nets

Make your own Valentine's Day cards

If you think you've got it tough on Valentine's Day, consider your poor, humble Download.com editor. My wife's birthday is on Valentine's Day! Luckily, we've been together long enough that I don't have to impress her with dozens of roses, buckets of chocolates, and the rest of the conventional commercial holiday paraphernalia. However, a homemade card is always a great way to demonstrate my love.

Creating your own Valentine's Day cards with commercial design software like Adobe Photoshop or CorelDRAW will provide you with a wide array of options for tweaking your … Read more

Time for MoveOn.org to move on

Speaking as someone whose political views are decidedly left, I never thought I'd say this, but would Moveon.Org just put a plug in it already?

As an Internet phenomenon, MoveOn certainly demonstrated how to mobilize public opinion. Indeed, the organization, founded in 1998 by a married couple of nouveau-riche techies, Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, acquitted itself well during the Monica Lewinsky uproar.

Unlike a sadly servile mainstream media, which insisted upon playing to the lowest common denominator, a spunky MoveOn appeared seemingly out of nowhere to rally online opposition to the sham taking place in Washington.

But … Read more

Verizon: No 'need' to degrade P2P traffic...yet

WASHINGTON--Verizon Communications doesn't currently block or slow down peer-to-peer file-sharing applications like BitTorrent on its broadband network, but it can't rule out doing so in the future, a company vice president said Monday.

The comments by Verizon executive vice president Tom Tauke arrive as Comcast has taken heat for throttling BitTorrent traffic in the name of "reasonable network management" and as the Federal Communications Commission is studying whether Internet service providers should be permitted to manipulate P2P traffic. Consumer interest groups have asked the FCC to declare that "degrading peer-to-peer traffic" violates the FCC'… Read more

Box.net adds group collaboration to personal Web storage

Box.net added a really cool, and useful collaboration feature to its online storage service yesterday. Any user can right click a folder and choose a new collaboration option that lets them invite anyone to gain access to those files, either as an editor or viewer. Box.net has always had the option of linking to the file, or sharing a grouping of files with everyone, or a just a small group of people via its premium service and snazzy widgets; however, this new addition is more advanced.

Once a user becomes a collaborator, the shared folder will show up … Read more

Novell's .Net moment

Dave Rosenberg suggests that Novell's biggest opportunity may well be to take its affection for Microsoft to the next level and become the center of the .Net open-source universe. He may be on to something:

The .NET approach is a chance for Novell to take an entire development framework that Red Hat has shown no interest in and dominate it. For the majority of the linux world, .NET is irrelevant. The Java guys who think some of the aspects of .NET are cool have no interest in running only on Windows.

Novell has struggled to compete in the open-source world. Combining with Microsoft hasn't helped. So why not, as Dave suggests, link up with Microsoft's .Net code to build an ecosystem around it that would complement Microsoft's own efforts to do so?

The problem, of course, is .Net.… Read more

Google's Schmidt named chair of think tank

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has been named as chairman of the board to the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that focuses on issues like health care, education, and foreign policy.

Schmidt joined the board 10 years ago when the think tank, which aims to transcend conventional party lines, was founded and before he joined Google. He will assume his new role June 1 and succeeds James Fallows, author and national correspondent of the Atlantic.

"We are thrilled about (Schmidt becoming chairman) and delighted that he's willing to carve out time from … Read more

Why Novell should become the center of the open source .NET universe

My previous post about Novell looking to make acquisitions got me thinking about what the company could do to become relevant again. The best I can come up with is that Novell should become the dominant force in the open source .NET universe.

The deal with Microsoft must have some level of joint engineering possibility that would help Mono mature and make .NET cross-platform. If Microsoft's goal really is to create the WAMP stack, it will still require a great deal of community development to get people to write and donate applications, something Novell is good at managing.

The .… Read more

FCC wants to know: Is degrading P2P traffic 'reasonable'?

Update 10:53 a.m. PST: This blog was updated to add information about a third petition related to antidiscrimination rules for text messaging.

As foreshadowed at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, federal regulators this week took the first formal step into investigating complaints about how Internet service providers, such as Comcast, manage peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic on their networks.

The Federal Communications Commission late on Monday posted requests for public comment about two such petitions, both of which deal with the question of what practices constitute "reasonable network management"--and therefore jibe with the FCC's policies. … Read more

Fresh off the press: NewsGator, now freeware

Checking Web sites by typing in the URL feels like firing up a rickety 56k baud modem and logging on to CompuServe. It gets the job done, but really should only be used under extreme duress or nostalgia. Syndicated feeds bring the Web site to you, and when NewsGator made all its RSS clients free on Wednesday, they suddenly made a top-notch suite with tools for Windows, Mac, mobile, the Web, a podcast manager, and a Microsoft Outlook extension incredibly appealing. And by appealing, I mean you might not be able to imagine feeds the same way afterwards. It's that good.

AT&T considers filtering for pirated content

AT&T is considering using filtering technology to stop pirated content from traversing its network, according to a New York Times blog posted from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

According to the blog, James Cicconi, senior vice president, external and legal affairs for AT&T, said during a panel discussion Tuesday about digital piracy that the carrier is already discussing the possibility of using filtering technology with content companies like NBC Universal.

"We are very interested in a technology-based solution, and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this," Cicconi … Read more