Author: Staff Writer

Markets are suddenly tumbling all around the world, right as Twitter is going public

Staff Writer

North American stocks have been sliding all morning. The S&P 500 index is down 0.6%, trading at 1760, 14 points off the highs of the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.2%, but the NASDAQ is the big lagger, down 1.0%. The index is being dragged lower by QUALCOMM (down 3.8%), Whole Foods (down 8.9%), and Tesla (down 7.5%), which all missed expectations on earnings this week. And after a boost earlier, European indices are now giving up gains. The Italian FTSE MIB is down 1.6%, and the…

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Google barges moored in San Francisco Bay, could be floating data centres?

Staff Writer

Mystery grows about Google barges moored off US coast The barges have a four-storey structure on deck and rumours are circulating about what the company plans to use them for. One suggestion is that they could be turned in to floating data centres powered by wave action. Others believe they could be fitted out with new showrooms for Google Glass with a “party deck” on top. So far Google has declined to comment on what the the vessels are being used for. “It’s an interesting concept,” said Nick Layzell, of…

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DotConnectAfrica attends Transform Africa 2013, calls for the progress of its .africa commitments to be acknowledged

Staff Writer

DCA was invited as a delegate to the international high-level conference that was held in Rwanda from October 28 to 31, 2013 Nov. 3, 2013 – The conference was attended by over 1,500 delegates and Seven African Heads of State including among others Presidents of Kenya, Uganda, Gabon, and Burkina Faso.  Other delegates included Ministers and CEO’s of blue chip firms. The summit was Co-hosted by President Paul Kagame and Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with the aim of pooling together International participants…

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Facebook & Google Move Up On Social Network Creep Index

Staff Writer

Google and Facebook gave the anti-social networking crowd new ammunition as they made moves that kicked them up a notch on the social media creep index. Let’s put it this way: If you were looking for an excuse to give up on these companies, these recent announcements certainly don’t give you good reasons to reconsider staying. As I define it, the creep index is like the Defcon Warning System of social media. Instead of defining how close we are to nuclear war, it measures just how intrusive and creepy our…

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The BRICS Internet Cable: Back to Cable Geopolitics?

Staff Writer

News of the laying of a BRICS-cable triggered public attention as news of laying telegraph cables did a century ago. The ‘cable rush’ by Britain, Germany and France – then major industrial and colonial powers – heralded the start of cable geopolitics which still exist today.  Despite all the promises of the end of geography and Internet ‘virtuality’, geography remains as important as ever. Are we facing a renewed interest in cable geo-strategy? In Part 1 of this article, we will look at the emergence of cable geo-strategy. In a…

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New gTLDs: does your business know a thing about new domain names

Staff Writer

New generic top-level domains are set to shake-up the way businesses pick names for their websites. We explain how they work The starting gun has been fired on the biggest land grab in the history of the web. Beginning today, thousands of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) will be unleashed, giving businesses the opportunity to be more creative with their website addresses. No longer will businesses be restricted to .co.uk, .com or the slightly more esoteric likes of .net or .tv. Instead, they’ll be able to put their brand name…

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The Open (Internet) Society and Its Enemies: Can Multistakeholderism Survive “Information Dominance”?

Staff Writer
MTN Zambia

Information Dominance For General Keith Alexander, the head of the US‘s major surveillance agency, the NSA’s fundamental ambition appears to be what he and the US military call “Information Dominance”. “Information Dominance is the ability to seize and control the information domain “high ground” when, where and however required for decisive competitive advantage… Information Dominance means freedom of action to maneuver and act — conduct offensive and defensive actions, kinetically and non-kinetically — at the intersection of maritime, information and cyberspace domains” John Arguilla, a leading US cyberwar strategist defines…

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Why the world’s technology giants are investing in Africa

Staff Writer

“I don’t understand. Why is it that the media only seems to talk about Africa when bad things happen?” The man behind the counter at my hotel in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, was talking to me about my job, and why I was visiting. He looked genuinely pained. He told me he is a big fan of the BBC – in west Africa the World Service and language services have a big following – but it seemed to him that the media outside the continent often only noticed when bad…

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book fair targets Internet giants Amazon, Apple and Google

Staff Writer

Organisers of the world’s biggest book fair warned on Tuesday against the domination of Internet giants as the publishing world grapples to blend old and new forms of reading. American giants Amazon, Apple and Google — whose entry into the world of online sales and digital books is threatening the traditional publishing industry — are “logistics magicians but are not publishers”, said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair. “There’s no passion there,” he told reporters as the giant German book fair prepared to open Wednesday. Boos warned it…

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Big data pitches the EU against US government and corporates

Staff Writer

The benefits of big data are being squashed under a steamroller of short-term corporate interests and the privacy abuses of security infrastructure, argues Joe McNamee. Joe McNamee, is the executive director of European Digital Rights (EDRi), an NGO that campaigns for civil rights in the digital environment. “What legal framework should be implemented when companies and governments increasingly know more about individuals than they know about themselves? This is the stark – and vastly underestimated – question that is facing European policy-makers in the reform of the data protection framework.…

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