Bob Caswell

Sophos, an internet-security company, released numbers on the amount of spam sent per country between this past July and September. And the United States is responsible for about 30% of it (see chart below). Despite legislation such as the CAN-SPAM Act, the U.S. hasn’t been able to do much to stop spam. And spam is getting more complicated: fake e-cards, virus-infected PDF attachments, and worthless MP3 files or ringtons are the latest methods. In fact, according to anti-spam company MXSweep, nearly one in ten spam e-mails attach MP3 files or ringtones.

I guess I wouldn’t know much about this. I use Google’s gmail and rarely see any spam.

Continue Reading »

The latest info from our good friends those “people familiar with the matter” is that Google is in advanced talks with two U.S. cellphone operators: Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel. The talks, of course, are revolving around the two companies offering new Google-powered mobile phones. Google has to get some major wireless operators to sign on to this project if it’s to reach its rumor-generated goal of getting Gphones in front of consumers by the middle of next year.

Continue Reading »

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) is quoting “people familiar with the matter” in stating that within two weeks Google will announce plans to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year. Apparently, Google’s goal is “[T]o make applications and services as accessible on cellphones as they are on the Internet.”

Continue Reading »

YouTube made popular the idea of video on the Internet even if it has always seemed to be pretty low on the list of options in terms of picture quality. But now certain companies have realized that just because computers can be another way to watch video doesn’t mean the general population is content with fuzzy, low quality in a tiny window. Today there’s news of at least two companies focusing on Internet video quality: BitTorrent and Move Networks.

Continue Reading »

Anyone familiar with digg, Netflix, del.icio.us, flickr, Picasa, LinkedIn, Last.fm, StumbleUpon, reddit, etc. knows that any sort of social networking at any of these sites (that is, sharing / commenting / befriending) happens in isolation. Want to see what your friends are up to in terms of music listening, picture uploading, movie watching, career changing, or Internet bookmarking? Well, clear your schedule because you’ll need the time to log in to your dozen or so favorite social networks. Being social has never been so fragmented and time consuming.

Continue Reading »

ARM is a British company best known for designing chips for cellphones and licensing them to semiconductor companies. The company’s technology is the most widely used in cellphones, though any company implementing the technology modifies it however it deems best. But now a new effort is under way to exploit this chip technology by creating a standard layer of software.

The collaboration was announced at the fourth annual ARM Developers’ Conference being held this week in Santa Clara, California. The idea is to address the rise in consumer demand for Internet access and advanced applications on cellphones. The seven companies are ARM, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Mozilla, Marvell, MontaVista, and Movial. The new standard chosen: a Linux-based open source platform to be designed for next-generation mobile applications.

Continue Reading »

Radiohead has decided to follow Prince’s lead by trying a new distribution model for their music. The band announced that the new album, In Rainbows, will only be available via Radiohead.com. And the consumer picks the price for the digital download. Time made it sound like “free” was even an option, though another source explains that there is a minimum charge of 1 pence plus a 45 pence credit card processing fee. In dollars, about $0.94, and that’s for the entire album.

Continue Reading »