SMS a killer app at 20; irrelevant at 25?

05/14/12

The first SMS-capable mobile phones were approved for sale in Europe 20 years ago this month. By any measure, SMS has become a huge success, at least for the telephone companies, with more than 6 trillion SMS messages sent worldwide in 2010, generating more than $110 billion in revenue. But the future may not be anywhere near as bright because of increasing use of "free" Internet-based services such as Facebook, Apple's iMessage and WhatsApp.com.

NBC, the Olympics and the Internet

05/01/12

I have been far from nice when it comes to my opinion of NBC's understanding of the power of the Internet when it comes to Olympic coverage. Six years ago I had the Pollyannaish view that NBC would stumble on the Internet when it next broadcast the Olympics. ("The last pre-Internet Olympics?") I was wrong and complained again the next time the Olympics came around ("NBC Olympic coverage: Is the Internet the enemy?").

Is Apple destroying the Internet?

04/16/12

When The Guardian recently interviewed Google co-founder Sergey Brin as a teaser for its weeklong series of articles about the "Battle for the Internet," the publication got a good headline out of it: "Google's Brin: threats to web freedom 'greater then ever.'"

Are Facebook passwords fair game for employers?

04/03/12

The Associated Press in late March reported on the issue of employers asking job applicants for their Facebook passwords, citing new and old incidents. The story apparently hit a sore point because it was all over the press within a day or so and in short order politicians were posturing and reaching for the limelight by introducing legislation to ban the practice and sending letters to enforcement agencies demanding action.

Abusive websites and customer retention

03/19/12

Why is it that companies that should know better embark on programs of customer abuse when they should stop and think like a customer, at least for a few seconds? This is a small tale of a company getting it right, then making three all-too-common mistakes. These are not the only ways a company can abuse its customers, but is an example of the kind of non-thinking that should be avoided.

Apple's "new iPad": Too late to be corporate game changer

03/07/12

It's been a hard few years for we-control-everything corporate IT departments as well as for the "Microsoft is the answer, what was your question?" approach to corporate computing. It has also been a while since corporate IT departments have had to deal with a new reality that completely changed how they interact with their users.

Apple's Gatekeeper: A low cost for partial security

02/21/12

Out of the blue, Apple just announced Mountain Lion, the next generation of its OS X operating system. By the time Mountain Lion ships sometime next summer, Apple says it will have lots of new features, some transported from its iOS environment of the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch world. This column will examine just one of the new features, one that, while good, has not yet included all the functions of its iOS prototype.

Europe cares about privacy, so you must too

02/07/12

In late January, the European Commission published a proposal "on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data."

Science, technology and politicians

01/17/12

What is it about politicians that makes them believe that they, with a few minutes' cursory review, know better than people who have studied in an area for decades? Whatever the case, it far from a rare condition. The most recent example of this attitude is the copyright protection proposals currently in front of Congress.

Is vulnerability an objective?

01/03/12

I ended last year with a death-of-the-Internet column, and I'm starting off the new year with a death-via-the-Internet one.

The Internet has escaped the ax, at least in the US, at least for now

12/20/11

A year ago I wrote that 2011 would be a year in which the Internet would "be under a multi-pronged attack that threatens to change it irrevocably in ways that may destroy much of the Internet's potential." Well, 2011 has come and mostly gone, and it turned out that my pessimism may have been misplaced but not invalid.

GPS on the run?

11/15/11

The Supreme Court earlier this month heard arguments on a relatively common drug case, but there is a chance for this case to set the groundwork, for good or ill, on resolving most of the issues I discussed recently regarding the murky state of privacy protections from the government in the United States.

The UN, copyright extremism and you

11/01/11

In September representatives from India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) got together to talk about the Internet. Their conclusion: The 'Net needed help from the United Nations in the areas of developing policies, technical standards, operation, dispute resolution and crises management.

Breach reporting: Now companies have to do it

10/17/11

Consumer advocates as well as many business groups have attempted to get federal laws adopted in the United States that would mandate disclosure of security breaches in which some types of private information about identifiable people are exposed. In spite of the obvious logic of having a national standard, these efforts so far have failed.

Clarifying the rules for government

10/03/11

One feature of today's mostly electronic, mostly Internet world is that governments tend to assume that it is legally OK to do many things that they would never have considered to be OK in the pre-Internet world.

Internet privacy: Cookies as a weapon

09/20/11

In November 2009 the European Parliament approved a directive on Internet privacy that, among other things, required user opt-in before websites could install cookies on the user's computer.

HP (again) shows us how not to do it

09/06/11

HP management has not been good to the company over the last few years. One would have to do a lot of searching to find a management team that has so thoroughly messed up in the court of public opinion.

Smartphones and corporate websites, a required match

08/15/11

If I remember correctly, not long after the original Apple iPhone went on sale The New York Times ran a story indicating surprise that a relatively large number of poorer people were buying the expensive phone. After some pondering, the Times concluded that the cost of the iPhone was actually small when compared to a personal computer and Internet service. The iPhone was a way that people who could not otherwise afford to be on the Internet could get reliable, reasonable speed, access for not much more per month than they were already paying for their current cellphones.

Moves afoot in U.S., elsewhere to end PSTN copper lifeline

08/03/11

In what may be a preview of what will happen in the United States, the Australian telecommunications giant Telstra late last month released its plan to bring a close to the old telephone world. Telstra announced it will decommission its copper customer access network and stop offering fixed line telephone service to retail customers after July 1, 2018.

Cyberwar and cyber-isolationism

07/12/11

There has been a bit of a splash in the press the last few days about a mention by former CIA Director Michael Hayden of the idea of creating new, extra secure internets for government or commerce.

iCloud: Apple's cumulonimbus vision

06/13/11

The most surprising thing about the presentations Apple's leaders gave at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month was that we actually had been told in advance about some of the news that was going to be discussed.

RSA: Maximizing customer harm

05/31/11

When news of the major RSA breach broke about two months ago I complained that the company was not being all that upfront in telling customers what the breach might mean to them. Now we hear that the break-in at giant defense contractor Lockheed Martin may be an example of the fallout of the RSA breach.

India: Data privacy, yes; adults, no; Internet privacy, no

05/18/11

India has just approved three new information technology rules, some of which might impact U.S. companies that outsource and others that will hurt Indian Internet users.

25 years of communications: From anything-but-IP to all-IP

05/02/11

Twenty-five years ago -- when Network World was born -- the Internet was only 3 years old itself. At that time, less than 2,500 hosts were connected to the Internet and maybe 10,000 people used it regularly. Now there are more than 800 million hosts and 1.8 billion regular users.

Epsilon breach: When should almost public info be private?

04/13/11

A press feeding frenzy followed the somewhat vague April Fools Day announcement by Epsilon Data Management that someone had hacked into its systems and stolen a bunch of email addresses. The addresses were of people who had "opted in" for email marketing by a bunch of major vendors such as Target and Red Roof Inns, and many of the vendors sent announcements of the breach to their customers (I got such an announcement from a vendor I had purchased a present from for my wife. The announcement did not say all that much, essentially it told me to "be careful".).