internet

FCC approves much-needed increased China-U.S. bandwidth

As it stands, there's almost twice as much bandwidth across the Atlantic as there is across the Pacific. But with new U.S. FCC approval for the first ever China-U.S. fiber link, this is all about to change.

The score right now: 5,547 to 2,726. That's the current Atlantic vs. Pacific bandwidth score in gigabits per second, according to TeleGeography. The Trans-Pacific Express "will initially provide capacity of up to 1.28 terabits per second, and the system will have a design capacity of up to 5.12Tbps to support future Internet growth and … Read more

Coghead flips to Adobe Flash and Amazon EC2

Coghead on Monday plans to launch a second version of its hosted application development platform, which the start-up has moved to Adobe Systems' Flex/Flash technology and Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) computing infrastructure.

The company is one of several targeting what it calls "do-it-yourself developers" at small and midsize businesses.

Such developers are generally tech-savvy enough to write macros in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet software or work with scripting languages, but they don't have the same level of training as a professional C++ programmer, for example. The company estimates that there are between 15 … Read more

Report: Most Americans still get campaign info on TV

We've already observed in New Hampshire this month that there's something to be said for tried-and-true techniques like handshaking and baby-kissing--as opposed to MySpace "friending"--in winning a presidential race.

Now there's some data to back up the premise that the Internet is playing a growing, but still not yet dominant, role in the drama-filled 2008 contest.

Specifically, more Americans are still "learning something" about this year's presidential campaigns by watching television news and--gasp--reading the daily newspaper than by surfing the Web, according to a new report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. (… Read more

AOL Radio re-posts security update

AOL Radio may need to turn up the volume to get its users to download the latest security update, or its listeners may tune them out.

AOL Radio re-posted its Unagi plug-in 2.6.2.6 on Friday, but it failed to stress that users running versions of AOL Radio prior to August could be facing a security risk if they didn't download the update.

It turns out that AOL Radio users running version 2.6.1.11 are at risk, said Thomas Chau, who runs the AOL Radio blog. He noted, however, that anyone who downloaded the Unagi … Read more

Samsung streams video and music to your HDTV

Bearing a striking resemblance to Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link, Samsung has announced the Home Digital Media Adapter (DMA). The Home Digital Media Adapter is designed to attach to the back of certain 2008 Samsung HDTVs and streams media from the internet or networked connected PCs. Connecting to your home network is possible either by a wired Ethernet connection or by buying a separate 802.11n module. It also works as a Media Center Extender, which gives you access to Microsoft's user interface and features like an electronic programming guide. The initial list of supported file types is … Read more

Intel CEO predicts a more 'personalised' Internet

In a visionary speech to the CES trade show in Las Vegas, Intel chief executive Paul Otellini predicted the rise of a more "personal Internet" - one which will be proactive in serving users the information and entertainment they need in a more intuitive and personalised way.

Today's Internet, he said, is a "go-to" Internet.

"The Internet reacts to our requests rather than anticipating them," he told the conference at the Venetian Hotel and Casino.

In the future, he predicts Internet services will be more proactive, predictive and context aware.

"The Internet … Read more

Mozilla yanks its gauche anti-Internet Explorer campaign

It's often said that open-source companies spend a lot less money on sales and marketing. Apparently this translates into not knowing how to spend it well when we do spend money, as Mozilla's recent bout with marketing demonstrates.

Mozilla's "Firefox Users against Boredom" campaign was meant to be funny. Kind of like Apple's Mac vs. PC ads. But it wasn't.

I, personally, wasn't offended by its tongue-in-cheek implications that Internet Explorer causes cancer and such. I just found them dumb and ineffective. It's also surprising to me that with so much … Read more

IE7Pro update reminds us why it's easy to love

Internet Explorer 7 disappointed many of our users by offering far too few features much too late. After all, Firefox was way ahead with tabbed browsing, greater stability, and a seemingly bottomless pit of extensions. Then came IE7Pro, one extension with enough oomph to make IE7 worth using.

IE7's bump up to Version 2.0 doesn't actually add a whole lot more than a chance to remember what we liked about the app in the first place, but there is new support for 64-bit machines, and a hot-key combination (Control+M) that shrinks IE windows to a tray icon. In order to rustle up some revenue while keeping the program free to use, IE7Pro announced it runs search from a Google-powered toolbar, and presumably runs operations from the proceeds. Finally, Version 2 replaces the download manager with a MiniDM that's not actually so mini.

The big show, of course, is IE7Pro's major assist to Microsoft's market-dominating browser. There's a lot here--ad- and Flash-blocking, spell check (which requires installing an OpenOffice.org dictionary,) and tabbing features. Double clicking shuts down a tab, while typing a URL automatically opens it in a fresh tab. That shaves off time and steps in the course of a browsing day.… Read more

Long power outage a wake-up call to be better prepared

I've just emerged from a brief visit to the 19th century (via a storm-driven 36-hour power outage) and among all my other experiences and impressions during this odd weekend, none was more powerful than an extremely visceral understanding of just how fragile our modern infrastructures are.

This all began when, just as I was about to run out of my Sausalito, Calif., house on Friday morning, I decided to do a quick e-mail check. Oddly, there was no Internet connection, and after a cursory check to see why, I realized that our power was out, a condition that had … Read more