How much freedom and equality there will be in the Internet of the future

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just called off the “closed door” network neutrality negotiations it was conducting between major ISPs, Google, Skype and the Open Internet Coalition, after news broke Wednesday afternoon that Google and Verizon had reached an independent deal on the issue outside of the FCC negotiations. The end of these talks, which had been roundly criticized because they were being held in secret, may be a sign of hope for the FCC to push ahead with the public debate.

The FCC decision comes less than 24 hours after hysterical and confused reports of a Google and Verizon deal on net neutrality began circulating around media outlets and Washington.

What it Means for the Valley and Consumers As Google and Verizon work out their compromise and promote whatever version of network neutrality works for one of the largest telecommunications companies and the largest driver of web traffic, the effect on the startup ecosystem and consumers may take a while to appear. But warning signs are already planted. For example:

AT&T tried to stop YouTube access on its phones.

Germany’s T-Mobile wants to block video content on wireless networks.

Google and Verizon are talking about paid prioritization of Google traffic.

Consider what paid prioritization means for the nascent web television industry, which right now sometimes uses Google’s YouTube as a distribution platform. It’s great that Google may pay for their shows to get prioritization, but what happens if Google doesn’t like a show, or maybe it wants to run ads the creator doesn’t like? The Internet as an equal opportunity distribution platform is subtly changed.
The U.S. broadband network was in sad shape as well, unless one was lucky enough to live in an area with a cable provider that was deploying DOCSIS 3.0 or within range of Verizon’s fiber network. An FCC survey this year discovered that 78 percent of the U.S. has only two broadband providers to choose from, while 13 percent have only one.



The numbers are important, because one of the bulwarks against nefarious activity in terms of discriminating against certain types of content is robust competition. The line of thinking is that if AT&T blocks certain files, the customer can simply find an ISP that doesn’t. In practice, this isn’t a very effective threat because in some areas, the alternatives are crappy DSL lines, satellite broadband or nothing.

The new FCC ,with Genachowski at its head, was going to change all that. He decided to champion network neutrality, not only for wireline, but also for wireless access. He was going to be a thorn in the side of the big incumbents and agitate for innovation, consumer rights and change.

  gigaom.com By Stacey Higginbotham

 The report's authors, Craig Settles and Adam Elliot, admitted that even they were surprised by the study's principal observation that competition inversely correlates with state wealth.

"We hesitate to draw what could be the obvious conclusion that, if a state's constituents become wealthier, competitiveness in broadband will drop," they conclude. "We take the position that wealth attracted or facilitated (and still does) one or two large providers to come into the area initially and establish market dominance such that their resulting barriers prevented competition from becoming widely established. It very well may be that specifically because less affluent states did not attract one of the largest providers (at least for a while), several smaller regional or local providers were able to establish stronger market positions."

So it may be that policy makers have to come up with a more sophisticated way of thinking about "competitiveness" and its virtues. In poorer, more rural states, having a host of probably cash-poor competitors on the market doesn't necessarily mean better broadband. The Federal Communications Commission's latest report (please read this report TWICE) on Internet competition found that only 72 percent of consumers in "competitive" Arkansas had access to 200Kbps or greater cable modem service in 2008.

arstechnica.com

 There is no clear and generally applicable definition of net neutrality. It is a principle that is described differently by different people coming from different regional, social and scientific backgrounds. Technical definition would be that all IP packets should be treated equally on a best-effort basis. But net neutrality is not a technical principle but a social paradigm that strives to preserve the Internet in a perceived state of maximum freedom and equality among its participants. Hence, ultimately, society will have to decide about how much freedom and equality there will be in the Internet of the future. Here we will focus on the more technical aspects of net neutrality.

So.....
Let's reach 2 million for Net Neutrality! Save the Internet?

from savetheinternet.com :




Urge Congress and the FCC to support Net Neutrality.

Cable Firms Join Forces to Attract Focused Ads

In an effort to slow Google’s siphoning of advertising dollars away from television, the nation’s six largest cable companies are making plans for a jointly owned company that would allow national advertisers to buy customized ads and interactive ads across the companies’ systems.

For the last six months, executives from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox Communications, Charter Communications and Bright House Networks have been meeting monthly, alternating between New York and Philadelphia.

Quarterbacking the initiative — code-named Project Canoe to emphasize that the companies must all work together — has been Stephen Burke, president of Comcast, and Landel C. Hobbs, the chief operating officer of Time Warner Cable.

Getting the right advertisement to the right person, based on that individual’s own tastes and lifestyle, has been the promise of cable television for years and the reality of the Internet.

The allure of online advertising is that it can be directed to individuals and that advertisers can quickly measure its effectiveness. After all, a bachelor living in a Manhattan high-rise surely does not need a pickup truck or a box of diapers. And a retiree living in Florida probably does not drink much Red Bull or venture online to find a date.

Cable companies and even Google — which has a deal with the satellite TV company EchoStar to sell television ads — see customized features in television as a potential gold mine.

But such newfangled advertising models are something the cable industry has promised for years, and until they see them on a large scale, advertisers and investors will remain cautious.

That is why the industry has not made a more public splash about the initiative and why executives involved with the project asked not to be identified.

Collectively, the cable companies will initially put about $150 million behind the effort in order to build a national service that can sell targeted advertising across all six cable systems.

Cable companies have the ability to compile better data on users than Internet companies can glean, which could make focused ads on television more effective, according to Craig Moffett, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. It also makes the data that Project Canoe will collect from set-top boxes a valuable asset.

“Addressable advertising on television is in many ways the holy grail, because it can offer ever more targeting ability than Google,” Mr. Moffett said (“addressable” is the industry term for targeted ads).

While much ink has been spilled over the rise of Internet video and the decline of television, about 90 percent of all video consumed in the United States last year was done the old-fashioned way — watching shows as they came on TV — according to Starcom USA, whose clients include General Motors and Procter & Gamble. About 7 percent was via digital video recorder, 2 percent was online, and 1 percent was through video-on-demand services.

Here is what is at stake. Combined, the nation’s cable operators generate about $5 billion in revenue from selling local advertising in markets where they own the infrastructure to people’s homes, a small slice of the $70 billion television advertising pot. They largely compete with local newspapers and radio stations. But Project Canoe will allow the industry to sell ads on a nationwide basis through a joint platform.

For each hour of programming on a cable network, the cable operator owns about two minutes that it can sell to advertisers. The network, say ESPN or TNT, owns about 15 minutes that it can sell.

Because the only way to deliver custom television advertising is through a cable set-top box, Project Canoe is also a way for the cable companies to get a piece of the advertising revenue. This is done by allowing cable networks like ESPN or a broadcast network like CBS to sell ads on Project Canoe’s platform and direct those ads using the vast amount of data collected from set-top boxes.

The executives involved in Project Canoe think that, by working together, they can increase the cable industry’s take from $5 billion a year to $15 billion a year, according to an executive briefed on research compiled by Project Canoe.

Another component of Project Canoe is interactive advertising, which allows television viewers to use remote controls to, say, request a brochure or call up more information about a product.

“The investment community has been waiting for addressability for a generation,” said Mr. Moffett. “This has been hoped for for the better part of a decade. “But it was never going to happen without a coalition of the cable operators. This is a critical step forward.”

Last spring, industry executives began discussing how they could devise a joint advertising platform to offer up to big national advertisers. But only recently, after prodding from media buyers for General Motors and Procter & Gamble, did the cable executives become more serious by deciding to establish a separate company.

“As an advertiser, as an agency, it is so necessary that the cable industry act collectively,” said Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president and video and innovations director at Starcom. “Because they didn’t have a formal group before, they just threw stuff against the wall and some stuff stuck.”

Ms. Scheppach has been involved in consulting with the cable companies on the project. “Starcom has been working with the cable industry for several years to drive advertising standards,” including video-on-demand, tailored ads and interactive advertising, she said. “To me, this is an outgrowth and a formalization of that.”

The group recently hired the recruitment firm Spencer Stuart to search for a chief executive, according to executives briefed on the plans.

“They’re trying to figure out, do they want someone from inside the cable industry, or do they want someone from inside the advertising industry?” Mr. Moffett said.

nytimes.com

NTT DoCoMo Android-based cell phone?

According to InfoWorld, Japan's biggest mobile telecom carrier gave its strongest support yet to Google's Android platform on Thursday when it said it is considering a cell phone based on the technology.

"We are starting discussions to offer handsets that will have the Android operating system," said Takeshi Natsuno, managing director of the multimedia services department at NTT DoCoMo.

The talks include getting support for I-mode, DoCoMo's hit mobile Internet service, on the Android platform. Nearly 48 million of DoCoMo's 53 million customers subscribe to I-mode, so having it on Android will be key to the Google platform's success in Japan.

Android is a Linux-based platform for cell phones that will combine open source components and include an operating system, a middleware stack, a customizable user interface, and applications.

NTT DoCoMo is one of the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, the group developing Android. Until Thursday, it hadn't disclosed what it hoped to gain from its participation in the group, which comprises about 40 companies, including some of the biggest names in the cell phone industry.

"When I look at the prototype, the Android-based handset works really well even on some of the cheaper handset designs," said Natsuno.
full story

Press release Article

NTT DoCoMo and Google to Partner in Mobile Internet Services

Tokyo, January 24, 2008 - NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (Headquartered in Tokyo; President & CEO Masao Nakamura) and Google Inc. (Headquartered in California; Chairman & CEO; Eric Schmidt) today jointly announced that they formed a partnership that includes providing search services, search-related advertisement and potential applications to i-mode™ users.

The two companies will also collaborate to enhance the user-friendliness of i-mode services, by making various Google services easier to access through i-mode handsets. The default pre-loading of Google Maps™ application into upcoming DoCoMo i-mode handsets is one of the initial initiatives being discussed.

A summary of the agreement items follows.

1. Purpose of this partnership:
Google, one of the largest search engines in the world, is aiming to fulfill the mission of "organizing the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." i-mode, the pioneering mobile Internet service provided by DoCoMo, boasts nearly 48 million mobile Internet users. By connecting i-mode with various services provided by Google, the parties together intend to increase accessibility, user-friendliness and further develop the usefulness of mobile Internet services in the Japanese market.

2. Outline of this partnership:
(1) Extension of search services on i-mode
In addition to the existing i-mode menu site search service, through the partnership with Google, i-mode users will be served Google search results for mobile and PC web sites via the i-mode portal search-box. Launch of the expanded search services is scheduled in spring 2008. The new search-box will be placed on the top-page of the i-mode portal, increasing the immediate accessibility and convenience of searches on i-mode.

(2) Search-related advertisements
Simultaneously with the launch of the new search services in spring 2008, key-word based advertisements using Google's ad platform AdWords™ will also be provided on the search-result pages in conjunction with the search results.

(3) More Google services for i-mode handsets
As a first initiative beyond searches, Google Maps for Mobile is under discussion to become a standard pre-installed application on upcoming i-mode handsets to be launched in the near future. The parties are also planning to collaborate around other services and search-related functions. The parties intend to make it easier for i-mode users to use Google services such as Gmail™, YouTube™ and Picasa™ by giving users more seamless and immediate access over the mobile phone. Furthermore, in all upcoming DoCoMo full-browser capable handsets, Google will be set to appear as the default start-page on the full-browser.

(4) Other possible mobile marketing services
Google, in conjunction with DoCoMo and its subsidiaries, will also further study the possibility of new mobile marketing services directed towards i-mode users.

(5) Possible deployment of Android™ platform
DoCoMo and Google will also continue to study the possibility of bringing Android based handsets to the Japanese market. Android, a revolutionary platform for mobile phones, was announced by the Open Handset Alliance™ (OHA) last fall, in which Google was the key initiator of the Android project.

About NTT DoCoMo, Inc.

NTT DoCoMo is the world's leading mobile communications company. DoCoMo serves over 53 million customers, including 40 million people subscribing to FOMA™, launched as the world's first 3G mobile service based on W-CDMA in 2001. DoCoMo also offers a wide variety of leading-edge mobile multimedia services, including i-mode, the world's most popular mobile e-mail/Internet service, used by nearly 48 million people. With the addition of credit-card and other e-wallet functions, DoCoMo mobile phones have become highly versatile tools for daily life. NTT DoCoMo is listed on the Tokyo (9437), London (NDCM) and New York (DCM) stock exchanges. For more information, visit www.nttdocomo.com.

i-mode and FOMA are trademarks or registered trademarks of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. in Japan and other countries.
NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service is only available to subscribers in Japan.

About Google Inc.

Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit http://www.google.com.

Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associate.

i-mode Technology

i-mode is built on a firm foundation of advanced technology. The use of packet transmissions offers continuous access, while the use of a subset of HTML makes content creation easy and provides simple conversion of existing websites.

Compatibility

i-mode websites are created with iHTML, a subset of standard HTML. Since converting existing HTML websites to i-mode format requires only minor changes to the HTML, conversion is fast and easy, and the number of i-mode sites is high and increasing rapidly.

Efficiency

NTT DoCoMo's packet-switched technology was specifically designed to provide users with "always-on" network access, eliminating the need to log on or off. In turn, i-mode − the service developed for this packet-switched technology − provides the most efficient wireless access possible as no dedicated radio channel is required. The result is lower costs for customers as they are billed according to volume of data sent and received, rather than by time spent connected.

Versatility

i-mode offers one more significant benefit: mobile voice and data service in a single convenient package. This voice/data flexibility is unprecedented: people can download information about events, restaurants, etc., and then make reservations, or place calls to numbers searched in the i-mode directory.

Open Standards

At all phases of the development of i-mode, NTT DoCoMo pursued a policy of open technology exchange and joint large system tests at our R&D center with the world's leading research organizations, mobile communications operators and equipment manufacturers. In addition, i-mode supports Java-based applications whose importance continues to increase as the move to wireless devices accelerates globally.

Overseas Specific Information

The latest information and resources for creating i-mode Java applications
DoJa Developer Network

Merry Christmas, Google Talk bots bring real-time translation

Google Talk has added a number of bots that translate text for you, using Google’s Translation technology. To use them, just add the bot to your contact list. The bot names are all name@bot.talk.google.com, with the name being the two letter language code being translated from, the number 2, and the two letter code for the language being translated too.

Google lists out about 30 total language bots in the announcement post on the Google Talk blog. The bots are all logically named according to their translation duty, such as en2ko@bot.talk.google.com, signifying an English to Korean translation. Just like Google's other language services, English is the dominant language across the translations, though some non-English bots such as fr2de do exist. Users must add a bot to their Gmail contact list in order to communicate with the bot or use it in a group chat. Once added though, these bots will do their job both in Gmail and other Google Talk implementations like the iGoogle start page, but group chats don't appear to work in third-party clients such as Apple's iChat.

Using a bot for simple translation is as easy as starting a chat with it and typing your phrase, sentence or paragraph. To translate a chat between you and at least one other person, bots for each translation direction will need to be added. For example: if an English speaker wants to use Google Talk to speak with a Chinese speaker, each participant will need to add the relevant translation bot to their contact list, or one participant can add both as contacts, then bring them into the chat. Either way, this end of the process can be a bit clunky, and there is much room for improvement. One way would be to simply check each user's default language and automatically add bots (or at least offer) when two different native language speakers begin to chat.

Once users are set up to chat and the proper bots are brought in, chatting and translating is a mixed bag. In tests across various languages including English, French, and German, the bots at times exhibited surprising translation abilities for things like colloquialisms, but dropped the ball other times with basic "hello, how are you" statements like. By extension, these bots are only as good as Google's translation dictionaries, which some feel can leave much to be desired.

Another bizarre problem in testing was that some combinations of bots would begin to translate each other. When translating English to German, for example, the English bot would occasionally re-translate a statement that was just converted from English to German. This problem was erratic though, hinting that it could simply be a bug which can likely be fixed soon, as the service just debuted today.

All things considered, Google Talk's automated translation abilities are certainly a welcome communication innovation. Users will simply need to remain patient and understanding when mistranslations inevitably happen. Google's language dictionaries will undoubtedly improve over the coming months and years, bringing even more users together through the simple power of chat.

OK, I cheated. I don't really speak Chinese. But I know a bot that does, and we're releasing it today together with number of other translation bots. For those not familiar with bots, a (ro)bot is a piece of software that acts as a chat contact and provides some fun or useful functionality.

If you want to try it, just add en2zh@bot.talk.google.com as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or as a pocket translator in your Google Talk client for BlackBerry.

For more languages, just add any of the 29 23 other translation bots. They're named using two-letter language abbreviations as "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com", and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. So, for French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.

For those of you into programming, why not build your own bot? Maybe a weather service or a rock/paper/scissors game. The Google Talk service uses an open protocol called XMPP, and it's easy to find client libraries and code samples that will give you a flying start. For Java users, check out Ignite Realtime's Smack library. Please note that the Google Talk service enforces traffic limitations on user accounts, so if you want to support more than a few thousand Google Talk users on your bot, connect using the server-to-server protocol (either by making your bot act as an XMPP server or by hosting the bot on your own XMPP server).

Jonas Lindberg
Software Engineer

Update: Our initial list of available bots included some languages that are not actually available. There are 24 bots currently available: ar2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fr2de, fr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, zh2en. As some have guessed, this is a 20% project, and while machine translation isn't perfect, we hope these bots can be helpful in bridging language barriers.

Permalink|arstechnica.com

130 countries Google Earth Imagery Update - October 2nd

Google pushed out a new imagery update today - mostly 60 cm resolution satellite imagery. They haven't given out specifics yet, but the updates are in U.S., Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, Australia and New Zealand. Google has posted some clues to some of the locations in their post at the Google Lat-Long blog. The post does indicate that the imagery update touches over 130 countries and that it is a "significant amount of new or updated 60cm satellite imagery".

Google Earth Blog

As usual with image updates, the imagery update has not yet made it in Google Maps. The Maps image update normally happens a week or two after a Google Earth update.

Google Earth | Free

Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

• Fly to your house. Just type in an address, press Search, and you’ll zoom right in.
• Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
• Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings, or look up to explore the sky
• Save and share your searches and favorites.
  

Since Google Earth was launched, users have been exploring our world and creating content overlays (KML files) to share their explorations with others. We're now highlighting user-created KML files each week in the new Google Earth Gallery. You can also choose to add the gallery's Google Gadget to your iGoogle page.

http://earth.google.com/