Archive for the ‘Computing Technology’ Category

Mastodon integration (test post)

Tuesday, November 8th, 2022

This site is now operating a plug-in that should integrate it with the #ActivityPub universe (the protocol used by Mastodon and other Fediverse tools). So this post should show up for those who choose to subscribe to us on #Mastodon, or who search for the hashtags #embedded in it. Once I ...

Mobile operators seek to block Skype in Sweden – The Local

Saturday, March 31st, 2012

VoIP software, like Skype, is a challenge for traditional telephony operators, who now have income from providing digital bandwidth, but are losing higher-margin operations, such as voice calls. Good to see the European Commission stand up for network neutrality on this one: According to the European Commission, maintaining "net neutrality" – ...

The interplay of copyright and creativity – a Storify collection

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

I've recently started playing around with Storify. In the piece embedded below, I'm gathering together various different snippets concerning the interplay of copyright and creativity. http://storify.com/funferal/copyright-and-creativity

Global Facebook subject to Irish Data Protection rules

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Turns out that all Facebook user accounts, outside of the US and Canada, are overseen by its European headquarters in Ireland. That means that it's subject to Irish data protection rules, and the Irish data protection commissioner has now launched an investigation. This is one to watch.

Irish telecoms market data

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

The latest edition of Comreg's Quarterly Report (pdf) is now available, and it's got some interesting nuggets hidden in it. First, VoIP is now showing up in call volumes - although Comreg only tracks certain VoIP services, and not internet-based offerings such as Skype. There's a suggestion in the report that ...

Personalized (online) radio services from the BBC?

Friday, July 7th, 2006

There was an interesting teaser earlier this week, from the DG of the BBC, when he talked about:MyBBCRadio [which will] use peer-to-peer technology to provide "thousands, ultimately millions, of individual radio services created by audiences themselves".. Elsewhere it says the technology will build on podcasting and the BBC iPlayer, so ...

Interrogating population density

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

Sascha notes that internet penetration does not correlate closely with population density, and asks what it does correlate with in this context. Dredging up memories of my previous career, my sense is that population density has some impact, but so too does the variance in density. That is, two of the ...

WiMax as grassroots telecoms backbone?

Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

Perhaps related to my dialogue with Paul at Mediageek regarding creating a grassroots telecoms backbone, Om Malik draws attention to the potential of WiMax for backbone purposes. He suggests that a WiMax backbone for the United States could be built for $3 bn which is, as he notes, quite a ...

Grassroots responses to net neutrality debates

Friday, March 10th, 2006

Over at Mediageek, Paul is thinking about possible grassroots responses to attacks on network neutrality. Without plotting specific policy responses he references previous (and ongoing) debates on media policy, and responses such as Indymedia and LPFM:By way of comparison, the micropower unlicensed radio movement provided both an immediate means of ...

Why use ANPR? To cover the costs of ANPR

Tuesday, March 7th, 2006

Why introduce ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition)? Well, according to this rather muddled rationale, it should be used to defray the cost of the cameras introduced in order to operate the ANPR system. Think I'm joking?He argues that automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology should be applied in new ways ...