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In a battle that's been ongoing since the fall of 2007, Comcast just won the latest round against the Federal Communications Commission. A federal appeals court announced its decision this morning to grant ComCast a petition for review, vacating the order by the FCC, which imposed a "net neutrality" on the nation's largest cable company. The decision appears to focus on the FCC's legal authority to enforce net neutrality and not on the legality of net neutrality itself. Sponsor The case began when "several subscribers to Comcast's high-speed Internet service discovered that the company was interfering with their use of peer-to-peer networking applications," the decision reads. Comcast argued that its move to block p2p file-sharing was "necessary to manage scarce network capacity", but the FCC found differently, ruling that the company had "significantly impeded consumers' ability to access the content and use the applications of their choice". When we last looked at this issue , the FCC had ruled against ComCast, enforcing a key tenet in the Net Neutrality debate - that ISPs have an obligation to serve up content regardless of type or method of delivery. The ISP should not have the power to discriminate according to source, destination or other such factors. Until now, the FCC's decision had backed this, but now the appeals court has ruled that the FCC was acting outside of its powers. According to Cecilia Kang at the Washington Post this decision could affect the FCC going forward: The so-called net neutrality rule, imposed by former FCC chairman Kevin Martin, comes just days before the agency accepts final comments on a separate open Internet regulatory effort this Thursday. And the agency will be faced with a steep legal challenge going forward as it attempts to convert itself from a broadcast- and phone-era agency into one that draws new rules for the Internet era. The decision could also be a stumbling block in the FCC's plan to implement a national broadband network . The full text of the report is available in .pdf . Discuss
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A Blow To Net Neutrality: FCC Loses Appeal to Comcast
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What are the security issues with the iPad and how is it suited as a device for developing enterprise scale applications? Those are the questions we posed to Ken Westin, the founder and CEO of ActiveTrak . Westin is a a security expert. His company develops a software and a service to track the location of a device if lost or stolen. In June, the company is introducing an enterprise version of its technology that will also go by the name ActiveTrak. Sponsor The iPad will become a device that we will undoubtedly see in the enterprise. It fits into the same space as a smartphone or social computing technology, applicable to personal and work life. Neville Hobson on the NextWeb cites a survey by Sybase about the interest in smart phones for the workplace and its correlation to the iPad. But Westin says the iPad does have its own set of limitations that makes it an issue for development of enterprise security grade applications: The iPhone and iPad software has built-in PPTP, IPSec, Cisco VPN software . But more companies are moving to SSL VPN, which is not supported by the iPad. In time, though, a client should be developed for the product. The device may be able to access the domain, however it is different from being a domain member as an administrator cannot manage it, enforce group policies or push patches or apps to it. Westin is supported by other security experts who cite Apple's lack of interest in security issues: "The general consensus is that Apple continues to do only the absolute minimum to address enterprise security and supportability requirements," noted Andrew Storms, Director of Security Operations for nCircle. `We haven't seen any new enterprise iPhone security features from Apple since the summer of 2009 when they introduced their new hardware level encryption, which was almost immediately subverted. This is not the kind of behavior security professionals want to see in vendors.' Recent events seem to illustrate that point. Security researches were able to compromise a fully-updated iPhone 3GS at the recent CanSecWest Pwn2Own competition. Storms warned me "If the iPad has the same OS as the iPhone then enterprises are going to be even more concerned about the data on this device.' " Westin said it is the background processing in particular that makes the iPad less appealing for ActiveTrak. For instance, its application runs in the background on an Android device. An iPad, and for that matter an iPhone, does not provide that capability. His company does provide a free application for the iPhone. It's free but it can only be activated if someone turns it on. To maneuver around the issue, Westin said they disguise the app button as a Safari icon, which activates the application. That's when the tracking starts by triangulation techniques using WiFi and GPS. Westin is a fan of Apple. He uses a MacBook Pro. He says developer tools are better on the iPhone and it has a great community. But, Apple wants it all. It controls the hardware, the software and the content. That's a concern for the enterprise that wants to adopt the iPad. Such control over content is a problem as it gives Apple the power to wipe an application off a device without permission. That may seem unlikely in an enterprise setting but the possibility does lead to hesitation. Further, Apple may make great high end products for consumers but it does not have the equivalent of a Blackberry server that can control the device and its content. Instead, the individual must have a MobileMe account. This can become a coordination nightmare for IT if the enterprise has 5,000 people who need an iPad. Westin said ActiveTrak will wait until the iPad platfrom opens up more before developing. Discuss
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Is the iPad Secure Enough for the Enterprise?
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If you believe in matches made in heaven then you will understand why the new partnership between Quova and SimpleGeo is just that. Developers can now harness the power of Quova's complex IP geolocation technology within SimpleGeo's framework for creating location apps. Quova announced the partnership today at Where 2.0 in San Jose, and said it will broaden its customer base and provide new contexts for its data. In return, SimpleGeo wins by giving developers a more complete solution for geolocation. Sponsor Quova specializes in IP Geolocation - a process that uses the IP address of a person's computer or mobile phone gateway to determine that person's location. The results are less specific than those provided by a GPS-enabled smartphone or WiFi, but is often the best available location data for many users. The data can be used to target content by region, or localize online searches. Quova has historically focused on the enterprise market, which is highly sophisticated and able to consume raw IP location data. SimpleGeo is a cloud-based geodata company that has been building its geolocation services since May 2009. The company, founded by Joe Stump and Matt Galligan , is unique in its focus on location-based services. It announced the availability of a data storage service, an iTunes-like data marketplace, and an API to developers today at Where 2.0. These offerings are described by SimpleGeo as a "ready-to-use platform that makes it easy to store, scale and discover geodata for use on the Web and in applications." "After discovering Quova¹s offerings, it became obvious that we needed to include their IP Geolocation data in our ready-to-use location infrastructure," said Matt Galligan, cofounder and CEO of SimpleGeo. "Quova's data will enable developers using SimpleGeo to locate their users easily, regardless of access to GPS or WiFi data. The partnership just made sense." Essentially, the partnership creates a geolocation "failover" system for developers. Applications and services can select the best available source for location data. The level of accuracy ranges from GPS smartphones, at the high end, to Wi-Fi data from
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Where 2.0: Quova and SimpleGEO Make App Building Easier
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By the year 2020, the big players in cloud computing and big data could consume more power than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined, says environmental advocacy group Greenpeace in a report released today. The group is calling for technology companies that require large data centers to begin using renewable energy sources, warning that "the growth of Internet computing could come with a huge jump in greenhouse gas emissions". Greenpeace is calling attention to a central flaw in the duality of technology - its ability to help the world while, at the same time, running off the same old, dirty, polluting power sources that harm it. Sponsor The report, entitled "Make IT Green: Cloud Computing and its Contribution to Climate Change", "shows how the launch of quintessential cloud computing devices like the Apple iPad, which offer users access to the 'cloud' of online services like social networks and video streaming, can contribute to a much larger carbon footprint of the Information Technology (IT) sector than previously estimated." The report highlights Facebook's recent commissioning of a data center in Oregon, which is powered primarily by coal, "the United States' largest source of greenhouse gas emissions." Yahoo!, on the other hand, "chose to build a data centre outside Buffalo, New York, that is powered by energy from a hydroelectric plant - dramatically decreasing its carbon footprint." Google, it notes, has been "recently approved as a regulated wholesale buyer and seller of electricity", meaning any power it creates that it cannot use it can sell back to the power companies. Greenpeace is using statistics from Smart 2020 , a 2008 study that found that changes within the ICT sector could reduce "15% of business as usual emissions". As a result of rapid expansion in places like India and China, "demand for ICT services will quadruple by 2020". The release of the report comes just days before Apple's release of the iPad, a device that will assuredly run off cloud-based services, and just weeks after Microsoft said it was betting the farm on the cloud . Discuss
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Greenpeace Calls For Renewable Energy In Cloud Computing
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One of the first web design books I bought was Creating Killer Web Sites , a 90s classic by David Siegel. That book was known for pushing visual style over HTML standards. It also encouraged the use of HTML hacks , for example using tables to create layouts. Siegel's techniques were basically workarounds, but they just worked in an era when building web pages was painful due to browser incompatibilities. In Siegel's latest book, Pull , he tackles the Semantic Web. Once again, Siegel plays loosely with existing web standards. Sponsor Siegel's definition of 'Semantic Web' is much broader than that of many technologists. So, just as many Web standards advocates derided Siegel's version of web design back in the 90s, will they also cry foul of his version of the Semantic Web? Pull is being positioned as a business guide to the emerging Semantic Web. It has similarities to Creating Killer Web Sites , which caught the wave of an emerging big trend of the mid-90s (web site design) and became a bestseller. Siegel is attempting to catch a second big online wave, with the Semantic Web in 2010. Siegel explains the title in the introduction: "This book describes the pull era , where customers pull everything to them on demand - products, services, information, knowledge, and advice. Much of the foundation for pulling is called the semantic web , a new way of packaging information to make it much more useful and reusable. Over the next ten to twenty years, it will change business from a lead-push model to a pull-follow model of interacting with customers." It's hard to argue against the vision that the book outlines. However for many Semantic Web proponents, the foundational technologies are Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). These standards allow web publishers to encode meaning - semantics - into their sites. David Siegel's definition of Semantic Web is far broader. On the book's accompanying website, The Power of Pull , there is a " Semantic Web Acid Test ." It defines a semantic web business as one that has an "unambiguous" structure for its data. The book states that "some technologists feel that semantic web data must be expressed using a language called RDF," but Siegel disagrees. Instead, he believes that "simple, unambiguous formats are part of the semantic web." The book is ultimately about how structured data will change how we do business. Frankly, the use of the term 'Semantic Web' in this book feels forced. Even so, I think it's a very useful book and offers detailed scenarios of how structured data will improve business. For example, chapter 4 is about retailers and outlines the benefits of RFID tags in retail - including describing a visit Siegel made to forward-thinking German retailer Metro Group. Overall Pull is a solid and well-researched book. It's a good introduction for business people to structured data and the Semantic Web. My one issue with the book is that Siegel's appropriation of the term 'Semantic Web' leaves me feeling a little uneasy. On the home page of his personal website is a blog post (entitled 'Why I Should be Apple's Next CEO'), in which Siegel claims that he "started talking about the Semantic Web in 1998, before Tim Berners-Lee coined the term." Whether that's true or not, it does beg the question: is Siegel's definition of the Semantic Web the same as Tim Berners-Lee's? Discuss
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David Siegel: From Killer Web Sites to Semantic Web
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