Finally, after nearly 8 years of tug-of-war, ITU finally comes to terms that it needs to work with ICANN as I noted a few years ago (here and here).

The Internet should continue to be overseen by major agencies including ICANN and the ITU, rather than any new “superstructure,” the new head of the International Telecommunications Union said on Friday…

“We all must work together, each agency has its role to play. We must come to a better cooperation … and avoid setting up a superstructure which would be very controversial and very difficult to put into effect,” Toure told a news conference.

I am glad we can all put this behind us and focus on other more important things :-)

Alcatel, one of the major submarine cable builder in the world, has an interesting resource page on submarine cables like an animation on how to repair submarine cables cut. (via Ben Frankes)

The animation looks easy. Detect the cut, pick up one cable, then the other and then join them back. Even considering it takes time to find the cables, it normally dont take more than 48 hours to fixed the cut.

So what did it takes so long to fixed the cable at the recent cable cut with some estimates going up to nearly 3 weeks?

Well, in an earthquake, the cables are displaced from its original expected position. Not only the cables are displaced, earthquake also causes landslides, which means the cables may be potentially buried. In a massive earthquake, there could also be multiple cuts. Displaced, hidden with multiple cuts, locating the sever submarine cables is like finding needle in the haystack.

“The Future of Learning” Manifesto is a great read even if you are not an educator.

For the educators, this definitely rings a bell: “I could memorize your facts, but I got Google for that…Are you teaching me to think? Or just to take notes?”

“Playing Small Does Not Serve the World…You’ve got one choice. Play big or stay home. Serve the world or be forgotten.” is an great advise for all alike.

For the parents (and all those who wishes to censors all the “bad things” on the net): “Today you worry about filters and predators and firewalls and the MySpace boogeymen. Okay, I want to be safe. And I appreciate you wanting me to be safe. I just don’t want to live in a locked box in the process.”

Last but not the least, for the technologists, a reminder that Email is dying: “How about we stop talking all giddy-like about the technology. For us, it’s not about the box. Not even about the iPod in pink or black. And it’s definitely not about the email (psst: we don’t email ‘cept when old people need help).”

Found this “comic” in the newspaper. It is more real then funny tho.

I have a fun time reading various predictions for 2007, e.g. Wired, Wireless, Funny, Google and Information Week.

Some sample includes:

– Internet Traffic Doubles to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent.

– Google GDrive will finally be launched

– Navigation becomes rather more important on mobiles. Mobile search doesn’t.

Some of the funny ones includes

– RFID and Web Services by Information Week [JS: hahahahahahahaha….thats so 2004]

– Nokia releases the mxx2115 cell phone incorporating an MP3 player, video games, digital camera, digital camcorder, text messaging, calendar, GPS, calculator, satellite radio, e-mail, downloadable video clips, web browser, voice recorder and digital thermometer before realizing that it neglected to include the ability to make phone calls. [Hint: Nokia 770]

I am tempted to add my own set of predictions but nay, I leave it for another day.

Happy New Year

As we start on a new year, lets look at the 2006 IPv4 Address Use Report

The current (jan 1st, 2007) figure for 2005 is 175.52 million addresses. Together with adjustments for earlier years, this brings the total addresses available to almost exactly 1.3 billion, down from 1468.61 million a year ago. This is out of 3706.65 million usable IPv4 addresses, so 2407.11 million addresses are currently given out to either end-users or Internet Service Providers.

Lets also put a stop the myth that “MIT has more IP addresses of whole of China”, something that is no longer true for a couple of years. Yet sadly, some still chant it, as recently as a couple of weeks ago by a NUS lecturer that I immediately put a stop to.

China is the 4th largest IP holder now after US, JP and EU.