But three years later, the effort known as the Global Network Initiative has failed to attract any corporate members beyond the original three, limiting its impact and raising questions about its potential as a viable force for change.

At the same time, the recent Middle East uprisings have highlighted the crucial role technology can play in the world’s most closed societies, which leaders of the initiative say makes their efforts even more important.

“Recent events really show that the issues of freedom of expression and privacy are relevant to companies across the board in the technology sector,” said Susan Morgan, executive director of the initiative. “Things really seem to be accelerating.”

The growing popularity of the iPhone and other powerful mobile devices ensures that mobile ads will become more ubiquitous, but predictions for the growth of the business vary widely. “We see mobile as a huge growth opportunity for us,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president for product management at Google, said in an interview. “We see an opportunity working with AdMob to really accelerate our efforts in an important industry for Google.”

Google is already ahead of its rivals, Microsoft and Yahoo, in one segment of the mobile advertising business: ads linked to search queries. The acquisition of AdMob, whose ad clients include Procter & Gamble, Adidas and Land Rover, will help it expand into display ads.

The all-stock deal is modest for Google, given its roughly $177 billion market value. But it is the company’s third-largest acquisition, behind the $3.1 billion deal last year for the advertising specialist DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube in 2006.

One of the six high-flying jobs Yahoo! Hotjobs featured in its latest article is about designing content for mobile platform. Here is the full description. (with an eulogized version of the job title) In US it guarantees a six figure salary, apparently. Cannot be as high as that in the developing world, but something worth keeping an eye on.

Mobile Experience Architect

The cool streaming videos and eye-popping CD covers that get delivered to the screens of millions of cell phones and PDAs each hour are designed to make you spend money. Information architects create the structure and mind-manipulating patterns (site maps) of each mobile delivery. You’ll need to learn about marketing, strategy, and user testing through a degree program in computer science, Web design, or business. There’s even an IT certification for professional mobile architects. Salaries range into six figures.

Read the full article in Yahoo HotJobs here.

Overall, cell-phone service has become significantly better, judging by the annual survey conducted in September by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. Contract terms for cell-phone service are less onerous, and there were fewer problems with call quality in this year’s survey. The best carriers even came through after a hurricane hit one of our survey cities.

Sixty percent of readers were completely or very satisfied with their service. That appears to be a substantial improvement over 2007, even though we made some changes to our survey this year, including expanding the number of cities we rate and the coverage areas within them.

Read the full story in Yahoo Finance here.

Vint Cerf, who can fairly be described as one of the godfathers of Internet has endorsed Barack Obama in the US presidential race, saying that his decision is swayed by Obama’s stance on net neutrality – the question of whether content providers should be charged more for different content by the “pipe” providers.

Extracts:

We believe that the Internet should remain an open environment. It’s vital to innovation. Companies like Google, and Yahoo, and eBay, and Amazon, and Skype and so on, got their start without having to get permission from any ISP or any broadband provider to offer services. They simply acquired access to the internet, put their services up and then made them available to the general public.

We think that’s the best way for the Internet to evolve and I’m pleased to say that in the upcoming presidential elections, the two candidates have rather different views of this particular matter. Senator Obama in particular sees things the way I do which is that the Net should remain open, fully accessible and providing access on a non-discriminatory basis to the people who want to offer new services on the network.

The preliminary, tentative judgment orders Sprint Nextel to pay customers $18.2 million in reimbursements and, more importantly, orders Sprint to stop trying to collect another $54.7 million from California customers (some 2 million customers total) who have canceled their contracts but refused or failed to pay the termination fee.

While an appeal is inevitable, the ruling could have massive fallout throughout the industry. Without the threat of levying early termination fees, the cellular carriers lose the power that’s enabled them to lock customers into contracts for multiple years at a time. And while those contracts can be heinously long, they also let the carriers offer cell phone hardware at reduced (subsidized) prices. AT&T’s two-year contract is the only reason the iPhone 3G costs $199. If subsidies vanish, what happens to hardware lock-in? Could an era of expensive, but unlocked, hardware be just around the corner? It’s highly probable.

Read the full story in YAHOO Tech here.

The cause for the runup in tower worker deaths isn’t completely clear, but it’s likely a combination of careless working practices (workers not using safety gear 100 percent of the time, or not using it correctly) and network operators pushing to build out and upgrade their networks too quickly. Hard to blame carriers for wanting to get faster networks up and running, but not at the cost of human life.

Read the full story in Yahoo Tech here.

“This is really the early days, but when you see the low banking penetration in emerging markets, compared to rapidly growing mobile penetration, the potential is very big,” said James Moberly, senior manager for payment solutions at Vodafone on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress here.

The GSM Association, the global mobile phone industry body, estimates that about a dozen such schemes involving money transfer services are in operation throughout the world, with 10 million users.

Vodafone plans to launch cash transfer services soon in India and other African countries.

“You can send money, withdraw cash, pay your bills or your loan, and all this is within seconds,” said Aleeda Fazal, head of product development at Afghan group Roshan, which is the partner for Vodafone in the troubled country.

Powered by ScribeFire.

In his first major speech since taking control of Yahoo last June, Mr. Yang announced the launch of a new upgraded mobile home page for cellphones, an updated version of its mobile portal Yahoo Go as well as new software tools to help outside developers design applications and widgets to work in conjunction with Yahoo’s mobile offerings.

Yahoo also announced new partnerships with News Corp.’s MySpace, eBay Inc. and Viacom’s MTV network, which will see those companies use Yahoo’s development tools to create mobile applications users can access through Yahoo.

However, Yahoo has opted not to enter the mobile operating system market. Microsoft has already shipped millions of Windows Mobile-equipped devices while Google plans to unveil its own open source operating system later this year that will run on dozens of phone models. While users will be able to access Yahoo’s home page from either of those operating systems, the trick will be convincing them to do so.

Read the full story here

Mobile banking services, which are also catching on in Kenya and South Africa, enable people who don’t have bank accounts to transfer money easily, quickly and safely. It’s spreading in the developing world because mobile phones are much more common than bank accounts.

The system is particularly useful for the 8 million Filipinos — 10 percent of the country’s citizens — who work overseas and send money home, like Dennis’ mother, Anna Tiangco. Previously, she sent money via a bank wire transfer, which costs $2.50 and takes two days to clear. The cell phone method costs only 13 cents and is nearly instantaneous.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The improved platform allows users to exchange text messages with mobile phones and comes as the portal experiments with making its Mail application “a stickier experience”.  

It offers a trio of contact options including basic email, Web chat and the transmission of text messages to mobile.  

The text-to-mobile feature is initially available in the US, Canada, India and the
Philippines but will expand to a further 21 other markets within next six weeks.  

Mail users simply type-in a phone number to the email address field to send a text message to wireless friends – although some carriers have already announced they will charge for delivery. Read more.

“They are pretty much trying to think about voice, content and access as palette from which consumers can choose.”

The guerillas are firms such as Google and Yahoo who don’t own a network and aren’t focused on ARPU, and whose apps run on PCs, mobile phones, PlayStations and all kinds of networks and devices. “They’re advertising-funded.  They have a different view of the world,” Schaefer said. Read more.

Searching the Web on a mobile phone has been a lot like getting online via dial-up modem circa 1995: slow, tedious and not terribly useful. Typing on tiny buttons, squinting at a list of links and clicking through to a page that won’t display properly is enough to test anyone’s patience.
The head of Yahoo’s mobile strategy, Marco Boerries, standing, said overcoming difficult Web navigation would be a challenge.

But that is beginning to change. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all trained their sights on cellphones, which they see as the next great battleground in the Internet search wars. They have thrown tens of millions of dollars and armies of programmers at the problem, seeking to develop tools that people on the move can actually use.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The ocean between Sri Lanka and Thailand now has one. It is up to us to make sure that the warning that get communicated from international and regional warning centers will be communciated to the affected communities promptly and that those communities will be prepared to respond properly.

NOAA Provides First Tsunami Detection Buoy for the Indian Ocean: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

Following a ceremony in Phuket, Thailand, where the 2004 Boxing Day event caused the most extensive tsunami damage in Thailand, the MV SEAFDEC set sail today to deploy the buoy about mid-way between Thailand and Sri Lanka. NOAA scientists and engineers are onboard to provide technical assistance during the launch operations.With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NOAA built and provided the DART station on behalf of the U.S. government. The buoy will be maintained by the Thai Meteorological Department and National Disaster Warning Center. The station’s data will be available to all nations through the World Meteorological Organization Global Telecommunications System and will be part of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

The Thai buoy is the first of 22 tsunameters planned for the Indian Ocean’s regional tsunami warning system. NOAA will provide a second DART buoy further to the south in the spring of 2007. This is part of an end-to-end warning system that includes tide gauges, communications upgrades, modeling, and dissemination systems for five countries — Indonesia, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand.