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Facebook’s populism versus the online intelligentsia

30 May

There’s been a lot written about Facebook lately, what with its big initial public offering and everything, and the overwhelming majority of it has been negative. Even my own post running up to the IPO focused on all the bad things that have dogged the site during its crazy climb over the past few years, from users’ privacy concerns to advertisers’ doubts about the site’s usefulness.

My Macleans‘ comrade Jesse Brown also wrote a post last week in which he proclaimed that Facebook’s stock has never been lower (for him). He’s just not getting much use out of the site anymore, if he ever did, a sentiment shared by many.

Yet, when faced with so much negativity, I can’t help but start to feel contrarian. In the case of Facebook, if everyone hates it so much, how has it grown to nearly a billion users? And how did it become the most anticipated IPO since Google?

The answer, I think, is that like all things online, Facebook is at the center of its own negativity echo chamber. And in the website’s case, it’s a rather odd one.

The reality is this: despite what we so-called technology pundits may think and often write, the vast majority of Facebook’s 900-million-plus users probably really like using the site. For every curmudgeon like me or Jesse who is on it begrudgingly, there are a couple of dozen (or hundreds) of people who love it and are constantly on it. Indeed, that’s what the numbers show – people spend more time on Facebook than any other website, by far. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on May 30, 2012 in Facebook

 

SurfEasy great for private surfing – and Hulu

29 May

One of the things I always try to do at the Consumer Electronics Show is take stock of the Canadian companies at the annual Las Vegas techno-circus. Aside from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, that usually means talking to startups.

At this year’s show, one of the more interesting startups I encountered was SurfEasy, a new Toronto-based outfit aiming to make web surfing more private through a USB key that plugs in to your computer. The company recently started shipping its product and I finally had a chance to review it.

The best part of the SurfEasy key is just that – it’s easy. It’s a thin USB stick that comes in a plastic credit-card-like holder. You plug it in and it immediately launches a quick registration window, where you input your email address and a password. From there, a brief tutorial shows you how to use it and then you’re off to the races.

The SurfEasy browser is based on Mozilla, so it looks and feels similar to Firefox. A blue panel on the top right tells you that the site you’re on is encrypted. All of the browser’s traffic flows through a virtual private network connection to SurfEasy with the same level of security encryption as banks use, according to the company. That means no one – not your ISP, Google or the government – can snoop on what you’re doing. Indeed, the Google search bar shows up on SurfEasy’s default home page, but it can only track your location by city rather than by your individual IP address. Even that level of identification can be turned off, if you choose. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on May 29, 2012 in internet, privacy

 

Presidential panel drives stake into ‘spectrum crisis’

28 May

It’s always fun to juxtapose how different news outlets cover the same story. If you’re into wireless technology, there probably couldn’t be a better example of this than CNN and the New York Times.

Check out CNN’s coverage of “the spectrum crunch” from back in February, which offers up such juicy headlines as “America’s airwaves are full,” “Why your cellphone bill is going up” and “4 ways to stave off the cell phone apocalypse.”

Now take a look at a story the Times ran over the weekend about how, “Presidential panel urges more flexible use of spectrum.” According to the panel, which included Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie amoung others, there is no spectrum crisis, contrary to claims made by cellphone carriers and directly parroted by CNN.

If the government agencies and companies who use wireless spectrum simply adopted new computer technology that allowed for more efficient and flexible use of airwaves, the fast growth in all this smartphone data traffic wouldn’t be a problem at all:

The committee’s authors believed that agile radio technologies that make it possible for computerized radio systems to share spectrum on a vastly more efficient basis would make it possible to move from an era of scarcity to one of abundance. The central point of the report is that while there is no new spectrum available, new technologies can vastly increase the capacity of existing spectrum.

How vastly? Up to 40,000 times.

“We’re living with spectrum that is of a policy that was really set in motion by technology of 100 years ago,” said Mark Gorenberg, who sat on the panel. “That’s led to a fragmentation of the spectrum that has led to inefficiency and artificial scarcity.”

The report follows on an earlier story by the Times in which several network engineers, including cellphone inventor Martin Cooper, dispelled wireless carriers’ claims of a spectrum crisis. As the engineers put it, running out of spectrum would be like running out of a colour. “Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem,” Cooper said.

While there’s no question that smartphone data usage is growing quickly, wireless carriers are actually quite happy with the current spectrum system because it ensures they control all the airwaves. It’s good to see the Times speaking to people in the know as opposed to simply swallowing the industry’s claims blindly.

 
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Posted by on May 28, 2012 in telecommunications

 

Talking internet data caps with Open Media

25 May

When it comes to broadband internet, it seems like you can always count on regulators to turn a positive into a negative. Such was the case earlier this week when Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski defended so-called tiered pricing by internet providers – known in these northern climes as usage-based billing – as worthwhile efforts in fighting network congestion.

Critics in the U.S. quickly jumped on Genachowski for swallowing the industry’s excuses for shrinking caps, which was ironic given that his comments came only days after Comcast – the country’s largest cable provider – announced it was raising or doing away with its limits.

Up here in Canada, the reaction was similarly negative. York University professor David Ellis pointedly points out that Genachowski, who was once admired for his supposed progressiveness on internet issues, has now apparently been suckered by the same fallacious reasoning our own regulators were once (and might possibly still be) enamoured with.

It’s a cliche that Canada might as well exist in a bubble, particularly technologically, as far as the United States is concerned because Genachowski should have looked north, where this topic has been debated ad nauseum, before making such a foolish proclamation. As Ellis points out, caps-as-congestion-fighters is an argument that has been largely discredited here. Too bad nobody told the Americans.

That said, I’m still wondering why many Canadians have such ridiculously low caps compared to Americans (typical plans on Bell and Rogers offer 60 to 70 gigabytes, compared to 300 or more on Comcast and the like). I put the question to Steve Anderson, head of activist group Open Media, and we ended up having a bit of a back-and-forth over email.

He said the reasons why Canadians are still paying too much for internet services boils down to the following: Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on May 25, 2012 in crtc, internet, ubb

 

Can Apple pull a Dyson with televisions?

24 May

It’s not a weapon, it’s the Dyson ball.

Ever since the publication of Steve Jobs’ biography last fall, the rumour mill over whether Apple is going to launch its own flat-panel television has been in high gear. At this point, with Jobs claiming he had finally “cracked” it and reports that production has indeed begun, such a TV is looking more like a matter of when, not if.

Still, some technology and consumer electronics analysts doubt Apple’s chances since everyone already has a flat-panel TV. The market is “mature” and not very profitable, they say, so the company is going to have a tough go of it.

Such doubts are likely unwarranted, not just because betting against Apple’s track record is unwise. More to the point, believing that a new player can’t succeed in a mature market ignores how innovation works, not to mention the fact that markets evolve and grow because of new approaches.

If there’s a company that perfectly illustrates this, it’s Dyson. Back in the 1970s, British inventor James Dyson found himself frustrated with his Hoover vacuum cleaner. It clogged easily and lost suction, which meant he had to continually clean out the insides, including the bag. He resolved to build a better vacuum and, using sawmill technology as his inspiration, he did just that. A Japanese company licensed his new-and-improved vacuum design and it quickly became a hit there. Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on May 24, 2012 in apple, dyson

 
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