March 2013

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Ivi's Case

Ivi, a pay TV service that was streaming over-the-air TV signals on the Internet without permission, has finally reached the end of the road in court.

The Supreme Court denied the company's petition for certiorari and refused to hear the case, letting stand the Second Circuit decision upholding an injunction against the service. The decision hands a satisfying victory and perhaps hopeful one to broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and other station owners that sued ivi in 2010 for copyright infringement and are faced with a similar legal challenge to Aereo, another streaming service in New York backed by Barry Diller.

Even the professors behind massive online classes aren’t sure they should count for credit

Professors pioneering the new massive open online courses have mostly positive things to say about the “MOOCs” but most don’t believe their schools should award credit, says a survey from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

White spaces networks are not “super” nor even Wi-Fi

[Commentary] Recently there has been a push to make a significant amount of unlicensed white-space spectrum available in the 600 MHz band. The Federal Communications Commission is considering making an additional 30 MHz of spectrum available for unlicensed use, augmenting existing white-space spectrum. Proponents of this unlicensed band are using the term “Super Wi-Fi” to describe the technology that would use this spectrum. The only problem is that it’s not super for multiple reasons, and it’s definitely not “Wi-Fi.” I believe applying that spectrum to technologies that will use it the most fully will provide the greatest societal and economic benefit. Right now, those technologies include LTE and LTE-Advanced. We should continue to foster innovation and experimentation with white space spectrum and Wi-Fi, but not at the expense of also expanding the base and capabilities of our best-in-class, commercial wireless broadband networks that depend on licensed, exclusive use spectrum for their core operations.

[Rysavy is President of Rysavy Research, a wireless network engineering firm]

Smartphones do too much: convergence is giving way to divergence

[Commentary] For years, the holy grail of personal tech has been convergence. Now that we essentially have a version of that in the form of smartphones – which allow fairly sophisticated computing for most daily needs, from accomplishing work to playing music – ironically many of us are discovering the need to extract some of those functions and instead carry multiple devices, such as a smartphone, a tablet, and a smartwatch all at once.

I call this trend divergence; let’s look at a few factors that are driving it. While convergence will continue to move forward in certain areas – such as in the home entertainment space, where a single TV will compress several functions offered by separate set-top boxes into one device – newer form factors, horizontal solutions, specialization, and above all human ingenuity will ensure that we never run out of the need to carry multiple devices. At least not until advancements in materials science and technology enable a single device to take multiple forms.

Six Steps to Mobile Success in Government

A half-dozen steps that government agencies can take to realize the potentially enormous benefits of mobile while avoiding the missteps of previous technology implementations:

Rethink business processes.
Define the problem you wish to solve.
Adopt a "mobile-first" approach.
Focus on user experience.
Prototype, test, prototype again.
Make mobile a source of security, not a threat to it.

Loyalty Low Among Wireless Carriers

Despite what U.S. wireless carriers might think about customer loyalty, there’s a good chance they’re underestimating how committed those people are to their brands. According to a study from WDS (a division of Xerox that provides customer experience management), 36% of wireless customers in the U.S. said they are considering leaving their mobile carrier within the next year. Meanwhile, only 13% of customers would be considered loyal enough to remain with a carrier despite better offers from others or service disruptions.

The Very First Cell Phone Calls

The cell phone made its public debut 40 years ago, which sounds like a very long time ago because it was.

Ahead of the April 3rd anniversary, The New York Times Magazine takes us back to the very day in 1973 that inventor Martin Cooper first showed off his portable Motorola telephone. At 2.5 pounds it looks more like the famous Zack Morris brick than our fancy smartphone glass and aluminum slabs today. For the entree of this wonder Cooper wanted to do a "dazzling demonstration." Turns out, to do that, he just had to talk on it.

Why Your Car Is Now A Giant Smartphone On Wheels

A Q&A with GM’s Mary Chan.

There was a time when the automotive industry was the pride of America, when consumers eagerly awaited each new model, when Wall Street happily buzzed about each upcoming earnings report. Today, the excitement we once reserved for the car has been transferred to a smaller but increasingly sexy object: the smartphone. It’s Mary Chan’s task to help bring pizzazz back to cars. As president of a new GM division called “Global Connected Consumer,” Chan and her team aim to optimize the relationship between the technology that we navigate through space, and the technology that we navigate through cyberspace. GM was a pioneer in “connected vehicles” when it debuted OnStar 16 years ago. But 2013 could be a banner year for GM’s efforts in this space, as it attempts to marry OnStar with its various infotainment brands (Cadillac’s Cue, Chevy’s MyLink, and Buick’s and GMC’s IntelliLink). Fast Company caught up with Chan to learn more about how she intends to bring some of the allure of Silicon Valley to an industry that traditionally moves slower, despite boasts about going from 0 to 60.

Facebook quickly fixes privacy leak in new timeline, group says

Facebook quickly fixed a privacy leak in its new timeline after being alerted to the problem, according to a watchdog that follows the social-networking site closely.

Europe v. Facebook, an Austrian student organization that has filed complaints in Europe over Facebook's privacy practices, said it found the redesign allowed "friends of friends" to see all of the events a user attended even if the person's privacy settings only permitted their friends to see the events. The timeline changes also allowed someone to see batches of event activity under a heading called "events," according to Europe v. Facebook. Details of events attended can be deleted, but it must be done manually, which Europe v. Facebook said could take "hours." After it was notified, Facebook fixed the problem within a couple of hours by getting rid of the "events" heading, Europe v. Facebook said.

The Internet is a surveillance state

[Commentary] . Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time.

Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources. [Schneier is a security technologist]

Benton

Search