• Thursday 12 August 2010

• Customer backlash forces Vodafone to renege on software update

  

  Vodafone said new firmware would be ready in seven to 10 days. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA Archive/PA Photos

  Little more than a week since Vodafone's customers began installing their HTC Desire Android 2.2 update (it was actually an update to Vodafone 360 software for Android 2.1), a customer backlash has forced the mobile operator to release the software upgrade without the garish features it chose to set as defaults. Continue reading...

  Posted by Josh Halliday 12.14 BST

• The Technology newsbucket: SPARQLS pieces together linked data, Yahoo laid bare, and Wolff says the "unsayable"

  

  Former Yahoo staffer Paul Graham lays bare the alleged failings of his old employer. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

  Plus there's a nice new social networking infographic on the blog

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Josh Halliday 08.34 BST

• Wednesday 11 August 2010

• The Technology newsbucket: Duke Nukem resurrection, FBI data plunder, and net neutrality

  

  Foursquare soon to have a new, bigger rival? Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

  All this and more in today's Technology newsbucket

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Josh Halliday 08.30 BST

• Tuesday 10 August 2010

• Tech Weekly: Google's access plans, academic collaboration, innovation

  Google and Verizon's net neutrality proposals examined, we wave goodbye to Google Wave, find out about a Facebook users' union, look at the last.fm of academic study - Mendeley, and hear Charles Leadbeater's thoughts on using the web to collaborate

  Posted by Aleks Krotoski, Jemima Kiss, Robert Andrews, Scott Cawley 17.36 BST

• Google, Verizon and net neutrality: what does it mean?

  If you think net neutrality sounds boring, think again. While the debate has been bubbling along for years, it is a concept that could mean the end of open, free and equal internet of today that we take for granted.

  So what does it mean?

  Net neutrality is the principle that all internet traffic – content, platforms, and websites – should be treated equally by the networks that deliver them.

  The internet today is, mostly, a level playing field. We pay a fee to have access to the internet. Web services pay to host their content and to for that content to be accessible. And internet service providers pay for the bit in between – the connection.

  What telecoms firms want is the right for companies to pay a premium to have their content delivered faster than rival content, or to establish new layer of faster internet on which to to serve paying, premium services.

  That would leave non-commercial sites on a poorer, slower web where they would find it harder to attract readers – changing the democratic nature of the internet. It would also mean poorer users, or those in the developing world, would find it harder to access the "full" internet experience.

  
  Photo by JasonWalton on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

  Against net neutrality

  Those against net neutrality are the big telecoms networks in the US - Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and others - because they want to introduce tiered, prioritised services. That could mean Yahoo, for example, paying to have its search results delivered faster, through a faster network, than Microsoft's Bing.

  Computer scientist David Farber is one of those who has cautioned against net neutrality saying it may hinder the progress of new, innovative networks. "An updated internet could offer a wide range of new and improved services," he told the Washington Post in 2008. "including better security against viruses, worms, denial-of-service attacks and zombie computers; services that require high levels of reliability, such as medical monitoring; and those that cannot tolerate network delays, such as voice and streaming video. To provide these services, both the architecture of the Internet and the business models through which services are delivered will probably have to change."

  For net neutrality

  Several high-profile figures from the tech industry have spoken out in defence of the net neutrality principle, including the internet protocol co-inventor Vint Cerf and web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

  Berners-Lee has said: "Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies can control what I access for commercial reasons. In China, companies could control what users access for political reasons. Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the internet."

  Where did the term come from?

  Network neutrality isn't a new concept in telecoms. In the US, the "common carrier" laws ensured that customers of different phone networks could talk to each other. Regardless of who and how they paid to access the telephone network, once they are on the line, they can call anyone.

  The term was popularised in the late 1990s but became commonplace when the arguments were picked up by the press around 2006. In the US, coverage has centered around the Federal Communications Commission which upheld a complaint against ComCast for illegally restricting paying web users from using filesharing services. In the UK, "traffic shaping" can similarly be seen as a precursor to wider tiers of internet use with ISPs commonly demoting and even blocking P2P traffic, for example. ISPs in the UK have also indicated they are concerned about services that put pressure on their networks like the BBC's video traffic, which may lead to them charging.

  What does this Google-Verizon pact mean?

  Google has always said it supports net neutrality, whereas Verizon is one of the biggest networks in the US and wants to be allowed to charge for different services. But the two have agreed a proposal, rather than a formal deal, which listed key principles that business and regulators could work with:

  • ISPs cannot discriminate against any service in an anti-competitive way.
  • ISPs cannot block consumers from any legal service.
  • ISPs have the right to manage and prioritise web traffic.
  • ISPs must be transparent about how they are managing services.
  • The FCC would enforce on a case-by-case basis, and have its regulatory powers over broadband services restored.
  • A fixed part of all phone fees would be dedicated to investment in broadband networks.

  And the last and most significant two:
  
  • ISPs can introduce new and different internet services, such as 3D.
  • Wireless services are exempt from all these proposals, apart from the condition of transparency.

  
  Photo by gt8073a on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

  First, new types of content and new types of services on new types of network – this is the internet of the future. While the internet today operates as one largely unified system, the internet of tomorrow will need investment and innovation to build new features and functionality we can only dream of.

  Second, the desktop is dying - wireless, mobile networks are the future. So the internet of the future will operate on the network of the future which will largely be a wireless one. Under the Google-Verizon proposal, wireless services would be exempt from all these requirements, which means ISPs would be able to discriminate against competitors and would be able to block access to a service even if it was legal. It's the same principle as your mobile operator charing you more to call a friend on another network – but with everything from video, to email, gaming, music – anything you do on your phone.

  The FCC isn't too pleased that Google and Verizon are trying to dictate policy, however. Commissioner Michael J Copps said: "Some will claim this announcement moves the discussion forward. That's one of its many problems. It is time to move a decision forward – a decision to reassert FCC authority over broadband telecommunications, to guarantee an open internet now and forever, and to put the interests of consumers in front of the interests of giant corporations."

  Net neutrality campaigners say Google's response is contradictory, hence the negative response to the Verizon pact. Despite its proclaimed commitment to net neutrality, Google has proposed a future where ISPs can build and charge new networks as they wish. Continue reading...

  Posted by Jemima Kiss 15.41 BST

• The Information Architecture behind the World Government Data store

  

  guardian.co.uk

  The Guardian's Information Architect, Martin Belam, provides a glimpse behind the scenes at the design process of our World Government Data store.

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Martin Belam 15.23 BST

• Google and Verizon offer give and take over net neutrality

  

  Google and Verizon announced a joint proposal for internet regulation. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

  After last week's excitement – when the New York Times boldly but inaccurately claimed that Google and Verizon were cutting a sweetheart deal over internet traffic – the truth has turned out to be less dramatic but potentially more worrying for US consumers and net users.

  Instead, Google and Verizon have announced a joint policy proposal, intended as a framework for the future regulation of US internet provision.

  In a nutshell the two companies are putting forward a system of regulation that suits them both, as you might expect. One cynical way of reading this is to think of Google and Verizon as two syndicates carving out a piece of the action: Google gets a commitment to net neutrality over the standard, wired internet that people access via computers at home or at work, while Verizon gets far weaker regulation on wireless networks accessed via smartphones.

  Why does Google feel it needs to work with Verizon on this? Verizon in the US is in a uniquely powerful position of straddling both wired and wireless access, since it operates one of the two major wireless networks (AT&T running the other), while also being a major wired ISP competing with the likes of cable provider Comcast.

  All this is a far cry, though, from the New York Times's suggestion that a specific deal between the two was in the works, which was bluntly denied by both companies.
  Continue reading...

  Posted by Richard Adams 01.54 BST

• Monday 9 August 2010

• Apple iPhone executive Mark Papermaster departs following hardware problems

  Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) hired Mark Papermaster to head up the company's iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams only after litigation was cleared up between him and his former employer IBM. A year and a half later, Papermaster is leaving under another tense situation, following widely reported problems with the iPhone 4's antenna.

  
  Photo by J from the UK on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

  The New York Times reported over the weekend that Apple confirmed Papermaster's departure, but would not elaborate as to whether he was fired or decided to leave on his own. Unnamed sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Papermaster had been pushed out over a series of hardware problems, some related to the iPod Touch.

  Papermaster's responsibilities will be handed over to Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Macintosh hardware engineering, who is already responsible for some iPhone components, including chips, the retina display and touch screens.

  The top hardware executive's departure is all-too timely, given the recent fiasco around the iPhone 4's antenna that ultimately prevented Consumer Reports from recommending the device. Apple tried to extinguish the fire by hosting a last-minute press conference, where it apologised, admitted it wasn't perfect and agreed to give all customers a free bumper.

  Posted by Tricia Duryee 09.14 BST

• Technology Newsbucket: BlackBerry security, software patents and a bruised Apple

  All this and more in today's Technology newsbucket...

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Josh Halliday 07.52 BST

• Friday 6 August 2010

• BlackBerry tablet: our readers' predictions

  

  A mock-up of the new RIM BlackBerry pad (BlackPad) Photograph: intomobile.com

  We crowdsourced predictions for the specs of RIM's rumoured BlackBerry 'BlackPad' – and here are the results

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Josh Halliday 11.33 BST

• Thursday 5 August 2010

• Google kills Wave - but the concept is here to stay

  Google has announced it is ending development on Wave, the cross-platform communication tool it launched with much fanfare at its I/O developer conference in May 2009.

  Google said in a post last night that "Wave has not seen the adoption we would have liked" and that elements of Wave's technology, including drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are now as open source so users can "liberate their content from Wave".

  Like most people, you've probably heard of it but not actually tried it, which sums up the problem. What was it? The Wave idea was a centralised communications tool that combined the real-time advantages of Twitter with the aggregation of your email and chat, with collaborative documents too. Easy to dismiss as something too ambitious and far reaching, but perhaps the difficulty in describing its function was its biggest downall. Twitter managed to survive a similar fate (remember that moment of trying to describe it to a non believer?) but Wave was far more ambitious.

  There will be plenty of coverage today reeling off lists of Google's failures; Google Squared, Google Answers, Google Radio, Google Lively, Google Health, Google Notebook and Dodgeball among them. Those will be reliably dwarfed by Google's successes. Our European perspective might make us more critical of failure than in the US, where it is more rightly regarded as an inevitable and positive sign of productivity and innovation.

  Chief executive Eric Schmidt himself said of the Wave failure that it is just a symptom of trying things out. "Remember, we celebrate our failures. This is a company where it's absolutely OK to try something that's very hard, have it not be successful, and take the learning from that," he told journalists late yesterday.

  
  
  Co-founder Sergey Brin was convinced to support the Wave concept by a Google development team in Australia. "When they came and proposed this idea they said, 'We want to do something new and revolutionary, but we're not even going to tell you what it is. And we want to go back to Australia, hire a bunch of people and just work on it.' ," Brin told the Guardian shortly after Wave's launch. "That was a crazy proposal. But, having seen their success with Maps, I felt that it actually was pretty reasonable."

  When Wave launched at I/O, some developers were waving their laptops in the air. It was a moment.

  I'd file this under ideas that were just a little ahead of their time. With refinement, a clearer proposition and better integration with existing services, it would have stood a better chance. Wave was one stab at tackling our information overload, at providing a central hub for all the information we need to deal with every day. And it will be back, in one form or another.

  Posted by Jemima Kiss 09.12 BST

• The Technology newsbucket: RIM hits back (again), Apple holding out on a fix, and IE 9 preview

  

  Eric Schmidt, CEO and Chair of Google talks shop about information production Photograph: Graham Turner. Photograph: Graham Turner/guardian.co.uk

  All this and more in today's technology newsbucket

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Josh Halliday 07.28 BST

• Wednesday 4 August 2010

• Tech Weekly: The future of mobile

  A mobile theme to this week's programme – we hear what the future holds for the medium, as well as finding out why there is a ban on BlackBerrys in the UAE, how Android is catching Apple's iOS, and there's details of a new Kindle from Amazon

  Posted by Aleks Krotoski, Jemima Kiss, Scott Cawley 10.39 BST

• Sharp to launch 3D smartphone

  Strategies to compete with the iPhone are getting increasingly inventive; the latest is a plan from Sharp for a smartphone with a 3D screen.

  Sharp says its 3D screen technology, which is only used on small screen for now, does not need special glasses to view the 3D image - which is just as well. But does it have any practical function, or is a 3D screen on a phone just a gimmick?

  Sharp isn't unique in developing a 3D smartphone; Nokia announced a research model called the N810 tablet last September. But the model is key for Sharp, who are lagging in the smartphone market after the massive Microsoft Kin flop earlier this year.

  The 3D smartphone will launch by the end of this year, Sharp said, and will include a 3D camera. Now that does sound interesting.

  
  Photo by jimf0390 on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

  Posted on 09.45 BST

• The Technology newsbucket: New BlackBerry blues, a TV tablet and Google goodness

  

  A mock-up of the new RIM BlackBerry pad (BlackPad) Photograph: intomobile.com

  All this and more in today's Technology newsbucket

  Continue reading...
  Posted by Josh Halliday 07.36 BST

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1. 1. Customer backlash forces Vodafone to renege on software update (12)
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