Follow NPR's Super Tuesday Coverage on Twitter

As the precinct results begin to pour in tonight, the NPR News Blog is going to try something new. I'll be posting updates throughout the evening using the group messaging service Twitter.com. For those of you who aren't familiar with Twitter, think of it as a way to hold a conversation with lots of other people using the Web, instant messaging and text messaging simultaneously. Users of Twitter "follow" each other to receive short updates from them, no more than 140 keystrokes each. That way, users can chat with each other whether they're sitting at their computer or off somewhere with their mobile phone. No matter where you are, the conversation continues.

Yeah, it sounds a little crazy, but after a while you get the hang of it and it's a really powerful way to communicate with others.

In this case, I'll be posting precinct results, as well as whenever NPR makes a call on a particular race, using a Twitter account called nprnewsblog. If you're not a Twitter user, you can just visit this page or follow its RSS feed, if you're technically inclined. If you're a Twitter user, simply go to the nprnewsblog page on Twitter once you've logged in, and click the "follow" button. After that, you'll receive notifications automatically. You can even set it up to receive every notification via text messaging, but just be prepared for a lot of text messages, particularly if you don't have a flat-rate text messaging plan.

If that's not enough for you, be sure to check out the Bryant Park Project's Twitter account. They'll be covering tonight's action as well.

Meanwhile, if you're a Twitter user and plan to be yakking a lot about Super Tuesday tonight, please feel free to post your Twitter name as a comment to this blog post so I (and everyone else, for that matter) can check out what you're writing.

So please join us on Twitter tonight. It's gonna be quite a ride.

-- Andy Carvin, aka acarvin on Twitter

4:08 PM ET | 02- 5-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

'Botnets': A Cybervillain's Weapon of Choice

As your computer sits at home in your living room, criminals may be using it for their own sinister purposes. It might sound like science fiction, but it actually happens.

In fact, hackers like to create entire networks of computers they've taken over, usually without the owners' knowledge. FBI Director Robert Mueller warned against these networks, known as "botnets," in a speech at Penn State this week, calling them the "Swiss Army knives of cybercrime. You name it, they can do it, from attacking networks, sending spam and collecting data, to infecting computers and injecting spyware."

To create the botnets, hackers use virus and worm attacks to put software on PCs that connect back to a server. The hacker can then use the server to send instructions to the compromised computers, called "zombies."

And there are literally millions of computers in the United States and around the world that have become zombies, says Shawn Henry, deputy assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division. "These things have exponentially increased the ability of criminals and others to do harm," he told me.

The hunt for the people behind these networks is a "cat-and-mouse game," Henry says. Cybercriminals can often switch IP addresses quickly, from zombie machine to zombie machine, making them hard to track. The FBI relies on cooperation from businesses, government officials and universities to track them down, find their main servers and block them. (Henry and his team, working with their partners, have found more than a million infected computers and shut down several bot operations since June.)

Continue reading "'Botnets': A Cybervillain's Weapon of Choice" »

5:20 PM ET | 11- 8-2007 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

Science Bloggers Aim to Mark 'Serious' Posts

We bloggers seem to have a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later.

But Dave Munger, a science blogger and stay-at-home dad in Davidson, N.C., wanted to find a way to show people that some blog posts are meant to carry more weight than a rant or an off-hand comment. So he and several other academic bloggers created BPR3 — Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting.

The purpose behind the group's site, Munger told me, is to separate useful and thoughtful comments on peer-reviewed science from posts about news releases and those just sounding off. Munger and his wife, a psychologist who teaches at Davidson College, have been doing something similar for years on their own blog, Cognitive Daily, at ScienceBlogs.

A few months ago, Sister Edith Bogue, a blogging sociologist from Minnesota, contacted Munger and asked if she could use their idea — a tab that isolates the research posts — on her site. But they realized that there was a need for something a wider group could use. So, they developed an icon and began the BPR3 blog.

Bloggers can go there to download the icon and use it in their blogs to signal visitors that the post is of a more serious, research-focused nature. The group created guidelines on what kinds of posts would qualify.

It is the Internet, of course, and Munger realizes that anyone can download an icon and stick it on a site. So in a couple of weeks, BPR3 will launch an aggregation site and RSS feed that will be monitored by Munger and his group. Bloggers will need to register to be included in these features.

So, if you came across an icon like this while surfing the Web, would it make you take that post more seriously?

6:07 PM ET | 10-30-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Facebook Valued at $15 Billion, But Will It Last?

For a long time, Facebook, a social-networking site originally for college students, seemed to be Avis to MySpace's Hertz (you know, Facebook was always trying harder). So its founder, 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, had a little trouble convincing people that he wasn't crazy for turning down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo!

But now, Microsoft has helped prove Zuckerberg's point. After winning a much-publicized battle with Google, Microsoft announced Wednesday that it was buying 1.6 percent of the private company for $240 million.

That, as Andy Carvin, NPR's senior product manager for online communities, told me, "adds credibility to Facebook's argument" about its overall worth. The deal puts Facebook's value at $15 billion — about 500 times the $30 million the company is expected to make in profit this year.

As for how the site's online community will react, Andy says it won't be a big deal. "I'm guessing that the average college student won't care as long as their favorite Facebook apps are untouched," he said.

But will Microsoft's backing make any difference in the long run? As Mik Parekh of the British Internet marketing company Cynergise noted recently on the company's Web site, as popular as Facebook is right now, there is always another, even better social-networking tool just over the hill. Parekh writes that it may be just a matter of time before Facebook is eclipsed.

So, how long can Facebook survive as-is? If it is to make it past the next tide it needs to change what it offers to the users. Add more value so even government agencies and corporations can reap some benefit of having their workers spend time on it.

And Andy says Facebook appears to be moving along those lines. For example, the company also announced Wednesday that it has signed a deal to make Facebook features available on BlackBerries. If there is any modern tool that government agencies and corporations seem to rely on, it's the BlackBerry.

5:15 PM ET | 10-25-2007 | permalink | comments (7) | e-mail post

Are Laptops Too Distracting for the Classroom?

When I was the executive director of the Online News Association a few years ago, one of my jobs was arranging wireless Internet access in key areas during the organization's yearly conferences. The areas I left out of that plan included the actual session rooms. More than a few speakers had told me that it was enormously distracting to try to engage an audience while a significant portion was checking e-mail or surfing the Web.

So when I heard Daniel Coyne, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, talk on All Things Considered about asking his students to put their laptops away, it had a familiar ring. He said most students he observed were not using them to do work. He talked about seeing students plan their weddings, watch baseball games and send each other instant messages during class.

And it's not just students. My wife recently gave a seminar to a group of teachers in Boston and noticed two in the back who were paying no attention at all. Turns out they were surfing the 'Net.

No doubt laptops were seen as helpful tools by students and faculty when they first started popping up in class. But that was before wireless Internet became ubiquitous on many campuses, allowing online access from any location. Perhaps blocking the wireless access in classrooms and other settings would allow laptop users to type their notes while cutting down on the distraction. What do you think? Should laptops be allowed in class?

2:34 PM ET | 10-10-2007 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

Many Find Microsoft's Vista Disappointing

Over the weekend, my wife turned to me as yet another program failed to load properly on our new PC outfitted with Microsoft's Vista operating system. "Is there any way we can get rid of this piece of junk?" she asked for the umpteenth time.

My wife, a Mac user, seldom has any kind words for PCs. But I find myself in agreement with her on Vista. Many of our kids' computer games don't work on it, drivers for particular programs don't seem to install, printers won't work properly and the machine freezes in ways that my old XP-running desktops don't.

Microsoft is aware of customer dissatisfaction with Vista. Wendy Kaufman reports for Morning Edition that the company has pushed back the date when Windows users must use Vista on new machines by several months, from January 2008 to the end of June. All versions of XP will continue to be available until then. A Microsoft spokesman said the company wants Windows users to "make the move when they're ready."

Which seems to be corporate-speak for "Just give us a few months to try and fix it."

Technology expert Chris Pirillo writes on his eponymous blog, "Do I recommend Windows Vista? Not a snowball's chance in ... I'm waiting on Apple to release Mac OS X Leopard. As far as I'm concerned at this point, Microsoft is taking a huge hit."

2:06 PM ET | 10- 1-2007 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

AOL to Move from Virginia to New York

AOL is moving its bigwigs from the leafy suburbs of the nation's capital to the Big Apple. The Associated Press reports that the Internet giant will move most of its senior executives from Dulles, Va., to New York as part of a plan to complete a move from the company's long-time identity as an Internet provider to an ad-driven business.

(Let us all bow our heads in a moment of silence for the AOL CDs that came to us in the mail, stalked us at computer stores, called to us from post office displays.)

The new AOL headquarters will be at a 15-story building in Greenwich Village just south of Union Square... The announcement comes a little more than a year after AOL accelerated efforts to drive traffic to its ad-supported Web sites by giving away AOL.com e-mail accounts, software and other features once reserved for paying customers.

AOL also announced a deal with computer maker Hewlett-Packard to have an AOL-HP branded portal as the default home page on the Web browsers installed on HP machines.

Data shows that subscriptions to the service had been plummeting. AOL had 10.9 million paying U.S. subscribers as of the end of June. That's a 60 percent drop from its peak of 26.7 million in September 2002.

4:50 PM ET | 09-17-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

European Court Rules Against Microsoft

Boy, it seems like high season for accusations that dominant teams are bending the rules to gain a competitive advantage. Last week, of course, we had the NFL's New England Patriots and "Videogate." Today, we have Microsoft and anti-competitive behavior.

Europe's second-highest court rejected the giant software company's appeal of an earlier ruling by the European Commission that found it had abused its dominant position in the marketplace. The Court of First Instance in Luxembourg ordered Microsoft to pay 80 percent of the commission's legal costs, on top of about $600 million in fines that it had already been ordered to pay.

PC World reports that lawyers are analyzing the ruling but that "already some things are clear." The court backed the commission's order that Microsoft develop a version of Windows without its Media Player. (The original complaint said that by bundling its Media Player with its operating system, Microsoft gained an unfair advantage over rivals like Real Player.) The court also agreed that Microsoft's refusal to share information about its operating system "limits technical development to the prejudice of consumers."

Microsoft did win one small part of the case (and will probably appeal the entire ruling). The court overturned the part of the original decision that had established an independent trustee to monitor Microsoft's behavior.

Hmm. No monitor, eh? That would be like trusting the Patriots' word that they won't videotape again without keeping a close eye on them. We'll have to see how that one works out.

10:41 AM ET | 09-17-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Apple Sticks Wi-Fi in New iPod, Drops iPhone Price

I've been in the audience when Steve Jobs makes an appearance at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The few moments before he walks on stage are like waiting for a rock star to appear. Or maybe a really casually dressed Santa Claus — because Jobs always brings presents.

At today's "Apple Event," he brought a bundle, so to speak, including: a new version of iTunes that will allow users to make custom ring tones for their iPhones; a redesigned iPod Nano that includes video, more games support and more storage; a new partnership with Starbucks that will make it possible for users to buy whatever music is playing at their local Starbucks when they walk in; and the touch-screen iPod Touch, the first iPod to feature wireless networking capabilities.

And Jobs must have been reading all those reports saying that the iPhone isn't selling quite as well as hoped, because Apple is dropping the price of an 8-gigabyte iPhone by $200 to $399. (I think it's still about $100 too high for many consumers, but it's more affordable.)

Macworld offers lots of coverage of all the new features.

Jobs even joked about the company's recent problems with NBC Universal, which said last week that it won't renew its contract to sell its popular TV shows on iTunes. When showing people how to turn their tunes into custom phone rings, Jobs played "Give Peace a Chance," and added, "That's [for] when NBC calls."

6:13 PM ET | 09- 5-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

NBC Universal Says It Won't Renew Deal with iTunes

"Save the cheerleader, save the world." But it doesn't look like anything will save the deal between iTunes and NBC Universal, the owner of shows like Heroes, The Office and 30 Rock.

Daily Tech writes that NBC is tired of the almost iron-like grip that Apple likes to keep on, well, pretty much everything it touches. In this case, it's the pricing model used to distribute music and video on iTunes.

NBC Universal feels that it should ... have the ability to package content together. Apple on the other hand has stood its ground with regards to pricing and contends that packaging video content would lead to confusion for buyers and decrease demand.

NBC Universal is currently the top provider of videos on iTunes, making up 40 percent of the site's downloads. You'll still be able to get the shows you like until the end of December, but after that, well, you'll have to go back to watching the cheerleader get saved on regular TV.

There is always the chance of an 11th-hour agreement. But right now, it looks like NBC is not playing Apple's tune ... or, should I say, iTune. But it is a familiar one for Apple. In July, Universal Music Group decided not to renew its long-term contract with Apple over similar pricing concerns.

1:29 PM ET | 08-31-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Is Bacn Filling Up Your Inbox?

I love bacon. But it's not all good for you, and I'm not talking about the fat content.

NPR.org's Eric Weiner has a great piece about "bacn." (No, that is not a typo.) Don't know what bacn is? Bacn is, well, spam that you want (a concept that sends shivers down my spine, truth be told). Think bank statements, specials on pizza from your local store, notices from your kids' school or even news updates from NPR. It's stuff you want, but it can still slow you down and clog your Internet arteries, just like spam.

Bacn, like spam, can be annoying, but it's a specific kind of annoyance. Like pornography, you know it when you see it. An e-mail from your wife is not bacn — that's personal. An e-mail from Nigeria offering to send you $3 million is not bacn — that's spam. Bacn is everything in between, the "middle class of e-mail," [Tommy Vallier, a Canadian blogger] says.

There is also "FakinBacn" — spam that poses as bacn.

I'm getting a stomachache. But there may be a cure in the advice of Bruno Giussani, who's described as "a popular Swiss blogger" (that's a phrase you don't see too often). As Giussani says, you can just use e-mail filters to put your bacn into various folders in your e-mail program. Giussani doesn't think it's a big deal: "So five or six geeks meet at a conference, start tossing names around, and then pretend to have identified a new trend."

In the end, it all leads to various existential questions: If you leave bacn in your inbox too long, does it spoil? Does Weight Watchers send out low-fat bacn? And wouldn't Canadian bacn be ham?

5:16 PM ET | 08-29-2007 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

How the 'Phishers' Almost Got Me

It was that close — I was one mouse click away from possibly having my identity stolen. I had entered my user name into what I thought was my online bank account. Then at the last second, I happened to glance at the URL of the site I was visiting. It was not my bank's Web address, even though it looked just like my bank's home page. I realized that I was being scammed. I closed the browser window and thanked my lucky stars.

"Phishers" will do anything to steal the information they need to get into your bank account or into your credit cards. They almost got me because I wasn't paying attention one day and got careless.

Morning Edition's John Ydstie talked to me today about my "escape" and what people need to do to reduce their chances of falling into the evil clutches of these thieves.

Have you ever fallen victim to a scam? Any suggestions on how to avoid them?

9:02 AM ET | 08-24-2007 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

Boston Lays Claim to Title of Bloggiest City in America

Beantown bloggers rule!

Or so says OutsideIn.com, a Web site that tracks neighborhood blogging in 3,345 neighborhoods in 54 cities across the U.S. In its most recent survey, which covered the months of March and April, Boston beat out Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., for top honors.

Why Beantown, you may ask? Think of all those colleges, jammed with students happily blogging away the hours instead of studying. All those tech people who work in or around the Hub. Boston.com reports that Outsidein.com Chief Executive Steven Berlin Johnson offered an additional theory: Blogs thrive where locals are wired, well-educated and obsessed with politics. (Boston? Obsessed with politics? Surely you jest.)

But as always with Boston, there's a New York factor involved. Brooklyn is actually the nation's bloggiest neighborhood -- if it was considered a city on its own, rather than just a borough, it might have come close to eclipsing Boston.

At least it's not the Bronx. Damn Yankees.

2:06 PM ET | 08-14-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Porn 2.0

(NOTE: None of these links go to adult sites. Not NPR's style.)

The porn industry always seems to be on the cutting edge of technology. Many credit the early success of the VHS tape and DVD to people who wanted dirty movies in their own home. On the Internet, the industry pioneered video streaming, subscription services, pop-up ads and electronic billing.

But it seems like porn is behind the curve of Web 2.0. There's a fascinating article (with no dirty pictures so don't get excited) on Wired about how the adult industry is slow to adopt social networking and community elements.

I guess it makes sense. There is a certain amount of trust involved in making friends online and sharing your photos and such. People still want anonymity on porn sites. And the Wired piece notes that U.S. law requires strict record-keeping for adult content, including verifying the ages and real names of everyone in the picture.

There are (so I hear) a few sites like PornoTube (no link for you), where people can share their explicit videos, but with nothing like the community-building aspect of YouTube, Flickr or Facebook. Maybe that's for the good. It's already a little creepy to get a friend request from someone you don't know. At least you don't have to see them naked.

- Robert Smith

3:27 PM ET | 08-10-2007 | permalink | comments (3) | e-mail post

Who Said Shopping Wasn't a Spectator Sport?

My friend at Cool Hunting pointed me to an addictive site. ThisWorld is an interactive map of the Earth that shows who is shopping for what and where. It's part of a new social networking site called ThisNext, where people can recommend stuff to their friends. That's fine, but watching bored consumers shop in real-time has me screaming at the computer like I'm at a hockey game.

"Hey. Dude in China. You're paying too much for that coffeemaker!"

"Come on, UK hipster. Pirate boots?"

I watched a surfer in Redwood City, Calif., flip through shoe after shoe until he seemed to stop at some gold lame sneakers. Do none of these people listen to me?

I suppose there's something I should be learning here. People around the world buy the same crap. Literally. Someone in San Francisco was shopping for coffee-scented soap in the shape of dog poo. Oh Internet, you never disappoint me.

Watch people shop in real-time at ThisWorld.

ThisNext.com

 

- Robert Smith

5:44 PM ET | 08- 8-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Mr. Facebook, Tear Down This Wall!

Scott Gilbertson over at Wired is demanding that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace open up their little worlds. If you have ever used them, you know that these sites are like segregated neighborhoods. Facebook people can only link to Facebook friends. MySpace people have their own 'hood. And the more photos and music and contacts and friends you add to your page, the more tied you are to your particular site. He writes:

Want to show somebody a video or a picture you posted to your profile? Unless they also have an account, they can't see it. Your pictures, videos and everything else is stranded in a walled garden, cut off from the rest of the web.

So Gilbertson is asking the Web community to build its own open social networking system. It's technically possible, but he may not find people flocking to his cause. Segregation exists online for the same reason it does in the real world. People want the comfort of hanging around with people just like them.

Danah Boyd of the University of California-Berkeley recently wrote about how the closed ecosystems of MySpace and Facebook are evolving in different directions.

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. ... MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm.

Even if you take down the technological barriers to sharing between the sites, would the users want that? You can make all the kids go to the prom together, but you can't make them dance.

- Robert Smith

4:55 PM ET | 08- 6-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Company to Offer Free Internet Phone Calls

As I've mentioned, my wife has been in Turkey for the past month. It's not her first long trip, which means I've spent a lot of money in the past on long-distance bills. Sometimes the bills could reach as high as $200 or $300.

But I've not spent a penny during this trip. Skype and SightSpeed, two Internet peer-to-peer telephony services, have saved my pocketbook. Both my wife and I have these programs installed on our computers, and we each have a Web cam. That means I get to talk to her for free as long as I want each day (working around that nasty seven-hour time difference), and I get to see her while I'm doing it.

But not everyone wants to use a computer to make phone calls. There's the more traditional-phone-service-like Voice over Internet Protocol, of course, and while you pay less, there's still a monthly fee to use services like Vonage. (Skype and SightSpeed also offer similar fee-based services.) And there are taxes as well.

But the San Francisco Chronicle's Technology Chronicles blog reports that a new company is offering a product that, after the purchase price, allows you to make as many domestic calls as you want for free. No taxes or anything. For as long as you want.

Ooma, a company from Palo Alto, Calif., has "announced a beta version of their ooma product, which allows people to make unlimited free calls from home using a broadband connection." A hub costs $399, meaning it would probably take a little more than a year for it to pay for itself based on the cost of other VoIP services. (Ooma says it will charge low per-minute rates for international calls.)

Business folks think the company is taking a bit of chance, BusinessWeek reports. Another VoIP company, SunRocket, is closing down, and Vonage is in a slump. But the people who run ooma think their product will get around problems other companies face.

1:39 PM ET | 07-20-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Whole Foods CEO Made Anonymous Attacks on Rival, Then Tried to Buy It

I know that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. But it seems that people are increasingly using the anonymity of the Internet to throw ethics out the window.

The Associated Press reports that John Mackey, chief executive of the Whole Foods grocery chain, wrote anonymous postings online about a rival, questioned why anyone would purchase its stock and then tried to buy it. Mackey's anonymous persona was "outed" this week as part of an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission to block Whole Foods from buying the rival, Wild Oats.

The postings on Internet financial forums, made under the name "rahodeb," said Wild Oats Markets Inc. stock was overpriced. The statements predicted the company would fall into bankruptcy and then be sold after its stock fell below $5 per share.

All Things Considered reports that legal and business experts say Mackey's behavior is "unethical and embarrassing."

Whole Foods admitted its CEO posted the comments between 1999 and 2006 but said they are no longer relevant. It added that the comments were Mackey's, not Whole Foods'.

It's amazing to me that people think they can get away with this stuff. In May, I blogged about a well-known Boston pediatrician who settled a malpractice suit after he was exposed in court as a blogger who had been making unflattering comments about the jury in his case.

4:52 PM ET | 07-12-2007 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

So, What's Really the Story with 'Bandwidth Shaping'?

Last week, we posted a piece about "bandwidth shaping" -- a method Internet service providers use to slow down users when demand is high. Sensing we might be looking at a tip-of-the-iceberg thing, I called BBC Internet expert Bill Thompson, a source for a piece we had linked to in the post (and systems administrator for a site used by British MPs), to learn more.

First, don't call it "bandwidth shaping," Thompson says. That's corporate speak. He says he calls it what it really is -- "throttling," the same as throttling back a train.

"It's like falling off a cliff" -- that's how fast your Internet connection can suddenly slow down these days, Thompson says, adding sometimes ISPs will slow down the whole network, not just heavy users, to handle peak periods.

Most Internet users haven't noticed that their connections are slower because they're not online a lot, he says. But it has attracted attention from early Internet adopters (who are apt to follow what's happening on the Web), gamers and other such folks who spend a lot of time online.

Thompson also reminded me that this isn't the first time online consumers have seen their bandwidth cut back. When companies started offering "unlimited access" instead of making customers pay for dial-up per hour, users flocked to those ISPs, and it created a problem. So ISPs redefined "unlimited" as a certain number of hours a day -- an attempt to pull back heavy users, whose accounts could be affected if they went over.

Thompson believes we could soon see the same kind of limited "unlimited access" descriptions applied to broadband connections.

How about you folks? Has anyone else noticed problems with their broadband connections of the sort we've been talking about? Has anyone heard from their ISPs about "bandwidth shaping"?

12:27 PM ET | 06-26-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Does Your Internet Connection Seem Slow?

If you're noticing slowdowns while online, the culprit could be "bandwidth (or traffic) shaping." Most internet service providers don't like to talk about it, but it's the most recent way of dealing with people using a lot of bandwidth during peak periods.

When we old timers were on the 'Net back in the early '90s, we were mostly sending text e-mails or looking for text documents with Gopher. It all seemed very exciting at the time -- of course, we also thought Ross Perot was exciting. But these days, online users want to watch a YouTube video while accessing e-mail, sending instant messages and talking on the digital phone, all at the same time.

It's a lot for one little twisted copper wire to handle on a DSL connection -- but it can be a bigger problem for a cable company if 200 people in your neighborhood are all using the same fiber-fed broadband connection at the same time. Thus, we have bandwidth shaping, as Internet expert Bill Thompson explains in this BBC article.

"They do this because they have a limited capacity to deliver to 100 or 200 homes, and if everybody's using the internet at the same time then the whole thing starts to get congested. Before that happens they cut back on the heavy users."

Broadbandreports.com has posted an e-mail that a Time Warner customer says he received this month, detailing how his Road Runner service is going to handle bandwidth hogs.

So here's my question: ISPs are always trying to get you to pay extra for premium services so you can have more bandwidth. Does this now mean that by purchasing this kind of package, you open yourself up to being virtually slapped on the wrist for your 'Net habits?

10:00 AM ET | 06-18-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

In the Video Gaming Battle, Microsoft May Have Just Blinked

Believe it or not, moms have just become the prime targets for the video gaming world.

Bloomberg reported over the weekend that Microsoft, following the lead of Nintendo, has decided to focus more on moms and the "casual gamer" -- basically, anyone who isn't a 15-to-34-year-old male whose sole desire in life is to destroy as many aliens, spaceships, enemy soldiers, etc., as possible, without eating or going to the bathroom for days at a time. Microsoft might even drop its price on the Xbox.

Why this shift in marketing? Because nothing focuses the mind of a business executive like the success of a rival. It's not just the wireless Wii that has vaulted Nintendo to the top of the gaming world: it's Nintendo's decision to go after all those casual gamers.

Nintendo has been particularly successful with its sports-oriented games. Using a wireless Wii stick and physical actions to control what's happening onscreen has enabled family members who might not have the thumb-button coordination of younger members to hold their own. The result is that its console outsells both Xbox and Sony's PlayStation 3 (which is in serious trouble) by large margins.

As a parent of four kids who love their PlayStation 2, I cheer Nintendo's effort to create games that appeal to the entire family. Albert Penello, director of Xbox global platform marketing, said he realizes his company also needs to start reaching out to this demographic or risk being "pigeonholed as a hard-core machine." If that fear of being pigeonholed means my family can eventually get more use out of an Xbox than our PS2, I would be more than happy to switch.

9:36 AM ET | 06-11-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

Those Magnificent Men and Their Wireless Machines

It is the dawn of "WiTricity."

That's what a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists are calling a power source that they have figured out how to use to wirelessly turn on a light bulb more than 7 feet away.

I love the story of how this invention came to be: The team leader, Professor Marin Soljacic, got the idea while standing in his pajamas, staring at his cell phone.

As he told the MIT News:

"It was probably the sixth time that month that I was awakened by my cell phone beeping to let me know that I had forgotten to charge it. It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging." To make this possible, one would have to have a way to transmit power wirelessly, so Soljacic started thinking about which physical phenomena could help make this wish a reality.

From small needs are great inventions created. This could mean the end of cords for laptops, cell phones, iPods, you name it.

10:37 AM ET | 06- 8-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

The Folks Shaping Cyberspace

Are you one of the 8 percent of Americans shaping cyberspace?

A new study presented this week by the Pew Internet and American Life Project showed that this 8 percent (which the study called "omnivores") "have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace and express themselves online and do a range of Web 2.0 activities such as blogging or managing their own Web pages."

Well, I've always known I'm a tech omnivore. (You should come to my attic and see the old gadgets lying around: Apple Newtons, Aplio Internet phone connectors, etc.) Only problem is that the report says most omnivores are in their 20s. I, er, ah, am not in my 20s anymore. I'm just an old...er, omnivore.

But if you want to see if you belong here, or fall into one of the nine other groupings of online users, you can take the 52-question Pew survey yourself, care of the Trendsspotting blog, operated by Taly Weiss, a social psychologist who runs a market research firm in Israel.

5:24 PM ET | 05-11-2007 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post