Nuevas Tecnologías (Continuación)

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Internet nos ofrece a todos nosotros la posibilidad de expresarnos, crear, aprender y compartir. En la actualidad más de dos mil millones de personas están online, aproximadamente un tercio del planeta. Internet se ha convertido en uno de los motores de la economía del siglo XXI: nos permite llegar a una audiencia global con solo hacer clic con el ratón, además de crearse cientos de miles de negocios y millones de puestos de trabajo. Según un nuevo estudio de la OCDE, la Web ya es responsable de un 13 por ciento de los resultados empresariales de Estados Unidos, lo cual influye en todos los sectores, desde las comunicaciones a la automoción, pasando por los restaurantes y las tiendas minoristas.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Governments have always sought to manage public perception in wartime, but the Israel Defense Forces’ steady stream of updates on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook since it began airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday seems different. Unlike the usual media tactics — leaflets, state-sponsored radio, spokesmen — social media campaigns seek to incorporate themselves into the media we’re already consuming, popping into our news feeds, implicitly seeking our participation. Or, in the case of the IDF campaign, sometimes explicitly.

The @IDFSpokesperson Twitter account, encouraging followers to show support for the strikes, tweeted Wednesday: “More than 12,000 rockets hit Israel in the past 12 years.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Apple CEO Tim Cook had to apologize for the buggy new Maps app in the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 on Friday, saying that his company "fell short" of making a "world-class product." It was a gracious and humble admission of a major mistake -- a sign that Apple takes its customers seriously and conducts itself with integrity.

"We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused," Cook said in a letter posted on the company's website. "We are doing everything we can to make Maps better." That relentless focus on treating customers right is why Apple has been the undisputed leader of the technology business for the past decade.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Does anyone own the rectangle? Should anyone own the rectangle?

These questions may sound absurd, but they're at the heart of U.S. patent law's Battle of the Titans: Apple vs. Samsung.

On Aug. 24, a San Jose jury awarded Apple Inc. a whopping $1.05 billion in damages. Apple had accused Samsung of copying its intellectual property, including its very broad design patents for rectangular "electronic devices." And Apple wants to use those patents to stop its competitor from selling items like the new (rectangular) Galaxy tablet and (rectangular) Android-based smartphones.

Now, you may be thinking that a lot of devices in your house are rectangular.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Late last week, a San Jose jury awarded Apple Inc. $1.05 billion in damages for patent infringement, a huge win for Apple in its worldwide patent fight with smartphone manufacturers that, like Samsung, sell devices equipped with Google's Android operating system.

The award, the third largest in the history of U.S. patent litigation, will likely cruise into first place next month when U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh decides what additional amount Apple should receive from Samsung based on the jury's finding that much of the infringement was "willful."

But even without that enhancement, which could add another $2 billion to Samsung's tab, the jury's $1 billion-plus verdict breaks down to just under $48 for each of the roughly 22 million infringing phones sold by Samsung.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Imagina que apenas estamos en el desarrollo del lenguaje hablado y a alguien se le ocurre una nueva palabra para describir una acción, pensamiento o sentimiento, como "magnífico" o "terrible". Pero en este mundo extraño, esa persona demanda que cualquiera que use el término le pague un dólar cada vez que la mencione. Eso nos dificultaría negociar nuestro camino hacia una sociedad que se comunica a través del diálogo.

Pienso que así son las guerras de patentes sobre la tecnología utilizada en los teléfonos inteligentes y las tabletas.

Como ser humano, no me interesa la reciente victoria de Apple en Estados Unidos en contra de Samsung por haber copiado la forma y características de sus iPhones y iPads.…  Seguir leyendo »

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In horror movies, the scariest moments usually come from the monster you can't see. So the same goes for real life, or at least online life. Over the past few years, largely out of sight, governments have been clawing back freedoms on the internet, turning an invention that was designed to emancipate the individual into a tool for surveillance and control. In the next few months, this process is set to be enshrined internationally, amid plans to put cyberspace under the authority of a largely secretive and obscure UN agency.

If this succeeds, this will be an important boost to states' plans to censor the web and to use it to monitor citizens.…  Seguir leyendo »

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When the US Federal Trade Commission slapped a fine of $22.5m on the search giant Google last week, it was easy to dismiss as relatively insignificant against a worldwide profit of nearly $3bn. But it marks an important point in a shift in perceptions of Google, once seen as a paragon of internet virtue.

It's easy to forget the extent to which Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin were once seen as good guys. The pair met and began work on their search engine in 1995, but refused to participate in the dotcom mania which was making their peers rich on the back of half-baked ideas and hype.…  Seguir leyendo »

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That's good advice to keep in mind after the drop in Facebook's share price last week. Shares in the social media company closed Friday at $21, a loss of $17 since the company's public offering in May. (It moved up by 83 cents in Monday's trading.)

By any definition, Facebook has grown into a very successful business. Facebook is one of those rare companies that reshape the world. It has signed up almost 1 billion users, it collects almost $4 billion in revenues, it earns more than $1 billion in profits.

Yet Facebook is rapidly proving itself a correspondingly disappointing investment -- and worse may be ahead.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The line that separates my mind from the Internet is getting blurry. This has been happening ever since I realized how often it feels as though I know something just because I can find it with Google. Technically, of course, I don’t know it. But when there’s a smartphone or iPad in reach, I know everything the Internet knows. Or at least, that’s how it feels.

This curious feeling of knowing has settled over most of us. In a group, someone always seems to be “checking” something in the conversation, piping up with handy facts culled from a rapid consultation with the Great and Powerful Man Behind the Curtain.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Fifty years ago today, we took a giant step in communications history with the first transatlantic live television broadcast connecting Europe and America. For the first time, Europeans saw the Statue of Liberty, the Chicago Cubs playing the Philadelphia Phillies at Wrigley Field, President John Kennedy's news conference, buffalo roaming the Great Plains and a boy admiring a Sioux chief in North Dakota in real time. Americans saw the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and reindeer in the Arctic Circle.

According to "Cronkite," by Douglas Brinkley, Walter Cronkite said, "We had to keep telling ourselves it was happening."

It was happening because the United States had launched the first communications satellite, Telstar, in space.…  Seguir leyendo »

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This week I have received two dinner invitations via Twitter direct message; they bounced into my iPhone as email alerts. I was asked if I would like to write this piece via an email, which announced itself with a ping while I was walking along the Cornish coastal path, and to which I replied with a terse "OK". I can't remember the last time I actually spoke to the person who'd commissioned it, for talking to people for work-related purposes has become the communication of last resort, only necessary when you have complex problems that require direct speech to iron out.…  Seguir leyendo »

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I opened my account sophomore year of high school. Until I graduated, it was a forum of drivel and rumors. As most of the people I had on the site matured, it truly transformed into a platform of communication.

Nowadays Facebook is a great way of learning what’s going on around me, both in my personal and professional lives. It has streamlined the process of keeping in touch with my friends and family scattered across the country. As a journalist, I use the site to share my newspaper articles and columns. Being able to follow different media outlets, as well as see reader feedback, is also valuable.…  Seguir leyendo »

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This week's announcement that Yahoo is hiring away Google executive Marissa Mayer as its latest CEO has been met by both Wall Street and the tech industry with yawns or worse.

Yawners cite the fact that Yahoo -- by all measures, a company that has been in decline for some time =- has hired five CEOs in as many years. The fanfare with which they are brought in is matched only by the size of the failure they leave in their wake. Those who are excited about the new appointment seem to care less about what it means for Yahoo or the Internet than the fact that Mayer is a woman, pregnant, and a former girlfriend of Google chief Larry Page.…  Seguir leyendo »

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A couple of months ago we visited Juarez, Mexico, a city right across our border — yet so far away.

The scene was almost surreal: We got off the plane and were met on the tarmac by a convoy of armored cars and open-back trucks swarming with police. The officers were “policía federal.” Like the ones you hear about, they carried machine guns and wore masks to hide their identities. They hung off the backs of their trucks, alert, constantly swiveling as they surveyed the landscape.

They were looking for violent criminals. Meanwhile, everyone we met with — civil society leaders, nonprofit activists, private-sector officials and young people — was looking around for answers.…  Seguir leyendo »

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In a ground-breaking vote on an issue that affects all of us, the United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday endorsed a resolution upholding the principle of freedom of expression and information on the Internet.

The broad support for the resolution demonstrated that maintaining the free flow of information on the Internet is a global call and not something pushed only by a few Western states.

In recent years I have frequently spoken about Internet freedom, an issue which is a priority to the Swedish government. I have condemned the harassment of bloggers and online activists and called for a strong global coalition of states to support the simple but salient fact that freedom of expression also is applicable to the Internet.…  Seguir leyendo »

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En 1911 Thomas Alba Edison, en el cénit de su carrera, predijo que en el año 2011 existirían en el mundo «pequeños soportes de lectura de libros hechos con hojas de níquel en los que los lectores podrían almacenar toda su biblioteca en un solo volumen». Por supuesto, en su momento lo tacharon de exagerado, de amante de la ciencia ficción, incluso. Hoy, en cambio, sabemos que se quedó corto, y que un simple «pendrive» de cinco euros es capaz de contener no solo la biblioteca personal de alguien, sino la gran biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos y la del Vaticano juntas.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Do machines speak? If so, do they have a constitutional right to free speech?

This may sound like a fanciful question, a matter of philosophy or science fiction. But it’s become a real issue with important consequences.

In today’s world, we have delegated many of our daily decisions to computers. On the drive to work, a GPS device suggests the best route; at your desk, Microsoft Word guesses at your misspellings, and Facebook recommends new friends. In the past few years, the suggestion has been made that when computers make such choices they are “speaking,” and enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Whatever the outcome of Facebook's public offering of stock, the social network has already enriched quite a few — as well as famously offered many hundreds of millions of people a new virtual social world. Yet critics claim that Facebook is hastening the demise of privacy, which as the cliché goes, is already on life support.

Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy says that "Facebook has purposefully worked to erode the concept of privacy by disingenuously claiming users want to share all of their personal information." Human Rights First CEO Elisa Massimino argues, "Facebook's privacy policies are prohibitively confusing, make it difficult for users to protect personal information, expose to disclosure information users believe is private, and are changed without adequate warning or consent from users."…  Seguir leyendo »

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The Internet stands at a crossroads. Built from the bottom up, powered by the people, it has become a powerful economic engine and a positive social force. But its success has generated a worrying backlash. Around the world, repressive regimes are putting in place or proposing measures that restrict free expression and affect fundamental rights. The number of governments that censor Internet content has grown to 40 today from about four in 2002. And this number is still growing, threatening to take away the Internet as you and I have known it.

Some of these steps are in reaction to the various harms that can be and are being propagated through the network.…  Seguir leyendo »