Internet Service Providers Not Keeping Up with User Trends

There's a revolution happening on the Internet — though broadband providers have not seemed to notice.

Thanks to new gadgets, programs and Web services, consumers are sending, sharing and swapping more data than ever over the global network. Yet many are stuck with Internet connections that give them upload speeds much slower than download speeds. What that means is that it takes a lot longer to send a movie or picture out to the Internet than it takes to download the same file. Uploading a video, a roll of pictures or a backup of key files on your hard drive can take hours, or even days. I ran into this issue earlier this month when I sent some pictures to Kodak to get them printed for my dad for Father's Day. I uploaded 170 pictures, which was about 800 megabytes of data.

Admittedly, I have a relatively poky connection: EarthLink says my maximum download speed is 3 megabits per second, but I rarely get more than 2.2 megabits per second. Even at that rate, it would have taken me less than an hour to download that much data. But because I was uploading — at a mere 384 kilobits per second maximum throughput — it took me more than three hours.

I'm not the only one affected. Internet users as a whole are sending increasing amounts of data out on to the Net. They are blogging, posting messages on Twitter, using Loopt to tell others where they are hanging out, or writing messages on friend's profile pages on Facebook. They're sharing videos and pictures on sites such as Flickr, YouTube or Facebook. And they're playing multiplayer games over the Internet such as "World of Warcraft'' or via services such as Xbox Live.

Those on the cutting edge are doing even more. They're swapping videos or software — sometimes illicitly — through services such as BitTorrent. They're using gadgets such as the SlingPlayer, programs such as Simplify Media or services such as Apple's Mobile Me to remotely access videos, music or files from their home PCs or other devices. And they're backing up their home PCs to online storage sites.

And their ranks are growing. YouTube users upload 20 hours of video to the site every minute. That's up from six hours of video every minute just two years ago. Meanwhile, Facebook users upload 850 million photos and 10 million videos to its site every month.

But broadband companies seem oblivious to this trend. If you look at the plans offered by the Bay Area's two main providers, Comcast and AT&T, it's all but impossible to find one in which the upload speed comes anywhere close to the download speed. To get an upload speed that's faster than a slow DSL download rate, you have to subscribe to one of the pricier plans, like Comcast's Extreme 50, which gives you a 10 megabit per second upload connect — at a cost of $100 a month.

Comcast and AT&T officials say they are watching consumer Internet usage trends. They note that as their companies have ramped up download speeds, they've tended to increase upload speeds as well and will continue to do so. The download and upload speeds they offer are simply a response to market demand, they say, claiming that the vast majority of their customers still download far more data than they upload.

"We're designing our products based on how we see consumers using them," John Britton, an AT&T spokesman, told me. Over the course of a month, a week or even a day, it's undoubtedly true that consumers tend to download more data than they upload. But for a growing number of Internet users, there are times when they want to upload data.

When I was uploading my pictures, I was sending far more data than I was receiving. During that time, I couldn't have cared less how fast my download speed was. Indeed, I would have loved to have been able to allocate my download bandwidth to upload my pictures.

But there's no way for me to do that. In terms of Internet access providers, the Bay Area essentially has a duopoly. There are numerous small players such as EarthLink, but Comcast and AT&T dominate — and duopolies tend to not have a good read on real market demand. People often buy one of their products because they don't have any other choices — not because they meet their needs.

In other words, if the market were more competitive, a company might be able to build a successful business by catering to people who want faster upload speeds. Just because consumers use their connections to download more data than they upload isn't proof that they don't want to upload more. The slow speeds could well discourage folks from doing more uploading. And they may well find a use for faster upload speeds — if they had them.

I'd love to be able to back up the videos, songs and documents on my computer to a server on the Internet. But with my slow upload connection, that's not really an option because it would take days of uninterrupted uploading to back up any significant portion of my hard drive. Here's hoping broadband providers join the revolution and make faster upload speeds an option soon.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_12689652?source=email

Tags: AT&T, EarthLink, Comcast, ISP’s, uploading rates, downloading rates, Internet infrastructure, Global IT and Business News, YouTube, Loopt, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, World of warcraft, Xbox live, BitTorrent. SlingPlayer, Simplify Media, Apple's Mobile Me,

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UK Spy Chief Exposed On Facebook

The wife of the designated head of Britain's premier spy agency posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on Facebook, the popular internet networking site, causing shock among security experts and calls for an enquiry.

Sir John Sawers was chosen last month to take over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, the agency popularly known as MI6, in November. The agency has adopted a more public image in recent years, but its employees are still bound by strict secrecy rules.

In what the Mail on Sunday weekly called an "extraordinary lapse" in judgement, the new spy chief's wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and details of where they live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are. The published details, accessible by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world, were immediately removed once authorities were alerted by the newspaper's enquiries.

Security breach denied

David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, made light of the incident and denied there has been a security breach, giving Sawers his full support. "It's not a state secret that he wears speedo swimming trunks," Miliband said. "For goodness' sake, let's grow up!" Miliband told the BBC. But security experts remained shocked.

"It is a most distressing and unfortunate security lapse that will take a great deal of money to put right," Professor Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said. Glees said that the children may now require an additional security detail and that the family may need to move to a new home.

The incident is one of a series of security blunders that have embarrassed the government of Gordon Brown, coming less than two weeks after the British prime minister launched Britain's first national cyber security strategy.

The Mail on Sunday, which published the story on its front page and pictures on a double-page spread, said the information "could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists."

Several government officials called on the government to launch an inquiry into the matter and have since questioned whether Sawers was the right man for the job.

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/07/200975152453161326.html

Tags: Facebook, Sir John Sawers, Lady Sawers, Gordon Bown, David Milibrand, Anthony Glees, UK, M16, Secret Intelligence Service, Speedo, Spy agency, Global Best Practice,

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YouTube Uploads Soar After iPhone 3G S Ships

Mobile uploads to YouTube jumped 400 percent last Friday, the day that Apple released its iPhone 3GS, which contains a video recorder function and easy sharing features.

In the last six months, meanwhile, the Google-owned video site has seen mobile uploads increase by 1,700 percent, the company said in a blog post.

"This growth represents three things coming together: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks," YouTube wrote.

To take advantage of its increased uploads, YouTube issued a challenge to video creators -- make your video go viral through social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter and YouTube will feature it on its homepage. Just upload your video with the "mobiletest" tag, share it with friends, and Tweet the link to @youtube.

"We'll give you one week to spread your test video far and wide, after which we'll take a look at the most popular clips and feature a few on our homepage in a special "mobile upload" edition of our Spotlight Video," YouTube said.

Also today, YouTube announced that it is rolling out the updated version of its channel design to all new users. All existing channels will roll over to the new version by July 15.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/zd/20090625/tc_zd/241763

Tags: YouTube mobile, iPhone 3G, Facebook, Twitter, mobiletest tag, YouTube spotlight video, Google, Global IT News, Youtube mobile video competition, Youtube channels,

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Twitter: Fastest Growing Brand

Twitter grew 1,448 percent from this time last year, but its growth is slowing as the year goes on, according to Monday data from Nielsen.

The micro-blogging site logged 18.2 million unique visitors in May 2009, up from 1.2 million in May 2008, and up 7 percent from April 2009. Those stats make Twitter the fastest growing brand year-over-year, but that growth is starting to slow, Nielsen said. Time spent on Twitter also increased 175 percent from last year, up from 6 minutes and 19 seconds to 17 minutes and 21 seconds. That was down 1 percent from April 2009, however.

Elsewhere in the social networking sphere, Facebook remained the number one global social networking site in May for the seventh month in a row with 144.3 million unique visitors. It was also number one in the U.S. for the fifth month in a row with 75.4 million visitors - a 190 percent increase from May 2008.

MySpace was still number one when it came to total video streams, with 116.1 million video streams. Unique video views jumped 22.9 percent month-over-month, from 9.9 million in April 2009 to 12.2 million in May.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/zd/20090622/tc_zd/241620

Tags: Twitter, Twitter growth, unique visitors, myspace, Facebook, Nielsen, unique video views, total video streams, twitter fastest growing brand, Global IT News, global social networking,

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Google, Facebook Launch Persian Services

(AFP) - Internet giant Google has unveiled a Farsi translation service to help Iranians "communicate directly" to the world, while Facebook has launched a version of its site in Persian, they said Friday.

The Internet has played a key role in allowing some Iranians to communicate since last week's disputed presidential elections and many international media outlets have used services like Twitter and emails in their coverage. "We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran," Google's principal scientist Franz Och said, announcing the addition of Farsi to Google Translate, its free online service.

Like YouTube and Twitter, "Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa -- increasing everyone's access to information," he added in a posting on Google's official blog. Meanwhile, Facebook engineer Eric Kwan said on its blog: "Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath." He added: "Today we're making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian." Several thousand people posted a "thumbs up" reaction to the news, denoting their approval.

The BBC reported that Google and Facebook had speeded up work on their projects because of huge interest in current events in Iran. Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been declared the winner of the elections, provoking major protests on the streets of Tehran by supporters of his principal challenger, moderate former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Many young people have been taking part in the protests. Meanwhile, the BBC also said Friday it has increased the number of satellites carrying its BBC Persian television service to countries including Iran. It said in a statement that the Hotbird 6 satellite which carries BBC international TV and radio services had been subjected to "deliberate interference" since last Friday. Services will now be available via three other satellites.

"This is an important time for Iran and many Iranians are turning to the BBC for impartial and independent news and information during this crisis," said BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090619/tc_afp/iranpoliticsinternetgooglefacebookmedialanguage_20090619160723

Tags: Google, Twitter, Facebook, Farsi, Iran, BBC, YouTube, Hotbird 6, Franz Och, Peter Horrocks, Eric Kwan, BBC Persian Television, Google Translate, Global Best Practice,

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Mideast Hanging On Every Text and Tweet From Iran

Though Tehran has largely shut down communication outlets, protesters are getting out snippets of text and stealthily uploaded photos in a guerrilla-style Internet revolt.

Reporting from Cairo -- Footage of burning cars, masked boys and bloodied protesters in Iran is playing across the Middle East, captivating Arab countries where repressive regimes have for years been arresting political bloggers and cyberspace dissidents.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations have tense relations with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Shiite-led theocracy ruling Iran. But they don't want protests in Tehran to inspire similar democratic fervor in their countries -- especially the merging of Facebook and Twitter with a potent opposition leader like Iran's presidential challenger, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

So far, that has yet to happen. Egyptian activists, for example, have called for rallies and strikes on Internet social networks over the last year, but they have no galvanizing personality and are too disorganized to pose a threat to the police state controlled by President Hosni Mubarak.

"I don't think similar events could even take place in Egypt or other Arab countries," said Ibrahim Issa, editor of the Cairo independent newspaper Al Dustour, who has been arrested a number of times for criticizing the Mubarak government. "We hope and we always keep faith that what's happening in Iran could push Arabs to try and do the same against their oppressive regimes. But reality tells us that this is not applicable. We are comparing 30 years of what I can call Iranian democracy to 30 years of Egyptian tyranny."

The Middle East is witnessing Iran slip into a guerrilla-style Internet and Twitter game of strategies and slogans pecked out by protesters attempting to outflank a government that has largely shut down communication outlets, leaving the nation breathless on snippets of text and stealthily uploaded pictures.

It is a battle on the streets and across the airways, a realm where technology is both churning out and smothering polarizing messages and images. Iranian authorities have blocked opposition websites, jammed satellite TV channels and cut off text messaging. But still, word is trickling beyond the censors, linking, however sparsely, protesters from Tehran to those elsewhere in the country.

Tweets by StopAhmadi are both philosophical and terse: "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Over n' out." "Girl shot in Tehran." Persiankiwi's tweets list updates of police movements and arrests: "Our street is quiet now -- we cannot move tonight but must move asap when dawn starts."

Iran is offering an intriguing glimpse into how years of disillusionment can suddenly leap from cafes and university campuses to a national revolt, where dueling political voices and agendas square off with banners, rhetoric and allegations of election fraud.

The Iranian elections have "imposed themselves on everything. The masses of young men, the noticeable presence of young women -- especially female university students -- and the slogans of change, the intense competition that raged," Mohammad Hussein al-Yusifi wrote in the Kuwait daily Awan. "All these factors left us no possibility but to observe closely what is happening on the Iranian scene."

The characters in that tumult, appearing amid videos of tear gas and baton-swinging police, have provided alluring narratives: presidential challenger Mousavi, whose Facebook fan group has about 50,000 members, standing amid throngs of his supporters; Ahmadinejad proclaiming victory and calling for calm; and the hovering visage of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Each is mentioned on Twitter missives bristling with rumors about what might happen next.

But sometimes things go blank. On Tuesday, Persiankiwi's Twitter feed, which has nearly 19,000 followers, posted this: "I must log off now -- will log on when I have more info -- need phone line -- no mobile cover, no sms, no satellite, no radio." Similar difficulties are encountered by international media. Teymoor Nabili, a reporter for Al Jazeera, wrote on the network's website: "Day-by-day our ability to access any information has been slowly whittled away. . . . I am no longer allowed to take a camera out into the streets. I'm not even sure I can walk out into the streets with a mobile phone without getting into trouble."

Activists and bloggers watching developments in Iran from afar say the protests show the promise and limits of technology in orchestrating the kind of social unrest seen in Tehran. There is also the sentiment that Iranian activists rising up against an anti-Western regime enjoy more international support than their counterparts in Arab countries where anti-democratic governments are close U.S. allies.

"A cyber war and its bloggers [can't] carry out a revolution or overthrow a certain regime on its own," said Wael Abbas, a blogger and human rights activist in Egypt. "Full revolution has to come from the masses in the streets." The huge rallies and placards in Tehran make Issa, the Cairo editor, envious: "The current Egyptian system was built on fraud while the Iranian revolution was built by the people, and that is why they are fighting for such a system," he said. "The bottom line is that unlike Iran, we are politically dead."

Iran's revolutionary spirit, evident 30 years ago in the Islamic Revolution, has been unbottled again. And for the Arab world it is a lesson in resistance and a maturing democracy that may be controlled by clerics but is expressing its will in the streets and in blips of texts and tweets.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-iran-image17-2009jun17,0,5597.story?track=rss

Tags: Iran, Twitter, Iranian elections, Iranian protests, Cairo, Egypt, Facebook, Bloggers, activists, persiankiwi, Tehran, Global Development News, Al Dustour, Mubarak,

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US Asks Twitter to Stay Online Because of Iran Vote

NEW YORK (AFP) – The US government took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of its use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, according to a senior official.

The request highlighted the Obama administration's Web-savvy and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media. But it also seemed to run counter to President Barack Obama's public efforts not to appear to be meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Twitter delayed Monday's scheduled tuneup, which would have taken place during daylight hours in Iran, and rescheduled it for Tuesday but said the decision was made with its network provider, not the State Department. The micro-blogging site went down around 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Tuesday and was back online about an hour later.

A State Department official in Washington said Twitter had been asked to delay Monday's shutdown because it was being used as "an important means of communications" in Iran. The official told reporters on condition of anonymity that Twitter was all the more important because the Iranian government had shut down other websites, cell phones, and newspapers.

"One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter," the official said. "They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to." Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, in a blog post, noted the State Department request but said the decision to delay the outage was made with Twitter's network provider, NTT America.

"When we worked with our network provider yesterday to reschedule this planned maintenance, we did so because events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network," Stone said.

"We decided together to move the date. It made sense for Twitter and for NTT America to keep services active during this highly visible global event," he said. Stone said "it's humbling to think that our two-year old company could be playing such a globally meaningful role that State officials find their way toward highlighting our significance.

"However, it's important to note that the State Department does not have access to our decision making process," he said. "Nevertheless, we can both agree that the open exchange of information is a positive force in the world." Stone also said the maintenance was a success and Twitter's network capacity had been "significantly increased."

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said meanwhile that the United States does not intend to meddle in Iranian politics. "We don't want to be seen as interfering," he said. Obama himself issued the same message Tuesday, saying: "It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as ... meddling in Iranian elections."

Kelly went on to say that new media provided a good source of information for the US government, which has had no diplomatic relations with Iran for three decades. "We're of course monitoring the situation through a number of different media, including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter," he said.

Another Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, speaking at a two-day conference in New York on Tuesday about the micro-blogging service, described the usage of Twitter by Iranians as "amazing." "Just think about what's occurring over there and the accessibility that we all have to see this unfold in real time," he said. "It's amazing. It's huge."

"Suddenly everything that's happening over there feels extremely close," he said. "It feels approachable. And that's really important and that is really the greatest success of what Twitter is."

"If ever there was a time that Twitter mattered it was this past weekend in Iran," added Jeff Pulver, organizer of the 140 Character Conference.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090617/ts_alt_afp/iranuspoliticsunrestinternettwitter_20090617014955

Tags: US State Department, Obama, Biz Stone, Twitter, NTT America, Jack Dorsey, 140 Character Conference, Jeff Pulver, Iran, Iranians, Facebook, Election, Election Protests, Global Development News,

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New Web Site Tracks Other Site's User Policies

A new Web site will track policies imposed by popular Internet sites such as Facebook and Google, hoping to help users spot potentially harmful changes.

Introduced Thursday, TOSBack.org, the brainchild of privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, will track terms of service modifications within hours of an update.

The site will compare old and new policies side by side and highlight changes. With about two dozen sites covered already, TOSBack.org plans to add more agreements, from credit card, bank, cable TV and other companies.

Tim Jones, the EFF's activism and technology manager, hopes the site will help avoid debacles such as the one faced by Facebook in February. Changes to Facebook's terms of use over control of content went unnoticed at first. But amid protests that Facebook might hold sway over content indefinitely, the company agreed to solicit user feedback.

The site reverted to the previous terms of use policies as it tried to resolve the issues raised. Ultimately, Facebook let users vote on revised terms, which clarify that users own their information, not Facebook. But Jones said many Web sites change their terms of service all the time and often don't notify users.

"Terms of service policies are obviously really important. They form the foundation of your relationship with almost every site you visit on the Internet," he said.

"But almost no one really has time to read them or the legal background to read them." TOSBack.org aims to make the general public more aware of user agreements and how it affects them, Jones said.

Tags: Facebook, Google, TOSBack, Electronic Frontier Foundation, GlobalITNewsBlogspot, Policy tracker, Terms of use, Terms of service,

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_12529768?source=email

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