Green Revolving Funds Can Help Fund Costs of Cloud Computing and R&E Networking

07 February 2012, 01:20:00 PM from CircleID
 

There have been some interesting new developments in university Green Revolving Funds (GRF) that I believe could be a significant revenue opportunity for cloud suppliers and R&E networks. In this age of severe financial constraints and cutbacks for universities, new revenue models are needed to sustain advanced cyber-infrastructure in support of research and education.

In recent years, GRFs have become increasingly popular on campuses in the United States and Canada. The funds operate and are managed by the university, with loans issued to university departments or campus groups. As of February 2011, there were 52 active green revolving funds in the United States and Canada. These funds were traditionally earmarked for energy efficiency applications like changing light bulbs or boilers. But increasingly they are now being used for IT applications.

Most green initiatives involve ICT in some form or another. A good example is Iowa State University that borrowed $

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Is ICANN Opening up Public Comment Periods in Bad Faith?

07 February 2012, 12:02:00 PM from CircleID
 

I read with interest that ICANN opened up yet another comment period on new TLDs.

I believe that I speak for many when I question whether ICANN is opening up these comment periods in good faith, or instead whether these are smokescreens, mere distractions to pretend that ICANN is "listening" to the public while staff and insiders proceed with predetermined outcomes.

I note that as of today, there are multiple past comment periods where ICANN staff have not yet even summarized/digested the public's input. This is simply unacceptable. In other organizations, people would get fired for not doing their jobs in a timely manner. At ICANN, such behaviour is not only tolerated, it is seemingly encouraged. It appears to be part of the culture of "willful blindness" of ICANN staff, insiders and the Bo

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10 Reasons Why New gTLDs May Not Work For You

07 February 2012, 11:29:01 AM from CircleID
 

World's mega businesses are about to wake up to the domain name expansion reality, where suddenly a name identity's exclusive ownership on global canvas of cyber branding and functionality will be ensured via gTLD. Something that traditional trademark system took years to achieve. A gTLD brand is not for everyone, structurally designed for powerful new ideas and established organizations around the world; however, following are the ten reasons why it may not work for you.

1. Localization – Your offerings are focused on local markets and there is no agenda for a multi-directional outward expansion. True, there are millions of successful businesses comfortably paced and happily servicing their local customer base, but a gTLD is most suitable when there is a challenge to tackle unlimited marketing options and enlarge national or global visibility.

2. Discounted Pricing – You pursue a reduced price strategy over creating pr

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Phish or Fair?

07 February 2012, 08:03:00 AM from CircleID
 

It shouldn't be a big surprise to hear that phishing is a big problem for banks. Criminals send email pretending to be a bank, and set up web sites that look a lot like a bank. One reason that phishing is possible is that e-mail has no built in security, so that if a mail message comes in purporting to be from, say, accounts@bankofamerica.com, there's no easy way to tell whether the message is really from bankofamerica.com, or from a crook.

Mail authentication schemes like DKIM and the new dmarc.org group use cryptographic signatures to help authenticate mail and prove that it really is from who it purports to be from. So, if the mail can authenticate the sender, the phishing problem goes away, right?

Unfortunately not. One huge problem is that even if you have all the crypto stuff so you can be 100% sure that a message really is from, say, BANK-AMERICA.COM, you don't know whether BANK-AMERI

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New gTLD Application Monitoring? Now?

06 February 2012, 04:48:00 PM from CircleID
 

Why in the world would any company sign-up for a "New gTLD Application Monitoring Service" when ICANN intends to publicly post all applications on May 1st?

Domain Name Watching and Trademark Watching Services make perfect sense when new registrations and applications are being submitted and granted on a daily basis. I think that we can all easily agree that trying to understand new domain name and trademark registrations without an automated service would be nearly impossible.

And when ICANN eventually moves away from these discrete application rounds, I will be the first one to recommend an Application Watching Service.

However, as all new gTLD Applications in this first round will be publicly posted to the ICANN website on May 1st , it would seem that reaching for Ctrl-F would be the quickest and easiest way to search for exact- and near-matches.

Additionally, the applications that are likely to cause the greatest concern are probably those that

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Mobile Internet Usage at 8.5%, Doubled From Last Year

06 February 2012, 04:13:00 PM from CircleID
 

Global internet usage through mobile devices, has almost doubled to 8.5% in January 2012 from 4.3% last year according to a new report from web analytics StatCounter. While this stat excludes tablets, firm's research arm highlights the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet with market share doubling year on year since 2009. Nokia leads worldwide, most probably driven by its dominance in India. Apple is second globally but leads the US and UK markets. In the UK RIM is second only to Apple.

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