World's poor drive growth in global cellphone use

By Frank Jordans, Associated Press

GENEVA — Six in 10 people around the world now have cellphone subscriptions, signaling that mobile phones are the communications technology of choice, particularly in poor countries, according to a U.N. report published Monday.

By the end of last year there were an estimated 4.1 billion subscriptions globally, compared with about 1 billion in 2002, the International Telecommunication Union said.

Fixed line subscriptions increased at a much slower pace to 1.27 billion from about 1 billion over the same period.

"There has been a clear shift to mobile cellular telephony," the agency said, noting that developing countries now account for about two-thirds of cellphones in use. In 2002, less than half of mobile subscriptions globally were in the developing world, it said.

Internet use more than doubled. An estimated 23% of people on the planet used the Internet last year, up from 11% in 2002. Poor countries still lag far behind on Internet access, with only one in 20 people in Africa going online in 2007 — the most recent year for which firm figures were available.

Fixed broadband increased to almost 20% in rich countries, while globally just over one in 20 had access to fast Internet connections at home.

The Geneva-based agency recorded the sharpest rise in mobile broadband subscriptions. The technology, which allows users to access the Web at high speed with mobile devices, was available to 3% of people worldwide, increasing to 14% in developed countries.

The 106-page report also ranked countries according to how advanced their use of information and communications technology, or ICT, is. Sweden came first, followed by South Korea, which had high ratings despite lower per capita income than most of its peers.

"The (South Korean) government has pursued a very active ICT-focused policy, making the ICT sector one of its priorities," said Susan Teltscher, who leads the agency's statistics division.

Denmark came third, ahead of the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway.

Small, densely populated countries such as Luxembourg (7) and Hong Kong (11) also did well, while large developing countries like China (73) and India (118) were hampered by the size of their populations. The United States was 17th out of 154.

Myanmar was the only country where access and use indicators dropped in absolute terms. Internet bandwidth in the Southeast Asian country dropped 90% during the five-year period.

Myanmar's military government has cracked down on Internet use by dissident groups, temporarily shutting down international connections and jailing bloggers.

The so-called "digital divide" between rich and poor countries remained unchanged between 2002 and 2007.

"Despite significant improvements in the developing world, the gap between the ICT haves and have-notes remains," the report found.

Teltscher said the global economic recession would likely affect the development of telecommunications technology around the world.

"In terms of consumer demand and uptake, there will probably be a little bit of slowdown in the growth, but we are not expecting any decline," she said. "People who have a mobile phone are unlikely to give up on it."

Source : USA Today

Diablo III : How to game a virtual economy and make a living playing video games?

Shouting in strange, digital languages at baleful, hyper-intelligent dragons is fun. So is clawing for a tactical edge in real-time, chess-like strategic melees. But it doesn’t make you money.
It is the one thing that has always eluded the underpaid nerds around the world, who suffer stoically at tedious jobs while dreaming of their computers at home — how to make a living on their obsession with gaming.
In parts of Asia, though, creative businessmen have begun to figure it out. In China and Vietnam, for instance, companies known as “gold farms” to Western gamers are employing real-life laborers in ever-growing numbers. They sit at computers and mine for digital gold in popular multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft (or WoW to those in the know), which the companies then sell to, mainly, Western players.
These transactions are done over Paypal and once a player has handed over the real money, someone approaches the character in-game and hands over the fake gold.
 
More from GlobalPost: Video games are a big business. And getting bigger.
While paying actual dollars for digital currency may seem absurd, many serious gamers find paying for gold to be much less costly than spending the substantial number of hours it requires to accumulate the digital currency in the way the game’s developers intended, like, say, by vanquishing an endless parade of foes.
For countries like Vietnam, these digital economies are yielding substantial real-world rewards. According to a World Bank report released in April, selling digital goods for real dollars is proving so lucrative in some developing countries that it could pay for much-needed infrastructure projects.
The third-party gaming services industry, as it is known, accounts for $3 billion in revenue worldwide, most of which remained inside the countries where the services were rendered. To put that in perspective, coffee production in the entire developing world accounts for about $70 billion in revenues, but only $5.5 billion of that remained in the domestic economies.
It seems that World of Warcraft gold you just paid $20 for is fair trade. So enjoy guilt-free gaming.

The makers of WoW have always stood against this practice, banning the accounts of players and farmers who participate in it. The game’s designers say that just as printing money drives up inflation, farming digital gold can ruin an in-game economy and eventually drive players away.
For a game that survives on a $15 a month subscription, that’s something that WoW’s developers, the Blizzard Corporation — the Starbucks of the electronic entertainment industry — says it can’t afford.
 
More from GlobalPost: Vietnam releases it's own version of Call of Duty
But as any young, street-corner libertarian will tell you (over and over and over again), legalizing drugs or prostitution saves you money and raises tax revenues. That message may have resonated with Blizzard.
So now, instead of trying to police millions of gamers, the Blizzard Corporation is trying a new strategy, one that would embrace the digital free market and help it make some extra cash in return.
For their blockbuster 2012 release of the third installment of the wildly popular Diablo series, Blizzard will include a venue for selling in-game weapons and gear for real money, a move that could significantly expand the market for digital gold farmers in the developing world, and even in the West. The gaming community is abuzz with fantasies of moving out of their cubicles to sell digital demon-slaying equipment full-time from wherever they please.
In exchange, Blizzard will take a “nominal” commission for the sale of these items.
Not everyone, of course, has embraced the change. While the scope and profitability of the Diablo III marketplace is as yet unknown, some gamers, a wily and rarely satisfied bunch, worry that the priorities of developers will shift from creating an engaging, entertaining experience into creating profitable game scenarios — all the while collecting money from your average Vietnamese loot farmer.
In an August interview, Blizzard Corporation's vice president of game development, Rob Pardo, assured the community that the company was being honest about the real-money marketplace.
"The way we're trying to do the transactions, there's not really an obvious example of how we can design the game differently or manipulate the game that would somehow turn into more revenue on the auction house. I want to protect us or the player base from those possibilities,” he said.
While it remains to be seen if Diablo III’s economy will yield the same demand for digital goods as World of Warcraft and thus further expand the third-party gaming services industry in the developing world, incorporating real dollars into digital ones will almost certainly change the face of gaming.
So be on the lookout this holiday season for sales on demon-slaying rune swords and enchanted plate mail. It might be the perfect gift for the gamer in your life.

Author : Jeb Boone
Source : Global Post

Has the internet become the interest group?

ATLANTA, Georgia — When protesters first took to the streets in Tunisia more than a year ago, few expected the vast pro-democracy movement that followed. But even fewer expected hackers to have anything to do with it.
Anonymous, the global hacker collective, targeted government websites in support of uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Syria.
Born from the amoral chaos of 4chan, an image board frequented by those associated with Anonymous, the collective managed to coalesce around a belief that, at the very least, people should not have to live under the rule of tyrants.

More from GlobalPost: In response to SOPA, Anonymous hackers target US government
These altruistic hacks took place amid other, more questionable, breaches that some members of the collective said were done simply “for the lulz” (the laughs). But one thing is now clear: online activism has grown up over the past year, as people with ideals and technical expertise joined a global revolution against power, greed and economic inequality.
Web activism is now capturing the imagination of mainstream internet users, and is organizing for a new reason — to stand up for itself.
A case in point is the recent online rally against the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, currenly being debated by a Congressional committee. Opponents say the bill would dramatically diminish internet freedom, online privacy, and the free and fair use of copyrighted material.
Anonymous quickly leaped into the breach, threatening to attack the US government if the bill passed. But while Anonymous gears up for a potential cyber war, mainstream users are working to kill the legislation through more traditional organizing and legal actions.
Politicians, in return, are increasingly turning to online communities for support. The internet, it seems, has become it’s own interest group.

Last week, on the popular social news website Reddit, users began calling for direct action against lawmakers who have come out in support of SOPA, as well as PIPA, the sister-legislation in the Senate.

More: Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit.com, talks about his opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act.
Instead of calling for illegal hacks against politicians, the Reddit community decided to use its power to organize large numbers of people — as a labor union or minority group might — to punish those they deem to be pro-censorship lawmakers — doing everything they can, including digging up unsavory secrets and funding opposition candidates — to threaten their coming reelection bids.

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Redditors, as they are known, first targeted Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina in what was dubbed “Operation Graham Cracker.” After an online discussion, however, Redditors decided to shift their focus to Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, who is up for reelection in November and who activists say has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from SOPA supporters.
“Operation Pull Ryan,” those involved with it say, seeks to force the congressman to make clear his opposition to the legislation or suffer the consequences.
“Either Congressman Paul Ryan pledges to vote no on SOPA/PIPA or he is replaced by a[n] anti-SOPA/PIPA candidate,” the activists say.
In a three pronged attack, Reddit users seeking to undo Ryan are now working to catalogue the congressman’s “failures” in Wisconsin, pressuring his donors (using legal, political tools) into pulling their funding, and compelling Rackspace.com, a company that hosts Paul Ryan’s website and has publicly expressed its opposition to SOPA, to remove his domain from their servers.
One of the founders of Reddit’s Operation Pull Ryan, who also started pullryan.com, Reddit user EquanimousMind, who refused to give a real name, said that Reddit and other websites are becoming a new political force that are now beginning to assert themselves.

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“What you’re seeing with Operation Pull Ryan (OPR) is something new. Bills like SOPA / PIPA are forcing the evolution of the Reddit hivemind into something more focused, organized and dangerous. I think this is just the start,” EquanimousMind told GlobalPost in a message on Reddit, adding that users can speak only for themselves and not the entire Reddit community, which has millions of participants from all over the world discussing everything from My Little Pony to world politics.
EquanimousMind said that Operation Pull Ryan had been making progress after only a few days of looking into the congressman’s voting record.
“To be honest I'm a little shocked at what's not a secret, there is such a clear correlation between the tax loop holes he tries to pass and his corporate sponsor list. I don't think we even need to find skeletons to get him out of office based on his public record. Still, when you have over 2,000 people doing nothing but search for secrets on you, something might just pop up,” EquanimousMind said.
Reddit activists have also raised more than $15,000 in a fundraising drive to support the operation and plan to donate the money to Ryan’s 2012 election opponent, Rob Zerban, a staunch anti-SOPA Wisconsin Democrat.
With his ear to the internet, Zerban participated in a question and answer session on Reddit, where he explained his position against SOPA and other censorship legislation being debated in the US House of Representatives. His participation in the session endeared him to the Reddit community.
The power of the online activist community, in the same way a labor union wields power, is in its numbers and ability to organize. Increasingly, this is taking place around the world — from Cairo to Sanaa to Washington to London — through Facebook, Twitter and, now, forums like Reddit. And political campaigns are beginning to take notice.

Author : Jeb Boone

Source : Global Post

19th International Conference on Telecommunications

Jounieh, Lebanon | 23-25 April 2012

TELECOMMUNICATIONS: GROWING A CONNECTED WORLD

There is a growing interest in a pervasive and always connected world. The emerging generation of wireless networks, heterogeneous access technologies, ad-hoc and sensor networks, and new Internet technologies will be part of this new world.
While the radio cell size shrinks, there is a need for new, green, increasingly robust, secure, self-organizing, and context-aware networking protocols and techniques that challenge our designs for upcoming technologies, in a world that has become strongly dependent on those communication means. ICT'2012 will reflect on such trends.

The nineteenth International Conference on Telecommunications ICT'2012 will be held under the patronage of His Excellency M. Nicolas Sehnaoui, Minister of Telecommunications in Lebanon.

The annual ICT conference was initiated by the Centre for Telecommunications Research, King's College London.
Based on the initial success of Dubai in 1994, ICT has been held in:
Bali, Indonesia (1995)
Istanbul, Turkey (1996)
Melbourne, Australia (1997)
Chalkidiki, Greece (1998)
Jeju, Korea (1999)
Acapulco, Mexico (2000)
Bucharest, Romania (2001)
Beijing, China (2002)
Tahiti, French Polynesia (2003)
Fortaleza, Brazil (2004)
Cape Town, South Africa (2005)
Funchal, Portugal (2006)
Penang, Malaysia (2007)
St. Petersburg, Russia (2008)
Marrakech, Morocco (2009)
Doha, Qatar (2010)
Ayia Napa, Cyprus (2011) The 19th International Conference on Telecommunications ICT'2012 will be held in Jounieh, Lebanon.
The conference will feature technical presentations and tutorials.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Wireless Communications
• Ad-Hoc and Multi-Sensor Communications
• Multi-antenna systems - Multi-Carrier systems - Multi-user systems
• Cognitive Radio - Radio Resource Management - Game theory in communication systems
• Cooperative Communications - Peer-to-peer communications - Green Communications
• Cross Layer Design - Heterogeneous Networks
• Localization and Navigation - Satellite Communications
• Radio Frequency and Antenna design
• Optical communications and devices
• Signal Processing techniques for Communications
• Information theory - Channel coding - Joint source-channel coding
• Network coding - Compressed sensing
• Bio-inspired signal processing techniques
• Video Compression - Distributed video coding
• Multimedia Signal Pocessing - Audio signal processing - Video signal processing
• Virtual reality - Camera array processing
• Network theory and technologies - Routing techniques - Wireless IP – Voice and Video over IP
• Cryptography and Network Security - Computer and Communication Networks
• Distributed Algorithms - Cloud and Grid computing - Pervasive Computing
• Reconfigurable Architectures and design techniques for signal processing and communications
• Software and Simulation Tools

Source : http://www.ict2012.org/

Online shopping lets US export consumer lifestyle worldwide

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - As gift-buying frenzy mounts in the days before Christmas, United States (US) retailers are exporting the country's shopping culture along with once hard-to-get goods to locales around the world.
Spending at US 'e-commerce' websites climbed 15 per cent from the previous year by the start of December, and online sales on the 'Cyber Monday' after Thanksgiving set a new record high of US$1.25 billion (S$1.62 billion), according to comScore.
The international share of the Cyber Monday shopping tally climbed to nearly seven per cent, the industry tracker reported.
'Black Friday and Cyber Monday are definitely American exports,' said Michael DeSimone, chief executive of New York-based FiftyOne, which specialises in helping US store websites handle international transactions.

Source : The Straits Times