can process via your in-store EFTPOS facilities.

6 Own a site that your customers will love
Our Custom Template designs are virtually hand crafted by expert web designers who have successfully created e-Commerce websites for years. All websites are professionally designed to be attractive, fast loading and easy to use. We also implement various techniques to promote repeat visitations and referrals - a great way to market your website through customer networks.

5 Quality in what you see (and don't see!)
We do not host our websites on two dollar host farms based in India, and we make no apologies about it. We never overload our servers either (a common trick to cut costs). This means that all our websites perform to the highest technical levels available today to ensure that your business investment is protected and performing optimally. Some specific hosting features include:

- 24/7/365 service uptime monitoring with automatic reboot
- Up to 99.95% uptime guarantee
- Self repairing server environment
- Highly redundant network and power systems
- Biometric authentication, 24/7 security and surveillance systems
- Nightly automated database backups
- Advanced fire suppression VESDA units
- On-site generator and 2 hr UPS battery backup
- Redundant fibre entry points
- All servers located in a secure data centre located in Melbourne, Australia

4 No hidden fees or charges
Our packages contain everything you need to begin trading and taking payments online. There are no hidden fees or charges. We charge a nominal one time set up fee. You are billed quarterly via a single invoice. Easy peasy!

3 Pay only for what you use
You may elect various optional extras, in which case you will be quoted separately for this work upfront. All our complimentary services are always based on highly competitive rates (that's for our designers, developers and marketing specialists alike). We always quote you fixed price before any commitment so that you have a clear expectation and budget in mind.

2 Security
It's not just about protecting the buyer, but also the seller. All our websites enable SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Encryption which provides warranties ranging between $10,000 to $250,000 in value, further giving yourself and your customers peace of mind and real protection. Not only is PayPal a highly recognised and trusted brand in secure payment gateway solutions, it provides various fraud prevention and protection services thus reducing your exposure to transactional risk.

1 In it together
Dragon CMS' founders took their passion and made it into their business and we are dedicated to helping all our clients do the same! Despite our low fees, we provide you with nothing short of professional service and no-nonsense advice. While our competitors cut back on service to cut costs, we embrace it. After all, without you - our client - we wouldn't be where we are today!

The new Dragon CMS website is launching in 2009!

Google Zeitgeist 2008

2008-12-11T15:07:00.004+11:00

For those of you who have not seen this already, the Google Zeitgeist is a list of most popular search terms. This year's Z list is (fastest rising, globally):

1 sarah palin
2 beijing 2008
3 facebook login
4 tuenti
5 heath ledger
6 obama
7 nasza klasa
8 wer kennt wen
9 euro 2008
10 jonas brothers

Source

"Why Google Must Die"

2008-11-22T23:19:00.003+11:00

Today I stumbled across the article titled "Why Google Must Die" which immediately captured my attention!

I can really relate to what this guy has gone through because my company provides SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) services.

The article rants mostly but also raises some interesting problems of the Google Search system, which are:

- Inconsistent and non-repeatable search results
- Individualised results (eg. iGoogle services)
- Search results tend to be commerce-oriented (less informative)
- Parked sites (sites which don't contain any credible information) being displayed
- Searching for "Art Jenkins" did not return www.artjenkins.com
- etc

John concludes "... over the years there have been numerous attempts at creating an advanced search mechanism utilizing check boxes and a question-and-response AI network. You'd think that idea would have gotten further than it has. Hopefully, someone will conceptualize something new that works better than what we have today. The situation is just deteriorating too fast."

I believe there is going to be a paradigm shift in search. PageRank technology supplemented by social input. Likely opportunity in the niche space.

Oblong's G-Speak Spatial Operating System

2008-11-16T13:13:00.003+11:00

With touch interactive user interfaces being such a hot area of the market right now, it is interesting to so Oblong's new concept reminiscent of Speilberg's Minority Report.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Google Runs 10% of Websites!

2008-11-01T16:02:00.011+11:00

This news shocked me a little when I first read about it on Cnet.

Who'd imagine that Google serves approx. 10 million websites? That's about 10% of the public web space!

The other traditionally dominant web servers are Apache and Microsoft's IIS, which have been around since since the dawn of time. Have a look at the data below.

Blue: Apache, Red: Microsoft, Magenta: Google, Tourqois: Other. Credit: Netcraft

The most alarming aspect of the data illustrates Google's astounding growth, not only in search space but also almost every other imaginable aspect of computing today. And they are doing ridiculously well. For example, Google Australia commands almost 90% of the search market here. "Here" being Australia Down Under.

The Google brand is now voted the most valuable brand, topling Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Coca-Cola.

The data shows another interesting trend, which is the exponential growth of the number of websites available on the web. Of course, a lot of the recent growth can be attributed to Web 2.0 and social media (Google's Blogger is an extremely popular service, I use it!) as well as websites that are bot-generated, in other words the websites are automatically created by computers and not humans.

These are trends likely to continue into the near future.

Watch Out for These Hot Technologies

2008-10-30T20:57:00.004+11:00

I came across an interesting article on PC World titled "15 Hot New Technologies That Will Change the Everything".

Wow, what a bold title I thought when I first read it. Nevertheless it raises some interesting facts and trends about what we can expect in the near future.

In summary these technologies are:

- Memristor: A Groundbreaking New Circuit
- 32-Core CPUs From Intel and AMD
- Nehalem and Swift Chips Spell the End of Stand-Alone Graphics Boards
- USB 3.0 Speeds Up Performance on External Devices
- Wireless Power Transmission
- 64-Bit Computing Allows for More RAM
- Windows 7: It's Inevitable
- Google's Desktop OS
- Gesture-Based Remote Control
- Radical Simplification Hits the TV Business
- Curtains for DRM
- Use Any Phone on Any Wireless Network
- Your Fingers Do Even More Walking
- Cell Phones Are the New Paper
- Where You At? Ask Your Phone, Not Your Friend

Enjoy!

Source: PC World

Pushing Legal Boundaries

2008-10-27T23:34:00.005+11:00

A few news items caught my eye recently:

Woman Jailed for Murdering Avatar: Turns out that a "...43-year-old Tokyo woman was jailed for murdering her virtual ex-husband's avatar". Although she was not charged with murder, but with "illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data", it raises such questions.

Dutch Court Punishes Theft of Virtual Property: Two kids in the Netherlands were found guilty of robbing "Runescape and giving his assets to the two perpetrators". These "assests" are not real but virtual - they don't exist as tangible property as we would define property.

Real Pilots And 'Virtual Flyers' Go Head-to-head: "Stunt pilots have raced against computer-generated opponents for the first time — in a contest that combines the real and the ‘virtual’ at 250 miles per hour".

So you can see a theme here, it creates a minefield of moral hazards and new challenges for humanity as we sail into (virtually) unchartered territories!

You thoughts and comments welcome.

Big Brother Downunder

2008-10-17T16:43:00.004+11:00

And I don't mean the seriously crass TV show on Channel 10.

The Australian Government is developing a national firewall under the pretence of preventing "inappropriate" content getting to children. The content filter is enabled by default and users must request sites to be unblocked.

Reminds me of the days when the school librarian would rule the library computers with an iron fist and straight face (that's you Mr. Humphries!). I felt that our greatest liberties were under attack, the knife truly sank home after they blocked access to Hotmail! But that was then and this is now...

News has surfaced that this system will be mandatory across all internet services in Australia. What concerns me is that the Government will decide who goes onto the blacklist, effectively controlling what you can or can't view online. It also raises grave privacy concerns now that they can snoop everybody's traffic. Ok wait... perhaps the only difference now is that we know about it and are AUD $189 m poorer for it.

Opera Study: 4.13% of the Web is Standards Compliant!

2008-10-17T01:30:00.007+11:00

Yes you read it right, only about 4% of the Web is Standards compliant! That is a staggering less than 1 in 20, certainly much less than what I expected.

Browser maker Opera has published the early results of an ongoing study that aims to provide insight into the structure of Internet content. To conduct this research project, Opera created the Metadata Analysis and Mining Application (MAMA), a tool that crawls the web and indexes the markup and scripting data from approximately 3.5 million pages. Thanks Opera, that's a handy little tool for developers and designers alike.

As much as we develop our sites to W3C Standards, the problem is with specific web browsers as each has its own quirks, bugs and specific features. Ultimately the site must render and behave consistently across browsers, so we develop with this aim.

The Opera study reveals an interesting evolutionary feature of the internet. The good news is that upcoming IE 8.0 will be much more standards compliant, potentially Google's Chrome, with its app-centric design, will change the playing field. Unfortunately, there is the issue of maintaining backwards compatibility.

Read the source article here or direct to Opera's MAMA Key Findings.

Top 10 Most Useless Websites!

2008-10-06T13:02:00.004+11:00

There will always be good and bad websites out there. PC World have worked hard to find you the truly annoying and dazzlingly useless ones!

If you're looking for more substance, also check out their article about 100 most useful sites.

AW

Webcaster Settlement Act Passed by US Senate

2008-10-02T13:00:00.000+10:00

The U.S. Senate passed the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008, sending it to President Bush’s desk for signature two days after the U.S. House of Representatives okayed the bill.

The bill allows for SoundExchange, on behalf of copyright owners and performers, to negotiate with Internet radio services through 2015 an alternative royalty agreement while Congress is in recess. The negotiations are aimed at setting aside a 2007 decision by the Copyright Royalty Board that set a royalty rate that Internet radio participants said would endanger the fiscal health of webcasting.

If the President signs the bill and new royalty agreements are reached, it would set a royalty rate retroactive to 2006, and allow for a framework that could resolve future disputes through 2015, according to an announcement by the Digital Media Association (DiMA).

“On behalf of DiMA and our Internet radio members, I want to thank Congress for acting quickly to pass the Webcaster Settlement Act,” said DiMA executive director Jonathan Potter, in a statement. “This legislation will enable DiMA and our member companies, and all Internet radio services, to continue negotiating royalty rates with SoundExchange for the years 2006-2015. We are very hopeful of reaching agreement soon, and thereby creating long-term stability that will re-energize the Internet radio business.”

Source: Billboard

A Brief History of the Internet

2008-09-29T14:01:00.002+10:00

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the world was not connected.

But then a small group of visionaries created the Internet.

And changed the world.

This is their story.

The (American) National Science Foundation (NSF) has put together a great history of the Internet ... Check it out (Flash required)!

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/home.jsp

What Makes a Great Website?

2008-09-24T10:12:00.004+10:00

There have been many studies in this area since the inception of the web some decades ago, but one rule continues to ring true: "Content is King"!

This of course implies both what is content (eg. textual, sensory, cultural) and how it is delivered to the target audience.

There are many ways to skin a cat. For example, a site aimed to promote a single product (eg. a new brand of soap) will have vastly different content management needs than, say, an e-commerce superstore which handles thousands of products.

When advising my clients I consider the following:
- What are you trying to achieve with this site (and is it going to be short-lived or long term)?
- What assumptions can we make about your typical audience (eg. minimum screen resolution, Flash capabilities, connection speeds)?
- What are your search optimisation parameters (eg. key words, conversion zones, landing pages)?
- Is you web infrastructure expected to cope with the proposed site?
- And of course, budget and time considerations.

Why should you care about content? Well, organisations which focus on solid content have higher repeat visitations, greater number of referrals, more bookmarks, arguably better search placement, and ultimately thrive. Visitors will place a greater value on your site, and your brand, thus enhancing ROI.

Just remember: "Content is King"!

Jobs: Looking for Java Developers!

2008-09-24T10:05:00.002+10:00

Since 2004, we develop in-house web-based ecommerce software (online payments, product management, customer management, search optimisation, etc). The software has enjoyed excellent uptake, and I am looking to grow the business further.

The people I look for need to be reliable, switched on and technically-minded, preferrably with commercial Java Development experience. There are various roles available: product development, quality control and customisation, on either Casual/PT/FT basis.

In return, we provide competitive performance-based remuneration, great learning culture and profit sharing opportunities. Candidates preferrably from Melbourne metro area.

If you are interested or have someone in mind, please contact me via email with CV at alexbwang@gmail.com

Some more information at our (seriously outdated!) site: www.prodigywebservices.com

Porn Not the Most Popular Online Activity

2008-09-17T13:07:00.002+10:00

Times are changing... Porn is no longer the number one activity on the Internet. It may be hard to believe, but according to a recent study by Bill Tancer, a researcher at Hitwise, time spent on social networking sites has surpassed time spent 'browsing' adult entertainment pages. Searches for pornography have dropped to account for 10% of Web searches, down from 20% a decade ago.

The study also showed that the top fears that people search for are elbows (seriously!), belly button lint, ceiling fans, social intimacy and rejection.
Also, searches for anti-depressant drugs spike around Xmas.

It's nice to see that people are doing things online besides gazing at porn, but I still think time wasted on a social networking site would be better utilised by socialising in, you know, the real world ... having said that, don't forget to add me to your Facebook!

Top Level Domain Designations

2008-09-12T12:11:00.004+10:00

Internet Names Australia - Australian Naming Authority
.com.au : For commercial entities
.edu.au : For educational institutions
.gov.au : For government and semi-government entities
.org.au : For various forms of affiliation groups
.id.au : For individual zones
.oz.au : For entities which are visible within the ACSnet domain
.info.au : For major Australian informational and service resources
.net.au : For network infrastructure and providers
.asn.au : For associations
.csiro.au : For CSIRO
.conf.au :For conferences and exhibitions requiring short duration Internet connectivity

Internic - US Naming Authority
.com : For commercial organisations anywhere in the world
.org : For non commercial organisations anywhere in the world

There is also talk of adding more TLDs to the existing mix, which should present some interesting opportunities for avid developers, however these are being eyed keenly and are expected to auction for serious money!

Google further consolidates position in Australian search market

2008-09-10T17:56:00.005+10:00

Latest figures suggest Google is getting stronger in the Australian search space.

Google: 78.6% (06/2007) --> 87.8% (06/2008)
MSN (aka Live): 14.7% (06/2007) --> 6.7% (06/2008)
Yahoo!: 5.3% (06/2007) --> 3.9% (06/2008)
Others: 1.4% (06/2007) --> 1.6% (06/2008)

Data from Hitwise 2008 Search Engine Update.

First post!

2008-09-08T13:17:00.004+10:00

I intend to post more frequently from now on, so please check back soon. Reminder that you can contact me directly:

Email: alexbwang@gmail.com
Mobile: +61 412 116 908
Blog: alexbwang.id.au
Skype: alexbwang

Until next time, all the best.

AW