O2, the mobile arm of Telefonica Europe, appears to be the winner of a bidding war for voice over IP start-up Jajah, according to a report on TheMarker that Reuters is citing.
O2 is expected to buy Jajah this week for $200 million, according to a report on the Hebrew language news site. Cisco Systems and Microsoft were rumored to have been competing for the VoIP start-up.
Jajah representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jajah, which provides low-cost international calling to more than 25 million users, already has the ability to terminate calls or transfer calls from the Internet to the local telephone network in more than 122 countries around the world.
In September, the company launched a beta for a third-party offering that allows Twitter users to make voice calls directly to each other through the microblogging service. The company announced in June that it had connected its 1 billionth call.
The Internet phone company has raised more than $30 million in funding, including a $20 million round of investment lead by T-Online Venture Fund, the investment arm of Deutsche Telekom. Other investors include Intel Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Globespan Capital Partners.
Sex, porn, and Michael Jackson were among the most popular items kids searched for online in 2009, as tracked by Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton.
Symantec on Thursday revealed the top 100 favorite search terms among children 18 and under found by its free OnlineFamily.Norton service, which helps parents monitor their kids' online searches. Though innocuous terms like Sesame Street and "New Moon"--a popular movie in the Twilight vampire series--made the cut, sex showed up fourth on the list for boys and fifth for girls, following YouTube, Google, and Facebook as the three top terms.
For boys, the top 25 search terms focused on social-networking sites, shopping sites, and certain adult terms. Girls seemed to favor subjects related to music, TV shows and movies, and celebrities.
Speaking of celebrities, to no one's surprise, the late Michael Jackson was the most searched for celebrity, coming in at number 12, followed by pop singer Taylor Swift at No. 13. Other hot stars that made the list included Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Beyonce, the Black Eyed Peas, the Jonas Brothers, Eminem, Rihanna, and Chris Brown (who was in the news this year after admitting that he assaulted ex-girlfriend Rihanna).
Searching for celebrities online, however, may be hazardous to your PC's health. Symantec has found found that these searches sometimes draw people to dangerous Web sites, which spew out viruses, spam, and other malware.
Kids seven and under searched for items related to video games, while older kids were heavy into music, with 34 percent of teens and 27 percent of tweens searching for music-related topics. The Miley Cyrus song "Party in the USA" was the most-searched for tune among kids, while "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eye Peas took the No. 2 spot.
Tech terms that popped up on the list included MySpace at No. 8, MSN at No. 33, the iPod Touch at No. 98, and Bing last at No. 100.
To compile its top 100 list, Symantec tracked 14.6 million searches run by users of its OnlineFamily.Norton service and ranked the terms according to ones submitted most frequently to those submitted the least. The terms were collected anonymously, so none could be associated with any specific children or families.
A new DARPA contest is using balloons to test our social-networking skills.
After kicking off the Internet 40 years ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is again tapping into the Net for a new challenge. The DARPA Network Challenge will award $40,000 to the first person who can identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 red weather balloons positioned at different parts of the sky across the continental United States.
The 8-foot balloons are scheduled to lift off on Saturday at 7 a.m. PST and remain in their locations throughout the day, until sunset. The contest will be open until December 14, so contestants will have a little more than a week to gather up and submit their answers.
But the contest has a twist. Since no one person can identify all 10 balloons across the States in one day, challengers will need to rely on social networks to team up with others to pinpoint the locations of the balloons. DARPA's goal here is not to see if people can answer the question but to gauge how we use social networks to resolve a problem.
DARPA plans to launch 10 red weather balloons, somewhat larger than the one shown here, around the continental United States, and competitors are invited to try to identify the precise latitudes and longitudes of all 10 balloons to win a $40,000 prize.
(Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Chief Master Sgt. Gary Emery)"We are not interested in the balloons. We already know where those are," Norman Whitaker, DARPA's deputy director of transformational convergence technology, said in a statement. "It's the techniques people use to solve the challenge we're focused on. We have people who are going to be actively watching from the sidelines to see how this plays out."
Whitaker is hoping the contest will offer insight into how the Internet and social networks can help people build teams and collaborate with each other to solve real problems and challenges.
DARPA is leaving it up to the contestants to best figure out how to work with others to track the balloons. One example posed by Whitaker is that of using a Web site to offer a portion of the prize to anyone who shares info about the locations of the balloons. Another idea is to work with a charity and donate your winnings. People can also naturally ask for help through Web-based tools such as Facebook or Twitter, connecting via computers or smartphones.
Although the challenge may be tough, Whitaker believes that at least one person will be able to solve it, whether it takes five minutes or all day. But if no one responds with the locations of all 10 balloons by the December 14 deadline, the agency will reward the $40,000 to the first person who tracked down at least five of them.
DARPA isn't sure yet what it will do with the information it finds. But that's never stopped the agency before. "We're DARPA," Whitaker said. "We like to do things that are really out of the box."
The agency enjoys a history of out-of-the-box challenges. Past contests have set up races between unmanned, robotic vehicles, including DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge and its 2007 Urban Grand Challenge.
Are you willing to take the DARPA challenge? How would you use the Internet and social networks to win the prize?
More mobile carriers are offering Netbooks as a way to lure new customers--a trend that's likely to surge and encompass notebooks as well.
By 2013, more than 60 percent of all mobile devices, including Netbooks and notebooks, are expected to be sold directly by wireless carriers, according to research released Wednesday by In-Stat. Almost 31 percent of notebooks alone will be sold through carriers, In-Stat predicts.
Bundling an inexpensive Netbook or notebook is a small price to pay for a carrier, which can then charge customers for a monthly data plan.
"In the U.S., carriers are charging up to $60 per month for a two-year contract with the subsidized purchase of a Netbook," In-Stat analyst Jim McGregor said in a statement. "While the subsidy costs the carrier $50 to $100, it generates $1,440 or more in service fees over the life of the contract."
Carriers such as Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Sprint have already been dangling Netbooks as carrots to attract more mobile customers. Verizon is selling Netbooks from Hewlett-Packard and Gateway. AT&T is selling Dell, Acer, and Lenovo Netbooks, as well as a Nokia Booklet 3G. Sprint is also selling a Dell Netbook.
Thanks to the success of low-cost Netbooks, U.S. carriers are further testing the waters by bundling full-size notebooks along with a two-year contract. The strategy isn't just limited to the United States, noted In-Stat. Carriers in Europe and Asia are giving out Netbooks with a data plan, but often at lower prices than in the U.S. Asian carriers have also been offering the kissing cousins of Netbooks: mobile Internet devices and ultramobile PCs.
This trend will intensify as carriers boost the number of services offered and cut prices on those services due to higher competition and better bandwidth, In-Stat said. The mobile market itself is also expected to become more attractive, with richer content and increased bandwidth.
Europe is set to get a major overhaul of its telecommunications regulation, after the European Parliament and Council of Telecoms Ministers reached a compromise on the rights of Internet users.
The Telecoms Reform Package is a raft of new laws that tackle issues ranging from data-breach notification to faster number porting. Following an agreement reached on Wednesday night, the package will now become part of national legislation in every EU country, with a deadline of May 2011.
A sticking point in the package's progress had been a provision regarding "three strikes" laws targeting Internet users suspected of unlawful file-sharing of copyrighted material. But negotiations led to an "Internet freedom provision," which states that any measures taken by member states to limit Internet access or use must "respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and general principles of Community law."
Read more of "European 'internet freedom' law agreed at ZDNet UK.
Helped by cost cuts and by growth in Internet and phone subscribers, Comcast on Wednesday reported a 22 percent jump in earnings for its third quarter.
The cable provider saw net income of $944 million, or 33 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with $771 million (26 cents per share) in the year-ago quarter. Sales also rose, hitting $8.8 billion, up from $8.5 billion in 2008's third quarter, though revenue was slightly below analysts' estimates.
For the quarter, the number of TV subscribers dropped 2.7 percent to 23.7 million from 24.4 million a year ago. But the loss was more than offset by gains in Internet and voice, two services that Comcast has marketed heavily, especially as part of its Triple-Play service.
The number of Internet subscribers rose 6.4 percent to 15.6 million, while Comcast phone customers jumped 20 percent to 7.3 million. Overall, the company saw a quarterly increase in customers of 3.4 percent to 46.8 million. Subscriber growth helped boost third-quarter sales for the cable segment by 2.8 percent to $8.4 billion.
With a focus on trimming costs, capital expenses declined 6.1 percent to $1.2 billion, due in large part to lower spending at the company's cable divison.
"The strength and resilience of our businesses combined with our continued emphasis on expenses and prudent capital management helped us achieve healthy operating and financial results in the third quarter," Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Comcast revealed no new details over its intent to acquire a leading stake in GE-owned NBC Universal. Early last month, reports surfaced that the company wanted to buy a 51 percent chunk of NBCU, with GE owning the rest, to create a new joint venture. If it goes through, the deal could transform Comcast into a major media powerhouse, with control of NBC as well as variety of TV networks and cable stations.
The organization responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses has approved a new plan to allow non-Latin characters in Web extensions.
Known as Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), the system is designed to globalize the Net so regions around the world can use their own local alphabet characters to surf in cyberspace, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, said Friday.
Calling IDNs the "biggest technical change" to the Internet since its birth 40 years ago, ICANN unanimously approved the plan on the final day of its six-day conference in Seoul.
IDNs will allow domain names to be to be written in native character sets, such as Chinese, Arabic, and Greek. In charge of managing domain names, ICANN has argued that IDNs are necessary to expand use of the Web in regions where people don't understand English. Since its inception, the Internet has been limited to the Latin character set used by the U.S. and many other nations.
"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush in a statement. "Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters--A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."
To expedite the new plan, ICANN will launch a Fast Track process on November 16. At that time, the organization will begin accepting applications from countries for new top level domains, or Internet extensions, based on each nation's character set.
Initially, the change will apply only to local country codes, such as .kr for Korea and .ru for Russia. Major top level domains (TLDs) such as .com, .net., and .org won't see non-Latin editions just yet. But ICANN is pushing to make progress on these major TLDs and hopes to include them in the IDN system before long.
ICANN had discussed and debated IDNs for years, during which time much testing, development, and global cooperation were needed to jump start the new system.
"This is a culmination of years of work, tests, study and discussion by the ICANN community," said Thrush. "To see this finally start to unfold is to see the beginning of an historic change in the Internet and who uses it."
Nokia has delayed the release of its N900 Internet tablet.
The N900 was previously set to arrive in October--and Nokia's preorder site still states that. However, it is now set for release "during November," Peter Schneider, head of Maemo marketing at Nokia, said Thursday in a post. Schneider did not state the reason for the delay, but Reuters reported that the company is waiting for more feedback from developers.
N900, which costs $649, is part cell phone and part computer. It's considered a potential game-changer for Nokia, which is pushing it as "fusing the power of the computer, the Internet and the mobile phone."
The device uses Nokia's Linux-based Maemo 5 operating system to offer multitasking, Web browsing via Mozilla, a touch screen, and slide-out keyboard. It includes an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 1GB of application memory, and 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB with a MicroSD card). It measures 4.4 inches by 2.4 inches and features a 3.5-inch widescreen display.The device also sports a 5-megapixel camera.
Internet attacks came from 201 different countries in the second quarter, up from 68 countries in the first quarter, according to a report released Thursday.
Akamai Technologies' quarterly "State of the Internet" report compiles data about the online world, from Internet attacks to average connection speeds across the globe.
Among the 201 countries now seen as the source of malware and other Internet threats, the U.S., China, and South Korea accounted for more than half of the attacks in the second quarter.
(Credit:
Akamai)
Blaming the Conficker worm on the majority of the assaults, Akamai discovered attacks on 4,100 unique ports, with 10 specific ports hit in about 90 percent of the cases. One specific port, 445, used for Microsoft Directory Services, has proven especially vulnerable and was compromised in 68 percent of the attacks, allowing hackers to invade computers with this port open, Akamai said.
The report also examined connection speeds.
Several countries saw their connection speeds drop from the previous quarter, with the overall global average falling 11 percent to 1.5Mbps. Only 19 percent of the connections throughout the globe managed speeds greater than 5Mbps, a slight decline from the prior quarter.
(Credit:
Akamai)
Among all countries, South Korea came in first place with an average speed of 11Mbps, while Eritrea was last at 42Kbps. The U.S. was 18th on the global list, reaching average connection speeds of 4.2Mbps.
Akamai found that within the U.S., many states also saw connection speeds fall. Arizona's average speed dropped 27 percent from the first quarter. New Hampshire enjoyed the fastest connection in the country at 6.4Mbps, while Delaware fell to second place at 6.3Mbps, down from 7.2Mbps in the prior quarter. Overall, the East Coast led the nation with the fastest speeds of any region.
(Credit:
Akamai)
Akamai caches Internet content for its customers, allowing it to monitor traffic through the Net. The company uses the data from its Internet monitoring to compile its quarterly reports.
Tech lovers used to be dubbed geeks and nerds. According to a new report, we're all geeks and nerds now.
Young, old, single, married--they're all online, using PCs, watching digital TV, and chatting on cell phones, according to a report published Wednesday by Forrester Research. Looking at American consumers by "life stage," Forrester examined the devices people own, what technology they buy, how they use the Internet, and how they set up their digital homes.
(Credit:
Forrester Research)
Singles under 40 and couples under 40 sans children are well-connected to the Web, noted the report, with 87 percent of them frequently online, both for personal and work reasons. They're also apt to venture online in locations beyond home or work, with 55 percent of them more likely than the overall average adult to access the Web on their phones.
Among parents under 40 with kids under 18, 88 percent of them regularly use the Internet. They also buy devices for the whole family, such as Blu-ray players, digital camcorders, digital video recorders, and game consoles. In this group, 86 percent own a cell phone that's likely to offer music or video playback.
For parents over 40 with kids under 18, 84 percent of them are online, typically splitting their Internet use between work and home. Two in three of these families have broadband, the most of any group surveyed by Forrester. They also love their personal gadgets, owning the most PCs, laptops, MP3 players, and GPS devices of all the groups.
Among singles over 40 and couples over 40 sans kids in the house, 70 percent are online and gravitate toward services that directly benefit them, such as online shopping. The report found that consumers in this group spent more money online over the past three months than any other group.
Across all technologies, HDTV grew the faster in 2008, discovered Forrester, with almost 10 million new households buying a high-definition TV. The second most popular technology was the home network. Forrester predicts that these two technologies will continue to grow at a record pace over the next five years.
(Credit:
Forrester Research)
The venerable PC continues to shine, with the average family owning two or more computers. The under-40 singles and couples are also more likely than other groups to own a laptop.
(Credit:
Forrester Research)
More than five in six of all homes own a cell phone, with families with parents under 40 leading the way with 93 percent adoption. Among families with parents over 40, 57 percent have at least three mobile phones.
Forrester's report is based on an annual survey sent to consumers by mail. The company said it received 48,412 completed questionnaires in the U.S. this year.
