Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday. The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads. Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads. Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity. Dudley said he did not know what the pricing tiers would be nor the download limits. He said the heavy users were likely using the network to download large amounts of video, most likely in high definition. It was not clear when exactly the trial would begin, but Dudley said it would likely be around the second quarter. The tiered pricing would only affect new customers in Beaumont, not existing ones. Time Warner Cable is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., the world’s largest media company.
Mitron has announced the launch of SMC’s wireless Internet mobile phone for Skype in Australia. With integrated wireless connectivity and pre-installed Skype User Interface, users can make and receive Skype calls whilst maintaining complete mobility unlike other devices that must connect with a computer.
Designed by SMC Networks, a leading global technology provider of LAN hardware, broadband connectivity devices and SOHO/Home wireless products, this leading edge WiFi Phone is Skype Certified and comes embedded with the widely recognised Skype Internet calling functionality. The handset supports almost all Skype functions, enabling free calling from anywhere in the world within the Skype network and cost effective calling to fixed lines or mobile phones using Skype’s SkypeIn and SkypeOut services. It also supports conference calls, Skype’s user base search and voice mail. Based on the 802.11b/g standard, the WSKP100 is compatible with almost all standard Wi-Fi access points or wireless routers on the market. “The WSKP100 is ideal for people at home, in business or even students on campus who are looking to make cost effective calls, without the hassle of switching on a computer,” said Michael Boorne, Managing Director, Mitron. “With more than 3 million Skype users in Australia, this phone will allow people to better utilise the rapidly growing number of free wireless access points which support browser-less authentication and an increasing number free public hotspots situated in key business travel locations and vacation areas. As wireless routers become more affordable for the home and small office, it will also provide users with more options for greater flexibility and mobility.” The phone is also incredibly easy to use, Skype is pre-installed on the handset so getting started is as easy as setting up a Skype account and entering a username/password in order to connect to any Wireless network” said Boorne. “It also has a PC-like Skype User Interface making it easy to configure and use.” Features: • Quality of Service (QoS) function of the WSKP100 ensures exceptional voice quality is maintained in shared wireless voice and data networks by prioritising voice over other data packet types. • Advanced Security: The WSKP100 supports Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and WPA2) with pre-shared keys (PSK). WPA supports TKIP while WPA2, supports AES encryption. WPA, and WPA2 address some of the security risks inherent in the legacy Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol. Specifically, they provide stronger authentication and encryption than WEP. • Light and compact candy bar design allows users to carry the phone wherever is needed. • Improved power-saving mechanism. The SMC WiFi Phone for Skype will deliver 3-hours continuous talk-time and 30-hour standby from its internal Li-Ion Battery and can be recharged from any USB enabled socket. - ends - Pricing and Availability The WSKP100 is available at all good retailers at an RRP of $239.00 Stockists: Mitron - 02 8004 6666 For further information or to obtain a unit for review, please contact Helen Smith at Espresso Communications on: 02 9357 5544 or via email at helen@espressocomms.com.au. About Mitron Mitron is a growing Australian company which distributes technology-related communications tools, including SMC Network products and the Mitron range of ADSL, Router, Wireless and VoIP devices. Mitron specialises in the customisation and supply of these devices to Internet & Voice Service Providers, Resellers and Retailers in
Think digg or netvibes aimed specifically at one demographic-hip-hop culture. Imagine RSS feeds and widgets geared to meet the needs of consumers, not necessarily the tech savvy. Take CEO and President Navarrow Wright, former web designer, programmer, and chief technology officer for BET, and combine his know-how with the experience, knowledge and ideas of hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons. The end result is Global Grind, a website specifically aimed at the hip-hop demographic and culture in hopes of getting them to gather, collect, share and find data relevant to them in one place-globalgrind.com.
What is Global Grind?
In their own words, Global Grind says that, “it’s the global view of all the content that is relevant in the hip-hop community.” The website, modeled after and pulling components from such social networking sites as Facebook, Netvibes, and digg, is the vision of Navarrow Wright and Russell Simmons. However, unlike websites that are hoping to appeal to the masses, the intended audience for Global Grind is clear. Because they aren’t trying to reach everyone, they have more freedom with their design and features. Wright informed Lindsay Campbell in a recent Wallstrip interview that there isn’t one place online that meets the needs of the hip-hop community, and that he and Simmons feel that Global Grind can be that place. Wright defines himself as part of this demographic, and is working hard to have the site meet his needs, too. His vision is clear.
Spicebird is a new open source organizer mash-up from Synovel that uses Mozilla technologies to combine the e-mail and contact tools of Thunderbird with the calendar and scheduling features in Sunbird to create a slick new integrated communications application.
Spicebird is still in its infancy, currently 0.4 beta, but already the first public release offers an impressive set of features, including e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging and other communication tools.
Synovel first demoed Spicebird a few weeks ago and there’s a video of Spicebird in action on the site which showcases some of the applications finer points, like automatic event detection in e-mails and ability to add those events to your calendar with a single click.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the basic interface for Spicebird is a series of tabs holding each primary element of the app — e-mail and news, contacts, calendar and tasks. The homepage of Spicebird looks a bit like an iGoogle or NetVibes page with little preview widgets for selected e-mail folders, RSS feeds, calendar events and more. All the widgets can be customized to suit your work habits.
Despite subdividing the interface into tabs, working Spicebird remains a seamless process. For instance, if you get an e-mail where Spicebird detects an appointment or meeting, it will offer a link to add that event to your calendar. Clicking the link will automatically switch over to your calendar tab and add the event to your schedule.
Spicebird also offers an integrated Jabber chat client, which means you can connect to GTalk and other Jabber-based services out of the box. The interface itself is pretty barebones at the moment, but it gets the job done.
So far Spicebird probably sounds more or less like Outlook, Evolution or even Gmail since all these info organizers offer similar features and indeed that’s more or less what this first release is — a proof of concept.
But Spicebird has big plans and the next revision (0.7 according to the roadmap) promises some even more interesting features like an integrated blog publishing tool, stored IM transcripts and support for more protocols, as well as a new tabbed e-mail interface (also in the works for Thunderbird 3.0).
The final version of Spicebird hopes to deliver CMS integration (via Drupal), a document manager, Microsoft Exchange support and eventually some variation on the the “inbox as an organizer for social networks” idea that seems to very popular of late.
In the mean time, if you’re interested in checking out Spicebird, you can download a version for Windows or Linux from the website (Mac users, it doesn’t look like Spicebird currently has any plans for Mac OS X).
I tested Spicebird on Windows XP and found it to be quite stable and very usable, even in its current beta form. Although it doesn’t yet have some of what could be its killer features, like the Songbird music player, Spicebird is definitely one to watch.
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/01/spicebird-offer.html
I’ve been writing about parenting and technology long enough for themes to begin to emerge. Like Lou Dobbs talking again and again about the “War on the Middle Class,” I am going to keep following the evolving story about kids and online safety, and supporting the idea that “Safe Product Design is Good Product Design.”
Yesterday’s announcement that MySpace has unveiled a new safety plan, working in cooperation with 49 attorneys general, is a step in the right direction. However, it did draw the predictable criticism epitomized by this reader comment on The Social blog:
A Novel Idea…: reader comment from jltnol Posted on: January 14, 2008, 2:24 PM PST Story: MySpace agrees to social-networking safety plan
Why can’t parents just do what the [sic] are supposed to do? Part of parenting is knowing what your kids are up to all the time.
If you can’t do it then hire a baby sitter who can.
You need a license to drive and a license to fish, but anybody can have a child.
Go Figure.
