Google charts a careful course through Asia’s maps

Here’s a piece I wrote to coincide with Google’s launch of Street View in Thailand: Google charts a careful course through Asia’s maps Google rushed out its panoramic Street View maps in Thailand on Friday as part of the country’s efforts to show tourist hot spots have recovered from last year’s floods.But it also marked something … Read more

The Gmail Phish: Why Publicize, and Why Now?

This Google Gmail phishing case has gotten quite a bit of attention, so I thought I’d throw in my two cents’ worth. (These are notes I collated for a segment I did for Al Jazeera earlier today. I didn’t do a particularly good job of getting these points across, and some of the stuff came … Read more

Skype Cuts Some Rates

Skype has lowered rates of its SkypeOut service to some destinations as part of its first anniversary celebrations. Here are the details: Six major new countries have been added to the SkypeOut Global Rate, a fixed, low-cost rate of 1.7 Euro cents per minute to popular calling destinations. China, Greece, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Poland and … Read more

Skype Comes To Asia

Skype has teamed up with Korea’s Daum Communications to offer a co-branded Korean version of the pseudo-VOIP free telephony service. Korea has the highest penetration of broadband in the world, and Daum claims 37 million members, so this could be quite a hit there. There’s no mention of whether the service offers Skype Out services, where … Read more

Tracking People With A Cellphone

Can services which allow you to track another person’s whereabouts be abused to monitor the movements of loved ones, employees etc without their knowledge? David Brake of Blog.org cites an article on Korea’s OhmyNews.com site that says yes. As he points out, there are plenty of services that offer this service with built-in safeguards to … Read more