Mousetrap Technology - Times Online - WBLG

Why politicians won't talk about technology

"It was not so long ago that technology policy was a high-profile political issue in the US," writes Jonathan Weber in a comment article about why politicians won't discuss technology.  Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s the conventional wisdom held that Japan Inc. and the Asian Tigers were gradually overtaking the US (not to mention Europe) in technological prowess, and that something had to be done.

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Will next iPod double as a digital camera?

Are Apple technicians busily at work on a touch-screen iPod? Could it possibly double as a digital camera? This is the buzz being generated in the geekier corners of the blogosphere this weekend after some sleuths spotted the latest Apple patent application filed last week in the US.

Court orders ISP to cut access to AllofMP3

A Danish court this week ordered an ISP to block its customers from accessing discount Russian download site AllofMP3, in what has been hailed as an important success for copyright holders

Only connect electronically

"Social networking is one of the building blocks of the Web 2.0 dream: bringing together like-minded people online to create a community of interest that can share knowledge, information and resources and make useful contacts," writes Michael Parsons in a comment article on connecting electronically. " However, we must not forget its older, fleshly incarnation – the real networking event. During the height of the dotcom boom you had to fight off invitations to internet networking events."

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PC World offers free Vista upgrades

When Mousetrap reported some time ago that Microsoft was negotiating discounts to its new Vista operating system, reader reaction was overwhelmingly negative. The idea was that people who bought PCs before the much-delayed Windows Vista was ready would get a voucher entitling them to a cut price edition of the new software, but most contributors were unwilling to pay anything for an untested piece of kit.

They may be assuaged by news today that anyone buying a PC or laptop costing £399 or above from PC World between today and March 15 will get the premium home edition of Vista free when it’s finally launched. Those who spend less than £399 will get a half-price edition of the basic home version.

The $100 million Wikipedia challenge

"Loosening the shackles of copyright restriction is the cause célèbre of the internet era," writes Bernhard Warner in a comment article on the copyright debate. "The BitTorrent generation feels entitled to unfettered access to all creative works, while copyright holders assume anyone with a broadband connection is a potential thief."

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Bucking the online trend

"Magazines would seem to be among the most vulnerable of all "old media" as peoples' time and attention shifts to the internet," says Jonathan Weber in a comment article about bucking the online trend. "But even though magazine companies are having their problems  they are actually showing more resilience than one might expect."

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Is a child porn law doing more harm than good?

Is a US law designed to counter child pornography muzzling educators and news outlets? That's precisely what a number of online publishers have been saying for years about the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. According to its harshest critics, the law is so poorly worded it could criminalise the publishing of sexual health education manuals and legitimate news such as the infamous prisoner torture photos from Abu Ghraib. This week, the publishers, led by Salon.com and Nerve.com, finally get their day in court.

Researchers unveil the one-pixel snapper

Behold, a major breakthrough in digital photography: the one-pixel camera. Yep, you heard right. A single pixel. From the Rice University researchers' site, the pictures look, well, not exactly crystal clear. (So, don't worry. You won't have to ditch your mega-mega-pixel snapper just yet).

The important development is not the quality of the first batch of photos, but rather the concept: namely, researchers have demonstrated a new approach for a single pixel to record more accurately an image. Under this concept, the digital camera of the future will have fewer, but more efficient pixels to capture the clearest possible images.

When did the future shock you?

"I once presented my grandmother with a CD of insipid choral music while she was sitting out a bout in hospital," writes Michael Parsons in a comment article about the way technology can shock. "I proudly put the CD down on the hospital table in front of her, hoping she'd be pleased I'd remembered she liked it. She looked at in confusion, and said, "Does the music come out of that?"

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The web is it

The internet has brought about many changes since its birth little more than 15 years ago, but one of its less predictable effects has been a surge of innovation within the advertising industry. Shaken by the erosion of traditionally captive audiences on TV, radio and in newspapers, companies have begun to change the way they reach out to consumers.

Where once they would subject us to the hard sell, the new messages are smarter, slicker and, at first glance at least, may not seem to be selling anything at all. When media consumers have so much choice, the goal is to produce an advert that people choose to watch, and will recommend to friends. The old maxim that content is king is proving to be true in advertising too.

Nasty new worm infiltrates video iPods

Apple is pointing an accusatory finger at Microsoft again, this time for introducing malware to the most recent version of its video iPods, which run on Windows PCs. Apple says there's no need to panic. Less than 1 per cent of video iPods shipped since September 12 (that's the fifth-generation iPods, in case you're scoring from home) carry the nasty code.

Somehow, that doesn't sound reassuring. In fact, Apple says it's received 25 reports about worm infections so far. But it's not forthcoming on exactly how many iPods "less than one per cent" represents. A few hundred? A few thousand? And which territories are affected?

Virtual news

"In this era of newsroom downsizing and newspaper sell-offs, it’s refreshing, if not slightly perplexing, to hear this week’s news that Reuters is expanding, opening a news bureau in the virtual world of Second Life," writes Bernhard Warner, himself a former Reuters correspondent, in this week's column. "As beats go, Second Life has all the makings of a community on the rise, and thus a worthy territory for a news operation to keep tabs on. Its economy is on an annual run-rate set to exceed $130 million."

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Calling all bloggers

An experiment in online social history takes place today, with people throughout Britain being encouraged to contribute to a collective blog being compiled by the British Library. The Times Online newsdesk weblog has been doing its bit...

Here be giants

"The core conceit of the original dot-com bubble was that the internet was going to force the reinvention of just about every industry on earth," writes Jonathan Weber in a comment article about Google's acquisition of YouTube. "In Bubble 2.0, though, you don't hear much about all that... it's remarkable how much of the feeding frenzy involves the media business in particular."

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So you want to start an online business

"At this point even the most cynical will probably concede that this internet thing is going to be around for a while. For good or ill, the audience is moving online, which means the people who serve the audience have to move with them, whether they're selling TV, baked beans, or words," writes Michael Parsons. He goes on to give five golden rules for anyone thinking of entering e-commerce. The first, encouragingly, is "You have no idea what you're getting into."

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Britons 'fear online crime more than mugging'

The average Briton feels more vulnerable to internet crime than muggings, car theft or burglary, according to a new survey. As cyber-crime grows in tandem with broadband take-up, concerns are growing among average net users that they may fall victim to this growing area of criminality, but there may be an up side to the figures. Security experts (particularly those who sell spam filters and firewalls) hope that the fear factor will condition net users to invest more in security.

Spam fighter in legal fight for its life

According to spam-fighters at The Spamhaus Project, some 80 per cent of the get-rich-quick schemes and sex aids that are blasted daily to unsuspecting net users are the work of a relatively small number of individuals. They are included in a list called ROKSO, or Register of Known Spam Operations, maintained by Spamhaus. Through the ROKSO filter, Spamhaus intercepts 50 billion spam messages per day. If a judge in the US has his say, Spamhaus could be sued out of oblivion for maintaining this spam filter.

Google goldmine or legal landmine?

What motive lies behind Google's acquisition of the video-sharing site YouTube? Bernhard Warner suggests that the decision may have more to do with a desire to keep Silicon Valley rivals off its turf than with any great enthusiasm for YouTube itself.

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Energy innovation

"Wind, solar, nuclear and geo-thermal are all now attracting attention even from venture capitalists like Vinod Khosla and John Doerr, Silicon Valley superstars who until recently stuck to computers and the internet," writes Jonathan Weber in his weekly column. "Yet appealing as it is to think that we can apply the Silicon Valley model of innovation to the energy problem, the fundamentals of energy technology are completely different."

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Never trust a webbed politician

"Watching politicians getting excited about technology is always an embarrassing experience," writes Michael Parsons in this week's column. "The manifest insincerity of their attempts to pull on geekish robes is physically painful to anyone who knows what's really going on."

What provoked this rant is, of course, David Cameron's much heralded video weblog, but our correspondent is not impresed. "I suspect Cameron's entire generation are going to have to die before the bluff amateur ho-ho-ho pin stripe anti-intellectual technocontempt of him and his ilk has been bred out of the establishment gene pool," he concludes.

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No geek-speak, please, we're British

One Briton in seven has no clue what an iPod does. "VOIP" and "IM" are even more mystifying – more than half the population has never even heard of these terms. New research by Nielsen-Netratings reveals just how schizophrenic the technology age has become. According to Nielsen, 52 per cent of Britons believe online and digital technology improve their lives, making the day-to-day routine even easier. Now, here's the kicker: 50 percent say they find this gadget-intensive digital age completely bewildering.

For sale: how to crack Apple's DRM

DVD Jon, DRM cracker extraordinaire, is taking his hacking exploits into the for-hire racket. The Norwegian, who as a teen taught the world how to circumvent DVD regional coding and then beat off Hollywood lawsuits, now has his sights on Apple's DRM Fairplay.

According to GigaOM, DVD Jon, now 22, has reverse-engineered Fairplay and wants to sell the know-how (in the form of a licence) to those media firms interested in getting their content on Apple devices. Are there that many media firms that have been shut out of iTunes?

Who wants to run the internet?

"Last week, after years of struggle, you and I finally got our first glimpse of 'internet freedom,'" writes Berhnhard Warner in a comment article about the governance of the internet." That cabal of crooked men in a Dr Evil hideout (aka, the US Department of Commerce) finally relinquished its iron-tight grip on governing the web."

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Endgame approaches in the console wars

Two short, dry business stories out of Tokyo this morning provide a snapshot of the standings in the long, juicy saga of the console wars.

Nintendo, buoyed by strong sales of its hand-held DS console and optimistic about the prospects of its forthcoming Wii, told investors that it was raising profit forecasts for the second half of the year. Sony, the arch-rival whose PlayStation 2 and PSP kept Nintendo on the defensive for so long, simultaneously suffered a 2.75 per cent drop in its share price.

The e-mail trail

E-mail has got a lot of politicians into trouble in the few years since its invention. The latest to make the mistake of assuming that his messages would remain private is Mark Foley, a Republican congressman who resigned after sexually explicit messages apparently sent to a 16-year-old intern were published. As James Collard, author of Times Online's gay weblog, notes, "if the accusations do turn out to be true... my oh my, the breath-taking folly of a politician like Foley getting frisky in a text or an e-mail."