Tech Lover

The Chinese government announced late last week that the country’s internet population had soared to 210million people, putting it just 5 million internet users behind the United States.

The state-controlled China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reported growth of 53% from 137 million internet users at this time last year, a growth rate which virtually guarantees that China will have the world’s largest internet population within the next few months.

Internet penetration in China, however, remains at just 16%, similar to that of the United States in the mid1990s. American internet penetration has since risen to 75% of adults, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. This figure is even higher when teens are included in the total. (China’s stats include all users aged 6 and up.)

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

Another key factor which differentiates the U.S. and Chinese internet populations is the use of cybercafes, which are very popular in China among users who can’t afford computers at home. About one-third of Chinese users primarily access the internet on public computers, versus just 7% in the United States.

Also worth mentioning is the notorious presence of censorship in China, which prevents internet users in the country from accessing many of the websites that are taken for granted by users in North America and Europe. Most online video sites, as well as politically charged content that may be critical of communist or authoritarian governments, are difficult or impossible to access for the average Chinese internet user.

Source:
www.teleclick.ca/2008/01/chineseinternetpopulationonbrinkofsurpassingus/

At a recent IT symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one area of study discussed was digitally augmented urban environments.

Carlo Ratti, director of the school’s SENSEable City Laboratory, says the lab is examining “the interface between people and mobile technology and cities. Wireless changes the way people live and work.”

Researchers in the group have been using MIT’s urban area in Cambridge., Mass., as a living lab. The campus achieved 100% Wi-Fi coverage in late 2005 and now has 3,000 access points. The staff monitors 104 buildings.

Once the infrastructure was in place Ratti’s group started to log and analyze traffic patterns, generating heat maps and graphics of usage statistics that provided a real-time picture of what the MIT population was up to at any given moment.

Researchers followed up with the release of iFind, downloadable PC client code that, through triangulation, provides information about a user’s location. Users decide when they want to be visible and to whom, and then can find friends and colleagues at a glance. About 1,500 of the 20,000 people on campus have downloaded iFind.

These humble first steps led to grander experiments overseas. The lab, for example, teamed with Google and Telecom Italia in Rome to see how much real-time information they could collect about city activity by monitoring cell-phone traffic patterns and taxi and bus movements.

Information superimposed on aerial photos showed cell activity as a red fog - the deeper the color, the more intense the traffic - while buses and taxis were yellow trails. The cell traffic showed the city waking up; at rush hour the main thoroughfares showed high-density cell traffic - and then just the opposite as those folks dispersed into the city.

You could see where the city was pulsating and people movement and flows, Ratti says. That kind of information can be important in planning everything from how to accommodate major events, such as a soccer match, to planning emergency evacuation routes. It also reveals such useful things as where cell handoffs are happening and where infrastructure might be insufficient.

Next up, the lab is trying to determine how a city can work as a real-time system. “Cities are not easy to change other than control traffic lights or reconfigure road lanes,” Ratti says. “But people change behavior based on what’s going on. You can influence them.”

“Cities of tomorrow will be made of concrete and silicon, and will make that possible, but “we don’t know how to do that yet,” he adds.

Source: http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/050307edit.html (hi tech)

Don’t expect to find Googles new Android platform on a Nokia phone soon, if ever. Nokias official stance is that its open to any new innovation in the market, especially one that will drive mobile data usage as Android ostensibly would. But Bill Plummer, vice president of multimedia for Nokia North America, points out Nokias Series 60 platform is already embedded in half the worlds smartphones so its not currently looking for any alternatives.

“We have a developer community that numbers in the millions, and last year we brought 40 million devices to market,” Plummer said. “At this stage the optimal solution for a phone is S60.”

Does that mean Nokia is remaining closed, while Google is the beacon of openness? Hardly, according to Plummer. “The changes that are taking place in the market — dont let anybody tell you its about convergence,” he said. “Its about collision.”

Google and a handful of hardware and software vendors and carriers are promoting their own operating system (OS) solution at the expense of others, Plummer said. The core OS may be based on Linux and it may be opensource, but opensource or no opensource, throwing a new platform into a market that has already coalesced around several other platforms doesnt unify the industry - rather it fragments it further, he said. Plummer doesnt challenge Googles right to launch such a platform - after all, Nokia’s S60Symbian platform is itself one of several competing OSs - but the feelgood vibes Google is attributing to Android are misplaced, he said.

Nokia, too, has been dabbling with open source. Symbian may be a licensed operating system, but Nokia took the S60 browser open source last year, using the same Apple Safari WebKit code that powers Androids browser. Nokia also uses Linux in its Internet tablet series, designed for WiFi and WiMAX networks, but Plummer said that those devices are intended to be mobile computers and the OS won’t be transferring to the handset.

So whats the difference between Google and Nokias flavors of open source? Probably not much, said John Jackson, wireless analyst for Yankee Group. Google and Nokia may have widely divergent approaches to the Java virtual machine and access to the underlying code, but on the browser they appear to be in the same camp. Google has made it clear that its vision for the mobile Internet is very browsercentric. That Webbased service approach tied to the same basic browser likely will mean that many applications designed for Android also will work on S60, Jackson said.

“Its highly likely when Google talks about opensource browsing and Nokia talks about opensource browsing, they’re really talking about the same thing,” Jackson said.

And ultimately that could resolve a very real problem for Google - that the worlds largest handset vendor isn’t getting on board with its plans.

Source:
http://telephonyonline.com/wireless/news/telecom_nokia_google/

Cell phone users in China sent 429 billion text messages last year, while India added more mobile subscribers in that year than Britain had in total, according to a new report.
The report by Ofcom, the British governments media and telecommunications watchdog, said mobile phones area driving most of the communications sectors growth and account for 53 percent of total telecom revenue.

In India, the number of new mobile subscriptions doubled to 150 million in 2006an increase that exceeds Britains total of 70 million mobile connections.

Still, only 14 percent of the Indian population had a mobile connection, showing its remaining growth potential.

In China, mobile users sent an equivalent of 967 text messages per user, more than any other country.

The findings were part of the research included in the Ofcom “International Communications Report,” which looked at the $1.78 trillion global television, radio, and telecommunications sector in 2006 to analyze growing trends.

It found Britain had the highest takeup of digital television of the 12 Westernized countries surveyedBritain, France, Germany, Italy, Republic of Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Japan, Canada, and the United States.

It also looked at Brazil, Russia, India, and China, which are at different stages of development.

Broadband takeup increased in Britain with over half of all households connected at the end of 2006, putting Britain slightly ahead of the United States for the first time.

In the television sector, Japanese and U.S. viewers spent the most time watching TV, both averaging 4.5 hours a day in 2006, while the U.S. also led the takeup of high definition TV, with 10 percent of homes capable of showing HDTV in 2006.

Internetbased TV, or IPTV, was most popular in France, with 1.5 million subscribers.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/21001035_226222503.html

During the past six months, the prospects for delivering free high-speed wireless Internet service throughout metropolitan areas went from a sure bet to a sucker bet.

Even as Los Angeles explores building a free or low-cost citywide Wi-Fi system, cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and Houston are delaying or pulling the plug on similar plans.

The catalyst for the sudden retrenchment came last month when Internet service provider EarthLink Inc., the nation’s largest builder of municipal Wi-Fi networks, said it was halting work on such projects and bailing out of some contracts as part of a massive corporate restructuring.

The Atlanta company plans to complete construction in Anaheim, Calif., and Philadelphia, the nation’s first major city to embrace broadband wireless, and operate those and a few other existing locations.

But EarthLink is stopping all new projects until it figures out a way to make money.

Offering wireless Internet service for free is a business model that is “simply unworkable,” EarthLink chief executive Rolla Huff said.

“None of this should be a surprise,” Craig Moffett, a cable-TV industry analyst, wrote in a recent report. “Free may be hard to compete with, but it’s also a tough way to make any money.”

But don’t expect cities to pull out completely, industry analysts said.

With more Wi-Fi products coming on the scene such as T-Mobile USA’s Wi-Fi cellphones and Apple Inc.’s iPhone and new iPod Touch, demand for citywide wireless broadband connections is likely to grow.

Wi-Fi networks are much faster, more efficient and cheaper to build and operate than cellular systems.

“We’ve gone from one end of the hype meter to the other,” said Craig Settles, an Oakland, Calif.-based author and communications-industry consultant. “We’ll balance this out sooner or later.”

Los Angeles may well become the city to watch as it goes through a laborious process to determine whether a wireless broadband network is needed - and how the service would pay for itself.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa outlined plans in February to blanket Los Angeles with wireless Internet access that people could use for free or for a small monthly subscription.

The city’s Information Technology Agency, which heads the Wi-Fi initiative, hired consulting firm Civitium in June to conduct a feasibility study.

The study, expected to be delivered in December, is being built on information from meetings with schools, hospitals, businesses, consumer groups, focus groups and other city agencies

http://www.denverpost.com/telecom/ci_7035851

This an interview with Melanie Braidich, president of the mountain region for Verizon Wireless, that’s posted on Denver Post.

Q: What are some trends you see coming for the wireless industry, either near-term or long-term?

A: There are a couple of trends going on right now. One is the whole idea around multimedia devices and the services we put on those multimedia devices. When I talk multimedia, I’m talking music, video and beyond that. We have 25 multimedia devices that allow for over-the-air music downloads, etc. That’s one trend. It’s no longer a voice-centric device anymore. The second trend is really data as part of our revenue. It’s 20 percent of our revenue stream right now; that’s up 64 percent year over year. I only see that growing in the near future and beyond.

Q: Could we ever get to the point where people use their phones for data as much or even more than they do for voice?

A: It’s absolutely possible. It depends on what the consumers want to use their device for, so absolutely.

Q: What are some of the bigger changes the industry has seen since you joined Verizon Wireless in 1989?

A: The major change that I’ve seen is that it’s not just pressing the send button and making a phone call. It’s also not solely for folks that have spare change in their pockets. It’s really now very competitive. There are more competitors in the marketplace. There are more applications that we can use on the service and more people using the service.

Q: How many employees do you oversee as president of the mountain region?

A: I have a five-state region — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, most of Idaho and Montana. I’m based here in Denver. We have 1,100 employees across the region, about 500 in Colorado and 150 here specifically in Denver.

Q: Are there any products or services that Verizon subscribers in the Rocky Mountain region use or buy more than other regions?

A: I think consistently they’re much like customers on the West Coast and East Coast in that they want the best devices on the best network and are always looking for what’s new.

I can tell you my favorite product as of late, only because I’m a recent import to the mountain region and I’ve been visiting a lot of new cities and states, and that is our product called VZ Navigator. It gives me wireless turn-by-turn directions. So I can either find the closest Starbucks at the touch of a button or I can find the most efficient way to get to a business meeting.

Q: What are the growth and investment plans for the region and Colorado?

A: We’re always investing in the network. That’s our primary offer. In Colorado we have a history of spending about $100 million on our network annually. Last year we spent $106 million. Through October this year we’ve spent $97 million and intend to push through that $100 million mark. Our intention is to continue that kind of investment in our network.

In terms of stores, we just opened a new store on Colorado Boulevard with the cross street of Evans. It’s the first “evolution” store in the Rocky Mountain region. It has more devices. It’s set up differently and allows customers to really sit and experience the products. There are a lot of interactive demonstration bars with more than 70 active devices.

Q: What are your thoughts about Apple’s decision to lock the iPhone to one phone carrier, and will that be the trend for future highly anticipated gadgets?

A: The market will really decide what the future is for an iPhone-like product, whether it’s locked down to one carrier or not.

Q: What does the Voyager, viewed as Verizon’s response to the iPhone and set to hit stores this week, offer that the latter doesn’t have?

A: It’s the first device that will have an interactive touch screen and a QWERTY keypad. It’s working on a high-speed network. That’s a huge differentiator for the Voyager.

Taken from: Phone Blog

“This is a radical new idea in supercomputing, as well as an important scientific and social experiment,” said John Witchel, graduate student and co- creator of FlashMob Computing. “The goal of the FlashMob I project is to demonstrate the viability of widespread supercomputing. We hope to give ordinary citizens the power to explore and address problems that are most important to them — whether it’s a high-school science class looking to participate in study of global warming, or a family impacted by breast cancer, or even a chess club looking to build an electronic grand-master. In short, we want to democratize supercomputing.”

“FlashMob Computing was effectively invented in the course of a classroom discussion,” said Pat Miller, USF lecturer and computer scientist at the Center for Applied Scientific Computing at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “A student posited that could break into the Top 500, by simply inviting people to come together to create a supercomputer for a few hours.”

“Today, supercomputers are reserved for issues the government deems important, primarily defense research,” said Greg Benson, USF Professor. “We envision a supercomputing landscape where individuals can effectively ‘vote with their laptops’ by volunteering to lend their computers to causes that are important to them — regardless of governmental interest and support. Because FlashMob supercomputers are relatively easy to set up and its code is so portable, scientists can develop can write programs that are ‘flashable,’ and put out a request for a FlashMob, breaking science’s long-time dependence on traditional supercomputer centers. Our ability to harness the power and promise of supercomputing will directly impact our individual and global well- being and prosperity.”

FlashMob I
FlashMob I will occur on April 3, at the University of San Francisco gym. Network setup will begin on April 2. Doors open at 8:00 AM, with arrival times staggered throughout the morning. Participants will be assigned a specific arrival time when they register. As participants arrive, they will be given a copy of FlashMob I Software which they will boot from their CD-ROM. Because the program runs entirely from the CD-ROM, hard drives will never be touched, safeguarding personal data security. Once the PC is connected to the network, it will self-configure and begin processing requests from a central server. With the addition of each volunteer computer, the power of the supercomputer grows.

At 1:00 PM on April 3, USF students and faculty will run LINPACK, a well- known benchmarking software package. The last benchmark will be run at 5:00 PM that same evening. The best benchmark will be submitted for inclusion in the Top 500 Supercomputer list.

Throughout the day, USF will host a series of lectures and round table discussions, with industry experts from Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, NASA, NERSC and others, as well as technology exhibitions and an XBox tournament.

FlashMob I is a modified Linux kernel containing original software that allows individual PC’s to join a network and operate as a single supercomputer. Standard supercomputer libraries such as MPI have been specially tuned for the unusual nature of a FlashMob and original code has been written to facilitate bootstrapping PC’s, real-time reporting, on the fly network and node diagnostics, and ad-hoc performance optimization. Both the modified Linux kernel and the accompanying software are burned onto a bootable CD-ROM and duplicated in volume.

In the tradition of Open Source computing, raw data from the experiment will be made publicly available at www.flashmobcomputing.org, a website where people can share ideas, tune software, and improve implementation, to encourage further research in the area of FlashMob Supercomputing, and to provide a strong baseline of practical experience in preparation for FlashMob II and FlashMob III. Additionally, the site will start tracking FlashMob computers with a Top 500 Flashes list — separate from the top500.org list to encourage the exploration of this exciting new area.

For more information, or to sign up to participate in this historic event please visit http://www.flashmobcomputing.org/.

This is Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet, and he is warning the ISP providers to get their act together and roll out the next generation of net addresses before the current ones run out in 2010.

Every device that goes online is allocated a unique IP address but the pool of numbers is finite and due to run out around 2010.

It seems that a new system known as IPv6 has been waiting in the wings for ten years, but needs to be switched on within the next couple of years to ensure that devices don’t drop off line. The rate of consumption of available remaining IPv4 numbers appears to be on track to run out in 2010/11.

Cerf is a guy to listen to. He is Google’s chief Internet evangelist and is still chairman of Icann, the body that oversees the internet.

The main issue seems to be that the current IPv4 isn’t compatible with the new IPv6, so two systems would be required to run side by side which is sure to dig into the profits of the ISP’s.

Source: http://www.gadgetell.com/2007/10/isp-addresses-running-out/