ReadWriteWeb

For obvious reasons, we care about what goes on in various parts of the world, particularly New Zealand and other areas that are underserved in terms of Internet access.

So, we were quite excited to learn this evening of a new proposal that would give New Zealanders - including a couple RWW staff members - a better broadband experience. According to NZ website Stuff, a halndful of well-known innovators and entrepreneurs are teaming up on a $900 million dollar project that would give Kiwis (and their Aussie neighbors) "virtually unlimited" broadband access via an international cable that would run across the Pacific Ocean. Just how much of a difference would this cable make compared to current Internet access?

According to recently released research from the Pew Center, we're just as optimistic about the web as we were ten years ago during the Internet's first boom cycle.

At the end of 2009, most Americans in this Pew survey have a dismal view of the 2000s. Between the Iraq war, the 9/11 attacks, economic and political distress and the curse of reality television, the decade has been voted the worst in our collective memory. But one of few bright spots in a tense ten-year period was and remains technological innovation, including the Internet, cell phones and email. Social sites, however, still have a way to go in the public eye.

According to a recent survey of around 3,000 kids, those who text, blog and use social sites such as Facebook have better writing skills than their less technologically inclined counterparts.

This hardly comes as a surprise to us tech geeks who spent our younger days alternating between writing critical theses on esoteric forums and getting assaulted by grammar Nazis on said forums. Although we may take it for granted that voluminous written communication online builds writing skills, others decry the lack of formality in most tween and teen lexicons. Is "text speak" as much a concern as enhanced writing skills are a benefit?

A backlash against anonymous commenters and trolls seems to be underway. Only last month, a court case was settled where anonymous commenters ended up having to pay big fines to the women who they defiled using vulgar, derogatory remarks on an internet forum. And previously, an anonymous blogger in the modeling industry was forced to reveal her identity after numerous malicious posts about a colleague showed up on her blog. Now the latest scandal in this new trend of "giving the trolls what they deserve" is causing a controversy all of its own. And this time, the nasty comment didn't just lead to an embarrassing reveal or a heavy fine, it cost someone their job.

In our society, there's an image of a computer nerd as this sad, pale, and lonely guy sitting in the dark gazing at a glowing screen. As it turns out, that's just an image and it's far from the truth. The reality is that most technology users are perfectly well-adjusted and social creatures. In fact, those who surf the web and use their mobile phones may actually be more social and better connected to the world at large than those who don't.

Five years ago, Internet traffic was, for the most part, managed by tier 1 providers like AT&T, Verizon, Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing, all of which connected to thousands of tier 2 networks and regional providers. Today, that has changed. Now, instead of traffic being distributed among tens of thousands of networks, only 150 networks control some 50% of all online traffic. Among these new Internet superpowers, it's no surprise to find Google listed. In fact, the search giant accounts for the largest source (6%) of all Internet traffic worldwide.

This data comes from a new report put out by Arbor Networks, who has just completed a two-year study of 256 exabytes of Internet traffic data, the largest study of global traffic since the start of the commercial Internet in the mid-1990's.

European researchers have been working for years on a system that allows developers to create internet applications that can manage and fix themselves. Called SELFMAN, the project aims to address the challenges inherent in large scale applications. According to Peter Van Roy, project coordinator, "The central challenge when you build big internet applications is how to keep them running without having to tweak and manage them all the time. We wanted to make big internet applications easy, so that all the management problems you normally have are handled by the system itself. It will take the internet to the next level."

Indeed it will.

Last night, something amazing happened: Facebook and Twitter came to my TV. No, I didn't go out and purchase some brand-new internet-enabled "TV of the future," I just received an upgrade to my DVR. Thanks to Verizon FiOS and their new "Widget Bazaar," I can now access Facebook and Twitter using only my remote control. Jealous? You should be. TV will never be the same again.

France's highest court, the Constitutional Council, ruled that access to the internet is a "fundamental human right" this week in striking down a controversial "three strikes" anti-piracy law called Loi Hadopi, according to a report today from the UK Daily Mail. Were such an opinion agreed upon by other governments around the world, the implications would be striking.

In the coming years, we will see a revolution in the ability of machines to access, process, and apply information. This revolution will emerge from three distinct areas of activity connected to the Semantic Web: the Web of Data, the Web of Services, and the Web of Identity providers. These webs aim to make semantic knowledge of data accessible, semantic services available and connectable, and semantic knowledge of individuals processable, respectively. In this post, we will look at the first of these Webs (of Data) and see how making information accessible to machines will transform how we find information.

In the U.S., Verizon FiOS customers will soon receive an update to their set-top boxes that will connect their TVs to the web in an entirely new way. The company is preparing a major upgrade to their TV widgets platform which currently serves basic info like weather and traffic. The upgrade will open that platform up to third-party developers. To demonstrate the capabilities of the upcoming SDK, the company built widgets that integrate both Facebook and Twitter with your TV viewing experience. In addition, DVRs will soon be able to access internet content from YouTube and several other video-sharing portals. And all of this web content is seamlessly woven within Verizon's on-screen guide alongside traditional programming information.

The "internet of things" is a concept that describes a wireless network between objects. In a way, it parallels the current network of addressable web pages (aka the "world wide web"), except "the internet of things" would include addressable inanimate objects that could be anything from your home's refrigerator to the shoes on your feet. Although this world of web-connected things has been much discussed for years, we've seen little movement pushing the concept forward. At least, until now.

Generation Y, aka the "Net Generation," does not dominate every aspect of online life. That revealing statistic and many others like it come from Pew Internet and American Life's recent "Generations Online" report which takes a look at how the different generations of users - from Millennials to the G.I. Generation - use the internet.

On Tuesday, January 20th, 2009, America and the whole world will gather to watch Barack Obama be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. Many have called Mr. Obama the Internet President because of the unprecedented way his campaign used the medium to raise funds, raise awareness, and ultimately outmaneuver John McCain. But what can we do now to help turn this country around? Read on for 7 things every one of us can do on the Internet to help Obama restore America.

New data released by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) gives us insight into how men and women engage in "simultaneous media use" - that is, surfing the net while also doing some other activity like watching TV. According to the study, it's more common for women to watch TV and use the computer than it is for men. What's more, women supposedly get better at this multi-tasking as they age.

If you've ever wondered how the Internet was born, but can't be bothered reading a whole book on the subject, check out this short animated documentary from Milah Bilgil. Entitled History of the internet, it does a great job explaining time-sharing, file-sharing, arpanet and internet. The video uses a new type of info-graphic called PICOL icons, which will soon be made available for free on picol.org. PICOL stands for Pictorial Communication Language - it's a project that aims to create "a standard and reduced sign system for electronic communication." PICOL is free to use and open to alter.

If you own a laptop and a smartphone coupled with an unlimited data plan, then you could be in for a nice treat today. Anyone that's bound to the internet can tell you that being stranded without internet access is not much fun. It could drive anyone crazy! When all else fails you can turn to the connection on your smartphone as long as you have an unlimited data plan. To feed your internet addiction from your smartphone to your computer, PdaNet is the program for you.

At Intel's Developer Forum, Yahoo today announced an initiative to bring the Internet to your TV set through what it has dubbed the 'Widget Channel.' While many a company has tried to bring the Internet to the living room (and mostly failed in the process), Yahoo is taking a slightly different approach by not trying to bring a full browser experience to the TV, but by creating a platform for widget developers.

According to a statement by Time Warner, AOL will be split into two separate businesses: advertising and access. Overall, revenues from its AOL division declined 16% to $1.1 billion last year. Most importantly, subscription revenue from its dial-up services dropped by 29%, especially after AOL started to offer more of its products for free. The only bright spot for AOL was that its advertising sales grew by 2%. Even there, though, the decline in users on sites in the AOL network put a dent into the otherwise relatively positive results.

Talk about a knee-jerk reaction. Yesterday, news broke out in Scotland about how the internet was to blame for Scotland's failing exam pass rates. According to the Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC), Wikipedia, among other sources, was cited as the reason as to why the students were failing. Is this a case of the internet making us stupid? Or do students just need to learn how to use the new research tools of the web a little more appropriately?