The high costs of the cloud

Call it the curse of the cloud. The proliferation of online video services and portable devices to watch them on have added congestion to data networks even as wireless carriers impose fees on its biggest data users. According to Bytemobile, video accounted for half of all mobile data traffic in February, up from 40 percent only a year earlier.

via The high costs of the cloud | MediaFile | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters.com.

It won’t be just iPads and the next generation of iPhones taxing wireless networks. Apple is the first to offer an LTE tablet to the masses, but LTE Android tablets will follow, as will more LTE phones powered by Android, which runs on 51 percent of the world’s smartphones. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have been building out their 4G networks for years, but Verizon recently warned that despite that effort, demand will outstrip LTE capacity as early as next year.

Open Source SQL Database Security, SQL Injection Prevention

GreenSQL is a Database Security solution.

GreenSQL is an Open Source database firewall used to protect databases from SQL injection attacks. GreenSQL works as a proxy and has built in support for MySQL and PostgreSQL. The logic is based on evaluation of SQL commands using a risk scoring matrix as well as blocking known db administrative commands (DROP, CREATE, etc). Commercial version of GreenSQL supporting Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL, The GreenSQL Express version is available for FREE at GreenSQL.com database security solutions.

via   | Open Source SQL Database Security, SQL Injection Prevention.

Can Mobile Operators Create Artificial Demand for Capacity?

This leads to a fundamental implication; are operators creating artificial demand intentionally to drive market prices up with tiered pricing and data caps, while at the same time, screaming for more spectrum allocation? The question remains, what benefits operators the most, building out networks with extensive capital spending, or making more profits on the demand and supply curve?

via Can Mobile Operators Create Artificial Demand for Capacity?.

Corporations Tend to Think Short-Term

Large corporations are notoriously short-sighted when it comes to, not only predicting, but acting on, consumer demand for the long-term. Since they are coupled to Wall Street fundamentals in creating short-term profits, spending for the longer term profitability usually takes a back seat. Put off today what can be worked out later for consumer demand. This is what we are seeing as network capacity demand outstrips the provider’s ability to keep up. See (The high cost of the cloud)

Facebook Considers Adding The Hate Button

According to Facebook’s S-1 filing, users are now generating 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day. With the Hate button, Facebook expects to at least double that. The S-1 noted “popular Pages on Facebook include Lady Gaga, Disney, and Manchester United, each of which has move than 20 million Likes.” Many inside the company think the Hates could easily top that.

via Facebook Considers Adding The Hate Button | TechCrunch.

Software defined radio from a USB TV capture card

So far, two USB sticks have been tested and the unit with the largest frequency range (64 – 1700 MHz) is available direct from China for $20.

via Software defined radio from a USB TV capture card – Hack a Day.

These cards demodulate the frequency and send all the data to the computer and is decoded via software. If you have one of these capture cards lying around, you can grab the software and load it up on your *nix box. Right now, the software only writes directly to a file, and may drop a few samples if writing to a hard disk instead of ram. Small problems, but we’re sure this project will pick up steam in the very near future.

rtl-sdr – OsmoSDR

rtl-sdr is a commandline tool that can initialize the RTL2832, tune to a given frequency, and record the I/Q-samples to a file.

The code can be checked out with:

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git

via rtl-sdr – OsmoSDR.

Software Defined Radio

“Girls Around Me” Creeper App Just Might Get People To Pay Attention To Privacy Settings

For example: all these options in Foursquare default to on, which is really fine, since after all the service is about sharing your location. And linking it to your Facebook or Twitter account is a natural step for many. But at the same time it’s easy to fail to understand that one is providing a sort of path that strangers can follow from a face on the street to a name, other photos, current location, and a number of other things.

via “Girls Around Me” Creeper App Just Might Get People To Pay Attention To Privacy Settings | TechCrunch.

Foursquare

Foursquare, stylized as foursquare, is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users “check-in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby.[3] Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile device or network location provided by the application. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes “badges”.

via Foursquare – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. Google bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude. Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS technology, rather than an application.[4]