Webtop apps or cloud based apps that run in a browser are the new wave of killer apps. Instead of monolithic applications built for the masses, the masses are building their own mass and micro market apps. New tools continue to make this easier. The Mozilla foundation’s Prizm is one such tool. The following video demstrates how simple building for the webtop can be.

In this video I show you how to create an application that looks and feels like a desktop application but runs on a typical Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP stack. The application has a back end database, is written in PHP, and uses Mozilla XUL instead of HTML. I also discuss how to use Mozilla Prism to create a streamlined version of the application that will run outside of a typical Web browser. (Linux.com) link to video

Qwest formally announced their anticipated FTTN service for 23 markets today. The price is high and availability was not clearly defined in the press release. Here’s a few highlights:

• Qwest Connect Quantum: This is a premium fiber-optic Internet service with connection speeds of up to 20 Mbps, for lightning-quick broadband access for a bundled price of $99.99 per month. This is the fastest connection speed available in most cities in the Qwest residential service region. Quantum is designed for serious broadband users who want to optimize speed for streaming video, high-resolution photography, file-sharing, online gaming and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Quantum is backed by Qwest’s Price for Life and 100% 30-Day Satisfaction Guarantees.

• Qwest Connect Titanium: With connection speeds of up to 12 Mbps for a bundled price of only $46.99 per month, along with the Price for Life and 30-Day Satisfaction Guarantees, Titanium is the best value available in the Qwest residential service region. The service offers super-high speeds ideal for customers interested in online music, video and keeping in touch with friends and family. At less than $50 per month, Titanium offers robust speed at the best value.

• Availability: Qwest Connect Quantum and Titanium will be available in 23 of Qwest’s top markets across 10 states in 2008 as Qwest continues to execute its phased rollout of fiber-optic technology to the neighborhood. Customers can go to www.qwest.com and enter their zip code or phone number to check availability and sign up for notifications regarding the availability of the faster speeds in their neighborhoods. (Qwest)

At $99.95 the top tier service isn’t cheap, but I’ll bet there are plenty of takers. It makes me wonder why people like AT&T management are so afraid of the supposedly low margins from a big dumb pipe.

There must be a full moon shining over monopolistic corporate management these days. Internet marketplace monopolist Ebay is hurt that Craigs List management unilaterally diluted the value of their shares without asking them first. It sounds like to pot calling the kettle black when you consider how careless Ebay management has been with shareholder equity. Consider the investment in Skype. It was the biggest blunder, but there were many, many more in Ebay’s recent past.

Back in 2004, eBay bought a 28.4 percent stake in Craigslist; although the suit is filed under seal in a Delaware Chancery Court, eBay is asking the court to rescind unspecified actions by Craigslist’s board of directors.

“Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder,” said eBay senior VP and general counsel Mike Jacobson, in a statement, “so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions. We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay’s stockholders and preserve our investment.” (Digital Trends)

Ebay had been trying to cast a knder and gentler image for themselves after the departure of the ruthless chief  executive with the soccer mom demeanor, Meg Whitman. It looks like the nice act is over.

We always knew that Comcast’s suits were pining for one of our coveted foil hat awards. Well after many failed attempts they’ve finally earned one . They are accusing AT&T if causing intereference by intermingling wiring inside of residences. The only way that this could happen is using an existing coax run from an AT&T STB to a television. If Comcast also has a signal on the same line, it’s extremely doubtful either would work. My guess would be the reported incidents are a result of the customer doing a little rewiring after the install. Sorry guys, but you can’t hang that one on AT&T.

The situation arises when customers mix and match Comcast and AT&T U-Verse services, like Comcast High-Speed Internet and U-Verse TV. Outside of the home, the data travels over different wiring: copper coax for Comcast and twisted pair for AT&T’s U-Verse. Inside the house, both services use the same coaxial wiring, which causes problems in some cases. (Ars Technica)

Think twice about taking your laptop on international flights. Even if you have a backup, your personal and business data is at risk of being shared as it has to be surrendered to border officials. That will make it much safer to rent or borrow a computer at your destination vs carry. A thumb drive containing your data will probably not get so much attention. Then again, secure storage in the cloud may be an even better solution.

As was widely expected, an appeals court has ruled that customs agents have every right to search the content of your laptop, reversing the only court case that had ruled otherwise (a few others had previously said such searches were just dandy). The court found (just like the other rulings) that there’s an “exception” to the 4th Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure at the border. The government, of course, claims that it needs to be able to search laptops to keep people safe — but it doesn’t explain why it needs the ability to search any laptop even if there’s no suspicion or reason to do a further search. (Techdirt)

Finland. Fron the same folks that produced Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning now comes a virtual production studio. They have developed a collaborative creation platform for film. Barrier to entry? None. Just join and provide your talents.

The Star Wreck Studios team, based in Tampere, Finland, has built a virtual studio for Iron Sky and an open-source platform that gives anybody the chance to make a film at no cost. They have recruited American Stephen Lee as managing director, and the chairman of the board is John Buckman, mostly known as the founder of Magnatune, a record label he created in Berkeley, Calif., in 2003.

Board member and serial entrepreneur Peter Vesterbacka says the aim of the open-source project is “wrecking the Hollywood model.”

“Hollywood only distributes 700 films a year, but there are 100,000 people in Hollywood with film ideas,” said Vesterbacka, who formerly worked for Hewlett-Packard and is also co-founder of the global social event Mobile Monday.

With this Web-based platform, people interested in film can make high-quality productions at almost no cost. The content can be anything from short films to feature films and can be distributed on the Internet or mobile devices or in theaters.

Vesterbacka says open source for film hasn’t worked so far, because of the complex production requirements.

So lets see. The big studios are losing their grip on distribution. They could still survive being the point of production and do some sort of pay-per-view TVoIP platform. But wait if Star Wreck Studios can approach 80% of production value for 10% the cost does that not threaten the big studios last bastion of revenue? I come to the same conclusion.

Star Wreck may not be the last such operation, but one of many. There will be a wholesale morphing of film. Or I should say how it is stitched together and deployed. Not only that but maybe this kind of tool would give folks like Michael Yon a venue to produce a full length film that is better than the Iraq-something trash that has bombed at the box office so far. Real life heroes in a real life place.

Linky.

Ever heard of second life? The full immersion virtual world? Ever wish you could build your own environment? And if you could do that why not build a virtual meeting world on steroids? Well that time looks like it is about there — MetaPlace.

Right now it looks pretty crude. Hey its beta code. But the fact that is permits the developer to create their own worlds has potential. It could replace WebEx style meetings with the appropriate tools added on. Give a high level of interaction that up till now has merely been a dog and pony show of one to many presentations. Scientists could do work in real time. Merely bring the results of the scientific data of the real world into the virtual.

This will be a technology to watch as it is brought to fruition. It won’t be just for games.

When you have a small number of competitors in a business, like the US has in the broadband access business, providers tend to create artificial scarcity and ration service. It’s almost a natural law. another one of those oddly natural laws is the 80 / 20 rule. 80% of users of any product will use 20% of a resource and 20% will use 80% of a resource. I matters not if it’s free refills on coffee, or the beer that is bought and paid for by the bottle, it holds true for both. It’s also true of bandwidth usage and should be expected by providers as a normal metric of their business.

Om Malik recently interviewed Danny McPherson, CTO of Arbor Networks, a supplier of network-management and traffic-shaping tools to carriers. You would think he would naturally concur with the Comcast line that the majority of traffics is peer to peer, but his data includes some very unexpected numbers:

The P2P stats are the ones that came as a complete surprise. Like you, I have read many reports that suggest P2P applications account for the majority of the traffic on high-speed networks. But McPherson’s data suggests otherwise:

• 20 percent of traffic is P2P applications
• During peak-load times, 70 percent of subscribers use http while 20 percent are using P2P
• Http still makes up the majority of the total traffic, of which 45 percent is traditional web content that includes text and images. Streaming video and audio content from services like YouTube accounts for nearly 50 percent of the http traffic. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone — streaming TV shows from Hulu and videos from YouTube have been on a major upswing, as noted by our colleagues over on NewTeeVee. (GigaOm)

It would seem that the 80 / 20 rule also applies to P2P traffic. As for the bandwidth “hogs”, Telcos have been building network capacity using the 80 / 20 rule since the days of the rotary telephone. The cable guys should certainly understand this as well since they’ve also been fixed line voice providers for over a decade.

Providing bandwidth becomes exponentially cheaper every year, but it does require a commitment to invest proportionally in plant and equipment to keep up with increasing demand. If you have little competition it’s easier and cheaper to create scarcity and ration. The creation of mythology like networks being overwhelmed by illicit P2P traffic is part and parcel of creating the scarcity myth.

It appears that Comcast is not the only one play games with TCP resets on Torrents according to the blog Torrent Freak. Here be the list of expected offenders –

If you are interested there is a plug in you can use to determine what is happening to your Torrent traffic. It is clear that Comcast is the leader but they are not alone as the table indicates.

Qwest is offering 20MBPS DSL to some customers and is investing $300 million to bring it to a few more this year. Unlike AT&T who is pretty much devoting new bandwidth to deliver pay TV, Qwest will sell you the whole pipe as it were, but at a rather princely price:

The price for 20Mbps/1Mbps service without phone service is $105, a price that jumps to $115 per month after a year. The price for 12Mbps/1Mbps service in that market is $52 a month, a price that jumps to $65 a month after 12 months. Still no official announcement from the company, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it surface this week. (DSL reports)