January 2012

Virgin Media to double broadband speeds

Virgin Media has promised to double the speed for all of its 4 million broadband customers free of charge to bolster its claim to be the fastest provider in the face of increased investment by BT.

Virgin Media will spend about £110 million in the next 18 months to upgrade its customers across the UK. The initiative was welcomed by the government, which has pledged to give the UK the fastest broadband in Europe by 2015. Virgin Media has said that the top speed of 120Mb would be the fastest available in the UK, although there would be relatively few customers on this package. About three-quarters of its subscribers take speeds of up to 10Mb, and these will see their service doubled to 20Mb.

Google Softens Tone on China

Google, which pulled its Web-search engine out of mainland China two years ago after a confrontation with Chinese authorities over censorship, has renewed its push to expand there, in an acknowledgment that it can't afford to miss out on the world's biggest Internet market.

The search giant is hiring more engineers, salespeople and product managers in China and working to introduce new services for Chinese consumers, according to Daniel Alegre, Google's top executive in Asia. In particular, Google is aiming to capitalize on its fast-growing Android operating system for mobile devices, online-advertising and product-search services to grow in China, Mr. Alegre said in an interview. One goal, he said, is to introduce its Android Market, which offers thousands of mobile applications to users of Android-powered smartphones and tablets but isn't available in China. The company also is trying to win over Chinese consumers with services that don't require official censorship, such as Shihui, which launched in September to help people search among Chinese sites offering discounts at local stores. Google is also working to beef up its product-search service to help consumers find goods from online retailers.

Iran’s Leaders Shut Down Independent Film Group

Brushing aside protests by Iranian filmmakers and rights activists, Iran’s Culture Ministry formally dissolved the House of Cinema, the only domestic organization that supports independent film, and moved to replace it with a committee that would not deviate from strict Islamic guidelines and politically permissible topics.

Founded 20 years ago, the House of Cinema has more than 5,000 members and is the parent group for a range of motion picture guilds in Iran. It has acted to protect their financial interests and creative rights, so the breakup of the organization, if not reversed, could fracture and silence Iran’s last remaining autonomous outlet of visual artistic expression. The dissolution order coincided with unprecedented praise for an independently produced Iranian film, “A Separation,” which has received many awards and is a favorite to win top honors at the Golden Globes this weekend in Los Angeles. There is talk that the film, which depicts the breakup of a marriage, will be an Oscar favorite as well.

Dutch court orders companies to block Pirate Bay

A Dutch court ordered two major Internet service providers in the Netherlands to block their customers from accessing The Pirate Bay website or face large fines.

The Swedish-born website has been a thorn in the side of the entertainment industry for years by helping millions of people download copyrighted music, movies and computer games. In 2010, a Swedish appeals court upheld the copyright infringement convictions of three men behind the site, but it remains in operation. The Dutch ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL had resisted demands by a copyright holders' organization to block their subscribers' access to the site, arguing they should not have to act as censors. But the Hague District Court said in its written ruling they must do so within 10 working days or face fines of euro 10,000 ($12,750) per day. Another option, individually pursuing "many thousands of subscribers in the Netherlands who trade files via The Pirate Bay would be, in the court's judgment, no less a far-reaching measure," the court said.

British Telecom to Put its Historic Archive Online

The UK's National Archives authority has been awarded a grant to digitize British Telecom's physical archive, making almost half a million photographs, documents and correspondence preserved by BT over 165 years available online as part of the New Connections project.

The BT Archives reveal Britain's role in the development of telecommunications, detail industrial and gender relations in the workplace and social change from 1846 to the present day, and take in the whole of the UK including Southern Ireland until 1921 and the Channel Islands until 1973, along with the UK's communications with countries across the globe.

Spanish bank to move 100,000+ employees to Google Apps

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria is adopting Google Apps for email and collaboration and expects to have its about 110,000 employees worldwide using the suite by the end of this year.

The rollout will start in the bank's home base, Spain, where it has 35,000 employees, and it will continue in more than 26 other countries, the companies said in a joint statement. When completed, BBVA's implementation of Apps will be the largest ever for Google's cloud-based communication and collaboration suite, which includes applications like Gmail, Calendar, Sites, Docs and Talk, as well as a variety of IT security and management features. Jose Olalla, BBVA's CIO, said in a blog post that the bank's goals in moving to Google Apps is to help employees collaborate better and be more efficient, and "transform our business operations."

China's Internet users breach half billion mark

The number of Internet users in China have crossed the half billion mark, reaching 505 million users at the end of November last year, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reported. The Internet penetration rate stood at 37.7 percent, up 3.4 percent over the end of 2010, CNNIC said in a report released late last month. This compares with Internet penetration rates of more than 70 percent for China's more technologically advanced East Asian neighbors, Japan and South Korea. At the end of November, the number of microblog users exceeded 300 million, jumping from 195 million at the end of June, a CNNIC report said.

Berlin theater stages first live play on Facebook

Pistol dueling in print and energetic postings of "applause" accompanied the Facebook premier of Theodor Fontane's "Effi Briest," which organizers said was the first live staging of a play on the social networking site.

Fontane's classic work, first published as a serial novel in 1894, was specially adapted to be performed on the Maxim Gorki Theater's "online Facebook stage". The play used status updates, photo uploads and wall postings from characters to relate protagonist Effi Briest's descent into disrepute. "We were really pleased to try something new and innovative, and have learned a lot about how we can use the internet for our productions," a spokeswoman for the theater said.

A New ‘Law’ for the Mobile Computing Era

The new gadgetry at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week owes a lot to the crisp articulation of ever-increasing computer performance known as Moore’s Law. First proclaimed in 1965 by Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore, it says that the number of transistors that can be put on a microchip doubles about every two years. But a new descriptive formulation that focuses on energy use seems especially apt these days. So much of the excitement and product innovation today centers on battery-powered, mobile computing — smartphones, tablets, and a host of devices based on digital sensors, like personal health monitors that track vital signs and calorie-burn rates. And the impact of low-power sensor-based computing is evident well beyond the consumer market. The trend in energy efficiency that has opened the door to the increasing spread of mobile computing is being called Koomey’s Law. It states that the amount of power needed to perform a computing task will fall by half every one and a half years.

Expensive and Bitter Media War Already Ignited

Voters in South Carolina will have plenty of opportunities to meet the Republican presidential candidates at town-hall-style meetings and campaign rallies over the next week and a half. But why even leave the house?

The state will be awash in campaign commercials, direct-mail fliers and automated phone calls in the days leading up to the Jan. 21 primary, all part of a full effort by the campaigns and their “super PACs” to break through in what could be the kind of climactic contest that the New Hampshire primary was not. Five candidates — Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum — are now running ads on local television. Four super PACs have also been on the air in recent days, and other outside issue groups are lining up behind them. One major factor that will differentiate this contest from the New Hampshire primary is the sheer amount of money expected to go into television advertising. In just the last few days, campaigns and super PACs have committed more than $5 million. And that amount will only grow.

Benton

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