Author Archive | Ed Oswald

China Requiring Websites to Register or Face Blocking

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 22, 2009 at 8:33 am

New regulations handed down by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over the weekend seem to suggest China may be creating a “whitelist” of approved websites. The Ministry said it is now requiring all websites to register, or face possible blocking by the authorities.

China’s latest censorship move seems born out of an effort to limit pornography, however critics seem to see porn being used as an excuse for broader net controls. Whether or not this extends to websites based outside of the country is unclear, although Chinese media is reporting that it will. If it goes through, the strategy would be a complete reversal of the way Chinese Internet regulators were previously doing business.

Under the previous system, websites were blocked on a case by case basis as soon as the Ministry learned about them. Here, everybody seems blacklisted first — and have to prove their non-subversiveness before being allowed into the walled garden that is the Chinese Internet.

The idea may be dead in the water: China could hurt itself economically as those who use the Internet to trade goods may find themselves unable to do business if the foreign site does not register. Additionally, the country does have a fairly long record of coming up with half-baked censorship schemes that are either not enforced or reversed after international outcry. A whitelist is certainly something that would cause the latter, I’d venture to guess.

China also last week limited .cn registrations to business users, Time reported last Friday. As far as I know, it would be the only TLD where private citizens are prohibited from purchasing domains. I wonder if ICANN would have something to say about that.

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Tapulous Makes $1 Million a Month from App Store

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 21, 2009 at 2:49 pm

When the App Store first launched last year, there was a lot of uncertainty around just how much it could viably contribute to Apple’s bottom line. Many said the offering would just be a minor blip on the revenue sheet — but now it appears it may be set to become a significant revenue driver.

Take for example Tapulous. The creators of “Tap Tap Revenge” among other titles now says the App Store is responsible for $1 million in sales per month, Reuters is reporting. This is a staggering figure for a company that only has 20 employees, and makes its entire living off of creating iPhone/iPod touch applications.

An estimated one-third of all App Store users had installed TTR, according to comScore research released earlier in the year.

How much is Apple making off of merely hosting Tapulous’ wildly successful applications? Using the 70/30 revenue split, Cupertino is raking in a cool $400,000 plus a month. That’s not only profitable to Tapulous, but also to Apple, whose hosting costs for the App Store for those applications are definitely nowhere near that.

Tapulous is also making some Apple-fee free revenue too. Although it won’t give specific numbers, the company has additional revenue streams through selling songs for its games, and in-game advertising.

We should be fair here though. This company’s success is probably the exception rather than the norm — there are about 100,000 apps in the store produced by thousands, if not tens of thousands of developers. It’s very tough these days in the App Store to compete and make a large amount of money, but Tapulous is quickly proving that its quite possible to do very well with the right application.

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No Nook By Christmas? Barnes & Noble’s Giving You $100

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 21, 2009 at 11:00 am

For those individuals who ordered their Nooks early, planning to give them as Christmas presents, hearing they will not be there in time is certainly not welcome news. However, Barnes & Noble is doing all it can to make sure they’re compensated for the company’s snafu.

“A very small percentage of customers” that ordered for pre-Christmas shipping that will not be fulfilled will receive a $100 gift certificate to the retailer, the company said Monday. Those affected were alerted on Friday. If you ask me, its a pretty sweet consolation prize considering these folks essentially just got the device for $159.

Here’s an idea: give the gift card to the recipient and you just bought them a few books to go along with their shiny new Nook when it arrives!

Like the Kindle, the Nook is seeing the same problems with fulfilling demand early on. There is about a two month wait — at least — for those who ordered their devices after November 20.  If Amazon’s history with Kindle sales is any indication, it could be well into the new year before supply and demand equalizes.

In any case, this demand should be heartening to the e-book/e-reader industry as a whole. It now appears that there is a large enough market for these devices, something that some analysts questioned early on during the days of the Kindle.

Maybe too it might just be a fad — that’s entirely possible and God knows tech has had so many gadget ideas that come in a blaze of glory and exit stage right with its tail between its legs.

As for me? I personally still like the idea of paper too much, but maybe I’m old fashioned…

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Twitter’s Profitable (No, Really.)

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 21, 2009 at 9:23 am

Oft-criticized for its lack of a business model that could actually make the company some money, Twitter may be able to shut up those critics for a bit. BusinessWeek has learned that the company will be able to post a small profit for 2009 thanks to the content deals it signed during the year.

It’s deal with Google was worth about $15 million, and with Microsoft for Bing about $10 million. Without actual data on the company’s operating expenses — it does not publicly release this information — BW is guessing expenses would run about $20-25 million. That means Twitter may actually have an ever-so-small profit this year.

Helping Twitter to achieve this feat was efforts at cost reductions. It’s text messaging offering which sent tweets to mobile phones were one of its biggest expenses — with Twitter very popular, the company was able to leverage this to get better deals on messaging rates.

It remains to be seen whether Twitter can remain profitable. Job one of course seems to be these content deals, the easiest way for the company to generate revenue. Plans to charge for commercial accounts is another way — tweeting is the new fad in customer relations — and advertising is another way.

Such changes may affect Twitter’s feel slightly as it becomes more commercial, however the current business model is not very sustainable. There’s just no way in it for the company to make money. Venture capitalists are in the business to make money, you know.

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Operation Chokehold: All Hype, No Bite

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 18, 2009 at 3:57 pm

What, you expected AT&T’s network to come to its knees? In what could probably be called the most foregone conclusion in the world of technology in quite some time, AT&T’s network withstood the assault of what probably was not more than a handful of users taking a piece of satire way too far. I checked my phone here in Reading, Pa. and didn’t really notice much of anything other than the typical peak-hour slowness. Others across the country reported similar results, according to the Facebook group.

Of course AT&T is not going to feed the troll: the company’s response was that there was “no impact” on service as a result of this. Reading the Facebook page is somewhat amusing, too. A lot of folks there seem to be determined to make some impact — in fact one is already recommending Round 2. Good lord.

As for Lyons, what does he have to say about this (edited for a family site, here’s the full post):

“I shall never speak of this again. Nor should you. Peace be upon you.”

Thank god.

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iPhone Growth Impressive Overseas

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 18, 2009 at 1:00 pm

While many are focusing on market share aspects of a report from mobile ad company AdMob today, there are some other interesting factoids within the report that I found especially prescient considering discussions I’ve been having with my friends lately.

Those partial to Microsoft have started to float the argument that Windows Mobile is still far more popular overseas, with Apple the also-ran in those markets. If we’re going to believe AdMob’s work, that’s probably not a very sturdy argument to make.

Since the iPhone and iPod touch are on the same platform, its somewhat difficult to gauge the true growth of iPhones overseas as they are not separated when it comes to detection (how these statistics are compiled). Either way Apple’s growth in some of these markets is very impressive, and should worry the fans of Redmond.

In Japan, the user base has grown by nearly 350 percent, followed by France which has seen a 300 percent increase. Australia, China, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands all grew by more than 200 percent during the year. More details of the report can be found in this PDF.

As should be expected iPhone growth in Canada and the US is lagging, although still up 100 percent. There’s a pretty straightforward and simple explanation for this: by far this is the most established market for the device as it has been here the longest.

I think these numbers are certainly beginning to put to rest the assumption by some in Microsoft that Apple can not compete outside of the US. Yes, Cupertino’s struggling mightily selling computers outside of its home markets — but apparently that’s not preventing people from picking up an iPhone.

When you add to this the data that’s showing Android’s doing well, like Colin Gibbs over at GigaOm is reporting, and data that shows RIM is also hitting its stride, you have to wonder if Microsoft really stands a chance to do much of anything in the mobile space.

Who knows, could we soon be talking about a “Halo effect” when it comes to the iPhone, too?

Caveat: As Technologizer reader John Baxter points out in the comments, we should take into account that some of these numbers on growth may be skewed due to the fact that these are emerging markets for Apple’s iPhone. Like the US and Canada, it’s probably fairly likely we’ll see a dramatic drop off in growth here too as the market saturates.

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Verizon’s Getting Ready for the iPhone, Just in Case

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 18, 2009 at 10:19 am

If the iPhone is really no longer an AT&T exclusive in the new year as many analysts are now suggesting and/or predicting, at least one carrier doesn’t want to get caught with its pants down. Verizon Wireless says it has made the changes it would need to make to its network in order to handle what would obviously be a new surge in data traffic.

Better to be safe than sorry, I guess?

Quite a surprising statement considering the company is spending quite a bit of money putting down Apple in its “Droid Does” ads that we’ve all been getting peppered with for the past two months plus. But in a way it’s not because Verizon has watched as AT&T’s network problems have become a serious liability to the company, “Operation Chokehold” notwithstanding.

“Absolutely, I think we could handle it,” Verizon Wireless CTO Anthony Melone told BusinessWeek in an interview. Now, lets not get the story twisted here: Melone is not saying there is any deal yet, but its pretty much common knowledge that the two sides have at least discussed possible partnerships in the past.

Verizon has gone the opposite way of AT&T over the past several years in investing in network infrastructure, spending about $19 billion on the network itself over the past three years. As Gizmodo points out, AT&T’s spending since the iPhone launch on the network itself has actually decreased.

With Verizon readily talking about it’s iPhone readiness, I wonder if T-Mobile USA will start making overtures as well. The carrier has been mentioned much more often recently as a logical next carrier for the device, as it would take minimal changes (adding TMUS’ 1700MHz band to the 3G chip of the iPhone) for it to work.

Going to Verizon — and CDMA — requires a much more involved rework of the device. Going to be an interesting 2010 in iPhoneland, that’s for sure.

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The Tech Media’s Complete Loss of Rationality

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 17, 2009 at 9:21 pm

I have been sitting here watching in disbelief over the past few days, feeling somewhat embarrassed about my profession at large.  Much of the tech media that has been tripping over themselves to treat Dan Lyons’ satirical movement to bring AT&T’s network to its knees as something akin to the Boston Tea Party — a defining moment that affects real change.

It’s been called by some as a “grassroots movement.” Another says that this, and I quote, “should be big lesson to any company about how social media is changing customer relations.” Others are lashing out at Lyons himself, calling him irresponsible for using his blog for exactly what it is, a satirical look into the world of Apple. To say the amount of bloviating on this topic has been astounding would be an understatement.

Earth to the media: Dan Lyons is a satirist, not Che Guevara!

Lets be clear here: there is absolutely no evidence that “Chokehold” will be anything more than a blip on AT&T’s daily graphs of data traffic. All of the hype surrounding the event has been manufactured by the tech media itself — and unfortunately, by some who have a large readership and lots of influence — and not by Lyons himself. If anything, I believe Mr. Lyons has been unfairly attacked and criticized for something that we have all essentially foisted upon him.

Remember that Facebook group we talked about in our initial coverage? It’s only up to 3,800 members — way smaller than other protest groups which have effected real change. If we are going to gauge participation by social media, we should look to Twitter too. A cursory look shows a lot of discussion, but its exactly that — talk. Call me skeptical, but its very hard to get an actual effective protest together. People are just too lazy these days, frankly.

If this is even in the least bit successful, we shouldn’t thank its creator. Rather, we should blame the tech media for making a huge deal out of a joke. Have we become so desperate for news that we’re practically manufacturing an event?

No, I’m not denying AT&T’s network sucks. In a lot of the country it does. But its not that bad that its going to bring hordes of people to the point of streaming their hearts out at 12 noon pacific tomorrow in some wild attempt at sabotage wireless data style. It’s just not going to happen. It’s time that the tech media takes a step back, and turns the hype machine off. Our readers deserve more than this.

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$26 Gets You Into A Predator Drone

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 17, 2009 at 10:28 am

This is certainly comforting: US officials have disclosed that Iraqi militants have found a way to hack into US Predator drone aircraft in an effort that is possibly being funded by Iran. The breach could be providing them with information that could help them evade capture by US authorities, and they could be doing it for as little as $25.95.

I wish I was kidding here, but the insurgents have used programs like SkyGrabber — a program that allows for satellite data capture — to obtain access into the drone’s video fees. I guess there’s some good news here: that’s all they’ve apparently been able to access, and officials stress they have not lost control of any aircraft as a result of the break-ins.

Military officials have apparently known about the issue since late last year, when a laptop from a Shiite militant contained drone video feeds. Since then several other laptops have been confiscated with similar data found. Evidence has been found in Afghanistan of hacking as well, indicating our enemies may also be spreading this information. So, where is this loophole that’s allowing people to get in? According to officials, its in the the downlink which has no encryption. They have known about the issue since the 1990s, but never did anything about it because they assumed our enemies wouldn’t know about it.

It’s not immediately clear if anything will be done in the short term. Encrypting data would necessitate that all drones be retrofitted with new hardware, which the government says it is concerned would cause delays. Additionally, encryption could pose issues in sharing data with the military and its allies, they argue.

“There’s a balance between pragmatics and sophistication,” former Air Force Secretary Mike Wynne told the WSJ. Doesn’t provide me much comfort. Any way you look at it, our Predator drones have a serious security hole, which should worry any of us with loved ones over there that these things are supposed to be protecting.

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Obama Set to Fund Broadband Expansion Initiative

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 17, 2009 at 9:25 am

The US government will be awarding $2 billion of federal stimulus money over the next 75 days to begin work to expand broadband to rural areas. The first $182 million is being distributed beginning today for 18 projects in 17 states, the Obama Administration said. Some $7.2 billion overall has been marked in the stimulus for work on broadband.

Government officials supporting the plan argue that the investment will stimulate the economy and create “tens of thousands of jobs.” The issue of unemployment has begun to nag the Adminstration, which for much of 2009 has been bogged down in the morass that has become health care reform.

Monies received through the broadband stimulus program may not be exactly for Internet access, however. Improvements to the electrical grid, work in electronic medical records, and high-speed rail projects are also set to receive some funds as a result of the move, officials say.

While I know some of Obama’s opponents will see this as a foolhardy way to spend money, I think it is a good idea to start investing in our broadband infrastructure. Lets put it this way: in the modern economy, broadband Internet access has become ever more vital to success. With the US falling behind globally, you could argue that our businesses are also suffering as well. Add to this the patchwork nature of our broadband footprint, and well, you get the point.

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