Net-neutrality plan is dividing companies

In an emerging battle over the future of the web, companies are taking sides, reports the New York Times: Facebook said it would not support a proposal by Google and Verizon to regulate internet access, while an AT&T executive called the plan a “reasonable framework.” Most media companies have stayed mute on the subject, but in an interview this week, the media mogul Barry Diller called the proposal a sham. And outside of technology circles, most people have not yet figured out what is at stake. The debate revolves around net neutrality, which in the broadest sense holds that internet users should have equal access to all types of information online, and that companies offering internet service should not be able to give priority to some sources or types of content. In a policy statement on Aug. 9, Google and Verizon proposed that regulators enforce those principles on wired connections but not on the wireless internet. They also excluded something they called “additional, differentiated online services.” In other words, on mobile phones or on special access lanes, carriers like Verizon and AT&T could charge companies a toll for faster access to customers or, some analysts worry, block certain services from reaching customers altogether. Opponents of the proposal say that the internet, suddenly, would not be so open anymore. Some experts were puzzled as to what these services might be and why such an exception might be necessary. “Broadband that’s not the internet? I don’t know what they’re talking about,” said David A. Patterson, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley. “They seem to have an idea of something other than the public internet as a way to ship information, but by nature, to have value it has to go to a lot of places, and right now, that’s the packet-switched internet.”

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Net-neutrality agreement sparks concerns

Before the FCC moves ahead with any net-neutrality proposal, it must establish its authority to regulate broadband.
Before the FCC moves ahead with any net-neutrality proposal, it must establish its authority to regulate broadband.

Verizon Communications and Google Inc. have crafted a joint policy proposal they hope can serve as a framework for Congress and the Federal Communications Commission in drafting so-called “net neutrality” rules to ensure that phone and cable providers cannot favor their own services or discriminate against certain kinds of internet traffic that compete with their core businesses. But several public-interest groups have decried the proposal, saying it would lead to a two-tiered system of internet use that favors large organizations over smaller competitors.

Phone and cable TV companies that provide internet access should be barred from slowing down, blocking, or charging to prioritize internet traffic flowing over their regular broadband lines, Verizon and Google said in a policy statement released Aug. 9. But the companies left room for broadband providers to charge extra to route traffic from premium services over dedicated networks that are separate from the public internet.

Although broadband providers such as Verizon and internet-content companies such as Google are at opposite ends in the increasingly bitter debate over such rules, the two companies have been in talks for months to try to identify common ground.…Read More

Google’s march toward social networking

Google this week confirmed its acquisition of online entertainment company Slide, PC World reports. The purchase rehashed speculation that the search giant is interested in working its way into social media, possibly with a game-centered service called “Google Me.” Although there isn’t any word on specific product details David Glazer, engineering director at Google confirms the company will invest more effort to make its services more “socially aware” in a recent blog post. This shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone. Google has repeatedly expressed interest in the past year, starting with the announcement of Google Wave at the 2009 I/O Developer Conference. If Google plans to dethrone Facebook (or at least become a contender in the world of social media) it needs to learn a few things from its past social endeavors, most of which haven’t ended so well. However, it’s clear that Google is keeping at this mission…

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Google: Brace yourselves for the data explosion

Google CEO Eric Schmidt had some scary things to say about privacy, reports PC World. In a nutshell, he said there’s an almost incomprehensible amount of data out there about all of us–much of which we’ve generated ourselves via social networks, blogs, and so on–and we are totally unprepared to deal with the implications of that fact. Schmidt was speaking at the Techonomy confab, currently underway at California’s Lake Tahoe, where large-brained people gather to talk about how technology and the economy intersect. Schmidt wasn’t really trying to draw disaster scenarios. He noted that a lot of positive benefits can come from the information explosion, and he’s right. Personally, if not for the internet, I might be in another line of work. I’d almost certainly live in another city. Being able to access vast amounts of data without lifting my butt from this ergonomic chair has transformed my life in dozens of ways, as I’m sure it has transformed others’. Of course, Google is in the business of monetizing that data, for which it seems to possess an insatiable appetite. And sometimes it screws up big time. Schmidt didn’t really talk about that. The good side of all this data: instant information about virtually anything. The dark side? Vast potential for personal profiling by your employer, your insurer, and The Man…

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Source: Google, Verizon near net neutrality plan

Google Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are close to finalizing a proposal for so-called “network neutrality” rules, which would dictate how broadband providers treat internet traffic flowing over their lines, according to a person briefed on the negotiations, the Associated Press reports. A deal could be announced within days, said the person, who did not want to be identified because negotiations are still ongoing. Any deal that is reached could form the basis for federal legislation and would likely shape efforts by the Federal Communications Commission to broker an agreement on the contentious issue, which has pitted the nation’s big phone and cable companies against many big internet companies. The FCC has been holding talks with a handful of large phone, cable and internet companies–including Verizon and Google–to try to reach some sort of industrywide compromise on net neutrality that all sides can accept. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is seeking to adopt rules that would require phone and cable companies to give equal treatment to all broadband traffic traveling over their networks…

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Google Wave is dead: Now what?

While very few of you may be shedding tears over the demise of Google Wave, or even knew what it was, we probably haven’t seen the last of this service, PC World reports. The search giant says the technology behind its ill-fated collaboration tool will live on in new products that have not yet been announced. Google isn’t giving any hints about what new those new products might be or how they would benefit from Wave features. But company CEO Eric Schmidt recently said the Wave team would be moving over to other products that are “like Wave but applied in some other areas,” according to a YouTube video posted by TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. So what might those other areas be that could benefit from Wave technology? The most likely candidate could be Google’s rumored Facebook competitor, Google Me. It’s unclear at this point what Google Me would be like or how it would differ from Buzz and Orkut, Google’s other two social applications.

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College students sound off on social networking likes and dislikes

Google is talking to several top online game developers about creating a broader social networking site that would offer social games and could compete with Facebook—and in interviews with ABC News, several college students offered their suggestions for what Google could do to make them abandon Facebook. When Ryan Khuri, 21, a junior majoring in English/philosophy at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, joined Facebook, he saw it as “the simple alternative to MySpace.” But now, Khuri said, Facebook “seems to be building more and more clutter.” Northwestern medical student Jack Dougherty, 22, agreed. Although he deleted his Facebook account a few years ago to help prevent his spending too much time on his computer, he said, one thing that would make the site more appealing to him is to simplify it. Many college students cite third-party applications as the main cause of Facebook clutter. “The constant invites to join them are annoying,” said Lauren Walters, 21, a graduate student at Clemson University in South Carolina, who said she uses Facebook for “social networking, and not for playing games.” While Facebook users can send video messages to each other and post videos to each other’s “walls,” many students point to the absence of a Skype-like video chat feature. Walters said she would be open to trying Google’s new social networking site but isn’t sure she’d leave Facebook for it, although the ability to chat with other users on the site via webcam could possibly win her over…

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Microsoft and NASA team up On 3-D space images

WorldWide Telescope, Microsoft’s galactic version of Google Earth, has been steadily increasing its fidelity ever since it launched in 2008, TechNewsDaily reports. Now, thanks to a new collaboration with NASA, WorldWide Telescope has produced the most detailed spherical image of the heavens to date, along with a new 3-D, true color map of the surface of Mars. As part of the new user experience in the WorldWide Telescope, Microsoft is also announcing a first of its kind: a high-resolution spherical TeraPixel sky map now available to viewers within the virtual telescope. The sky map is the largest and highest-quality spherical image of the sky currently available and was created from data provided by the Digitized Sky Survey, a collection of thousands of images taken over a period of 50 years by two ground-based survey telescopes. When those images are combined and processed, the TeraPixel image provides a complete, spherical, panoramic rendering of the night skies that, if displayed at full size, would require 50,000 high-definition televisions to view. The new high-quality image will give scientists with the ability to navigate through space dynamically to make their own discoveries…

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Google putting its digital library to the test

Google Book Search has about 12 million books available.
Google Book Search has about 12 million books available.

Google Inc. is giving researchers nearly a half-million dollars to test the academic value of its rapidly growing online library.

The grants announced July 14 will be used to help pay for 12 humanities projects studying questions that will require sifting through thousands of books to reach meaningful conclusions.

Google is hoping the research will validate its long-held belief that making electronic copies of old books will bring greater enlightenment to the world. The company’s critics, though, have argued that the internet search leader has trampled over copyright laws to build a commanding early lead in digital books so it can boost profits.…Read More

Google tells lawmakers it never used Wi-Fi data

Google Inc. is telling lawmakers that it never dissected or used any of the information that it accidentally sucked up while collecting data about public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries, reports the Associated Press. In a letter to three key members of the House Commerce Committee, the company apologized for collecting fragments of eMails, search requests and other online activities over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. The company got the information while photographing neighborhoods for its “Street View” mapping feature. Google said it was trying to gather information about the location, strength and configuration of Wi-Fi networks so it could improve the accuracy of location-based services such as Google Maps and driving directions. Going further and collecting snippets of information traveling over those networks “was a mistake,” Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, wrote in the letter…

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Missouri third-grader wins ‘Doodle 4 Google’ contest

For winning Google’s 2010 Doodle 4 Google contest, third-grader Makenzie Melton from El Dorado Springs, Mo., now has a $15,000 college scholarship, a netbook computer, and a $25,000 technology grant for a new computer lab at her school, CNN reports. Melton’s doodle, titled “Rainforest Habitat,” will appear on the Google home page May 27. The doodle, which expresses Melton’s “concern that the rainforest is in danger,” was chosen over more than 33,000 submissions by students ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade, according to a post on the Official Google Blog. Melton and the rest of the applicants were asked to develop a doodle for the site’s home page based on the theme, “If I could do anything, I would…” A panel of “well-known illustrators, cartoonists, and animators” helped choose the winning doodle, according to the blog…

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Oregon schools adopt Google Apps to save cash, expand ed-tech offerings

Oregon parents will have to sign a new consent form before their children use Google Apps.
Oregon parents will have to sign a new consent form before their children use Google Apps.

Oregon’s 540,000 public school students will be able to get teacher feedback on classroom projects in real time and create web sites and online videos, after the state school system announced April 28 that it will be the first to use Google Apps for Education in K-12 schools statewide.

Moving to the free Google Apps for Education – a host of school-friendly features the internet giant has pushed in recent months – will save the state $1.5 million in IT costs because the service is hosted entirely on the web, with no hardware, software, or technology upkeep involved, Oregon Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo said.

Oregon’s districts will have use of Google’s services for up to five years in this landmark education technology deal. The Oregon Department of Education will review an “additional multiyear extension” during the fourth year of the agreement, according to the agreement details. Participating school districts will have to distribute new parental consent forms for any student who wants to use the Google applications.…Read More