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Realizing how alive and complex the internet is, reminds me of how unaware but amazingly complex the human body is. It’s one of those: “Out of sight, out of mind” situations, that once you’re made aware – explodes one’s mind into a million pieces…..which is also hard to picture. The infrastructure and “backbone” that constructs the internet is far to removed from our average understanding but the above picture helps put it into context, just how much info/data the services we love to use…..use. Even more shocking is the fact that in the near term future (2-3 years) the above mentioned numbers will seem like child’s play.

Source: Imgur

You’ve probably never heard of Ting Mobile but what they’re attempting to do is simply amazing. Ting Mobile is the closest thing I’ve seen to a morally sound mobile carrier and don’t even get me started about AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile (not so much the latter two). We all have horror stories about being over-charged on our monthly bill, being data throttled and the near impossible human customer support. Here is where Ting mobile comes in!

Information technology has become a ubiquitous presence. By visualizing the processes that underlie our interactions with this technology we can trace what happens to the information we feed into the network.

A small wireless carrier named Republic Wireless is on the verge of doing the unthinkable – offering $19/month voice/text/data plans! While we don’t know the full story yet and the complete details  - what we do know is that it will essentially be buying bulk minutes from Sprint and then reselling them to its customers. Does Republic have coverage in your area? Can you get in on this ridiculous deal? Find out everything Nov. 8th and sign up for email updates here.

Source: BGR.Com

There is no privacy with smart-phones - regardless of brand or OEM. Understand this!

Source: Allthingsd.com

Facebook opens up! No, Zuck doesn’t want to be our friend but Facebook wants to share its vast data center knowledge with the world, siting its Oregon data center as an example of efficiency. That’s right, the vast Prineville complex, built in cooperation with many  silicon valley tech giants, has increased energy efficiency by 38 percent and at the same time, lowering cost by 24 percent. The coming “Cloud Revolution” will demand an increase in data centers, both in numbers and in size, which will ultimately demand more power. The world’s ongoing energy crisis will be stressed, as more and more data centers are built, so Facebook’s “Open Compute Project” is a welcomed news. See for yourself – click here.

Source: Engadget.com

You know what a zettabyte is? Can you comprehend what a zettabyte is…..yea, I failed at that one too. Still, it looks like some people can and by some people, I mean an academic team from UC San Diego, that made it their goal to count yearly global internet traffic. In 1998, the special number they came up with was 9.57 Zettabytes! Hold on, let me go back a little and state that: A zettabyte is equal to 1 billion terabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes = 1000⁷ = 10²¹

That was 1998 and…well…..we’re now living in 2011….at least some of us are – so the number is going to be much much higher. In fact, the number was higher in 1998, as private servers, run by giant internet companies were not counted. I’m still waiting for my Seagate Zettabyte FireWire drive! Wanna check out the findings yourself, click here for the PDF.

Source: Engadget.com

Only Google can make bad news look so good and be so interactive. Know of Google Labs? Well, you should! Google’s public data explorer enables anyone to get amazing statistical data analysis for many US economic indicators. Case in point – the above picture shows our debt spiraling out of control! Shockingly amazing. Google’s web based interface allows you to get economic data on all 50 states and manipulate it in terms of “Debt” – “Revenue” – “Expenditures” or “Cash Security Holding.”  I promise, it’ll be a depressingly fun time!

Source: Google.com

You’ve heard the rumors – you’ve seen the signs and now you’re reading the rumors and signs about Apple’s MobileMe overhaul. Chatter is pointing towards an April launch of the new MobileMe service, with price ranging from free to $20 a year – fine by me either way. So what do we get for free or $20/Yr? Well, you get the regular goodies like contact, calendar, mail, find my iphone, gallery and iDisk but talk is pointing to a sort of music locker. Yea, locker but not like your high school locker, which was filled with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit pictures – this one is for backing up your music library and then…..streaming it to your iOS devices.

Supposedly, Warner Music is already on board and Apple is leveraging that agreement against other labels – what Apple does best – to get everyone on board by the April launch. Apple has the means (North Carolina Data Center) and the content (iTunes) and the technology (Lala.com) – now it’s just a matter of talking the content creators into joining the club.

P.s. If you sign up to MobileMe free 60 Day Trial now – it will grandfather you into the new service or you can cancel if you don’t like it

Source: 9To5Mac.com

Complaining about AT&T’s network now? You haven’t seen nothing yet. Cisco has just released their Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast and the results are stagering. Below is a snap shoot but click here for the full PDF – Enjoy.

Source: ArsTechnica.com

Fran Shammo, Verizon CFO, has told attendees at a Morgan Stanley Technology – Media and Telecom conference Tuesday, that tiered data pricing will come this summer but the actual details are still being worked out. What might the plans be based on you ask, well some things being considered are “By Consumption” pricing or “Speed Differentiation” pricing.

This is hardly a surprise, as AT&T has already moved to tiered data pricing but the main question for me still remains: Will all the people that just bought a CDMA iPhone 4 be grandfather in to these new plans? So much for my dream: $100 unlimited data(not 5GB) and unlimited Talk.

Source: BGR.com

Not a good week so far for Microsoft, as it has issued a reason for the mysterious Win Phone 7 data lose issue and has been accused of piggybacking Google’s search results.

WP7: As it turns out, Yahoo is to blame for the massive amount of unaccounted for data usage people had showing up on their monthly wireless phone bills. The issue specifically: “Rafael Rivera demonstrated that Yahoo was sending 25 times more data than other IMAP mail providers whenever the phone interrogates the mail server; though the amount of data transferred each time is not enormous, the effect over the span of a month can be many gigabytes of data.”

Caught Cheating: Husband’s away on a business trip and the gardner comes over to thin out your bed? No, nothing so provocative here, just a classic cause of, “if you can’t beat them, cheat of them!” Google has accused (with evidence) Microsoft of essentially piggybacking of searches: “To test this hypothesis, Google manually set up fake results pages for very random queries, sent 20 engineers home to search on those terms using a computer with the IE8 toolbar, and weeks later those same fake results for those random results showed up on Bing.”

Oh Microsoft – this midlife crisis will not last forever, so sell the sports car and get ride of the gardner. Stay true or exit stage right. NEXT!!

Source: Arstechnica

We knew it was just a matter of time and maybe we’re lucky it lasted this long but word out of China is that there’s a new Android effecting trojan on the war path. Don’t freak out just yet! Mobile security blog LookOut posted about the trojan and its potential:

“A new Trojan affecting Android devices has recently emerged in China. Dubbed “Geinimi” based on its first known incarnation, this Trojan can compromise a significant amount of personal data on a user’s phone and send it to remote servers. The most sophisticated Android malware we’ve seen to date, Geinimi is also the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities. Once the malware is installed on a user’s phone, it has the potential to receive commands from a remote server that allow the owner of that server to control the phone.”

Do we need to lock the gates and get our “Anti-Brad Pitt” spray? No! This only effects third party app stores – so essentially Google Market Place is fine and will continue to be fine, at least for the time being but this is a reminder of what is to surely come as the mobile space expands. Source LookOut Mobile Security
NEXT!!