There are currently around 14 billion devices connected to the internet worldwide, including laptops and mobile phone and it is estimated by networking company Cisco that this will almost quadruple to 50 billion by 2020.
Cisco’s study also claimed that between 2011 and 2016 the amount of mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual rate of 78 per cent as the number of mobile devices connected to the internet exceeds the number of people on Earth in four years’ time. The United Nations estimates that world population will reach 7.3 billion by 2016. By that time, according to Cisco there will be more than 10 billion devices, generating global mobile data traffic of 10.8 exabytes per month.
The company also said that there will be more than 7 billion mobile devices globally by 2015, and that a greater use of video will mean total internet traffic will more than quadruple by 2014. It expects that ‘machine-to-machine’ communication, rather than mobile phones or laptops, is expected to play a greater role in the future.
Workers would increasingly take their own devices, such as phones or laptops, to work. Users are believed to be increasingly productive if allowed to use their own technology and using their own equipment also eases having to spend time transferring data.
The claims were made at Cisco’s international conference, Cisco Live, in London where it demonstrated a new type of video conferencing, bringing different users on to the same ‘virtual set’ and announced a new wifi router.
Machine-to-machine connections are also increasing and by 2016 are expected to reach 2 billion, Cisco said. They include GPS systems in cars, tracking systems, meters to record energy consumption and retail payment solutions in London cabs or on flights.
The wireless networks urgently need more spectrum to keep up with demand. Devices are our desires.
Filesharing website The Pirate Bay could be blocked in the UK after the High Court in London ruled that the site breaches copyright laws on a massive scale. Mr Justice Arnold ruled that The Pirate Bay and its users unlawfully share copyrighted music.
By June we should know if the court will order ISPs to stop their customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, which in turn has 3.7m users in the UK and 30m worldwide.
The filesharing site is believed to have made $3m in advertising in October last year by making 4m copies of music and films available. Record companies and music groups claim that The Pirate Bay ignored repeated requests to stop making available copyrighted music.
The judge said that The Pirate Bay take no steps to prevent infringement but actively encourage it and treat any attempts to prevent it (judicial or otherwise) with contempt.
The high court action follows a blocking order made against the Newzbin2 website, after a judge found it infringed copyright on a grand scale. This set the precedent for rights holders to force ISPs to block access to a number of high-profile filesharing sites in the UK, using the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry, which represents the music groups in the UK will apply to have the site blocked and therefore prevent further harm to creative industries. He said the site defrauds musicians and causes huge damage to the music industry and wider creative industries.
It is not the first time that The Pirate Bay has been in the courts. In April 2010, The Pirate Bay co-founders were found guilty in a Swedish court of allowing internet users to infringe copyright. They were collectively ordered to pay a £4.3m fine. But the court had no luck applying the files and sentences. This led the judge in the High Court, where the website’s owners were not represented, to suggest there was little point in trying to get the site’s proprietors into a British court.
It seems that using the name The Pirate Bay is so blatant it is sticking up two fingers to the record industry and the artists.
But the ruling has angered campaigners for digital rights who fight against controls on what we do online; who say this is just another form of censorship. The Open Rights Group says the ruling will have no effect on serious infringers, nor will it help boost the creative industries.
Tweeting or Facebook posting less than complimentary comments about the boss are landing more and more employees in hot water, and at worst, losing them their jobs. It’s a bad time to risk losing employment but some people just can’t resist having a whine online. But the boss can legally sack disloyal staff who go public.
And posting on social media sites can cost job applicants a position before they even get in the door as candidates are often vetted through these sites. There is some protection as candidates can demand to see what data was used in the recruitment process, but proving this could be an issue. So-called Facebook ‘friends’ could put the kybosh on applicants’ chances by tagging them in inappropriate photos, such as a fun night out. Even privacy settings might not protect from this.
Comments about work colleagues or practices are a no no, as it paints a negative picture of the business. Among those who have lost their jobs were the teenager who moaned about being bored and the Apple worker who criticised his iPhone. There have been an increasing number of cases of employees being sacked for gross misconduct. And using an employer’s computer is asking for trouble as staff’s input can be legally tracked at work.
Staff must be informed of their employer’s IT policy so they are aware of the rules. There must be no blurring over the permitted use of social networking sites at work.
For those in the public sector the stakes of using social networks are very high. At least two police officers have been sacked, seven have resigned and 150 faced disciplinary action after posting inappropriate photos or comments on Facebook in the past four years. Evidence of harassment, befriending of victims, racist comments and even details of sensitive police ops were found.
In all, 187 complaints were made against officers over their use of Facebook, with nine being given final written warnings, 47 given written warnings and one given a formal warning.
However, perhaps one of the most inappropriate uses of Facebook was the employer who sacked a café worker through a Facebook message. That’s as bad as being jilted by text.
Barclays Bank is the first in the UK to launch a system through which its customers with smartphones can make payments through their mobile numbers. The Barclays Pingit system is also targeting customers of other banks, to use the app,
It uses a smartphone app to activate person-to-person cash transfers of up to £300. Users who have an account with Barclays – and from this month anyone with a UK bank account – can download the app, link it to their phone number, and then send cash to anybody who has linked their mobile number to their account.
Mind you, the UK is years behind other countries in introducing mobile money transfer. In Kenya, the M-Pesa mobile money transfer system was launched five years ago. In Africa the majority of people have a mobile phone but only a minority have a bank account
And in Europe there are many ways of spending money through your mobile phone, such as paying for parking. Now your mobile phone number can become the key to your bank account rather than your bank account number. The scheme works through a database of UK mobile numbers linked to bank accounts, which customers opt into.
To pay someone the user keys in the mobile number of the recipient, may include a 30-character message (makes tweets look like War and Peace) and sends an SMS. At the other end, the app can be downloaded. The transfer reverts if it is not claimed within a day. There could be a bit of a worry of sending the cash to the wrong mobile – it’s easily done.
Although there are bound to be teething problems and issues around data security, it is a given that other banks will follow with their own versions of mobile phone banking. And where the banks offer services, the fee rises follow.
Social media may be dismissed by some as being a waste of time but there has been recent twittering that Facebook, YouTube and even texting could save thousands of threatened languages from extinction.
And you may have assumed that only so-called developed nations in the thick of state of the art technology let their fingers do the talking through digital media. But this is far from the case. For example, nomadic tribes in Mongolia and Siberia have an iPhone app to teach pronunciation of the ‘minority language’ Tuvan.
Linguist K David Harrison is an intrepid tracker of disappearing languages – it is believed that around half of the world’s 7,000 tongues are at risk by being lost by the end of the century. The associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting that small languages are using social media, YouTube, text messaging and various technologies to expand their voice and expand their presence. Languages spoken in just a tiny geographical area are being sent around the world.
Ironically he describes this phenomenon as the flipside of globalisation. A positive effect of globalisation is that you can have a language that is spoken by only five or 50 people in one remote location, and now through digital technology that language can achieve a global voice and a global audience, he says.
His work sounds crucial in saving these languages. With National Geographic, he has just helped produce eight talking dictionaries. These dictionaries contain more than 32,000 word entries in eight endangered languages. All the audio recordings have been made by native speakers.
One of them, Alfred Bud Lane speaks a language known as Siletz Dee-ni, which is restricted to a small area on the central Oregon coast. He recorded 14,000 words and said that his community and tribe are determined that their language will survive.
It’s sad to say, but not all languages can survive as speakers die but the digital technology is helping to save a precious few. They are threatened by cultural changes, ethnic shame and government repression.
The National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices project to prevent these ancient languages being forgotten has also produced dictionaries of languages in north-eastern India, Matukar Panau, an Oceanic language from Papua New Guinea which has only 600 surviving speakers, Chamacoco, from Paraguay’s remote northern desert, Remo, Sora, and Ho, from India, Tuvan, from Siberia and Mongolia and Celtic tongues
It’s funny because we so often here that language is being lost through texting, but this is a case of the opposite.
Businesses which use Orkney.com – a site designed, developed and produced by Copla – can now have their logo and images uploaded to feature on the front page of the site’s business directory. These mini adverts are just one of the latest features we have introduced to the essential one-stop site for business.
Anyone searching for businesses, including potential clients, will have their attention alerted by the eye-catching features.
Copla has also introduced special save icons; an innovative feature which shows an image for your links. This smart-looking addition draws the eye to links to your business profile pages or other links.
The Copla designed Orkney.com website continues to go from strength to strength with new features which businesses are tapping into to promote services.
The whole site is engineered to provide all the information about what is happening in business and every other aspect of Orkney life. And as the site is interactive, viewers can easily click onto your other pages, your website and social media links such as Facebook and Twitter.
These are just a few of the new features which together make Orkney.com a vibrant, interactive and up to the minute one-stop shop for Orkney as a place to do business, live or visit.
Visit the Orkney.com Business Directory here.
The Copla designed Orkney.com website continues to go from strength to strength with new features which businesses are tapping into to promote services and attract clients and business.
The Today page is the essential one-stop shop for locals, businesses and visitors to discover what is going on in Orkney today.
There is no need to search any further as we have introduced news from Google, the Orcadian newspaper, Orkney Islands Council, BBC Radio Orkney’s Facebook page, the latest travel news and even showcase available local properties, business special offers and job adverts.
And interactive features mean property being marketed by local agents, for instance, can be searched by price, location and even the number of bedrooms.
The whole site is engineered to provide all the information about what is happening in business and every other aspect of Orkney life.
Our information pages reveal the background to the county’s business sectors as well as heritage, wildlife, attractions and communities.
The site is used by many local businesses to promote Orkney and its commerce and services to a wide range of users from locals to businesses further afield, the Orkney diaspora and casual browser, as well as tourists.
These are just a few of the new features which together make Orkney.com a vibrant, interactive and up to the minute one-stop shop for Orkney as a place to do business, live or visit.
Visit the orkney.com Today page here
Rock band Duran Duran started out thirty years ago when our modern age of communication could never have been imagined. But for their latest album they have embraced the technologies of today and yesterday by releasing ‘All You Need is Now’ on vinyl and as a download, while their classic videos have prolonged life on YouTube.
The band recently added an online experiment with the “Here Right Now“, data visualization project which prompts their fans to interconnect and share an online experience. On the website fans around the world are prompted to upload impression of their needs and views by using simple generic keywords. .
Duran Duran’s bass guitarist John Taylor has been speaking about how this creative approach is reaching out to audiences and to deliver music. He is also an avid Twitter user.
Here Right Now is a partnership between Duran Duran and San Francisco-based Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) that aims to display people’s perception of ‘Now’ from around the world. A series of word prompts — the first set inspired by words used in “All You Need Is Now” — runs along the top of the screen, inviting users to submit their vision of the world and contribute to the project by uploading a photo of Now on the globe. Keyword prompts such as ‘sunrise’ have resulted in users posting sunrises from areas right around the world.
The result is a series of narrative postcards, each representing a unique interpretation of a simple, shared idea or experience. The postcards can be accessed on the site by anyone in the world, and include information about who shared the image and where they’re located. Fans can also be able to share their postcards on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter using the hashtag #rightnow.
Duran Duran keyboardist, Nick Rhodes, said the idea evolved from some discussions within the band about how to visually represent what different people around the world thought about certain things at different times – what they needed, what they wanted and how that changed over time. Ultimately it is hoped the experiment will become a shared, global initiative that will be constantly evolving.
As the collection grows, GAFFTA will also be encouraging coders to create their own visualisations with the projects public API. And the possibilities of social media have helped Duran Duran restart through more direct contact to its audience. It’s a good example of how people respond to sharing
We have introduced new and exciting features to the orkney.com website which we designed and produced. The site is already being used by many local businesses to promote Orkney and its commerce and services to a wide range of users from locals to businesses further afield, the Orkney diaspora and casual browser, as well as tourists.
Now, in addition to the Twitter, Facebook and Flickr integration and email provision offered to businesses – free of charge – there are great new features to display on the individual’s profile page.
These include the ability to display the Facebook and Twitter profiles. You can even advertise job vacancies on the profile. Visitors to the site are also alerted to the vacancies on the live Today page on Orkney.com which certainly gains more attention.
And when business special offers are advertised on a profile page, they are automatically featured on the Business Directory home page, as well as the live Today page.
These are just a few of the new features which together make Orkney.com a vibrant, interactive and up to the minute one-stop shop for Orkney as a place to do business, live or visit.
The battle to combat spam and email phishing is hotting up as 15 major technology and financial companies have recent opened up to the industry an organisation to design a system for authenticating emails from legitimate senders and weed out fakes.
The system is called DMARC – short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. Snappy title, eh?
Anyone with email is bombarded by fraudsters trying to trick people into giving away passwords and other personal information by sending emails that look as if they come from a legitimate bank, retailer or even the tax office. The unwary might enter personal details, which scam artists can capture and use for fraud.
To combat that DMARC builds upon existing techniques used to combat spam. Those techniques are designed to verify that an email actually came from the sender in question. The problem is there are multiple approaches to achieve that and no standard way of dealing with emails believed to be fake.
The new system asks email senders and the companies that provide email services to share information about the email messages they send and receive. In addition to authenticating their legitimate emails using the existing systems, companies can receive alerts from email providers every time their domain name is used in a fake message. They can then ask the email providers to move such messages to spam folder or block them outright.
Work on DMARC started about 18 months ago. But now other companies can sign up with the organisation, whether they send emails or provide email services. For email users, the group hopes DMARC will mean fewer fraudulent messages and scams reaching their inbox.
The group’s founders are email providers Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc. and Google Inc.; financial service providers Bank of America Corp., Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc.’s PayPal; online service companies Facebook, LinkedIn Corp. and American Greetings Corp. and security companies Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and the Trusted Domain Project. Google uses it already, both in its email sender and email provider capacities.
“Email phishing defrauds millions of people and companies every year, resulting in a loss of consumer confidence in email and the Internet as a whole,” said Brett McDowell, Chair of DMARC.org and Senior Manager of Customer Security Initiatives at PayPal. “Industry cooperation – combined with technology and consumer education – is crucial to fight phishing.”
The DMARC specification addresses concerns that have traditionally hindered widespread deployment of an authenticated, trusted email ecosystem, the group says in a press release. It continues that email receivers lack a reliable way to know the extent to which an email sender uses standards like SPF and DKIM for authenticating their messages. As a result, providers must rely on complex and imperfect measurements to separate legitimate unauthenticated messages sent by the domain owner from fraudulent phishing messages sent by a scammer.
By introducing a standards-based framework, DMARC has defined a more comprehensive and integrated way for email senders to introduce email authentication technologies into their infrastructure. For example, a sender could set policies to easily request a provider to discard unauthenticated email in order to block phishing attacks.
The specification also creates a mechanism for email providers to send detailed reports back to email senders to help catch any gaps in the authentication system. This feedback loop raises the trust level within the email ecosystem and makes it easier to detect and stop phishing attempts.