Google’s Gmail service has added a two-factor authentication mode for users who want a little more security in their Gmail account.  Gmail users can now have Google send them an SMS text message with a numeric code that would be used as a secondary pin in addition to the normal Gmail account password.  Gmail users [...]

For over 20 years, I have observed with alarm the steady expansion of legal and regulatory quantity and complexity, combined with serious excesses in the use of criminal sanctions. I have so often voiced an anguished “this can’t go on” that I have become an object of mockery to my children, who have known no [...]

With every millimeter shaved off the thickness of laptops and smartphones over the years, the cameras on those devices got substantially worse in quality because of the required shrinkage of the lens optics. Pelican Imaging aims to fix all this with their new image array sensor.

Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment, died last week, and Paul Kedrosky, who worked for Olsen for a time, has an interesting and touching tribute at Infectious Greed. Among his perceptions: The rise of Digital marked the beginning of the end of computers as scarce resources, something to be hoarded and parceled out in small pieces [...]

Via Fortune Magazine, IDC reports that Smartphone sales has exceeded Personal Computers (PCs) for the first time in Q4-2010. IDC also projects that Smartphones will expand its lead within the next few years with smartphone prices dropping rapidly and this has huge ramifications for several industries. What we think of as “computers” and “broadband” will have to undergo some radical revisions.

Says the National Academy of Engineering: [In 1988] the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable is installed . . . . The shark-proof TAT-8 is dedicated by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who praises “this maiden voyage across the sea on a beam of light.” Linking North America and France, the 3,148-mile cable is capable of handling [...]

Deep packet inspection or web crawlers had nothing to do with the Egyptian Internet shutdown, but Free Press rarely lets facts get in the way of exploiting a good crisis to call for government hearings. Ironically, it was Free Press asking the FCC to regulate Internet speech for decency.

Another interesting event tomorrow to which you cannot go because it, like the Kauffman affair, is full up – the Broadband Breakfast Club’s session on China and Intellectual Property, featuring Fuli Chen, IPR Attache for the Embassy of China and former Director of the International Law and IPR divisions at the Department of Treaty and Law [...]

Tomorrow – The Rules for Growth, the 2011 Kauffman [Foundation] State of Entrepreneurship Address and Luncheon at the National Press Club, “convened to explore effective, low-cost ways to promote innovation and accelerate U.S. economic growth, emphasizing changes in law and legal institutions that do not add to the national deficit.” (The event is sold out, so to [...]

Harris takes questions about mobile apps privacy and provides answers based on the CDT privacy perspective. Some of the questions are ones that are important to ask and will likely be discussed in the tech community for some time.