Could the iPhone 3.0 release this summer help create the mechanism — and culture — of micro-payments that many have long been seeking to solve the Web’s intellectual property problem?
UPDATE: These guys were thinking the exact same thing.
Archive for the ‘Tech Note’ Category
Web 3.0?
Monday, April 6th, 2009Broadband bridges to where?
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009See my new commentary on the new $7.2 billion broadband program in the Federal stimulus bill. I conclude that if we’re going to spend taxpayer money at all, we should take advantage of local knowledge:
Many states have already pinpointed the areas most in need of broadband infrastructure. Local companies and entrepreneurs are likely to best know where broadband needs to be deployed – and to aggressively deliver it with the most appropriate, cost-effective technology that meets the needs of the particular market. Using the states as smart conduits is also likely to get the money to network builders more quickly.
And that
After falling seriously behind foreign nations in broadband and in our favored measure of “bandwidth-per-capita” in the early 2000s, the U.S. got its act together and is now on the right path. In the last decade, total U.S. broadband lines grew from around 5 million to over 120 million, while residential broadband grew from under 5 million to 75 million. By far the most important broadband policy point is not to discourage or distort the annual $60+ billion that private companies already invest.
Cyber-security: Let’s get serious
Friday, March 20th, 2009As the Internet’s power grows — dominating our public discourse and driving deeper into every industry and commercial realm — it becomes a bigger target. As the key platform of our knowledge economy, it invites mischief, or worse.
Most digital citizens know the hassles and even dangers of viruses, phishing, and all manner of mal-ware. But cybersecurity is a much broader and deeper topic, and will grow ever more so. The Center for Strategic and International Studies published a good report on December 8 detailing the threats and offering recommendations to “the 44th Presidency.” CSIS suggested a number of specific actions, among them:
(1) a comprehensive national strategy; (2) that the White House lead the effort; (3) that we “regulate cyberspace”; (4) that we authenticate identities; (5) modernizing old laws not suited to the digital networked world; (6) building secure government systems; and (7) not starting over, given what they saw as the previous administration’s productive start.
Yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee moved the ball forward with a hearing on the topic, including the head of the CSIS study James Lewis, nuclear engineer Joseph Weiss, cyber-guru Ed Amoroso of AT&T, and Eugene Spafford of Purdue University’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security — better known by its brilliant acronym, CERIAS. (more…)
Rapid Internet Traffic Growth Continues in U.S. and Around Globe
Thursday, March 12th, 2009As nearly every indicator of economic growth plummets, the Net maintains its rise.
Internet traffic in the U.S. and around the globe in 2008 grew at an annual rate of between 50% and 60%. This compound pace of growth has remained fairly steady for the past half-decade. Year-end 2008 data show monthly U.S. Internet traffic was about 1.5 exabytes, a 10- fold increase since 2002. An exabyte is one million terabytes, or a billion gigabytes.
In previous research, we projected U.S. Internet and IP traffic to grow at a compound annual rate of around 56% through 2015. (See “Estimating the Exaflood”; “Unleashing the ?Exaflood’”; and “The Coming Exaflood.”)