EU and Google enlist ordinary people as environmental watchdogs

RNW, 28 July 2010 - 2:46pm | By Willemien Groot

(Photo: Google)

Eye on Earth, GEOSS and Google are planning to monitor the state of the environment. All three organisations plan to measure the influence of human activity on the environment and climate change. The big difference is that the organisations will not only be gathering data from scientists, but involving ordinary people as well.

Way back in 1998, then US Vice President Al Gore dreamed of a digital earth, where information could be gathered. NASA developed the first version and the possibility of creating a precise, accurate image of the state of the planet expanded exponentially with the rise of new social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Direct action

At the zenith of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, a simple Google maps application made a deep impression, even though the idea behind the app was very simple. Anyone could have thought of it, says Ed Parsons of Google UK:

"This is a great example. It was actually an engineer who works at Google but it could have been anyone, who makes use of the fact that the American government published a daily piece of data that shows the extent of the oil slick in the Gulf. And what he does, is he takes that extent and allows you with a little application that he has built on the web to overlay that extent up around any part of the world. You could type in Amsterdam or wherever you are interested in and it will overlay that extent on that particular region".

Mr Parsons says the map and overlay makes far more impression than pages of raw data, although he hastened to add that raw data should always be available. He says it makes the process more transparent and far more attractive for people who want to delve a little deeper.

Conveying the message

Governments have also realised that new media is a powerful tool they can use to help convey their message to the general public. The British government launched a website to support their climate policy. A government application for use with Google Earth shows what would happen to the planet if the temperature were to rise by an average of four degrees Celsius; the results are both confronting and effective.

Interactive

The effects of drought and floods are also relatively easy to map and monitor. Facebook, Twitter and the photo-sharing website Flickr are full of information about the environment and climate change and it reaches millions of people every day. Why not collect all the snippets of information into one place?

Two European websites are working hard to do just that. The European Environmental agency's Eye on Earthwebsite aims to function as a two-way communication platform that combines scientific information with observations made by ordinary people.

The Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which was launched in response to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, is developing a Global Earth Observations System of Systems or GEOSS. GEO members include 81 governments, the European Commission and dozens of intergovernmental organisations whose mandate includes Earth observation and related environmental issues. The project also has the support of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.

The JRC's Max Craglia says:

"We are promoting the idea that ordinary people can be providers of data. They know their local environment a lot better than any observing system rotating over the Earth. Bringing together different sources of data about the environment will help us understand the mechanisms of change; one cannot underestimate the importance of the idea. In addition, those billions of people who start monitoring will also develop a keener awareness of their own role in climate change".

Bend the Trend

GEOSS wants to play a global role but Eye on Earth is focused on Europe. The EU Environmental Agency (EEA) is publishing all available data about water and air quality and will add data on biodiversity and noise pollution later on.

The Bend the Trend website, launched by the EEA, is a social climate movement that aims to inform and inspire people to take action to combat climate change.

The success or failure of all the initiatives depend on their perceived trustworthiness says the EEA's Jeff Huntington: "As we get more and more into this way of thinking and working, I think the process that will become self-regulating. The final result will be a lot better than we have today."

Mr Huntington says the information provided by ordinary people or amateur scientists is not necessarily of inferior quality to data gathered by professional scientists. One source, even if it is scientific, is never enough.

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FBI says mastermind of botnet nabbed

Associated Press, By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jul 27, 10:02 pm ET

WASHINGTON – International authorities have arrested a computer hacker believed responsible for creating the malicious computer codethat infected as many as 12 million computers, invading major banks and corporations around the world, FBI officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

A 23-year-old Slovenian known as Iserdo was snagged in Maribor, Slovenia, after a lengthy investigation by Slovenian Criminal Police there along with FBI and Spanish authorities.

His arrest comes about five months after Spanish police broke up the massive cyber scam, arresting three of the alleged ringleaders who operated the so-called Mariposa botnet, stealing credit cards and online banking credentials. The botnet — a network of infected computers — appeared in December 2008 and infected more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and at least 40 major banks.

Botnets are networks of infected PCs that have been hijacked from their owners, often without their knowledge, and put into the control of criminals.

Jeffrey Troy, the FBI's deputy assistant director for the cyber division, said Tuesday that Iserdo's arrest is a major break in the investigation. He said it will take the alleged cyber mastermind off the street and prevent him from updating the malicious software code or somehow regaining control of computers that are still infected.

Officials declined to release Iserdo's real name and the exact charges filed against him, but said the arrest took place about 10 days ago and the man has been released on bond.

"To use an analogy here," said Troy, "as opposed to arresting the guy who broke into your home, we've arrested the guy that gave him the crowbar, the map and the best houses in the neighborhood. And that is a huge break in the investigation of cyber crimes."

Troy said more arrests are expected and are likely to extend beyond Spain and Slovenia and include additional operators who allegedly bought the malware from Iserdo. Authorities would not say how much Iserdo supposedly charged, but said hackers could buy the software package for a certain amount, or pay more to have it customized or get additional features. Internet reports suggest the fees ranged from as much as $500 for basic packages to more than $1,300 for more advanced versions.

Cyber masterminds behind the biggest botnets aren't often taken down largely because it is easy for experienced hackers to hide their identities by disguising the source of their Internet traffic. Usually thecomputer resources they use are stolen. And the investigations are complex and technical, often spanning dozens of countries with conflicting or even non-existing cyber crime laws.

For instance, there have been no arrests yet in the spread of the Conficker worm, which infected 3 million to 12 million PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and caused widespread fear that it could be used as a kind of Internet super weapon.

The Conficker botnet is still active, but is closely watched by security researchers. The infected computers have so far been used to make money in ordinary ways, pumping out spam and spreading fake antivirussoftware.

The Mariposa botnet, which has been dismantled, was easily one of the world's biggest botnets. It spread to more than 190 countries, according to researchers. It also appears to be far more sophisticated than the botnet that was used to hack into Google Inc. and other companies in the attack that led Google to threaten to pull out of China.

The researchers that helped take down Mariposa — which is from the Spanish word for "butterfly" — first started looking at it in the spring of 2009.

Hackers spread the botnet by using instant-messaging malicious links to contacts on infected computers. They also used removable thumb drives and peer-to-peer networks to spread the botnet.

The investigation has included federal and international law enforcement as well as a team of more than 100 people, including FBI, members of a specialized botnet investigative team and the so-called Mariposa working group, which includes researchers and private industry experts.

Why people 'jailbreak' their iPhones

CNN News, By John D. Sutter, July 27, 2010

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• "Jailbreaking" sounds shady, but it's now legal in the U.S.
• Jailbroken phones can download programs from the internet, not just just certain stores
• Some types of iPhone apps can only be accessed by jailbroken phones

(CNN) -- Despite how shady and against the rules it sounds, "jailbreaking" mobile phones is now legal in the United States, according to a new government ruling.

But what does that mean? And why do people jailbreak phones?

The simple answer is this: To gain more control.

Some mobile phones, particularly the iPhone, come with restrictions on what types of apps -- or programs -- you can purchase and run, which cellular network you can use and, essentially, what you can do with the phone.

Jailbreaking the iPhone allows you to shop for apps anywhere on the internet, not just the iTunes App Store, where all of the apps must be approved by Apple to go on sale.

There are several types of apps that Apple apparently won't approve, and you can find many of these in a sort of black market (now legal) app store for jail breakers, called Cydia.

Here are some popular apps you can use if your phone is jailbroken, but that you won't find in the mainstream App Store (special thanks to Kyle Matthews, owner of the site modmyi.com for his advice here):

MyWi: This app turns the iPhone into a mobile Wi-Fi hot spot. That means you could jump on the internet with a laptop, even if you can't find a public Wi-Fi network to join, and don't have a 3G card.

IntelliScreen: It lets you customize the iPhone's home screen, which normally just shows the time, date, and a switch that lets you open the phone. With this app, however, Matthews gets his e-mail and calendar on that home screen, so he doesn't have to open the phone to figure out what's going on.

Tlert: Instead of having to open the iPhone's text message program, this app lets you respond to new text messages from any program or screen.

Perhaps the most popular reason for people to jailbreak their iPhones is so that they can "unlock" them, too.

This is a bit confusing, but there are fundamental distinctions between "jailbreaking" a phone, which lets you download any app, and "unlocking" it, which allows you to access other wireless networks with the iPhone.

To unlock an iPhone, you first have to jailbreak it. (Apple doesn't want people to stray from AT&T, which is the exclusive wireless network provider for the iPhone in the United States.) Then download an app -- for instance, Ultrasn0w -- that will open your phone to other networks.

This isn't a cure-all, however.

Unlocking an iPhone will allow it to access other "GSM" networks, which, in the U.S., only includes T-Mobile and AT&T. Even if you unlock your iPhone, you still won't be able to use it with Verizon or Sprint.

However, many international carriers operate GSM networks, so people who travel frequently may want to unlock their phones to avoid international roaming fees.

Once the iPhone is unlocked, insert a SIM card from the new network you'd like to use and then have at it.

(On the iPhone 3G and 3GS, the SIM card is found at the top of the phone; insert a paper clip into a tiny hole to make it pop out. On the iPhone 4, a mini-SIM card is on the side, and you'll still need the paper clip.)

It's important to note that there are downsides to jailbreaking and unlocking your phone, even if those acts are now legal under federal law according to Monday's ruling by the U.S. Copyright Office, which is part of the Library of Congress (read a statement from the Library of Congress here).

Apple says jailbreaking the iPhone makes it more likely to crash.

"Apple's goal has always been to ensure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience," Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison wrote in an e-mail to CNN.com. "As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

Jailbreaking the iPhone also voids its warranty with Apple, so if your phone suddenly dies after it's jailbroken, Apple doesn't have to fix it.

Connecting a jailbroken phone to iTunes, however, can restore it to its original condition, according to Matthews.

"Apple can and does still void your warranty if the device is jailbroken, so you are able to at any time plug it into iTunes and press restore and iTunes will automatically restore your iPhone to a completely nonjailbroken state," he said. "So it's not something you can't go back on."

A number of free and paid programs will jailbreak the iPhone in a single click. Among the more popular ones are Spirit and PwnageTool, Matthews said.

You can find "how to" guides for jailbreaking the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad on ReadWriteWeb, hackthatphone.com and Gizmodo.

Users who want to jailbreak their phones install those programs and then follow the instructions. It's worth noting that no one has posted a program that will jailbreak the iPhone 4, but bloggers, including Matthews, expect a hack for Apple's newest phone to be posted online within a matter of days or weeks.

India's $35 PC is the Future of Computing

PC World, By Tony Bradley, PC World

The government of India has unveiled a prototype of a touchscreen, tablet computer which it expects to sell for $35 initially. As more companies migrate server applications and data storage to the cloud, a simple, Web-enabled platform such as this will replace the bloated desktop and laptop hardware architectures in use today.

The Indian prototype is impressive--especially at a $35 price point. The device runs on a variation of Linux.

It has no internal storage, but it is capable of storing data on a memory card. It has a built in word processor, video conferencing capabilities, and--most importantly for a cloud-based workforce--a Web browser. Oh--it can also run on solar power.

At $35, the Indian tablet is virtually disposable--far exceeding the $100 laptop developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and used in the non-profit One Laptop One Child program. In fact, in many ways the $35 tablet also makes the $500 iPad seem significantly over-priced.

India is courting manufacturers to find a partner to mass-produce the cheap tablet PC and hopes that the economy of scale will allow it to push the price down to $10--a tablet PC for the cost of a couple Starbucks drinks. It is intended for use by students or low-income families, and could be rolled out at some educational institutions as early as next year.

Not much has been revealed about the actual hardware specs of the Indian tablet. We don't yet know what processor it uses, or how much RAM is in the tablet. We don't know what resolution the display is capable of, or the exact size of the screen--although it appears to be a tad smaller than an iPad in pictures.

The iPad has been a tremendous success--selling over three million of the tablets in only 80 days. Despite its consumer media consumption origins, the iPad has also been embraced by corporations and is widely used as a portable computing platform for business professionals.

Businesses that have adopted the iPad, though, might be very interested in a touchscreen, Web-enabled tablet that can enable mobile workers to access cloud-based applications and data for less than 10 percent of the cost of the iPad.

In a cloud-based infrastructure, the device used to connect to and access information does not need the bells and whistles common on desktops and laptops. The tablet becomes a commodity, consuming less power, and delivering significant cost savings.

What businesses need is a simple, cheap device that uses a secure cloud connection to keep data where it belongs and keep workers up and working without the down time of expensive, failure-prone hardware.

You can follow Tony on his Facebook page , or contact him by email attony_bradley@pcworld.com . He also tweets as @Tony_BradleyPCW .

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Android Gets a Build-Your-Own-App App

Analysis: Google's do-it-yourself app developer sounds promising, and sounds like something Apple abandoned awhile ago.

PC World, Harry McCracken, Technologizer, Jul 12, 2010 4:24 pm

Got an idea for a smartphone app? If you've got an Android phone you might be able to build it yourself, thanks to App Inventor for Android, a new Google Labs program for Windows, OS X, and Linux that's designed to make building Android programs as easy as piecing blocks together.

Steve Lohr's story in the New York Times makes it sound sensational; here's a video from Google showing a lady creating her first App Inventor app:

App Inventor is in closed beta at the moment, and Google says it'll let folks in "soon" -- you can sign up here. As you'll see if you fill out the sign-up form, Google sees the program as an educational tool of particular interest to teachers and students.

It's an exciting idea that's more than slightly reminiscent of HyperCard, the brilliant visual programming tool that was a big deal on the Mac more than twenty years ago, and which is missed to this day. HyperCard or something similar would be a boon on the iPhone -- even Steve Jo bs has says he thinks so, although Apple apparently doesn't have any interest in building such an application itself, and new restrictions in the iOS developer agreement prevent apps developed with the HyperCard-like RunRev from being distributed on the App Store.

(More and more, I think that the surface similarities between Android and iOS are less interesting than the fundamental differences in emphasis and philosophy -- and the more different the two OSes get, the more interesting they'll be.)

I still have a cranky-old-man rant about PCs getting boring when they stopped coming with BASIC and normal people therefore stopped learning how to write their own software. I can't wait to get my hands on App Inventor -- and to see whether it's capable of creating programs that anyone other than their inventors will want to use . .

French and Dutch champion free speech on the web

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 9 July 2010 - 8:56am

By RNW News Desk (Photo: ANP)

Outgoing Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen got told off last year for sending out tweets from the weekly cabinet meeting. "You go ahead, I'll be a little later because this session is dragging on," he messaged to his Twitter followers who were waiting at a party. His cabinet colleagues were not amused.

A year on, the caretaker foreign minister is still an avid Twitterer with 40,308 followers, and unlike many a celebrity, his tweets are not tapped in by a ghostwriter. It's all his own work. Mr Verhagen's unwavering commitment to unrestricted internet access was manifest on Thursday too when he participated in an international meeting hosted by his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner in Paris.

Internet dissidents

At the conference, France and the Netherlands called for the protection of free speech on the internet and of cyber-dissidents in particular, asking firms that specialise in filtering and jamming information to stop helping repressive countries muzzle their citizens.

"We have to support cyber-dissidents as we've supported political dissidents," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a few journalists just after the opening in Paris of the first meeting of a "pilot group" formed by some 20 countries, firms and NGOs tasked with defining a framework for free speech on the web.

"The internet must not become an instrument of propaganda, surveillance and censorship" any more than "a vehicle of racial or religious hatred", the French minister added. "This isn't an ideological battle. It's not the West versus the rest of the world," he said.

There must be "a setting out of specific measures so that the internet can be a universal forum", said his Dutch counterpart, Maxime Verhagen. "Iran has blocked websites and social networks" and "this is a human rights violation", he recalled.

Filtering

Set up by France and the Netherlands, the "pilot group" is to work on the creation of an international code of conduct for private firms exporting filtering and jamming technology and on a mechanism to monitor the commitments states make to internet free speech.

A ministerial session has been convened in the Netherlands in October. Asked whether China might be invited, Maxime Verhagen said that could "be useful". "The new technologies enable the authorities to locate dissident voices," he said, with regret.

Representatives of technology groups like French-American Alcatel-Lucent and America's Cisco, Miscrosoft and Google, attended the meeting.

Alcatel, Nokia and Cisco

Secretary-General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Jean-Francois Julliard said his organization wanted to persuade the firms "not to sell just anything, anyhow" to China, Iran and Burma.

We are very well aware that the equipment sold "enables surveillance and monitoring of cyber-dissidents when the time comes", said the RSF official. This is "the case with Alcatel which sells communications and telephone surveillance equipment to the Burmese government, of Nokia, which sells telecoms equipment to the Iranian authorities and of Cisco which provides routers, modems and encryptors to the authorities in China".

Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi has often condemned supplies by Finland's Nokia and Germany's Siemens of "software that allows surveillance of telephone conversations and email exchanges" to the Tehran regime.

"We've asked ourselves about the responsibility of France Telecom which holds shares in certain operators in Morocco and Tunisia where there isn't complete freedom of distribution of information on the web either," said Jean-Francois Julliard.

"In the United States, Yahoo which buckled to Chinese law and is to blame for the jailing of a young Chinese has made honourable amends by setting up a compensation fund for cyber-dissidents," he added.

The United States is working on "a draft law that would allow US firms no longer to respond to requests for information from repressive governments", he said.

Twexit?

A follow-up conference has been organised in The Hague later this year, Maxime Verhagen tweeted on Thursday, sending his message from aboard the High Speed Train to Amsterdam. Whether he will be there as Foreign Minister is an open question, since it is not clear whether his party will remain in government.

(AFP)

Samsung releases eco friendly LCD monitors

Save a polar bear

The inquirer, By Nick Farrell, Thu Jul 08 2010, 10:23

DISPLAY MAKER Samsung has just released a batch of eco-friendly LCD monitors.

The 30 and 50 series monitors are supposed to have low power LED backlights. "Unlike other monitors," Samsung says, "our LED-backlit displays contain few or no environmentally hazardous substances, such as mercury or lead, and use about 40 percent less energy."

Samsung's Touch of Colour technology doesn't use paints, sprays or glues, ensuring they contain no volatile organic compounds, making recycling simpler and safer. Further, the company's "Magic Eco" function allows users to adjust a monitor's brightness based on different energy consumption levels with four preset energy-saving options to choose from.

Samsung claims that its 30 and 50 series monitors meet international energy standards including Energy Star 5.0 and China's Energy Level 1 grade (50 series).

Like most modern tellies and monitors, Samsung's 30 and 50 series displays are nice and thin. The 50 series is a charcoal grey "Touch of Colour" design while the 30 series comes in a "Mystic Brown" colour that is supposed to be the colour of "rich, handcrafted chocolate".

We know there are moves to make chocolate mystical but we have never seen this on an LCD monitor.

There's no word on prices yet.

Mobile Browsing Gains Popularity in Indonesia

Jakarta Globe, Putri Prameshwari & Ismira Lutfia, July 01, 2010

Indonesia is now the number one user of Opera Mini, a browser which allows mobile phones to access the Internet. Most users access the Internet on their phones between 8 p.m. and midnight. (JG Photo)

With standard Internet service still unavailable in much of Indonesia, the spread of digital information relies on mobile browsers, despite the limited connectivity.

As an example, footage from a homemade sex video involving top Indonesian celebrities was rapidly distributed among mobile-phone users a few weeks ago, most of them apparently having no trouble downloading it from the Internet.

Valens Riyadi, of the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association, said that aside from the debate on whether the Net should be restricted or not, mobile Internet users in the country would keep growing in number in the coming years.

“Currently, 80 percent of cellphone users in Indonesia have access to data service,” he said.

Indonesia was recently named the country with the most users of Opera Mini, the mobile version of the Norway-based Opera Internet browser.

In a statement on Opera’s Web site, cofounder Jon von Tetzchner said Indonesia for the first time ranked first among Opera Mini users from May 2009 to May 2010, displacing Russia from the No. 1 spot, which it had held for two years.

Since May 2009, Von Tetzchner said, the number of Opera Mini users across the world had increased by more than 140 percent to 61.4 million. Indonesia had one of the highest growth rates at 317 percent.

According to the report “Opera: State of the Mobile Web, May 2010,” the most visited Web site in Indonesia is social-networking platform Facebook, followed by search engine Google.com and news portal Detik.com.

Most Indonesian users, it said, browsed the Internet from 8 p.m. to midnight, and 23 percent were aged between 20 and 24 years.

“As companies look to make money from mobile data and mobile Web services, understanding the nocturnal habits of mobile Web users might help better provision bandwidth and provide additional rationale to ensure uptime during what are typically minimally staffed hours,” Von Tetzchner said.

Valens said social media would continue to be favorite browsing destinations for most Indonesians, especially those who were more mobile.

“Web sites like Facebook and YouTube, like it or not, are still dominating Internet use,” he said, adding that almost everyone now can turn to these Web sites to seek a variety of information.

Muhammad Jumadi, secretary general of the Indonesia Telecommunications Users Group, said Opera’s findings showed that the need for Internet access had become more significant for local users.

“Operators should take this opportunity to provide the service that suits the needs of today’s telecommunications users,” Jumadi said, adding that the government should also support operators in developing better infrastructure. “This shows that what people need is not just text and voice communication — they also need to access data.”

Data from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology’s Directorate of Post and Telecommunications showed that Internet penetration in Indonesia had reached 14.6 percent by last December, while cell-phone users accounted for 66.3 percent of the total population during the same time.

Koesmarihati, a member of the ministry’s study group on telecommunications regulation, said at a Japan-Indonesia Information and Communications Technology symposium on Monday that the government planned to complete 100 percent of its Universal Service Obligation program by 2014.

This would make ICT available in every village, in border areas, on the outermost islands, and in other non-commercial areas.