Facebook seems to have realised that not everyone's a Zuckerberg for annoying, meaningless "applications" and similar dross that gets in the way of the site's actual purpose, namely online socialising.
Try the "" version of Facebook and unless you're a masochist, I'm pretty sure you won't go back to the bloated normal variant. Perhaps the back-to-basics approach will even mitigate all those Facebook worm attacks...
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Transparency and accountability is finally within reach for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The argument that quite simply, the United States government created the internet and needs to be in charge didn't prevail and now ICANN is going global, galloping into an era of international oversight.
This will, naturally, result in less transparency and threaten accountability, American interests point out. Also, North Korea will hijack the DNS and nuke all TLDs bar .kp [that's Dear Leader in Hangeul, in case you wondered].
I for one welcome our new worldwide ICANN overlords!
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It's yellow, requires no admin effort as such, comes with a t-shirt and sits there inside the firewall, incessantly searching and indexing company documents and websites without complaints, breaks and salary. This jaundiced tool is the Google Search Appliance and appears to be what managers of web-enabled businesses have been asking for.
Google's got the basic concept right -- plug it in, and it works -- but importantly, the GSA is also the thin end of the wedge. It allows the Google Computing Cloud to penetrate corporate firewalls so to speak, and opens up a breach for Google Apps and other services.
Microsoft must have conniptions at the thought, but where's their Bing Box that does the same?
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Being fans of mobile broadband doesn't mean you won't feel a bit miffed to discover that that advertised 21Mbit/s connection delivers around 3 to 5Mbit/s on a good day. That's pretty fast but it's not as marketable as the heady headline speed figures some mobile telcos bandy about.
In fact, apart from in tightly controlled laboratory conditions, nobody will reach the 3.6, 7.2, 14.4, 21Mbit/s download speeds advertised in real life. You won't even get close to the theoretical maximum, so I'm pleased to see that the Aussie regulators are reminding telcos that it's not fair to promise customers something they'll never be able to receive.
Vodafone and Telecom seem to have taken that on board, at least on their websites. Vodafone doesn't give any speed promises at all for its 3G network, whereas Telecom reckons 3Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s are the average speeds for XT.
Truth in advertising is good, even if it gives the telcos marketing headaches. At the same time though, there seems little point in spending money on doubling or even trebling the theoretical maximum performance of networks when the actual throughput creeps up at a far less impressive rate.
If 21Mbit/s is the tops, surely a reasonable expectation would be to hit 10 to 15Mbit/s regularly?
Perhaps it's time for the telcos to have a quiet but stern word with their suppliers about this?
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