nets

Net Neutrality a Hot Button Issue in the Upcoming Election?

Today in NewsMax.com, John Mercurio takes a look at the top presidential candidates and examines where they stand on the issue of Net Nuetrality. There aren't too many surprises, Democrats for the most part are in favor of legislation that will ensure the future of net neutrality and Republican's tend to be in opposition and prefer to allow the free market to run it's course. After all, if customer's aren't happy with a tiered-access internet then they'll simply go make their own internet right?

Ok, so it's not really that simple, but I'm not sure if all the politicians realize it. After all, it was only a year ago that Senator Ted Stevens was explaining to the floor that the internet is a series of tubes. All & All though, we as a population are becoming increasingly net-savvy and the web will certainly dominate politics more than ever before.

… Read more

Box.net

Category: Data

Box.net is an online Web storage provider. Users can store 1GB of whatever they want or pay a little extra for more space with the service's premium plans. What really makes the service stand out is its slick-looking file-sharing widgets. Users get instant previews of images, music, and text documents. The files reside in your Box.net storage area, and as the widget owner you can even upload files through the widget.

The newer and more advanced widget enables group sharing for members with premium and professional accounts. Users can password protect a shared folder, which … Read more

Radar.net

Category: Mobile

Radar is designed specifically for swapping camera-phone photos around with your friends, an activity that is growing more and more common in today's mobile world. Radar assigns you a unique e-mail address that you can use from your computer or your mobile phone to send pictures to the service. Your photos are then shared with all your Radar "friends," who can access their accounts from either their computers or their cell phones.

One interesting aspect is that Radar is completely private. There are no social-networking features so that other users can find you: it allows … Read more

Why A Democracy Depends on a Free Press

I recently started reading Al Gore's latest book The Assault on Reason, and have found his analysis on the role of today's media elites to be particularly insightful. Gore writes: If the forum is not fully open, then those who control access become gatekeepers. If they charge money in return for access, then those with more money have a greater ability to participate. Good ideas in the minds of men and women who cannot afford the price of admission to the public forum are then no longer available for consideration. When their opinions are blocked, the meritocracy of ideas that has always been the beating heart of democratic theory begins to suffer damage. The conversation of democracy then comes untethered from the rule of reason and can be manipulated.While perusing this passage, I was reminded of a short educational film made in the 1940s which outlines the continuum between democracy and despotism.

The full video can be found here.… Read more

NBC to feds: Urge ISPs to police piracy

Friday marked the deadline for filing comments with federal regulators scrutinizing "broadband industry practices," and for the most part, they're familiar pleas for why or why not to impose strict Net neutrality requirements.

Not so for media conglomerate NBC Universal. Its general counsel, Richard Cotton, urged the Federal Communications Commission not to get bogged down in the question of whether it's wise to prohibit network operators from prioritizing content through making special deals. What's missing from the debate, he wrote, is acknowledgment of "a huge and rapidly growing proportion of Internet traffic consists of … Read more

Facebook platform: five apps you'll use again and again

Regular Webware readers who have been playing around with Facebook's new platform will likely recognize many of the sites and services that are offering their own applications. At almost 90 apps (and growing), there are a lot to choose from. After spending the better part of a day experimenting with many of them, I've chosen five of my personal favorites that I think people are bound to use, and come back to in the long haul because they're useful, and that's ultimately what makes repeat users.

Note: The bold links below won't take you right … Read more

Box.net rolls out Microsoft Office Web storage plug-in

Box.net is beta testing a new plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets users save Office files to their Box.net storage folders. The plug-in works for both Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows XP and Vista, provides users a new "Save to Box.net" button, and gives visual notification when the file is uploading and then successfully sent. Users can then access that file anytime on their Box.net Web storage folder.

The new plug-in was built using Box.net's developer API, which the Box.net team says can be used to add this functionality to … Read more

A remote that fights kids' online addiction

So you've gotten a "Weemote" to limit your kids' TV hours, but what happens when they get bored of Nick Jr. reruns and want to go online? Even if they've exceeded their allotted time, you know they'll try to find a way to sneak in a few games, especially if they're boys.

Those are situations that could call for the "Best Net Guard," a parental control device that comes in the form of a remote similar to one used to lock and unlock the car. If you're doing dishes in the … Read more

Box.net updates widget for group file sharing

Box.net, the online storage service, has updated their embeddable widget with a new group sharing feature for members with premium and professional accounts. Users can password protect a shared folder, which can then be accessed privately by others with the code. Storage owners can opt-in to allow user uploading, which lets anyone with access add files. The company is gearing it at businesses, whereas its previous widget incarnation was aimed at users with social networking profiles.

For group users to keep track of updates to shared folders, each share gets its own RSS feed. Once subscribed, the name and … Read more