Technology notebook
Published 9:18 pm Friday, June 19, 2009
High-speed Net use broadens
Some groups that have lagged in signing up for high-speed Internet service, such as the elderly, the poor and rural residents, have started to gain on those who have had a head start, according to a new survey.
Those conclusions come as the government is set to decide how to spend $7.2 billion in stimulus money on expanding the availability of broadband.
Broadband usage among those 65 or older grew from 19 percent in May 2008 to 30 percent this April, the Pew Internet &American Life Project said Wednesday.
Among households with annual income of less than $20,000, 35 percent subscribed to broadband this year, compared with 25 percent last year. By contrast, broadband penetration for households that earn more than $75,000 per year, already well connected, remained roughly unchanged at 85 percent.
In rural America, a target for the broadband stimulus money, broadband penetration is now 46 percent, up from 38 percent.
The nationwide average was 63 percent, up from 55 percent a year ago, suggesting a resilient demand for broadband even through a recession.
Industry figures contradict the survey somewhat, showing a slowdown in sign-ups over the past year. Leichtman Research Group Inc. put the number of broadband subscribers of the largest U.S. providers at 69.3 million at the end of March, up from 64.1 million a year earlier. That’s a smaller increase than Pew found. Leichtman’s tally includes 94 percent of the Internet provider market and includes subscriptions by some small businesses in addition to homes.
Atwitter over Joyce’s “Ulysses”
Forget about Ashton Kutcher. James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” one of the most difficult novels in English, is on Twitter.
Two devotees of “Ulysses” have adapted its 10th chapter to Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per post. Called “Wandering Rocks,” the chapter is especially well-suited to Twitter because it follows 19 Dubliners going about their daily business.
For three years now, Ian Bogost, a Georgia Tech professor, and friend Ian McCarthy, a product manager at LinkedIn, have commemorated “Bloomsday” on Twitter on June 16. That date in 1904 is when the entirety of “Ulysses” takes place, chronicling the experiences of a man named Leopold Bloom.
Bogost says using Twitter “for literary performance art might help shift perspectives on the service” and get people to use it for more than self-centered musings. “Perhaps in so doing, we can shift people’s interest in social media technologies from egomania and immediacy toward deliberation and cultural reflection,” Bogost wrote in an e-mail from Australia.
Bogost and McCarthy have dubbed their performance “Twittering Rocks,” a play on the chapter’s title that could also mean Twittering is awesome. They have registered 54 of the novel’s key characters as Twitter users, and Bogost built a software program that tweets their first-person utterances at the correct moments in the chapter.
“The result is a complex web of timed interactions between many characters,” he said, “precisely the effect Joyce was aiming for in the novel.”
Greece clamps down on crime
Greece’s prepaid mobile phone users will now have to register their identities in a bid to tackle illegal immigration and other crime, the communications minister said Tuesday.
Evripidis Stylianidis said widespread anonymous cell-phone ownership made crime-fighting more difficult.
“The types of criminals who prefer prepaid phones include drug dealers, immigrant smugglers and blackmailers,” Stylianidis said.
Prepaid mobiles were also used in an elaborate illegal wiretapping operation that targeted Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and senior officials in his conservative government during the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
Investigators failed to find who penetrated Greece’s Vodafone network for seven months by hacking legal surveillance software.
SIM cards for prepaid connections are frequently sold for cash at corner stores and supermarkets. Under the new regulations, prepaid connections would not be activated until registered by the owner at the mobile phone operator.
Pending parliament’s approval of the legislation, people would be required to register prepaid mobiles by June 30, 2010, Stylianidis said.
He also said tens of thousands of illegal immigrants would not be allowed to use pay-as-you-go phones under the new scheme.
According to the government, there are an estimated 9 million active prepaid connections in Greece, while 5 million are registered under calling plans.
The Associated Press
