Gelijktijdig websurfen en TV kijken
Sinds ik thuis een draadloos LAN heb - dat in verbinding staat met mijn ADSL-lijntje - kijk ik regelmatig TV terwijl ik ook nog wat rondsurf op het web. Er zijn namelijk talloze televisieprogramma's die niet je volledige aandacht behoeven, zodat je makkelijk onderwijl een aantal weblogs kan afstruinen of even je email kan lezen. Als ik mijn vrienden of collega's over dit gedrag vertel, wordt ik meestal met opgetrokken wenkbrouwen aangekeken. Ik heb nu echter het bewijs dat dit helemaal niet vreemd is! Consumenten blijken steeds vaker te gaan internetten en televisie kijken tegelijk, zo blijkt uit een onderzoek van Knowledge Networks/SRI. Zo blijkt dat simultaan TV- en internet-gebruik onder consumenten tussen de 35 en 49 jaar oud bijna verdubbeld is in de afgelopen 6 maanden, naar 11%. Bij mannen tussen de 18 en 35 jaar - de categorie waar ik me in bevind dus - is het TV-internet-gebruik zelfs 13%. Wat een opluchting!

Napster vs. music industry. And the winner is...
Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Napster is considering filing for bankruptcy. The Napster company, which service was stopped last year by a Federal court, has also lost its CEO Hilbers because he couldn't attract enough inevstors. The authors of the article call this 'the victory of the recording industry over the once hugely popular online music- swapping service'. They also write: 'The failure of Napster would represent the triumph of Hollywood over Silicon Valley'.
The funny thing is, you could also say that it's the other way around! At its top, there were about 50 million people using the service for exchanging audio files. Napster was so popular, that it had become one of the main drivers for broadband! The music industry was slow in responding to this new development of exchanging music using broadband internet connections. Bertelsmann tried to turn Napsters' succes into their own favour, by changing Napster into a paid service. It is actually since then that Napster has been out of service. And now it seems, it will never return. But this is in my opninion not a victory for the music industry, it is a defeat! They have not managed to build a working paid service. In the meanwhile the former Napster users have found several other programs and services with the same functionality as Napster (like KaZaA, Morpheus en AudioGalaxy). They are still exchanging music, and probably more than during the Napster era! Is that a victory for the music industry? I think not...

Update 18-5: Seems like it's not over yet. Konrad Hilbers and Napsters founder Shawn have returned. Bertelsmann paid another $ 8 million - getting near $ 100 million in total. So, no definite winner yet...

I read an article on Security Focus about a 19-year-old guy named Myko Hein, who uncapped is cable modem, using software I wrote about last week. AT&T found out about within 6 hours! Now poor Myko is banned from the AT&T network for life. His old 56k6 modem is what he is back to now. So beware ;-)

Modem boost utility threat to cable networks
A software package enables normal users, not only nerds, to speed up their cable modems. A user on Slahdot says; Cable modem uncapping allows broadband customers to boost their bandwidth to 6 or 7 times what they're paying for, by spoofing their modem's TFTP client into downloading a hacked DOCSIS configuration. The program, called OneStep, works on several types of Motorola cable modems. These modems are used in the US by AT&T Broadband, and here in Holland by Chello. Since a lot of Dutch users aren't very satisfied with the speed of their cable connection, I wonder if this program will cause any problems with too much traffic over the cable networks. We'll see.

BigMac and McShake now go together with McWiFi
About 4,000 McDonald's restaurants in Japan plan to offer their customers wireless broadband internet access. The fast-food restaurants will be supplied with WiFi hotspots, so customers with their laptops or pda's can access internet and email services together with their burgers and fries. The service will cost $12.50 a month.

I-mode black list becomes white list
KPN Mobile's i-mode uses a black list against spam. Users can build up a list with adresses that they don't want to receive mail from. Of course, this is the wrong way to prevent spam, since you can only put someone on the list once you have already received uncollicited mail! So you pay for data traffic caused by spam. It's good to see that KPN has admitted their mistake and want to change the system: now customers can build a white list of adresses that they want to receive i-mail from. This functionality will be built-in in the next generation i-mode devices.