Iranian protest at UN Plaza in San Francisco June 2009
The Iranian Communications Agency has formally announced it has banned Google’s popular email service Gmail.
The Iranian government said the ban would be “permanent”. The agency said the country would develop its own national email service for citizens to use.
During the botched Iranian elections last summer, the government blocked a number of social networking websites, including Facebook. The government later banned Twitter as protesters organized rallies through Twitter and published tweets including video of events amid the government crackdown on the protests.
The latest Gmail ban comes as the government warns people to refrain from participating in anti-government protests, one of which is scheduled tomorrow. More protests are scheduled on February 11, the day marking Islamic Revolution celebrations.
Update: Reports are coming in that there are SMS interruptions
The world’s top Internet search and online advertising company, Google, today announced an experiment project to develop and build ultra-speed Internet fiber optic networks capable of downloading at 1 gigabits per second.
Google says the purpose of the network is to “make Internet access better and faster for everyone,” and to give developers the necessary tools to create highly innovative technologies yet to be developed. Google’s ultimate goal for the networks is to lead to next generation apps, new deployment technologies, and more openness when it comes to selecting providers.
Apple Inc. today has been awarded a new virtual store patent (Patent No. US007660749) by the U.S. Patent Office, indicating the company could roll out a virtual app store environment where users could customize their own virtual characters.
The patent application also gives hints at the environment, suggesting there would be far more outside of the actual store. The entire virtual world, including the environment outside of the store, would dynamically change according to various factors such as the time of day, weather, and possibly even to yearly seasons such as summer and winter - think Rockstar’s GTA.
The AP removed from Google News after licensing talks break down, more publications could end their Google partnerships
The search giant has confirmed that it would no longer publish news articles from The Associated Press, after what appears to be a breakdown in licensing talks.
Google first started indexing and using AP content from the first licensing agreement set in the summer of 2007.
The news comes as other content providers such as the Wall Street Journal have threatened to block Google from indexing, using, and providing their content.
The world’s most popular online search engine, Google, today announced new changes for news content providers to limit the amount of news they provide free of charge.
The company introduced “First Click Free”, a new algorithm that can optionally limit each user to only 5 clicks per day for content from premium providers. On the 6th click, you will be taken to a subscription registration page.
The La Fonera 2.0 is a new smart wireless internet router by Fon that will let you connect a plethora of devices to access the internet from the router easily, anything from a printer, to hard drives, laptops, mp3 players, to other USB devices. It also includes support for various plug-ins on your computer so you can even download BitTorrent files, play media files, upload photos to Flickr, and a whole lot more.
Check out the video below to get a better picture of what the Fonera 2.0 can do. The router will cost about €50 or €60 as indicated by the the company CEO Martin Varsavsky in the video. The La Fonera 2.0 supports transfer speeds of up to 54Mbps working with a 50 meter range.
Hopefully this smaller router will pack a big punch and remove existing workability and cross platform obstacles found in many routers today that lose connections and require constant resets.
Despite slow holiday sales, internet retailer Amazon is reporting strong Q4 profits. The company says total revenue for the period was up 18% to $6.70 billion. Amazon says total revenue would have been up 24% thanks to unfavorable exchange rates. Net profit for Q4 was up 9% to $22 million. The company Founder Bezos also said the company’s ebook reader the Kindle, which has more than 230,000 titles was in “unusually strong” demand during the period.
If you want to know if your ISP blocks or throttles applications you are running, you can now use a new open source Google tool called Measurement Labs that is designed to tell you if your connection is throttled by your ISP via various diagnostic measurements. ISPs have been accused of blocking connections to various applications including BitTorrent and giving very slow connection speeds Read the full story
United Airlines has announced it will start offering in-flight WiFi service for $13 on its flights. Senior VP and Chief customer Officer at United said “we are investing in products and services that are most important to our customers, and having Wi-Fi access on board is something that they have told us is key…” Virgin already offers comparable in-flight internet connectivity.
The search giant has confirmed that it would no longer publish news articles from The Associated Press, after what appears to be a breakdown in licensing talks.
The 
United Airlines has announced it will start offering in-flight WiFi service for $13 on its flights. Senior VP and Chief customer Officer at United said “we are investing in products and services that are most important to our customers, and having Wi-Fi access on board is something that they have told us is key…” Virgin already offers comparable in-flight internet connectivity.