One Startup’s Vision to Reinvent the Web for Better Privacy. Venture capitalist Albert Wenger has done well by investing in Web businesses—he was an early backer of Etsy and Tumblr.
But at his urging, Union Square Ventures, where he is a partner, is backing a company founded on the principle that the Web needs a rethink. “We’re living in a time period where the new incumbents like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have firmly established themselves, and are near monopolists in their markets,” says Wenger. “If we want a long-term, open playing field for innovation, we’re going to need new, decentralized infrastructure.”
Blockstack received $4 million in funding from USV and others this month to try to establish that more open playing field. The startup is working on open-source software that will create a kind of parallel universe to the Web we know—one where users have more control of their data. Later this year, Blockstack will release software that lets you surf sites and apps created for this new digital domain using your existing Web browser. The bandwidth bottleneck that is throttling the Internet. Illustration by Richard Wilkinson On 19 June, several hundred thousand US fans of the television drama Game of Thrones went online to watch an eagerly awaited episode — and triggered a partial failure in the channel's streaming service.
Some 15,000 customers were left to rage at blank screens for more than an hour. The channel, HBO, apologized and promised to avoid a repeat. But the incident was just one particularly public example of an increasingly urgent problem: with global Internet traffic growing by an estimated 22% per year, the demand for bandwidth is fast outstripping providers' best efforts to supply it. You Want to Build an Empire Like Google’s? This Is Your OS. Information for the World from Outer Space. Open Wireless Movement. Republic wireless - The Mobile Network that Runs on Freedom. Signals In The Sky: Google Announces "Project Loon", Balloon-Powered Internet.
Google is taking to the air.
The online giant has announced plans to test a network of stratosphere-wandering balloons intended to provide Internet access to the two-thirds of humanity who still can't log on to the web. Facebook Looking Into Buying Drone Maker Titan Aerospace. Facebook, one of the primary backers of the Internet.org initiative, which aims to bring affordable Internet access to the 5 billion people in the world who still lack connectivity, is in talks with a company that could help further that agenda.
TechCrunch is hearing that Facebook is buying Titan Aerospace, makers of near-orbital, solar-powered drones which can fly for five years without needing to land. According to a source with access to information about the deal, the price for this acquisition is $60 million*. From our understanding, Facebook is interested in using these high-flying drones to blanket parts of the world without Internet access, beginning with Africa. The company would start by building 11,000 of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), specifically the “Solara 60″ model. Google reportedly launching 180 satellites for global internet service. Internet ATLAS - Limited View. See something or say something. Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure. Building a 21st Century Broadband Superhighway. U.S. technological leadership is in a state of decline.
Once the unequivocal frontrunner in information technology and telecommunications, the U.S. has fallen from 1st to between 15th and 21st in the world in terms of broadband access, adoption, speeds and prices. The most recent data from OECD (through June 2008) underscores the fact that the U.S. broadband penetration ranking remains stagnant. [i] Such a dramatic decline has prompted calls for a "broadband Apollo project," a nation-wide initiative to build advanced fiber-optic communications infrastructure to connect every community, constituency, and interested individual in the country.
Although members of Congress and the incoming Obama administration have all expressed interest in a national effort to promote universal broadband, the discussion thus far has lacked a coherent means to correct the current market failures and keep pace as other nations have raced ahead. The Challenge The Solution The Benefits The Key Elements Conclusion. Samsung to Offer Commercial 5G by 2020. Some parts of the world, such as China, have yet to launch 4G networks, but already Samsung is promising to deliver high speed 5G wireless data connections to consumers by 2020.
The claim comes as the firm announced it had developed its first core technology for fifth-generation networks. The Korean tech giant says its 5G wireless technology will be capable of providing users with data speeds of “up to several tens of Gbps per base station”. That, it says, is “several hundred times faster” than even yet-to-be-released 4G LTE technology. In practical terms, Samsung’s estimated speeds would allow a movie to be downloaded in under one second, and it could enable a host of new services that feed off the ability to transfer large files quickly. Comcast, Verizon Wireless, and Time Warner Cable. When Will the Rest of Us Get Google’s Gigabit-per-Second Service?
Call it the miracle on Francis Street.
Last year Ryan and Jenny Carpenter got a deal seemingly too good to be true in their Kansas City, Missouri, neighborhood: an installer from Google Fiber wired their bungalow to give them at least 50 times their previous Internet access speed and a substantially better TV service, all for only $125 a month, tax included—just a few dollars more than they’d been paying Time Warner Cable. The internet is fucked. In a perfect storm of corporate greed and broken government, the internet has gone from vibrant center of the new economy to burgeoning tool of economic control.
Time to Break Up the Telecom Industry. Carlos Slim Helu in his office in Mexico City in a June 13, 2007 file photo.
For-Profit ISPs Are Trying to Prevent Cities From Offering Faster and Cheaper Net Service. Buzzflash commentaries like this one aren’t funded by corporate advertising, but by readers like you.
Can you help sustain our work with a tax-deductible donation? (Photo: hdzimmermann)If you want to know what a difference a municipally owned internet service can make, just look to Chattanooga, Tennessee. In an article on CNNMoney entitled, "Chattanooga's super-fast publicly owned Internet," journalist James O'Toole describes how Chattanooga is providing the gold standard of internet access, while commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are leaving consumers in the dust, in terms of speed and service: Chattanooga, Tenn., may not be the first place that springs to mind when it comes to cutting-edge technology.
But thanks to its ultra-high-speed Internet, the city has established itself as a center for innovation -- and an encouraging example for those frustrated with slow speeds and high costs from private broadband providers. Rethinking the Computer at 80. Jim Wilson/The New York Times Peter G. Neumann One of those is Peter G. Neumann, now an 80-year-old computer scientist at SRI International, a pioneering engineering research laboratory here. As an applied-mathematics student at , Dr. INTERNET RISING: digi-documentary film. Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet & PC. Protocol 5 - Xanadu. Let There Be Li-Fi! As if underwater Wi-Fi wasn't fascinating enough, here's another wireless technology that could be potentially groundbreaking if and when it goes mass market.