Developages - Development and Technology Blog

bsk_cw writes “With the exception of Google′s Chrome (which got attention because it was, after all, Google), most of the alternative browsers out there tend to get lost in the shuffle. Computerworld asked three of their writers to take some lesser-known browsers out for a spin and see how they do. They looked at six candidates: Camino (for the Mac), Maxthon (for the PC), OmniWeb (for the Mac), Opera (both the Mac and the PC versions) and Shiira (for the Mac).” It would have been more interesting if they included some popular open source, Linux-friendly browsers like Konqueror or Epiphany, as well.

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Original post by timothy

Kjella writes “A little over a week ago we discussed the EU’s forbidding of disconnecting users from the Internet. But even after having passed with an 88% approval in the European Parliament, and passing through the European Commission, it was all undone last week. The European Council, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, removed the amendment before passing the Telecom package. This means that there’s now nothing stopping France’s controversial ‘three strikes’ law from going into effect. What hope is there for a ‘parliament’ where near-unanimous agreement can be completely undone so easily?”

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Original post by kdawson

Ian Lamont writes “BitTorrent has responded to a report in the Register that suggested uTorrent’s switch to UDP could cause an Internet meltdown. Marketing manager Simon Morris described the Register report as ‘utter nonsense,’ and said that the switch to uTP — a UDP-based implementation of the BitTorrent protocol — was intended to reduce network congestion. The original Register report was discussed enthusiastically on Slashdot this morning.”

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Original post by kdawson

An interesting article at the Register claims that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for ̢P file transfers (instead of TCP) to get around ISP “traffic management” restrictions will cause a meltdown of the Internet. Poppycock you say?

It’s worth pointing out that traditionally P2P sharing apps such as Bittorrent,  use TCP not UDP. So why would UDP cause VoIP apps to fail? Well for one huge reason, TCP allows for congestion control.

First, the article explains:

Gamers, VoIP and video conference users beware. The leading BitTorrent software authors have declared war on you - and any users wanting to wring high performance out of their networks… Upset about Bell Canada’s system for allocating bandwidth fairly among internet users, the developers of the uTorrent P2P application have decided to make the UDP protocol the default transport protocol for file transfers.

The article then adds:

By most estimates, ̢P accounts for close to half of internet traffic today. When this traffic is immune to congestion control [i.e. TCP], the remaining half will stumble along at roughly a quarter of the bandwidth it has available today: half the raw bandwidth, used with half efficiency, by 95% of internet users. Oops.

Yikes! Say goodbye to VoIP. No more Skype. No more fring, Gizmћ, Packet8, Vonage, Bandwidth.com SIP trunks, and all the rest of my beloved VoIP applications and services. May you rest in peace my good friends. [sniff] Now I′ll have to change my blog to the “Gadgets Blog”.

Game over man, game over!

Click above to hear this famous audio clip from Alien.

Tags: Bandwidth, Bittorrent, com, fring, Game over man, TCP, UDP, uTorrent, voip, vonage

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Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Gimble writes “Richard Bennett has an article at the Register claiming that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for file transfers to avoid ISP “traffic management” restrictions will cause a meltdown of the internet reducing everybody’s bandwidth to a quarter of their current value. Other folks have also expressed concern that this may not be the best thing for the internet.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

nnfiber writes “What if home owners could also own their Internet connection? Tim Wu, of New America Foundation and Derek Slater, Google’s Policy Analyst, say this can be a new effective way to encourage broadband deployment &mdash an important issue in ‘America’s economic growth.’ In his post, Timothy B. Lee says: ‘That might sound like a crazy idea at first blush, but Wu and Slater do a great job of explaining how it might work. The key idea is “condominium fiber,” an arrangement in which a number of neighboring households pool their resources to install fiber to all the homes in their neighborhoods. Once constructed, each home would own its own fiber strand, while the shared costs of maintaining the “trunk″ cable from the individual homes to a central switching location would be managed in the same way that condominium and homeowners’ associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities.’”

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Original post by timothy

MacWorld is running a piece from MacJournals.com’s for-pay publication detailing how the Safari browser’s anti-phishing works. The article takes Apple to task for not thinking enough of its users to bother telling them when Safari sends data off to a third party on their behalf. For it seems that Safari uses the same Google-based anti-phishing technology that Firefox has incorporated since version 2.0, but, unlike Mozilla, tells its users nothing about it. “Even when phrased as friendly to Apple as we can manage, the fact remains that after installing Safari 3.2, your computer is by default downloading lots of information from Google and sending information related to sites you visit back to Google — without telling you, without Apple disclosing the methods, and without any privacy statement from Apple.”

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Original post by kdawson

alphadogg writes “Northwestern University researchers have developed a system that gives a heads up about traffic problems on the Internet, where there is no central management system. Their Network Early Warning System (NEWS), which latches on to a popular BitTorrent client, is designed to spot problems by encouraging feedback from end users who are experiencing problems. ‘You can think of it as crowd sourcing network monitoring,’ said associate professor Fabián Bustamante. He has a track record with BitTorrent users, having developed the popular Ono plug-in for speeding up P2P interactions.”

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Original post by timothy

Texting (SMS) is certainly popular, especially amongst the younger crowd. In fact, one teenaged girl sends more than 600 text messages in a day — almost double what an average American sends/receives in a month. A 29-year-old man travelled from San Francisco to Green Bay to meet a woman he met via text message. It was love at first texting.

We′ve all heard of the term “speed dating”, which allows you to meet many people on several mini-dates usually lasting from 3 to 8 minutes. Well, how bout speed SMS dating, where you meet other texters with common interests simply using your mobile phone and Bouncephone. Bouncephone is free (standard carrier texting rates apply) and it’s accessible entirely from your mobile phone.

Here’s how it works.

Continue reading Single Texting Addicts - Meet Speed SMS Dating…

Tags: Bouncephone, dating, SMS, texting

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Copyright VoIP &amp Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Erris writes “Opendotdotdot has good news about laws in the EU: ‘EU culture ministers yesterday (20 November) rejected French proposals to curb online piracy through compulsory measures against free downloading … [and instead pushed] for “a fair balance between the various fundamental rights” while fighting online piracy, first listing “the right to personal data protection,” then “the freedom of information” and only lastly “the protection of intellectual property.” [This] indicates that the culture ministers and their advisers are beginning to understand the dynamics of the Net, that throttling its use through crude instruments like the “three strikes and you’re out″ is exactly the wrong thing to do.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

See — as if we needed confirmation — gadgetry is good for you.
Well, maybe I’m taking a small step here, but a new study from the MacArthur Foundation has found that all those hours that teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing.

(And how to they get access to the Internet? Gadgets, of course!)

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, Living and Learning With New Media. “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.” 

See?

More at the New York Times or go directly to the MacArthur Foundation.

Tags: instant messaging, macarthur foundation, myspace

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Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

boyko.at.netqos writes “Timothy B. Lee (no relation to Tim Berners-Lee), a frequent contributor to Ars Technica and Techdirt, has recently written ‘The Durable Internet,’ a paper published by the libertarian-leaning CATO institute. In it, Lee argues that because a neutral network works better than a non-neutral one, the Internet’s open-ended architecture is not likely to vanish, despite the fears of net neutrality proponents, (and despite the wishes of net neutrality opponents.) For that reason, perhaps network neutrality legislation isn’t necessary — or even desirable — from an open-networks perspective. In addition to the paper, Network Performance Daily has an interview and podcast with Tim Lee, and Lee addresses counter-arguments with a blog posting for Technology Liberation Front.”

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Original post by timothy

pparsons writes “Bell Canada Inc. will not have to suspend its practice of “shaping” traffic on the Internet after a group of companies that resell access to Bell’s network complained their customers were also being negatively affected. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission today released a decision that denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ request that Bell be ordered to cease its application of the practice to its wholesale customers.”

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Original post by samzenpus

Da Massive writes “Leading Hollywood film studios Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Disney Enterprises are suing Australia’s second largest ISP, iiNet, saying it’s complicit in the infringement of their copyrighted material. According to a statement of claim, “the ISP knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology”.”

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Original post by CmdrTaco

Roland Piquepaille writes “In recent months, the concept of ‘cloud computing’ was all the buzz. European researchers think about another name, the World Wide Grid, which could run on top of the Internet. In an article to appear soon, ICT Results will report about the g-Eclipse project. As the scientists said, ‘the g-Eclipse project aims to build an integrated workbench framework to access the power of existing Grid infrastructures. The framework will be built on top of the reliable eco-system of the Eclipse community to enable a sustainable development.’ The project started in July 2006 and was successfully completed in June 2008 for a total cost of 2.5 million including a EU contribution of 1.96 million.”

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Original post by samzenpus