Upwards of 25,000 protestors participated in large rallies throughout Europe on Saturday to protest ACTA, a worldwide anti piracy agreement which they believe will encourage internet surveillance.
You can read more about the protests over at stuff.co.nz
Hayden Crowther has created a waterproof case for use with all smartphones and called it the driPhone.
Mr Crowther plans to trademark the case in New Zealand, however Apple Inc are opposing this because they want the letter “i” to be replaced with a “y”.
You can read more over at stuff.co.nz
Last week we discussed how the closure of Megaupload is affecting innocent users of the file sharing service. Now it seems there is little chance for these users to ever get their data back.
InternetNZ chief executive Vikram Kumar believes Megaupload would have to come back as a going concern for it to be possible for innocent users to regain access to their files.
My Kumar believes it would be unrealistic for third-party hosting companies to decide which users should regain access to their files.
You can read more over at stuff.co.nz
Following Megaupload being temporarily shut down, it now looks like many other file sharing websites are shutting down world wide due to a US Government led crackdown on piracy.
Unfortunately this is hitting legitimate users of these websites who are now unable to access their files.
Steve Su, an academic in Perth was caught out by the closure of Megaupload.
“It’s like confiscating everyone’s mobile phone because terrorists used them,” he said. “I don’t think it’s correct to penalise the technology because, based on that logic, shouldn’t the internet be taken down, as this is how people infringe copyright?”
You can read more over at stuff.co.nz
Southern Cross Cable has cut the price it charges for transferring internet traffic to and from New Zealand by almost 50%. The announcement came hours after a plan for a rival trans-Tasman cable took another step towards happening.
The rival cable would be owned by Axin and run by Kordia, a New Zealand state-owned enterprise.
Marketing director Ross Pfeffer, of Southern Cross Cable has said the timing was ”totally coincidental”.
You can read more over at stuff.co.nz
It’s been 40 years (and a week or two) since email as we know it was invented.
Here’s a brief extract on the history of email taken from stuff.co.nz:
“Internal messaging systems have existed since the 1960s but in 1971 Tomlinson was helping build ARPANET for the US Department of Defence and laying the foundations of the modern internet. Tomlinson needed an easy way to send electronic messages between the various computers hooked up to ARPANET. He chose @ – generally referred to as the ”at” symbol – to designate that a message was intended for a specific user ”at” a specific organisation. The email protocol continued to develop but, for the next 20 years, it was restricted to academic and military use.
The internet was opened up for commercial use in the 1990s and email went mainstream.”
Wellington technology blog, ReadWriteWeb, has been purchased by San Francisco digital publishing company Say Media.
TechCrunch is reporting the deal is worth US$5 million.
ReadWriteWeb was launched in 2003 by Richard MacManus, and now employs a staff of just under 20, who are mostly based in the US.
Richard MacManus has revealed ReadWriteWeb attracts about 5 million page views and 2.75 million unique visitors each month.
You can read more over at stuff.co.nz
In light of a recent Google survey which found 1 in 10 users don’t know what CTRL – F does, theage.com.au has come up with a list of handy keyboard shortcuts.
Before I list some of them, you may be wondering what CTRL – F does. It’s used to search for text on a page. Give it a go now by searching for a word on this blog post.
“CTRL-C: to copy text
CTRL-V: to paste text
CTRL-Z: to undo a command
SHIFT-CTRL-Z: to redo the command above”
If you’re using a Mac, use the Apple command key instead of CTRL.
For a full list of handy shortcuts, check out theage.com.au
Note: I originally posted this on our Australian blog, but thought people would find it useful so have also posted it here. Let us know any shortcuts you use that aren’t listed.
Apple has announced the NZ release date for the iPhone 4S, with the device expected to arrive in stores on November 11. Customers can pre order the device from Friday.
You can read more at stuff.co.nz, including prices for the different models.
