Archive for the ‘News’ Category

What do you know about Net Neutrality?

Chances are, you haven’t heard of it,or you’ve heard it but don’t really know what it is – and you know what the scary thing is? If Net Neutrality is ended, the Internet as you know it is gone forever, split into a fast lane for companies with money and a slow lane for small businesses, individuals, clubs and societies – in fact, anyone who can’t afford to pay ISPs to have their site in the fast lane. ISPs may even completely block access to sites who aren’t able to pay them.

e.g with net neutrality, Small Biz A and Large Corp B can be accessed by anyone using ISP C, at the same speed as each other.

If there were no net neutrality, Large Corp B would be able to afford to pay ISP C – so that ISP C’s customers could access Corp B’s website at the highest possible speed.

Because Small Biz A cannot afford to pay ISP C, users are not given the same high speed access to the website of Biz A, so it takes longer for users to load the page and access Small Biz A’s site – giving Large Corp B a massive advantage. Maybe Small Biz A’s website couldn’t even be accessed by users of certain ISPs.

This reduces the ability of Small to Medium Size Enterprises to compete online with larger businesses, turning the Internet into a fast lane for those sites who can afford to pay, and a slow lane for those who can’t.

Barack Obama Recognises the Importance of Net Neutrality

In November 2007, before he became President, Barack Obama gave an important speech to Google about Net Neutrality – it’s 51 seconds, so have a quick watch before you read on -

Barack Obama also spoke of his support for Net Neutrality when he appeared on MTV:

Small Businesses won’t be able to compete online anymore, Clubs and Individuals will lose traffic, members and new visitors, and You and I will have to surf an Internet dominated exclusively by massive international brands. You won’t see Blogs that are self-hosted, no uploading your pics to a site that’s currently free. It will be a bleak and frankly rubbish place to be.

It will add an additional cost to businesses, which they’ll no doubt pass on to you, so you will end up paying more to stop small businesses, not-for-profits and individuals from having an effective presence online.

It will ruin online innovation – startups often bootstrap initially, flying by the seat of their financial pants until they achieve profitability. The additional costs to be given access by ISPs and get on the fast lane would often be prohibitive – if we didn’t have Net Neutrality, today’s online success stories might never have happened. The likes of Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google and many many more might never have existed if they’d had to pay out massive amounts of money, just so users could access their sites. Imagine if you’d never been able to access Facebook, Yahoo mail or Gmail or been able to buy books. Imagine if you’d never had access to Google, or Yahoo…

Virgin Media in UK are Against Net Neutrality

Over here in the UK in April 2008, the CEO of Virgin media stated that he is against neutrality as it’s ‘a load of bollocks’, and wants to charge people for enhanced speed access to Virgin’s internet customers – in fact they are ALREADY doing deals with media companies. If Virgin are your ISP they could already be limiting your access or speeding it up to certain companies – does that concern you? I think it should.

In my opinion he has undone years of Virgin’s branding work, where they aim to be perceived as slightly rebellious and maverick, but always on the side of the customer. By coming out against net neutrality, he has shown his company to be anti-user as far as I’m concerned.They also seem to be at odds with the overall feling towards Net Neutrality – and in that way, are acting against the interests of their customers by applying speed variations – if indeed they are, as chatter on forums would suggest – do a search on ‘virgin media limiting speed’ for yourself!

It’s the one thing that’s put me right off Virgin, and I find myself surprised that any company Richard Branson’s involved with would act with such anti-progress ridiculousness!

Virgin Media’s position on Net Neutrality -

I have boycotted Virgin products since last year as a result and will continue to do so until they publically agree that Net Neutrality is the right way forward for the whole world.

I get my Broadband from BT – who say, according to the Stop Virgin website:

“… Unlike Virgin, we think the bandwidth we provide our users should be equal for all services and if services like the BBC iPlayer put too much strain on the bandwidth, both ISP’s and content providers should educate the users on that issue so that users know when and why they may have to upgrade their account for more bandwidth if it exceeds ‘fair use’ terms. We always bear the consumer in mind first and have no plans to prioritize traffic from third party companies. We welcome all the Virgin customers who left because of the net neutrality issue and offer ‘neutral’ bandwidth.”

It’s not too often I say it, but ‘good on ya, BT!’

There are lots of resources you can see via SaveTheInternet.com , YouTube and via the search engines. This 3 minute video explains Net Neutrality in some detail:

Even Ninjas recognise the importance of Net Neutrality!

That’s why it’s so important you support Net Neutrality – Net Neutrality is what makes the Internet the massively useful global phenomenon it is today. Without Net Neutrality, the Internet would suck!

On September 21st, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission in the US) Chief ‘Boldly’ Committed to Net Neutrality. In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Genachowski said the FCC must be a “smart cop on the beat preserving Net Neutrality against increased efforts by providers to block services and applications over both wired and wireless connections.

Visit Savetheinternet.com to find out more, and see how you can help make sure the Internet of tomorrow still gives you the freedom to choose what you access.

Rob Bell

Yes, it’s true – the Internet Police have been round and arrested me for neglecting my blog once again. They said I had been blogging with undue care and attention, leaving my blog unattended for many days, even weeks at a time.

Oh blog, what can I say? I neglect you so, yet you sit there showing the world my words 24/7/365 unaffected by my ignoring you. They say I haven’t been feeding you properly, or dressing you appropriately. It’s not that I’ve lost interest, I still care for you – but I’m sorry, I’ve been seeing other Web platforms and activities. Yes, I have been spending increasingly more time with my Web Design business, and I’ve been seen a lot around Twitter and Facebook – I have also been spending a lot time with new clients, or on courses, webinars, or my other business, Ex Ignibus.

It’s not that I don’t love you, I’m just not sure that I’m in love with you – you’re not the blog I met almost 4 years ago (actually that’s true, you’re not that blog but you look and sound just like she did). You’ve got kinda bloated with all those plugins and applications I so love to feed you with, and your dress sense is so out of date compared to my other sites, who all got updated a couple of months ago. Your style just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the pack anymore…. but I don’t want to lose you.

There’s so much we should be doing together, and I know we have a bright future together – we just need to work better as a team, show a united front, and do what we do best together – giving useful information to novices and experts alike, on how to market ethically and effectively online, all about the latest trends online, and how best to use networks like Twitter. We need to up our game, dear blog, so here’s what has to happen.

Nothing much is going to happen here over the next week, because I am absolutely busied up with client work – and no matter what you say, you’ll always come second to my beloved clients.

After that, you and me are going to be spending some quiet time together, working on cleaning you up, getting you into optimised shape, thinning down your plugins, and completely redesigning your style and layout to turn you into one cool, sexy, intelligent blog that people are going to want to hang around with once again.

So get ready, because October is going to go down in history as the month you grew up and left your chrysalid to become a beautiful butterfly, rippling waves of positive effect across the blogosphere.

I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you – I’ll do better, I promise.

Your Naughty Owner,

Rob x

p.s. I got away with a caution from the Internet police, but they said they’d be keeping an eye on me in the future – and they’ll be back if I treat you bad ever again!

I’m not quite sure what it is… it’s not time, it’s not lack of ideas, it’s not lack of content… but something makes this blog harder to keep updating than any of the rest of my web estate! Those of you who follow me on social networks know that I’m online plenty, always researching new and quality information and applications, engaging with and sharing with people. I have almost 2,300 Twitter posts to my name at the time of writing this, so why oh why oh why do I find it such a chore to look after my blog? It’s been 6 weeks since my last update here – shame on me!

Does anyone else share this malady, and find their blog to be the hardest part of their web presence to maintain?

Of course, I have a bagful of excuses – too much client work, medical appointments, other jobs to do, things to learn, too busy talking to people – but at the end of the day, they are just excuses. I can make time for this blog, I’ve just failed to do so, and I aim to rectify this starting today. I made an agreement with my mentor to finalise the core of each of my sites – I’m going to include this site too, so a redesign to fit in with the others is imminent!

I always put pressure on myself to make my blog posts fit certain criteria – they have to be a certain minimum length, be original content that isn’t lifted from somewhere else, pass my rigorous quality standard… and I set the bar too high for myself, it’s so high I can’t realistically hope to fulfil all the requirements every single time – I have been paralysed by my own perfection-demanding nature. I read Seth Godin’s blog posts each day via RSS and they’re not often very long at all – why do I crave lengthiness in my own??!?

So today I’m giving myself a slap and reminding myself of the saying “You don’t have to be great to get going, but you do have to get going to be great”

What are you going to get going today to get great?

Rob Bell

p.s. I stayed up until ridiculous o’clock to ensure I got my vanity link on Facebook, so I’m going to use it lots – friend me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/robbell

p.p.s. And as if you didn’t already know, on Twitter I’m @robbell

Today is a big day for some, and a day like any other for many. Unless you’re a Social Media nerd, you probably couldn’t care less, but Twitter reached an important milestone today.

Ashton Kutcher went against Larry King and CNN and fought to become the first user to have 1 million people following them.

At 7.15 (ish) GMT this morning, Kutcher won! EA had offered to give all their games for a year to the person who was millionth to follow him, which resulted in so many people trying to follow him at that point many struggled to follow in time, and he shot to 1,000,300 in the time it took me to refresh my screen from the point he was at 999,976.

Kutcher broadcast live via Ustream as the moment approached, and a party began straight after his victory speech, then he was up dancing away with wife Demi Moore to ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang (incidently, I share the same name as the lead singer – Robert ‘Kool’ Bell – different middle names though!!!)

The battle was watched live on CNN and on the web via live-stats analysis provider Chartbeat (see below)

In his victory speech, with fellow twittererati P Diddy on speakerphone, Kutcher talked about how it’s a victory for new media – no longer are we confined to having to rely on tv and newspaper news because the people can now reach each other with no help from the media at all, and one person can reach out to millions easily. He played down his individual victory, declaring it a victory for the new information age against the old school.

Kutcher also passed 1 million followers on his Facebook account yesterday, without actually promoting it.

When I wrote The Ultimate Guide to Twitter, I documented the top 10 Twitterers – Obama was at the top with almost 250,000 followers. Now, just 2 months later he has almost 750,000 – but Kutcher and CNN have both overtaken him to become the two most followed accounts. The growth of the service in those 2 months is phenomenal, and it’s predicted to continue – especially given the fact that Oprah Winfrey is about to become the next celebrity twitterer, with Kutcher helping her send her first tweet live on her TV show later today. We’re expecting a big influx of stay at home Mums turning to Twitter along with Oprah today. I wonder how long it’ll take her to hit 1 million? I daresay it’ll set records…

Kutcher promised to donate $100,000 to help Malaria for his win, and showed the cheque, already printed, live in Ustream

Read more about Ashton Kutcher’s 1 million followers  on Mashable