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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Developers of a new technology called Telex say it can hide data from banned websites inside traffic of sites deemed safe. The software, developed by scientists at the University of Michigan and University of Waterloo, draws on well-known encryption techniques to conceal data making hard to decipher and gives ISPs a way to help Internet users avoid censorship roadblocks. Proxy servers are the most common way around traditional online censorship. The proxy server acts as an intermediary to connect network traffic when the more direct path is blocked. But these proxy servers can also be blocked, requiring new servers to be established. Telex avoids this issue by creating what the researchers describe as a proxy without an IP address. After installing the software, the user who wants to access a blocked website can connect to a non-blocked site outside the censor’s network. To the censor, this would appear to be a permitted connection, but Telex would redirect the user at the ISP level to the blocked site. The researchers say Telex will turn the Internet into an anti-censorship device. "First, there's software that you install on your computer,” said Alex Halderman, one of the software developers. “And then there are devices that we call Telex stations, that Internet service providers outside the country doing the censorship put on the pipes of the Internet. That is, on the wires that are carrying traffic." Halderman added that the Telex system will require cooperation from Internet service providers on a large scale if it is to work. "We like to envision this technology as a possible government-level response to government-level censorship," he said, with governments providing incentives for ISPs to install Telex. … [Read more...]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google introduced its Page Speed Service today, promising to boost page loading speed by 25 to 60 percent. "Page Speed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying web performance best practices, and serves them to end users via Google's servers across the globe," said Ram Ramani, a Google engineering manager. “Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times." The service is being offered to a limited set of webmasters for free, but the search engine giant said it would offer the service at a later time for a fee, according to PCMag.com. To use the service, webmasters need to sign up and point their site’s DNS entry to Google. "Now you don’t have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, gzipping resources or other web performance best practices," Ramani wrote. Google has promised an increase of loading speeds of up to 60 percent and has set up a speed test site, which will schedule tests from different locations worldwide, on different browsers and networks. This will allow webmasters to measure the exact speed for a site. … [Read more...]

NEW YORK — Google’s Android operating system dominates the domestic smartphone market, but Apple sells more iPhones. According to June figures from the Nielsen research firm, Android has the largest piece of the smartphone pie at 39 percent, with Apple’s iOS in second place at 28 percent. “However, because Apple is the only company manufacturing smartphones with the iOS operating system, it is clearly the top smartphone manufacturer in the U.S.,” Nielsen said. The research firm’s May findings had Android at a 38 percent share, with Apple at a 27 percent share. RIM’s Blackberry continues to struggle to keep pace at 20 percent market share for June, down 1 percent from May numbers. Other data revealed that Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS had a 9 percent share of the market, while HP webOS and Nokia’s Symbian accounted for 2 percent each. HTC tied with RIM for second place of the smartphone market by grabbing 14 percent with its Android phones and an additional 6 percent with its Windows Phone 7 handsets, according to the Nielsen data. Motorola's Android devices are owned by 11 percent of U.S. smartphone users, while Samsung's Android devices are used by 8 percent of consumers and its Windows Phone 7 devices logged a 2 percent share, Nielsen said. … [Read more...]

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple has today officially launched OS X Lion, now available via the App Store. Priced at $29.99, OS X Lion is Apple’s next-generation operating system for the Mac platform. The operating system brings a number of new features to the Mac, including an iOS-like application launch screen known as Launchpad, full-screen apps, a new combined interface for Dashboard, Expose, and Spaces known as Mission Control, enhanced multi-touch gestures and improvements to a number of core applications. “Lion is the best version of OS X yet, and we’re thrilled that users around the world can download it starting today,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. Another resume feature allows users to close apps and reopen them where they left off, without having to start over again. When users install software, they no longer need to save their work, close apps or set everything up again. “Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically,” Schiller said. OS X Lion Server is also available as a $49.00 add-on to the basic Lion install. … [Read more...]