Android kill switch activated & some links of the week
Control over tethered appliances basically comes in two forms: pre-approval of apps and kill switches. As this blog has documented, Apple has had a very heavy hand in screening apps, but — as far as we know — they haven’t ever used the iPhone kill switch. I was a little surprised to find that out, [...]
July 26th, 2010 | Published in Future of the Internet | 1 Comment
Google launches Government Requests tool. Google is now making public information on the requests it receives from government agents to remove content from its search results or reveal private user data. The Government Requests tool currently displays the number and type of requests by country for the last six months of 2009. In a bit [...]
June 1st, 2010 | Published in Android, Facebook, Future of the Internet, Generativity, censorship, cybersecurity, iphone, kindle, news | 1 Comment
FOI Topics and Links of the Week
Government transparency through technology. U.S. federal government agencies published their open government plans online this week. The plans detail long-term strategies for addressing one of the three identified principles of open government—transparency, civic participation, and government collaboration with public and private sectors. They can be accessed by appending “/open” to the department website address. The [...]
April 19th, 2010 | Published in Future of the Internet | 1 Comment
Quick Links on the Apple-Adobe Battle
On April 3, an Adobe technical project manager demonstrated that Adobe’s new Air software could be used to develop across platforms—he created a Reversi game app that runs on Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows 7, Ubuntu, and OS X (see potential caveats in comments here). Cool! As JZ said, via email, “if this is really possible, [...]
April 15th, 2010 | Published in Future of the Internet, Generativity, iphone, news | 4 Comments
FOI Topics and Links of the Week
Internet Telephony Comes to the iPhone. Apple has approved an app intended to provide a virtual second line for business that allows consumers to make calls using Wi-Fi when available instead of AT&T’s cellular network. The Line2 app may allow iPhone users to downgrade their AT&T cell plans, though contracts and lack of universal Wi-Fi [...]
April 5th, 2010 | Published in Future of the Internet
EFF unearths an iPhone Developer Program License Agreement
Recently, the Electronic Freedom Foundation posted the previously secret iPhone Developer Program License Agreement – a contract that apparently all iPhone app developers are required to click-sign before using Apple’s iPhone Software Development Kit. Though a provision of the Agreement prohibits disclosure of its contents, EFF gained access by requesting it under the Freedom of [...]
March 28th, 2010 | Published in Future of the Internet, Generativity, iphone | 3 Comments
The Future of Zittrain Has Not Been Stopped
First things first: yes, I’m in the hospital, but I’m OK. (I’m blogging, right?) The details: I found myself in the hospital last Thursday thanks to unexplained fevers that spiked at night and were gone by day. After a bunch of tests my unfailingly conscientious doctor recommended (well, insisted) I get to the hospital for [...]
March 15th, 2010 | Published in Future of the Internet | 39 Comments
FOI Topics and Links of the Week
A roundup of happenings that bear on the issues in The Future of the Internet – Canadian Android Carrier Forcing Firmware Update. A Canadian carrier wanted users to download a firmware upgrade that fixed a glitch prohibiting users from dialing 911, so it made the upgrade mandatory. Seems reasonable. But it bundled in an update [...]
March 8th, 2010 | Published in Facebook, Future of the Internet, cloud, cybersecurity, ubicomp | 3 Comments
FOI Topics and Links of the Week
AppMakr Transforms App Store Landscape, Enables Anyone To Make Their Own iPhone App. Gagan Biyani raves about AppMakr, a product that allows anyone to make a simple RSS-based iPhone app for $199. The company will even submit the app to the App Store. (So, for instance, Biyani put together an app that aggregates all of [...]
February 16th, 2010 | Published in Web 2.0 platforms, censorship, iphone
JZ has recently pondered the iPad in a column in the Financial Times. Some excerpts of his thoughts… First, he begins with a quick history of the subtle but massive shift between the Apple II and the iPhone: In 1977, a 21-year-old Steve Jobs unveiled something the world had never seen before: a ready-to-program personal [...]
February 15th, 2010 | Published in Future of the Internet | 1 Comment
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