Archive for June, 2010
Porn Sites Closer to xxx Web Addresses
It may soon be easier to block Internet porn: The agency that controls domain names said Friday it will consider adding .xxx to the list of suffixes people and companies can pick when establishing their identities online.
The California-based nonprofit agency, ICANN, effectively paved the way for a digital red light district to take its place alongside suffixes such as .com and .org, finally ending a decade-long battle over what some consider formal acknowledgment of pornography’s prominent place on the Internet.
While the move may help parents stop their children from seeing some seedy sites, it wouldn’t force porn peddlers to use the new .xxx address — and skeptics argue that few adult-only sites will give up their existing .com addresses.
Still, it’s seen as a symbolic step in the opening up of Internet domain names and suffixes, coming on the same day the agency said it would start accepting Chinese script for domain names.
The decision is primarily a victory for U.S. company ICM Registry LLC, which has applied repeatedly to be able to register and manage the .xxx suffix.
The Internet names agency has rejected its application three times since 2000, partly under pressure from Christian groups and governments unhappy with the spread of online porn, said ICM’s chief executive, Stuart Lawley. He pitches the suffix, in part, as protection for parents, arguing it will make it easy for Web blocking software to filter out “.xxx” sites, marking them clearly as porn.
“People who want to find it know where it is, and people who don’t see it or want to keep it away from their kids can use mechanisms to do so,” he said.
ICANN’s board, at a meeting Friday in Brussels, said it had not treated the company’s application fairly three years ago when it reversed an earlier decision recognizing .xxx as the representative of the porn industry. ICANN is now promising to move swiftly with standard checks on Lawley’s company.
Peter Dengate Thrush, the chairman of ICANN’s board, said the Friday decision “does not mean the .xxx application has been approved … It means that we are returning to negotiations with the applicant.” He estimates that it could take a year for full approval, far longer than the few months ICM says it would take.
He shrugged off criticisms that ICANN was creating a new platform for Internet porn.
“We’re not in the content business, and that’s up to national governments and lawmakers and people who are qualified to make judgments,” he said.
He also warned that .xxx might not necessarily be a success — and that some new Internet suffixes have failed to attract many signups. Some note that most porn sites would likely keep their existing “.com” names, to allow their businesses to be found more easily.
World Cup Kicks Twitter Tweets to Record High
Twitter said on Friday that World Cup football kicked the number of “tweets” fired off at the micro-blogging service to a record high of 3,283 per second.
The winning spike in tweets came right after a referee’s whistle ended a Thursday match in which Japan beat Denmark 3-1.
The previous “tweets-per-second” record of 3,085 was set last week after the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Boston Celtics in the final game of US National Basketball Association championships.
“We continued to see big spikes in Tweets following goals in the World Cup,” Twitter said in a message announcing the new ‘TPS’ record.
The rate of tweeting typically averages 750-per-second, according to the San Francisco based startup.
The micro-blogging service has exploded in popularity since it was launched in March 2006 and Twitter chief operating officer Dick Costello said recently that it now attracts 190 million visitors a month.
Last week, Twitter warned users to expect outages as it copes with the heavy traffic during the World Cup.
Mobile TV Wherever You Go
Now television content is offered on a variety of portable mobile devices, from cell phones to iPads. Some of this is available through downloading or streaming web video; other content is transmitted just like TV, via one signal to many devices simultaneously.
That’s where Qualcomm’s FLO Personal Television comes in, which aims to offer “real” TV on the go.
FLO TV’s service, which transmits mobile feeds of broadcast content, has been offered on mobile phone partners since 2007. Now, the company has launched its own pocket-sized TV device, the FLO PTV 350.
The device itself costs $199 and comes with a basic four-channel package that includes the major networks: CBS Mobile, ABC Mobile, Fox Mobile, and NBC2Go. An extra $15 a month – or $150 for a year – will get you 16 channels including the four major networks, as well as cable channels like MTV, CNN and Comedy Central.
The PTV 350 is not as sleek as an iPhone; it has the square look of a portable navigation device. At 3 by 4 inches, it’s solid but lightweight, and it fit easily in my bag. You hold it upright to view the 3.5-inch touch screen. (The PTV does not come with a case; you can purchase one from outside retailers like Amazon.com for $15 to $40.)
The PTV has power, volume, and channel buttons on the top and side of the device. It comes with an external headphone jack for when you don’t want to annoy other people with the audio. There were scan lines as I swiped through channels on the touchscreen, but once I selected a channel, the picture was clear.
Despite the small screen, the FLO PTV compared favorably to watching videos via the Web on the iPad. Although the iPad is a larger, slicker device, the videos I watched paused frequently to buffer, and when I was watching videos on the iPad in direct sunlight, it powered off after about 15 minutes due to the high temperature outside. I didn’t have that problem with the PTV, whose battery lasted six hours and never shut off while I was watching.
On the other hand, the FLO PTV’s signal wasn’t as robust as some cell phone signals. I got good reception in the city, but lost service completely in a remote part of the suburbs.
Also, the channels offered on FLO TV are special mobile versions of networks, so the program lineups aren’t exactly the same as what’s on regular TV.
3D TVs Really Worth Buying or Not
With an expensive new TV set and a $150 pair of funny glasses, you can watch 3-D movies and some sports from your sofa. Next up: nature shows, reality TV, and even game shows. Why the evening news likely will stay in two dimensions.
Taking a cue from movie studios that have goosed their box-office take with 3-D films like “Toy Story 3″ and “Alice in Wonderland,” the television industry is betting TV viewers will splurge to watch more-lifelike versions of their favorite athletes, wild animals and, potentially, sitcom characters.
This month, ESPN launched a 3-D channel designed to broadcast sporting events including 25 World Cup soccer matches. ESPN will offer close to 100 sporting events in the coming year. Turner Sports and Nascar will make the Coke Zero 400 available in 3-D on July 3. Fox Sports and DirecTV will provide the Major League Baseball All-Star game next month.
“We may be seeing BYOG [bring your own glasses] at the bottom of Super Bowl party invites,” said Chuck Pagano, ESPN’s executive vice president of technology.
This month, DirecTV and Panasonic will launch several joint 3-D channels devoted to movies, concerts and sports. Next year, Discovery, Sony and Imax will introduce a 24-hour 3-D venture focused on movies, nature programs, and other shows. The network may also air popular documentary series like “Man vs. Wild” or “The Haunted,” about paranormal activity, and will have access to Imax movies like “Hubble.”
Acer Updates Predator Desktop with Core i7 CPU GeForce GTX 470 Graphics
Acer threw down the metallic orange gauntlet with its Predator desktop, offering one of the most radical designs for a major manufacturer’s PC. Now it’s updated the specs on the system, while adding a little bit more black to the case design.
The new Predator comes with an Intel Core i7-930 CPU, a sizable 12GB of RAM, 1.5TB 7,200rpm hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 graphics card. You can upgrade the system on your own to SLI status thanks to a couple of extra PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. A hinged black panel hides the external drive bays on the front of the case.
Pricing is reasonable for the Predator considering the updated configuration. At $1,999, of course it’s much pricier than any mainstream desktop, but in the realm of super-powered gaming PCs, there are far, far pricier options. Then again, many of those systems don’t have the love-it-or-leave-it color scheme that Acer gave its debut (and only) gaming computer.