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An article on how the increasing flow of internet traffic could potentially lead to a form of 'gatekeeping' of users by providers. It has always been perceived that there was network neutrality as providers charged a flat rate for unlimited internet access. However, the article argues that this is not the case as there has aways been some form of management of traffic so that an acceptable level of service is maintained. An extreme example is the court case between BitTorrent users and the provider Comcast. Comcast blocked this service as it was effecting service. This was challenged by users who initially won. However in a challenge by Comcast, Washington found in their favour as it found that the Federal Communications Commission could not decide how Comcast should manage its network. Another interesting point made is the potential for service providers to charge content providers who attract a large amount of traffic.This way good service is guarenteed, through essentially sharing the burden of cost. Obviously this is fiercely opposed by businesses. Clearly this all has the potential to change the relationship between users, content providers and service providers.

SeeClickFix is a free mobile phone and web app that enables citizens to take care of their neighborhoods by seeing non-emergency issues in their neighborhoods, clicking to create 'tickets' describing the issue and how to resolve it, and fixing the issue or reporting it to whoever can. This article discusses the technology and tools working to help citizens get involved in their communities and their governments. It also discusses the Gov 2.0 Expo held recently in the US. I found the discussion of mobile citizen governance apps particularly interesting, as it would be something that could be rolled out fairly easily.

Article from today's Sydney Morning Herald about the settlement of a lawsuit related to a program called Beacon. I think its important that Facebook is scrutinised regularly, particularly in relation to its quite invasive policies when it comes to collecting data about its users for marketing purposes.

"They all said they didn't know how to put it (gender unspecified) into their computers, but they all agreed to do it and to have a word to their computer programmers," Norrie said. "It is the job of the system to fit the people it serves, not the job of the people to fit the system. Our identity is increasingly database driven and default settings are not very changeable.

The University of Sydney's IT Alumni Association will next week bring together IT experts in networking, industry, law, child welfare and ethics to discuss the Federal Government's plans to introduce compulsory internet filtering by Internet Service Providers. Forum details When 6.30pm for a 7pm start, Wednesday 28 April 2010 Where Boardroom (Room 124), School of IT Building, 1 Cleveland Street, The University of Sydney How Entry is free and open to the public but online registration by 23 April is essential. For more information http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/alumni/discussion_forum.shtml

PJFenwick is doing a PhD on facebook privacy and his explorations have shown that even when you lock up your settings, your friends (and friends of) can leak your information all over the place. "But by far the most interesting part of all of this have been dark users. Like dark matter, these users are not directly observable, usually because they've completely disabled API access. In fact, some of these users are completely dark unless you're a friend. They don't show up in search results. They don't show up on friends' lists. You can't send them messages. If you try to navigate to their user page (assuming you know it exists), you get redirected back to your homepage. These users have their privacy settings turned up real high, and are supposed to be hard to find. However like dark matter, dark users are observable due to their effects on the rest of the universe. If a dark user comments on a stream entry, I can see that comment. More importantly, I can see their user-ID, and I can generate a URL to a page that will contain their name. I can then watch for their activities elsewhere. Granted, I can't directly search for their activity, but I can observe their effects on my friends. For want of a better term, I've been calling this "dark stalking". What makes this all rather chilling is that I'm doing all of this via the application API. If your friend has installed an application, then it can access quite a lot of information about you, unless you turn it off. If your friend has granted the application the read_stream privilege, then it can read your status stream. Even if a friend of a friend has done this, and you comment on your friend's status entries, it's possible to infer your existence and retrieve those discussions through dark stalking."

Very timely for our forthcoming privacy class. Google has been wardriving. Which makes perfect sense. Useful for business and so easy to do when they're driving by. Who owns info that we put out on the street?

Google Australia will today be sent a "please explain" letter from two local privacy organisations demanding to know why the company has been collecting personal Wi-Fi network data from Australian homes alongside the images it takes with its Street View cameras. Google has taken some heat lately about its commitment to privacy after officials from 10 governments - including New Zealand, Canada and France - wrote a letter to chief executive Eric Schmidt to express their concern over data collection for Street View and the implementation of its Buzz social networking tool.

"Let us all renounce the harsh rhetoric about the POTUS [president of the U.S.]. Several, including myself, hv used inappropriate language. Let's remain civil! #tcot." See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/dCqW2m

If you are going to look at copyright on the internet, you really can't go past this settlement. This is Google's next step at world domination: control of our intellectual property. No one likes it, but everyone is going ahead with it because Google has them over a barrel ... The basic deal is that Google wants to digitise every book ever written and make them all searchable online by google customer. On the surface this is all shiny; it seems commonsense that all material should be digitised - we have to keep up with technology. The problem arises when you get to the sticky situation of copyright - generally with books, owners get royalties every time someone buys a copy. With the digitisation, Google wasn't too keen on the idea of pay-per-view. Ideally, they would have loved to present all that information free and just reap the benefit ... well, however Google reaps benefits. There was litigation all round - publishers were against it, yahoo and other internet giants were against it (because it wasn't their idea) and it went to the doors of the US Supreme Court, but not quite to trial. Google's rivals were not too sure that they wanted to go to trial, because the outcome was a little on the uncertain side. So the Google book settlement was drawn up, objected to, fought, signed up to, taken to the US Supreme Court for approval, rejected, modified, fought over a bit more, and sent back to the judge. The last move was in Feb 2010; we're still waiting for Critics argue that the deal gives Google too much power over digital books and will not benefit customers in terms of cost, possible censorship issues, privacy. Copyright owners will also lose out, as Google's royalty policy cuts them out of the system and reduces their royalty - and they are automatically included in the agreement unless they 'opt out' (even if they have not 'opted in'). Really, Google is the only party that seems to benefit, and yet for all of the fighting, the settlement seems

No, I don't agree that Internet Explorer is dead. However, there has been a significant progress in the adoption of alternative browsers, which is a healthy way to avoid a monopoly in browsers, which are the gate to internet for end users.  The decline in the use of IE thanks to the participation of open source browsers is acknowledged here. 

Blog entry: with the massive population, China is for sure the biggest market in every market. It surely has its impact on with the culture. As censoring as it is now, will this culture eventually affect the internet culture as a whole??

The findings of this article definitely portrays an extremist view of the internet. It shows the internet to be extremely dangerous which would add to the already growing nervousness which I think many parents experience in letting their children surf the web. While cybersecurity is an increasingly prominent issue I don't see how producing a bubble of fear around the online world can improve the situation. You generally cannot function without the internet and being fed these alarmist ideas only furthers the notion that people should be fearful and avoid the internet rather than be engaging with it and appreciating it for being an amazing tool to communicate and learn.

Well, Fox News is just unbelievable... guess who they consider their competitor, CNN or Comedy Central.

yayy for fear-mongering....

Google speaks out on censorship and the violation of user privacy in China. Yahoo in the US agrees but its Chinese partner Alibaba Group does not. Are they afraid of a backlash from Beijing and fear for their ungoing business success? Makes me wonder how bad the quagmire in China really is...

GOOGLE is considering a plan to keep many of its operations in China, even though it is resigned to closing its flagship search engine over a censorship dispute with the Chinese authorities.

I reckon, google is still waiting for the time to cut in, after all it's the biggest market.

This article is dealing with the recent disclosure by Google that it had fallen victim to a cyber attack. It renews the growing sentiment that a global response to the issue of cybersecurity is needed with particular emphasis on the cooperation between the government and business sectors.

Interesting comparison was made in this article regarding President Obama's priorities. It stated that "Obama has made cyber security a top priority for his administration, and has listed the threat from cyber weapons along with other weapons of mass destruction - such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons." Is it fair to make a comparison between the threat of nuclear weapons and threats which exist within the world of computers?

GOOGLE appears increasingly likely to close down its Chinese-language search engine, in a step that would remove one of the last major foreign players from the world's most populous and fastest-growing internet market.

Even with existing knowledge of the limitation that China government has in term of internet, I still find this quite surprising. Funny enough that as a Taiwanese, we've been taught that how strickly and misarable our Chinese friends live there; as years go by, we've been told again that what our old belief of our Chinese friends is no long true and those people are actuallly "set free." Apparently, there are still lots of unbelievable limits for our Chinese friends in internet wise.

Traditional media get bits of breaking news wrong all the time, but we accept that as part of the game. To vilify Wikipedia for the same errors sets unequal standards and besides, you'll likely never see the same level of transparency in traditional media about where it went wrong.

I found this article and its links really interesting - it discusses the fusion of the city and technology, and uses the concept of ubiquitous technology/urban informatics to explain and describe 'smart cities'. Also, it raises the idea of the 'searchable city' and that cities need to be considered on earily they are searchable. This raises the issue of reputation - which is referred to here: not only consumable items being reviewed by the citizenry and available on iphone apps, but also traffic routes, places to live etc.

The founder and Chief Executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced at a recent conference that Facebook's Open Graph project will soon enable an even greater degree of personalisation as people surf the net. I think this probably has implications for user experience, in terms of viewing popular sites through the prism of social networking - and it gives sites more authority to store data about individuals. Because Facebook seems to be so pervasive nowadays, it seems like we won't have much say in the matter...

Allison, that's a great point, I've tried to quit using the site but I stop when I realise that I won't know about upcoming social events - unfortunately its the primary means of communication used by some friends!

Yes and I think Facebook take full advantage! A lot of my friends have been posting notes on FB about changing privacy settings now that the new features have come in. So, people are trying to resist but in a more subtle way than dropping out of FB altogether.