John Lister

Rhode Island has the fastest broadband speeds in the United States, but overall the country continues to lag far behind the likes of Japan. The figures come from a study by the Communication Workers America, which is campaigning for faster access ... nationwide. Rhode Island had a median speed of 6.8MBps, narrowly pipping Delaware (6.7), with New Jersey (5.8), Virginia (5.0) and Massachusetts (4.6) rounding out the top five. Alaska was the slowest at 0.8MBps, just below North Dakota (1.16) and Montana (1.32). Wyoming and Idaho also ranked in the bottom five meaning that, aside from Virginia, ... (view more)

Yahoo has launched new technology making it easier for users to get website information personalised to their current location. However, privacy advocates say the search engine's safeguards aren't enough to protect web surfers from misuse by ... third-party organisations. The new tool, FireEagle, is primarily designed for mobile devices such as handheld PCs and smart phones. The idea is that the system will be open so that any website you visit can use the information about your location without needing separate software or coding. A reported 50 or more sites have already begun using the scheme, ... (view more)

A school testing company's blunder left personal details of more than 100,000 students publicly viewable on the web. The Princeton Review, which produces courses designed to help students prepare for tests including the SAT (the standard entry exam ... for US universities), recently switched Internet providers. During the move, password protected mechanisms were inadvertently disabled, allowing for full public exposure to sensitive student records. Among those which lost their cloaking were one file with names and birth dates of 74,000 Virginia students, and another with more extensive details ... (view more)

The first mobile phone based on Google's "Android" system will be available on the T-Mobile network in October. But insiders say the device, while functional, lacks the grace and style of its obvious market rival, Apple's iPhone. As we reported back ... in November, Google opted against launching its own mobile phone, instead developing an open source software package with the idea that it could encourage manufacturers to develop cheaper handsets. The belief at the time was that Google might get back its investment by negotiating a cut of any advertising revenue network carriers would make ... (view more)

A web server company is suing Google claiming that many of its services, including AdWords, Blogger and YouTube are all infringements of its patents. The suit by GraphOn Corporation claims all these systems copy its patented technology for "unique ... method of maintaining an automated and network-accessible database". The firm is seeking unspecified damages, plus "permanent injunctive relief" -- in other words, a court order stopping Google from using the technology. (Source: yahoo.com ) Google says it hasn't yet received official notice of the suit and therefore isn't commenting. (Source: cnet. ... (view more)

It looks as if Apple has attempted to fix the widespread connection glitches with the iPhone through a new software update. But it comes amid increased concerns about how much control the company has over users. As we reported earlier this week, ... customers worldwide have complained about calls mysteriously dropping . It still appears the problem is that the phone often fails to pick up even a strong 3G signal (the high-speed connection which makes many of the data features possible) and was repeatedly switching to a traditional network signal instead, which often triggered the glitch. The ... (view more)

iPhone users worldwide are complaining of dropped calls, and it's looking increasingly likely the cause is the phone itself. The problem appears to be occurring with the "3G connection," the fast-access which allows many of the smartphone features ... to operate. Because the phones aren't getting a strong enough connection on the 3G networks, they often need to switch to a traditional phone network in mid-call. This doesn't always go smoothly and is sometimes causing temporary disconnections which are enough to terminate the connection. There doesn't seem to be any strong geographical pattern in ... (view more)

iPhone users have spent $30 million on applications for the new 3G model in the month since it's released. But Apple will get 'only' $9 million of that take. Users can buy applications, produced by third-party developers, from the iTunes store. ... There have been around 60 million application downloads so far, though many of these (estimates say as much as 90%) are free. Paid applications range from around a dollar for novelty items to around ten dollars for games, so an average $5 price would fit the estimates. The most expensive item, a thousand dollar screensaver, was pulled by Apple recently ... (view more)

Security researchers have revealed that the current military hostilities between Russia and Georgia may have actually begun online a couple of weeks ago. There's no official word as to who was behind cyber attacks which brought down Georgian ... government websites, including that of the country's president Mikheil Saakashvili. The Russian government has denied any involvement in the attacks, which were routed through servers based in the US. Whoever was responsible used denial of service (DOS) attacks, a brutally simple technique which involves sending repeated requests to a website's server. It ... (view more)

Google has said sorry to users of its Gmail service after they were left without access to their emails for almost two hours early last week. The firm made a rare apology on its official blog after the outage, saying "The issue was caused by a ... temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly." (Source: blogspot.com ) There has been some speculation the problem may be connected with a recent change to Gmail's contacts system, designed to separate contacts users have manually added from those which are created automatically when you send or receive a ... (view more)