November 2011

Cell Phone To Point Of Near-Global Ubiquity

According to a new nine-country study by SSI, about 95% of the population in industrialized, tech-savvy countries owns a cell phone, with places such as Hong Kong, China and Sweden leading the way, with ownership rates of 99%, 98% and 98%, respectively.

Among the nine countries surveyed (which also included the United States, United Kingdom, German, France, Japan and Australia), the U.S. had the lowest rate of cell phone ownership at a still-high 89%. The survey also found that 28% of consumers in those countries owned multiple cell phones. “Soaring cell phone ownership has a significant impact on researchers doing telephone studies,” says Jessica Smith, Vice President, Offline Services for SSI, in a statement. “Researchers who omit cell phones from their samples will find critical gaps in coverage -- particularly among younger, ethnic and lower income households.” Among those who own cell phones, 42% currently have smartphones. And the remaining 58% plan to upgrade their cell phone to a smartphone with their next purchase. China and Hong Kong have the highest rates of smartphone ownership (68% and 57%, respectively), while Sweden and Japan are among the lowest (33% and 16%). Among those looking to upgrade to cell phones, Apple’s iPhone is the leading brand.

The Story Behind ShopCity And Its Antitrust Complaint Against Google

The new ShopCity vs Google case appears to resemble previous ones.

This time around, the small company is being represented by Gary Reback, a legendary anti-trust lawyer who directed Microsoft’s campaign against the Google Book Settlement. Reback and Microsoft are likely using ShopCity as a front to help convince regulators and the public that “if there’s smoke, there must be fire” when it comes to Google. But this does not mean that ShopCity’s claim lacks merit. Despite its protestation that “competition is just a click away,” Google does have dominant market power in the search business -- which is the first of a two-part test used to determine if a company is breaching Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The second is whether a company is abusing that dominance, and so far there is no evidence that Google has done so. Legal tests aside, commonsense also suggests that the ShopCity claim is trumped up. The company’s shopping web sites have a content-farm quality, which, as Marketing Pilgrim and others have noted, doesn’t tend to work with search engines or consumers.

It’s Time For Transparency On Music Streaming Rates

Major labels may be hoping that new-wave digital music jukeboxes can make up for slowing downloads growth. But a drip-drip of labels pulling out of the services in protest at low fees is continuing, and may grow to more than just indies. The distributor for drum ‘n bass act Blu Mar Ten became the latest to pull its content from streaming services including Spotify, Rdio and Napster, joining Projekt Records, Prosthetic Records, Century Media and Metal Blade Records so far this year. Consumption through these services is booming. Blu Mar Ten’s distributor says 82 percent of listens to its songs this Q3 was through Spotify, Rdio, Napster and Simfy. But just 2.6 percent of its revenue came from these services. In particular, for 750,000 Spotify streams, it got just £2,500, it says: “We have taken the decision to no longer provide content to any of the above streaming-type music services.” European royalty collector PRS For Music licenses on-demand digital music operators using a clearly laid-out industry rates structure that, in the UK, requires either 10.5 percent of their gross revenue or 0.085 pence per track streamed. But, unlike transparent operators like We7, which is only too happy to talk about the rates it pays, every time I have asked whether Spotify is paying industry-standard rates, both Spotify and the industry’s PRS For Music have clammed up, including the latest time I asked just last week. The lingering, unanswered perception is that Spotify, part-owned by the labels themselves, enjoys more favorable rates than its competitors.

Jobs wanted own network with unlicensed spectrum

Steve Jobs initially hoped to create his own network with the unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi uses rather than work with the mobile operators, said wireless industry pioneer John Stanton.

Stanton, chairman of venture capital firm Trilogy Partners, said he spent a fair amount of time with Jobs between 2005 and 2007. "He wanted to replace carriers," Stanton said of Jobs, the Apple founder and CEO who died Oct. 5 after a battle with cancer. "He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum. That was part of his vision." Stanton spoke at the Law Seminars International event in Seattle. He said that after around 2007, Jobs gave up on the idea. But Jobs still managed to have a major impact on wireless operators, Stanton said.

#Occupy: The Tech at the Heart of the Movement

[Commentary] With the police raids in the past few days of camps from Oakland to New York, the Occupy movement is at a key juncture. We want to step back and look at the role of technology in the protests' establishment, spread, and future.

This essay inaugurates a series of stories on the ways that protesters have shaped technologies to fit their needs -- and how technologies opened up new space for their messages. Let's start with what seems self-evident, but what I'm sure is more complex than it appears: Occupy is different from the protests that preceded it. To be honest, I'm not sure anyone can explain why. The list of factors contributing to its outstanding run is long: economic circumstances, a distance from the enforced patriotism that followed 9/11, disappointment on the left with Obama's presidency, the failure to adequately regulate banks, the neverending foreclosure crisis, the Adbusters provenance, severe cuts to social programs at the state and local level, the language of occupation, and the prolonged nature of the engagement. But among those factors, technology plays a central role. I don't mean this is in any narrowly celebratory way: "Technology caused Occupy Wall Street!" But I will say that a set of mobile technologies that didn't exist ten years ago offered protesters new human capabilities that they used to record and disseminate information, as well as organize -- or maybe more properly, design -- the protests. These new behaviors, like blanket cell-phone photo coverage paired with social media amplification, were unprecedented in the United States, though activists put them to use in the Arab Spring protests.

ISPs could have stopped massive click-fraud operation

In the wake of the successful bust of an alleged click-fraud operation that netted cyber criminals more than $14 million, security experts are bringing to light more information that could help organizations and end-users alike protect themselves from similar threats.

Experts are also asking whether ISPs could and should have done more to protect Internet users from the attacks that had been going on for four years. Dell SecureWorks, for example, has released a report explaining how perpetrators allegedly managed to infect upward of 4 million PCs worldwide with the DNSChanger Trojan that enabled them to rack up illicit profits for so long. The FBI, meanwhile, has provided detailed information as to how organizations and users can assess if their systems are infected. Finally, the Spamhaus Project has observed that ISPs could have acted early on to protect Internet users from the Rove Digital cybercrime gang activities. According to Dell SecureWorks, the group managed to infect millions of machines over a four-year period using the TDSS rootkit, which, according to Kaspersky Lab, has been used it in various forms for the last three or four years in various ways, from drive-by downloads to targeted attacks. Secureworks reported seeing in recent weeks between 600,000 and 1 million unique IP addresses infected with the DNSChanger Trojan, which was downloaded and installed using TDSS, also known as Tidserv, TDSServ, and Alureon.

Is Lying On The Internet Illegal?

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Cyber Security: Protecting America's New Frontier,” the focus was on big cyber threats to the country's infrastructure. But there was another juicier question that came out of the hearing: The way the Justice Department wants to interpret a current law, lying on the Internet would amount to a crime.

Richard Downing, deputy chief of the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the Department of Justice, argued that in order to properly protect the country, the part of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that says a person must exceed their "authorized access" to break the law should include a violation of the terms of service. When you sign up for a Web service, a dating one or even to attain the ability to comment on NPR DOT org, you usually agree to a long terms of service that we bet most people don't even read. The way the DOJ wants the law interpreted means breaking any of those terms would constitute a crime.

Connect to Compete and Education

Children live in an ever-more interconnected world where their success in competing for the jobs of tomorrow will increasingly depend on their ability to understand, operate and adapt to computer-based technology and online environments. And, we are seeing that smart use of technology can improve the opportunity to learn for people of all ages. Yet, the U.S. trails countries like Singapore and South Korea in expanding access to broadband Internet. By supplying low-income families with affordable Internet, computers and free digital training, the FCC's national "Connect to Compete" initiative will play a key role in providing more of our nation's children with a 21st century education.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Education released the National Education Technology Plan to promote the role technology can play in transforming education. Applying technology to our entire education system can have a cascading impact on improving student learning, expanding effective practices, using data to support decision-making and encourage continuous improvement. Connect to Compete addresses the need to build and expand technology infrastructure, one of five core components outlined in the National Education Technology Plan. I commend and thank the more than a dozen corporate and nonprofit partners for their leadership in breaking down barriers to Internet and technology access for tens of millions of Americans. Our collective efforts to increase access to technology and improve education will have a tremendous influence in providing greater opportunities for children across the U.S. while also making a significant investment in our nation's economic future.

6 Innovative Ways For Nonprofits To Use Social Media

For many nonprofit organizations, finding low-cost solutions to marketing and fund raising is paramount. Social media has been able to offer many solutions to existing problems, as well as offering some innovative new ways of interacting with supporters. Here are just some of the things nonprofits can do to reach their audience effectively:
Enable a virtual global reach; Tell the story through video; Use nonprofit-friendly tools; Make use of existing networks; Make giving easier; and Increase Your Events Exposure.

Half the members of Congress are millionaires

These days, being a millionaire typically qualifies you as part of the one percent. But in Congress, it only makes you average.

About 47 percent of Congress, or 249 current members of Congress, are millionaires, according to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics of lawmakers' personal financial disclosure forms covering calendar year 2010. The Center's analysis is based on the median values of lawmakers' disclosed assets and liabilities. That lofty financial status is enjoyed by only about one percent of Americans. On the whole, elected officials in the country's upper chamber enjoy cushier bank accounts and portfolios than their counterparts in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2010, the year of the most recently released financial data, the estimated median net worth of a current U.S. senator stood at an average of $2.56 million, according to the Center's research. Despite the global economic meltdown in 2008 and sluggish recovery, that's up about 7.6 percent from an estimated median net worth of about $2.38 million in 2009, according to the Center's analysis. And it's up about 13 percent from a median estimated net worth of $2.27 million in 2008.

Benton

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