The Net Neutrality saga continues

The Net Neutrality saga continues onwards, with no shortage of surprises or new developments.

1) The first piece of news is that Comcast might not be telling the truth in terms of what it's doing from a traffic management perspective on its Internet service. Comcast, in an 80-page disclosure of its traffic management, noted that it was only delaying peer to peer filesharing traffic when the network was congested. In a public statement yesterday by the FCC's Kevin Martin, "It does not appear that this technique was used only to occasionally delay traffic at particular nodes suffering from network congestion at that time. Based on testimony we've received thus far, this equipment was typically deployed over a wider geographic area or system, and is not even capable of knowing when an individual … segment of the network is congested".

While this may or may not be true, this does reveal one fundamental issue with respect to Comcast - in the absence of more transparency, nobody trusts what anybody is saying anymore, especially Comcast. More than anything Comcast is fighting for the right to keep the government out of its business, and while the FCC doesn't really want to be playing this role, it's been put in the position where it will look very bad indeed if it gives Comcast a free pass. With Comcast's traffic management policies using Sandvine gear, these proceedings continue to beat on Sandvine's stock price, which closed at .40 yesterday.

2) Cogeco Cable was called out yesterday by P2P video company Vuze as being the second worst ISP globally in terms of interfering with peer to peer traffic. This will no doubt build on a growing discontent in Canada with respect to the ISP community, particularly with Bell already implementing a heighted level of peer to peer shaping, and Rogers and Shaw also highlighted in the Vuze report.

The bottom line here is that the Net Neutrality debate appears to be gaining momentum and not getting resolved to any great degree, particularly in the U.S. and Canada. A worry might be that these debates start to spread to other geographies as well as companies that will be relying on P2P as a distribution method take their fights globally. Clearly, this would be a bad thing for deep packet inspection companies like Sandvine, Allot, Arbor, and Cisco as this could serve to delay deployment plans for the technology at global carriers over the coming years.

the White House Blog

On March 2nd, 2009, Blog, more commonly known as the White House Blog, entered the Technorati Top 100 for the first time at #99. The blog was started January 20th, 2009. 42 days later it had rocketed into the Top 100. I am pretty certain that is the fastest any blog has ever done that. As of this writing, it sits at #96 right between Jalopnik and delicious:days, an auto blog and a food blog.

Research libraries, with their in-depth collections that support research activities, have long collected print books and journals, and, in recent years, e-books and e-journals. E-books and e-journals enable researchers to locate and obtain information quickly and remotely at any time of the day or night; they have become especially popular over the past decade. On the other hand, audiobooks have not played a very important role in research libraries.

In July 2007, the Research Library at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) instituted an Audiobooks-on-iPods1 program using leadership and management audiobooks. NIST researchers enthusiastically embraced the program from its very first day. In its initial nine months, researchers checked out audiobooks six times more frequently than new print books.

In a rare vote outside of Midwinter and Annual Conference, the ALA Council voted last month to award posthumous honorary membership to Judith F. Krug for her work in the field of intellectual freedom. Krug was the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation for more than 40 years. She died on April 11 after a long illness. Honorary membership, ALA's highest honor, is conferred in recognition of outstanding contributions of lasting importance to libraries and librarianship. The award will be presented on Saturday, July 11, during the Opening General Session at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago

Internet Windows access problems

I've recently run into some crippling Windows problems. And it was, worst of all, effecting my Internet access when I need it so desperately, like so many fellow South Africans. Moving to mac has crossed my mind, but I opted to go to a free place. A place where operations and function, roam freely. Linux.

I'm glad to report that today, I got one of my old systems up and running with Ubuntu. Being only shown the basics just one night ago by a friend and far more superior user, I must say I'm digging it. My first few hours has been an easy and relatively flat learning curve. Finding a easy alternative to ALMOST every thing I do on Windows is merely a search away. I have gotten my internet up running on USB without a hitch and as for the typical uses Windows gives me like Photoshop for starters… Windows will just have be a close at hand.

If you've seen the infomercials for ShamWow on late-night TV, then I'm assuming you're a proud owner of the super absorbent shammy. I know I am. So when I saw this guy at the Ubisoft booth at E3 yesterday, it totally reminded me of the commercial. He was so excited about the new features in Splinter Cell Conviction that he had a huge crowd forming! Hey, if you weren't already excited to play the game, then you should be now. "Mark and execute" the video of this enthusiastic developer (and seasoned salesman) in the short video below.

Sometimes, the best way to refuel yourself is by working on something that will never see the light of day. A couple of weeks back, I did just that when I realized how outdated the iTunes Store interface looked. I spend 4 evenings on this, and don't regret a single minute of it. Free to do whatever I wanted without restrictions. Note: Besides putting the main navigation on top I didn't change the structure, just took all the existing elements and gave them a fresh coat of paint.

Facebook Connect entrepreneurs

We are always interested in hearing from developers and entrepreneurs about their experiences with Facebook Connect. Since the launch of Facebook Connect in December, 2008, more than 15,000 Facebook Connect implementations have gone live around the world. We continue to be impressed by the innovative ways developers deploy Connect, such as those highlighted in this recent Mashable article. Whether you're in the beginning stages of a Facebook Connect integration, or have been working on one for months, we'd love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts and experiences with us by filling out this quick survey. We may contact you to ask if we can feature you in a case study or press opportunities, or publish your experiences on the Facebook Connect Page. For additional news on Facebook Connect, please become a fan of the Facebook Connect Page.

Last night the official Spread Firefox download counter reached one billion! That's one billion times over the last five years that users have chosen a better Web experience. This is a monumental event - Firefox has come a long way since its debut in November 2004, thanks to the amazing Firefox community. Volunteers from all over the world contribute to the coding, testing and spreading of Firefox to communities across the globe. Firefox 3.5 shipped in 75 languages - more than any other browser. On Monday, www.onebillionplusyou.com will go live and act as a hub of information concerning the billionth download of Firefox. So stay tuned!

Jeff Dossett joined Yahoo! last fall but recently gave his resignation. The reason for the departure is personal, according to BoomTown. Dossett's responsibilities have been assumed by Vertical Audience Experiences head Jimmy Pitaro and Search & Social Applications Tim Mayer. Dossett originally replaced Scott Moore and Al Warms. Previously, Dossett worked at Microsoft.

the Library of Congress Working Group

In response to concerns about RDA raised by the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, the three U.S. national libraries-the Library of Congress (LC), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Agricultural Library (NAL)-made a commitment to the further development and completion of RDA. The three libraries agreed to make a joint decision on whether or not to implement RDA, based on the results of a test of both RDA and the Web product. The goal of the test is to assure the operational, technical, and economic feasibility of RDA. Testers will include the three national libraries and the broader U.S. library community.

Website includes a timeline and a proposed methodology of testing.

The Google watermark

a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible.

Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you: + Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes. + Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. + Maintain attribution

The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. + Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http://books.google.com/

What does it mean to live in the Communication Age?

What does it mean to live in the Communication Age? What is the nature of culture today? How have cultural identities changed in globalization? Culture in the Communication Age brings together some of the world's leading thinkers from a range of academic disciplines to discuss what 'culture' means in the modern era. They describe key features oflife in the 'Communication Age', and consider the cultural implications of the rise of global connectivity, mass media, information technology, and popular culture. Individual chapters consider: • • • • • • • • • • • Culture of the Mind Rethinking the Foundations of Culture Culture in the Global Ecumene From 'Ways of Life' to 'Lifestyle' Cultural Gender Cultural Fronts Superculture Popular Culture and Media Spectacles Visual Culture Star Culture Computers, the Internet, and Virtual Cultures.