Hop 255

Net Neutrality

Tim Berner's Lee has come out strongly in favour of net neutrality in this post.

Sidekick

Interesting story on stolen devices and tracking them.

Satellite guidance for the visually impaired

ESA report a prototype satellite navigation system accurate enough to direct vision-impaired pedestrians to their destination has recently been successfully demonstrated in Madrid. They say that In contrast to the 15-20 metre accuracy offered by GPS, the European system is accurate to less than two metres, and unlike GPS (a military system), the European version offers guaranteed signal quality. 

Wengo

Wengo, is a French VoIP provider, using open software. This might be an advantage for the future if Wendi Whitmore, from the US Airforce, is correct on trends in botnets.

World Cup Spyware

World cup sites apparently abound with malware according to McAfee's site advirsor.

Slingbox advertisment

A new Slingbox advertisment.

Voipcheap

Voipcheap is a new player in the VoIP market offering free calls to fixed lines in many countries. The only catch seems to be spending a minimum amount of metered calls (e.g to mobile etc) every 90 days. But it is hard to find the minimum charge on their website. If is not set too high it shouldn't be difficult to spend the minimum amount in that time period.

The fine print says:

"Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days. Unused free minutes cannot be taken to the following week(s). If limit is exceeded, a minimal rate of 1ct/min will be charged (as shown in the VoipCheap software)."

With VoipCheap, users can also get your own, regular phone number - for FREE.  They can therefore receive a call via VoipCheap. Phone numbers are currently available in:

Czech Republic
France
Germany
Netherlands
Switzerland
United Kingdom

The service is backed by Betamax. 

Their website says: "Betamax was founded in 2005 in Germany by a group of marketing experts. Funding from private investors and venture capitalists allowed for a rapid market roll-out of a variety of products which are powered by Betamax."

Text Link Ads

Text Link Ads (TLA) has a tool for estimating the value of advertising links over their system. Skype, for example, could earn $11,880 from a banner add at the top of their skype.com page or $10,764 from a side bar link (categorised under Other -- the link price increases if categorised under technology). Sell more than one link and the unit price declines but potential total earnings increase. 10 sidebar links, under the Other category, potentially earn Skype $4,036 per link or, in total, $40,360 per month for all links.

Google,Yahoo etc return messages such as "priceless", "too many zeros", "more than you can afford" and so forth while msn.com returns guess who? Gambling sites are paid the largest amounts for selling space. A popular food blog like Chocolate and Zucchini is $51 per link (side bar, single page) for 10 links or $510 per month in total. Alas this is not for all bloggers as the software doesn't work with Typepad blogs or Blogger (without a dedicated hosting account where you publish your Blogger blog) -- though you still estimate value of links with the tool. But it will work with some blogs.  Then again the links have to be sold for revenue to accrue.

Publishers can also choose to use TLA's automated publishing program to sell ad space. It operates on a 50% revenue share.

Allpeers

Hop255 is looking forward to the release of Allpeers. If it lives up to the promise it could revolutionise file sharing enabling simple exchange of encrypted content between closed groups.