Feb. 14, 2013
Scientists and information technology researchers from all over the world have been hired to finally put a stop to that most annoying of internet issue-- the endless buffering that happens right in the middle of so many videos viewed across the Web.
To make this happen, the European Commission will spend €3,569,000 until 2016 in an effort to reduce internet latency without a requirement for newer or stronger connections.
Instead, the team will have to come up with a new method to rewrite how computers and servers send data to each other in order to speed up the network of all networks.
Taken from the University of Aberdeen, Simula Research Labs in Norway, the University of Oslo and Karlstad University in Sweden, the team will work with people from British Telecom, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell in Belgium and Institut Mines-Telecom in France.
The scientists will try to determine new mechanisms in the network and the end-hosts to reduce or get rid of the effects of delay on gamers, video-oIP (video over IP) users and internet people that need higher speeds at downloading large files or streaming video.
“It’s a real issue that we all face, especially when using a program like Skype. If anyone else in the house is watching a video at the same time, your video connection suddenly becomes spotty and often simply disconnects," said professor Gorry Fairhurst, and internet engineer at Aberdeen University in the U.K.
“To be sure, this affects gamers who want to play online in real time and individuals that need to download large files of data – both end up buying special and expensive internet connections to make these work, but often it’s not more bandwidth that’s needed to go faster but less delay in getting it in the first place. We think we can reduce this delay by making a set of small but important changes to the way computers, servers and the network process the internet data,” he added.
The team and its backers say that if they manage to come up with a workable solution to get rid of buffering, it will help users all over the globe with slow internet speeds.
"We’re focussed on one defined issue and we think there are solutions for this, but we have to change the current internet standards for the Web," he added.
"This isn’t something that companies like Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Apple will undertake lightly, but we expect they’ll take up what we’re doing because this has benefits for everyone in the long term. If we can’t do something that the rest of the world stands up and says – ‘ok I get it, we’ll standardise it’, then we’ve failed," added Fairhurst.
In other tech news
Over the past eighteen months, there's been a lot of rumors that Intel is about to grind out its own TV set, and they were just rumors at the time. Erik Huggers, the head of Intel Media, joined Walt Mossberg onstage at AllThingsD's media conference today to confirm that the chip giant will be introducing its first internet-based TV before the year is over.
The company will be providing the hardware and services directly to consumers, and the device will come with a camera that can detect who is in front of the TV.
Huggers declined to provide many details -- including the service's name and programming partners -- but he said the service will let users watch live TV, on demand, and other offerings. So it's more like a service than a TV set in and by itself.
"For the first time, we will deliver a new consumer-electronics product that people will buy from Intel through a new brand," Huggers said.
He added that the set-top box will be be powered by an Intel chip and noted that the company is working with the entire television industry to figure out how to distribute live television, "catch-up TV," on-demand, and other services via the internet.
Though Intel hopes to revolutionize the TV industry, the new service will resemble current cable offerings. For one, don't count on saving money with Intel's new offering. Huggers noted that Intel's push isn't a value play and won't cut a user's television bill in half.
Additionally, users won't be able to pick and choose certain channels but will likely subscribe to bundles dictated by Intel's team.
"What consumers want is choice, control, and convenience," Huggers said. "If bundles are done right, there's real value in that. I don't believe the industry is ready for pure a la carte."
However, Intel's history in the TV industry has been choppy, to say the least. It was early to push Google TVs and other smart TVs, with its processors powering a Sony Google TV and a Logitech Google TV set-top box.
But those products were a failure, and Intel shut down its TV business in late 2011 after failing to gain much traction.
Huggers joined Intel that same year following stints at the BBC and Microsoft. During his time at the BBC, he was on the executive board and served as director of BBC future media and technology, overseeing the company's online push and other initiatives.
And during his time at Microsoft, Huggers worked in various digital media areas. While Intel stopped pushing its processors for use in smart TVs, the company clearly didn't give up on the market entirely.
Huggers noted that Intel has been building its media business for about a year. It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out, and the kind of success this new initiative will offer Intel.
In other tech news
According to a report from the U.K.’s chief scientific advisor, Britons' compelling habits to post every little detail of their personal and professional lives online is changing the way their identities are viewed.
Professor Sir John Beddington added that the internet is having a profound effect on how Brits see themselves and how they relate that identity to the world around them.
One obvious change which is a result of the proliferation of connected devices is the blurring between work and social identities, so that people check their work emails, Twitter and other social networks when they’re off the clock and employers start to look at social online presence as well as professional qualifications for prospective employees.
“Hyper-connectivity, even of the mobile sort, is driving social change and expectations, while bringing people together in new ways,” the report suggests.
“As early as 2011, there were more than seven billion devices connected to the internet, and numbers are predicted to reach 15 billion by 2015. About 60 percent of all web users in the United Kingdom are now members of a social network site, increasing from only 17 percent in 2007, the report says.”
With every aspect of people’s lives documented online, both the government and private sector companies have tons of personal information they can potentially use.
Hyper-connectivity can also bring mobs together “where their interests temporarily coincide” - either in a good way, like “solidarity” during the Olympics in London, or more destructively as during the 2011 riots.
The web is identified as the "technological driver" of changes in the population's identities, but the report also details major "social drivers" over the next ten years, which include an impending stampede of older people.
“People’s identities are likely to be under greater pressure in their family and caring roles, as the number of people providing care to older parents is projected to increase from nearly 400,000 in 2005, to about 500,000 in 2041, with most of this increase occurring by 2022.
“Traditional life stages, for example between adolescence and adulthood, or middle-age and old-age, are being delayed or blurred together,” the report said.
"Shifting intergenerational dynamics will also see a relatively smaller working population. Younger people are likely to find achieving the experiences of adulthood more challenging than previous generations," the report suggests.
The U.K. government also needs to consider those without internet access in its policy-making, the report recommends, so it can strengthen social integration and “make effective use of identities as a resource”.
In other technology news
In a bold statement, photo-sharing site Instagram said today that it has the permanent right to sell all users' photographs without payment or notification, a dramatic policy shift that quickly sparked a public outcry on privacy issues and other rights violations.
The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, 2013, comes just three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the company.
And it gets worse: unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out either!
Under the new policy, Facebook claims that the perpetual right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, which would effectively transform the Web site into the world's largest stock photo agency.
One irked Twitter user complained that "Instagram is now the new iStockPhoto, except they won't have to pay you anything to use your images."
"Instagram is actually asking people to agree to unspecified future commercial use of their photos," says Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "That makes it challenging for someone to give informed consent to that deal."
That means that a hotel in Hawaii, for instance, could write a check to Facebook to license photos taken at its resort and use them on its Web site, in TV ads, in glossy brochures, and so on-- all without paying any money to the Instagram user who took the photo. The language would include not only photos of picturesque sunsets on Waikiki Beach, but also images of young children frolicking on the beach, a result that parents might not expect, and which could trigger state privacy laws.
Another policy pitfall: If Instagram users continue to upload photos after January 16, 2013, and subsequently delete their account after the deadline, they may have granted Facebook an irrevocable right to sell those images in perpetuity. There's no obvious language that says deleting an account terminates Facebook's rights, EFF's Opsahl said.
Facebook's new rights to sell Instagram users' photos come from two additions to its terms of use policy. One section deletes the current phrase "limited license" and, by inserting the words "transferable" and "sub-licensable," allows Facebook to license users' photos to any other organization.
A second section allows Facebook to charge money. It says that "a business or other entity may pay us to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you." That language does not exist in the current terms of use.
Google's policy, by contrast, is far narrower and does not permit the company to sell photographs uploaded through Picasa or Google+. Its policy generally tracks the soon-to-be-replaced Instagram policy by saying "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our services."
And Yahoo's policies service for Flickr are similar, saying the company can use the images "solely for the purpose for which such content was submitted or made available."
Reginald Braithwaite, an author and software developer, posted a tongue-in-cheek "translation" of the new Instagram policy today "You are not our customers, you are the cattle we drive to market and auction off to the highest bidder. Enjoy your feed and keep producing the milk."
One Instagram user dubbed the policy change "Instagram's suicide note." The PopPhoto.com photography site summarized the situation by saying "The service itself is still a fun one, but that's a lot of red marks that have shown up over the past couple weeks. Many shooters -- even the casual ones -- probably aren't that excited to have a giant corporation out there selling their photos without being paid or even notified about it."
Another unusual addition to Instagram's new policy appears to immunize it from liability, such as class action lawsuits, if it makes supposedly private photos public. The language stresses, twice in the same paragraph, that "we will not be liable for any use or disclosure of content" and "Instagram will not be liable for any use or disclosure of any content you provide."
Yet another addition says "you acknowledge that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such." That appears to conflict with the Federal Trade Commission's guidelines that say advertisements should be listed as advertisements.
Such sweeping intellectual property language has been invoked before: In 1999, Yahoo claimed all rights to Geocities using language strikingly similar to Facebook's wording today, including the "non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right" to do what it wanted with its users' text and photos. But in the face of widespread protest -- and competitors advertising that their own products were free from such Draconian terms -- Yahoo backed down about a week later.
Facebook may not intend to monetize the photos taken by Instagram users, but if lawyers often draft overly broad language to permit future business opportunities that may never arise, than that could be a deal breaker. But on the other hand, there's no obvious language that would prohibit Facebook from taking those steps, and the company's silence in the face of questions today hasn't helped at all.
EFF's Opsahl says that the new policy runs afoul of his group's so-called 'best practices' for social networks. He added "Hopefully at some point in time, we'll get greater clarity from Facebook and Instagram.
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