Twitter is responding to mounting pressure after some high profile account compromises by allowing customers to opt-in to always-on secure HTTPS SSL mode.  Unfortunately, I doubt most people will go to the trouble of opting in by going to the security settings.  Since HTTPS is virtually cost-free to operate continuously for websites that already support HTTPS, Twitter [...]

Now that AT&T is following the footsteps of Comcast by instituting a 250 GB per month usage cap on their broadband service (150 GB for slower DSL customers), much of the outcry from the blogosphere aren’t justified by the facts.  These caps are large enough that they are irrelevant to 98% of the subscribers, and [...]

Clearwire Internet thought they could exaggerate their performance claims for their WiMAX wireless Internet services. The result is obvious customer anger and now a lawsuit.

Ookla, the company behind the popular speedtest.net broadband performance testing service, has released a new edition of the service this week with a few new features.  The already useful service is now even more useful with user accounts that allow users to save and share their test history data which is extremely useful for performance [...]

Pigs have apparently begun to fly as Google and AT&T seem to agree on something.  Both companies expressed a desire to get rid of the legacy analog phone network so in December 2009, AT&T wrote a letter to the FCC advocating the abandonment of the old telephone system. Google is adding a feature to their Google Voice software that [...]

Netflix doesn’t actually compete with subscription TV services from cable and Telco operators because their services are very different. Netflix is lobbying the Government to stop higher broadband prices when they’re also lobbying to have consumers subsidize the Netflix’s delivery costs.

Larry Downes has a good piece on the hunt for 300-500 MHz of mobile Internet spectrum and how the FCC is working to complete an inventory check on spectrum allocation.  When it comes to mobile Internet, physics and practical engineering and usability requirements limits us to frequencies between 300 MHz and 3700 MHz.  Less than [...]

It appears that Ashton Kutcher has become a high profile victim of Twitter’s negligence when someone at the TED conference hijacked Kutcher’s Twitter account using tools like Firesheep.  The Twitter PR account @TwitterGlobalPR twitted that Kutcher should have enabled SSL by typing HTTPS in front of twitter.com, but that deflects from the fact that it’s [...]

The same people protesting a 10 watt cell tower don’t seem to be as alarmed by TV towers broadcasting at over a million watt in the exact same VHF and UHF frequencies. By effectively paralyzing new cell tower construction, people are exposed to much higher cell phone transmit levels which are millions of times stronger than the cell tower due to close proximity.

I’ve been hammering popular online services like Facebook and Twitter for months for utterly weak efforts to protect consumers so I was pleased to hear that Senator Chuck Schumer has joined the fight. Some of the worst online services in my online security report card were served letters by Senator Schumer asking them to turn SSL security on by default.