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SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. is abandoning its effort to scan whole libraries and make their contents searchable, a sign it may be getting choosier about the fights it will pick with Google Inc.

The world’s largest software maker is under pressure to show it has a coherent strategy for turning around its unprofitable online business after its bid for Yahoo Inc., last valued at $47.5 billion, collapsed this month.

Digitizing books and archiving academic journals no longer fits with the company’s plan for its search operation, wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft’s search and advertising group, in a blog post Friday.

Microsoft will take down two separate sites for searching the contents of books and academic journals next week, and Live Search will direct Web surfers looking for books to non-Microsoft sites, the company said.

Nadella said Microsoft will focus on “verticals with high commercial intent.”

“We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner,” Nadella wrote.

At an advertising confab at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters this week, he demonstrated a new system that rewards customers with cash rebates for using Live Search to find and buy items on advertisers’ sites.

Microsoft entered the book-scanning business in 2005 by contributing material to the Open Content Alliance, an industry group conceived by the Internet Archive and Yahoo. In 2006, it unveiled its competing MSN book search site.

Unlike Google, whose decision to scan books still protected under copyright law has provoked multiple lawsuits, Microsoft stuck to scanning books with the permission of publishers or that were firmly in the public domain.

The company said it will give publishers digital copies of the 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles it has amassed.

Microsoft’s search engine is a distant third behind Google’s and Yahoo’s, in terms of the number of queries performed each month, despite the company’s many attempts to emulate Google’s innovative search features and create some of its own.

Microsoft as much as said its search strategy wasn’t working when it offered in February to buy Yahoo to boost its search and advertising. Talks between the companies collapsed because Yahoo executives sought more money.

The company’s ceding the book-search segment to Google and the Yahoo-led Open Content Alliance could signal Microsoft has a new search strategy and is ready to jettison its unsuccessful me-too efforts.

However, the software maker has not given up on combining its search operations with Yahoo’s. The two companies are said to be talking about a more limited deal.

DENVER (Billboard) - Games like “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero III” have proved their ability to breathe new life into classic rock sales. But can they do the same for new music?

Last month, Motley Crue decided to find out. The band placed its new single, the title track from “Saints of Los Angeles,” for sale as a downloadable track on “Rock Band” well in advance of the album's release date, which has been pushed back to June 24. The only other place to obtain the track was iTunes.

According to data provided by the band's management, Tenth Street Entertainment, the track was downloaded more than 47,000 times via the Xbox 360 version of the game alone in the first week after it became available. (”Rock Band” publisher MTV Networks was unable to independently verify these figures, and total downloads that include the PlayStation 3 version of the game were not available.)

By comparison, the same track received slightly more than 10,000 downloads via digital services like iTunes and Amazon, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

That's a pretty big discrepancy considering that music bought via “Rock Band” can't be transferred to a portable music player or even a computer for later enjoyment. It can be played only via the game.

FINDING THE AUDIENCE

Tenth Street CEO Allen Kovac shrugs off the gap in sales between formats, pointing out that a sale is a sale. In an age of rampant piracy, reaching fans where they are willing to spend money is the primary goal.

“We do research on every artist we have, and the research said that the people who bought Motley Crue music and tickets play 'Rock Band” and video games … (so) it was our inclination to go there,” he says. “As marketers, it's our job to find the audience. If our audience tells us they're sitting at Xbox and PlayStation, that's our job to do that.”

In slightly more than six months, the number of songs downloaded to the “Rock Band” game has surpassed 10 million tracks, according to MTV Networks, while song downloads from “Guitar Hero” passed 15 million, according to Activision. With more than 100 songs available for download via the “Rock Band” platform, that's an average of 100,000 downloads per song sold through the game.

That average, though, is somewhat skewed: Since new songs are added to the “Rock Band” store weekly, tracks available for sale since November have sold more than tracks added just last week. Still, it's an impressive figure.

By all accounts, catalog tracks sell best. Seven of the top 10 best-selling songs available on “Rock Band” are catalog titles; the other three are more recent, but still a few years old. Of all the songs available for download on “Rock Band,” more than 75 percent are catalog tracks. The rest is primarily music released within the past year. Only a handful of songs are previously unreleased new music or music from unknown acts using the game to get noticed.

TURNING THE TIDE

One such example is new metal act Black Tide. When its “Light From Above” album was released November 11, 2007, the single “Shockwave” sold only a few hundred copies per week, barely registering on Nielsen SoundScan. The week before being featured as a downloadable song on “Rock Band” on March 11, the single sold 1,000 downloads. Two weeks later, download sales doubled.

Yet sales on “Rock Band” were 10 times that of those on iTunes and other stores. In the six weeks following the “Rock Band” debut, “Shockwave” sold 6,000 digital downloads via online retailers, compared with an estimated 60,000 downloads via the game.

And “Rock Band” isn't the only game hawking new music. Def Leppard chose to release its new single “Nine Lives” as part of a three-song bundle on “Guitar Hero III” on April 24, along with past hits “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages.”

The “Guitar Hero III” download totals are unavailable, but first-week figures from SoundScan show that it sold about 7,000 downloads. The album it was meant to promote, “Songs From the Sparkle Lounge,” sold only 55,000 physical and digital units combined in its first week.

But Tenth Street's Kovac says “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” sales don't necessarily need to convert to album or digital download sales on a one-to-one basis to count as successful. Today's generation of music fans, he says, may be interested only in buying the game version of new music, enabling an interactive experience that has been sorely lacking lately.

“The resurgence of rock has happened because of 'Rock Band' and 'Guitar Hero,”' he says. “And the reason is because of the interaction with the audience. The more music marketing people look at interaction with the audience as opposed to only radio or a video, the more lasting the experience will be and the longer the artists' career will be.”

Reuters/Billboard

San Francisco - At its Google I/O developer conference next week, Google will shed light on technologies such as Google App Engine, for building and hosting Web applications, and OpenSocial, the Google-backed API for social networking.

Other technologies such as the Android mobile application platform also will be discussed.

The conference is to be held in San Francisco from May 28 to 29. Originally expecting 2,000 attendees, Google already had 2,500 people signed up by Thursday evening, said Tom Stocky, Google director of product management.

App Engine will be the subject of some announcements that the company is keeping under wraps until next week. “App Engine is Google's solution for building and hosting Web apps on our infrastructure, and it makes building Web apps easier to scale and easier to get started,” said Pete Koomen, product manager for App Engine at Google.

“Here, we've been building Web apps for a while, and we've got a lot of experience in this area,” Koomen said.

With OpenSocial, the company will discuss version 0.8 of the OpenSocial API specification, an industry-backed initiative to enable applications to access data on social network sites. The intent is to allow developers to build applications that can access a social network's friends and update feeds. There is an agreed-upon specification for version 0.8, but code for it remains in development.

OpenSocial is infrastructure for the Web, said Kevin Marks, Google developer advocate. Featured in version 0.8 are REST-ful APIs and the ability to access data on a social-networking site when the application is not running in the browser; offline capabilities are enabled.

“We're covering all the different aspects of OpenSocial development from building applications to [making] a social network site into a container for applications, and then there's discussions about how to get your applications you developed to spread within social networks and technologies and tips for that,” said Marks.

“What OpenSocial does is it provides a common API for developing social applications,” similar to how J2EE provided an API for Java development, said Bob Bickel, CEO at OpenSocial supporter Ringside Networks. Ringside enables Facebook and OpenSocial applications to run on any Web site, serving as a social application server.

For version 0.9 of OpenSocial, a templating language may be added to make it easier to generate HTML without having to write JavaScript code for that purpose, Marks said.

Although backed by companies such as MySpace and Yahoo, social-networking site Facebook is absent from the list of OpenSocial supporters. “Facebook is very welcome to implement OpenSocial, and we're asking and encouraging them to do that,” Marks said. A Facebook representative said the company will watch the evolution of OpenSocial and evaluate whether to participate in the future. Facebook has had its own application development program.

OpenSocial is governed by the OpenSocial Foundation, featuring Google and other supporters.

Additional topics to be covered at the conference include AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technologies, such as Google's AJAX APIs and geographic systems.

PHILADELPHIA - Comcast Corp. is trying to sell 46 smaller cable systems serving 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers as it seeks to improve efficiency by shedding disparate operations.

“It’s not about money at all,” said Robert Serrano, an analyst at SNL Kagan in Monterey, Calif. “They are pruning some of the more outlying areas in order to make a more efficient cluster.”

Serrano said Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV operator, could get $3,000 to $4,500 per subscriber, although sale prices would vary by asset.

Most of the cable systems are in eight states — Maine, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, Virginia, Georgia, West Virginia and California, and almost one-fourth of them are in rural central and northern Maine.

The Times Record in Brunswick, Maine, was the first to report that Comcast was selling 46 systems.

John Goran, chairman of the cable TV regulatory board in Freeport, Maine, said Comcast told him about its plans a week ago. Comcast serves 14 towns in Maine and is looking to get out of 11.

In Maine, the most logical buyer for Comcast subsidiaries is Time Warner Cable Inc., which serves 85 percent of Maine, including areas surrounding the 11 municipalities Comcast hopes to bow out of, Goran said. A Time Warner spokesman declined to comment.

Comcast took over the Maine systems after it acquired York, Maine-based Susquehanna Communications in May 2006 for $540 million in cash. It already owned 30 percent of SusCom and valued the entire asset at $775 million.

When a cable system is concentrated geographically, it is cheaper to provide services, Serrano said. If the area also happens to be more affluent, the company gets the added benefit of higher revenue per household.

After selling the nearly four dozen systems, Comcast might buy other cable systems closer to where it already has a substantial presence, said Bruce Leichtman, president of the Leichtman Research Group in Durham, N.H.

Goran hopes his new cable operator will be able to offer digital voice services, something his Freeport home doesn’t get from Comcast even though it’s close to downtown.

“We don’t have Internet phone, no video on demand or any of those advanced services,” he said. “We have standard cable and high-definition and premium channels and that’s it.”

Shares of Comcast fell 58 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $21.62 Friday.

Ken Hubbard worries that broadband speeds in the U.S. aren't adequate for the next wave of Web content.

Hubbard, president of networking startup InteliCloud Technology, said he's generally not a fan of large government programs, but it may be time for the U.S. Congress to look at ways to encourage roll out of faster broadband services.

Internet users are demanding more video and high-bandwidth applications, and high-definition video is on the way, said Hubbard, whose company is set to release a network appliance it dubs “network in a box.” “The infrastructure is not strong enough to support the growth that needs to happen,” he said. “[Broadband] has got to become ubiquitous.”

Hubbard's concerns have been echoed by several groups in recent months. Groups calling for a wide-ranging U.S. broadband policy say the nation is falling behind others in key broadband statistics. One problem, however, is that the debate over broadband policy spills over into many issues, including concerns about a lack of competition and net neutrality.

In March 2004, President George Bush called for broadband to be universally available across the country by 2007– a goal that has not been reached. Bush's broadband policy also focuses on keeping Internet service free of taxes and deregulating broadband providers, initiatives that largely came from Congress or the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

The call for a stronger broadband policy is far from unanimous. Broadband providers say they're spending billions of dollars a year to expand and improve their networks. And an FCC decision to deregulate telecom-based broadband providers, allowing them to stop sharing parts of their networks with competitors, is only three years old, others say.

Critics of the FCC's deregulation approach say it has eliminated most competition. But deregulation is “really bearing fruit” and should be given more time to work, said Bret Swanson, senior fellow at the conservative think tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF).

In many cases, the debate about broadband policy gets wrapped up in related debates about net neutrality and broadband traffic management, Swanson added. While several groups have called for the FCC or Congress to prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing some Internet traffic, these net neutrality rules could limit legitimate traffic management techniques, causing network congestion, he said.

Passing net neutrality rules could “halt what is a very positive solution right now,” he said. “The way a so-called new broadband policy is talked about seems to not be a step forward.”

Some advocates of a new broadband policy also talk about the need for more competition, but because of the cost of building networks, a significant increase in competitors isn't likely, Swanson added. The U.S. may be better served focusing on two large, robust networks with wireless and satellite service filling in the holes, he said.

“You're never going to have dozens or hundreds of broadband providers to your home,” he added.

Advocates of a broader national policy say broadband brings huge economic benefits to the U.S.– a 7 percent increase in broadband adoption would create 2.4 million new jobs and have an annual economic impact of US$134 billion, according to a study released in February by Connected Nation, a nonprofit group focused on improving broadband adoption across the U.S.

Critics of current policies say the U.S. is behind several other countries in broadband adoption, and many rural areas have little or no access to broadband. In addition, U.S. broadband users pay more for broadband and have access to slower speeds than several other nations, they say.

U.S. broadband providers say they are rolling out faster broadband– Verizon, AT&T and Qwest are all moving forward with fiber-based deployments. But Hubbard, whose company will aim its first product at providers of Internet-based services, doesn't see it happening fast enough to keep up with demand.

“To me, [the broadband] industry has had a shot at it, and they haven't done anything with it,” he said.

Critics say Bush's universal broadband goal was largely unsuccessful, with many rural areas still without service or with little competition. The California State Broadband Task Force, in a January report, found that about 4 percent of the state's households, or 1,975 communities, didn't have access to broadband. About 1.4 million [m] California residents, more people than live in 11 other states, don't have broadband service, the report said.

The California report is one of several released in recent months calling for a more comprehensive broadband policy in the U.S. The California task force focused on several things the state could do to encourage broadband rollout, including issuing state bonds to finance broadband expansion, 10 percent or 20 percent tax breaks for providers building networks in rural areas, and lifting the spending cap on a rural telecommunications program already in place.

Educause, a group focused on the benefits of IT on higher education, took a broader approach when it issued its Blueprint for Big Broadband in January. Educause called for a $100 billion investment in broadband in the U.S., with the federal government, state governments and private industry each paying for a third of the costs. The federal government would pay about $8 billion a year for four years under the Educause plan.

The goal is 100M bps to 1G bps of broadband speed available to each U.S. resident and business, said Wendy Wigen, an Educause policy analyst. Educause wants “deployment with a big D, so to speak,” she said. “When [government sources] quote 95 percent access… it is for DSL or cable modem, which we feel is not sufficient for the Internet demand that is just around the corner.”

Democratic presidential candidatesBarack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both talked about the importance of broadband, Wigen noted.

But Robert Atkinson, president of tech-focused think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), suggested that big government programs aren't likely to gain traction in the U.S. An ITIF report this month compared U.S. broadband policies to several other countries, and found that nations such as Japan and South Korea created mandates for broadband providers that would have little chance of approval in the U.S.

Japan required DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) providers to rent out their lines to competitors at low prices, a policy the U.S. has moved away from. South Korea basically required broadband providers to build out the networks nationwide, Atkinson said. Broadband providers in those countries are “in a different world,” he said.

While environmental factors such as weather and population density can have a major effect on broadband adoption, government policies can also help with adoption and rollout, Atkinson said. Instead of major spending projects, which could face major opposition, the recent ITIF report called for the U.S. government to take several smaller steps to encourage broadband rollout.

The U.S. government should adopt more favorable tax policies, allowing broadband network operators to depreciate their investments in next-generation networks faster, the report said. The ITIF recommended that the government make more wireless spectrum available, expand and reform programs aimed at delivering telecom services to rural areas, fund state programs already working to expand broadband deployment, such as the Connected Nation program.

In addition, U.S. residents have to decide what they want: fast broadband or broadband competition, Atkinson said. Part of the problem with the debate about broadband in the U.S. is that many groups have conflicting goals, with many consumer groups pushing for more competition, he said.

More competition is “completely incompatible” with super fast speeds, he added. Building competing broadband networks is an inefficient way to get faster networks, Atkinson said.

“This is not the widget industry,” he added. “Competition works well in the widget industry because the fixed costs are fairly low.”

U.S. policies should instead focus on rollout and speed, Atkinson added. “The goal should be to get as much broadband to as many people as possible,” he said.

Atkinson and Link Hoewing, assistant vice president of Internet and technology issues at Verizon, both see potential in the Connected Nation model, a program started in Kentucky that uses state and private funding to push broadband into areas that don't have it.

Several other states are trying to replicate the Kentucky model that has expanded broadband availability from 60 percent of households in the state to 95 percent of households since January 2004. Verizon and other providers are working with states to map unserved areas and expand coverage, Hoewing said.

In rural areas in other states, “we've got some work to do,” he added.

Like the PFF's Swanson, Hoewing pointed to the current broadband policy– the FCC's deregulation approach. The more government-centric approach in countries like Japan and South Korea wouldn't work in the U.S., he said.

Competition in the U.S. between telecom and cable companies are driving up speeds and driving down costs, he said. Broadband speeds in the U.S. are already competitive with many other counties, he added. “It's pretty evident competition is there,” he said.

But for InteliCloud's Hubbard, the U.S. broadband industry is moving too slow, and it's time for the government to take a more proactive approach.

“I think they will get there, but it may be another 10 years to get there,” he said. “We need to charge our slow growth into fast growth.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the top U.S. wireless carriers is trying to forge a deal with consumer groups and regulators that would reduce the fees customers are charged when they cancel their cell phone service early.

One of the major U.S. wireless carriers told Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin that it had made “substantial progress” toward a compromise with consumer advocacy groups over the fees, Martin said on Friday.

Martin did not say which carrier he had spoken with, but a source familiar with the discussions identified it as No. 2 U.S. mobile service, Verizon Wireless.

“I think it would be good for consumers and ultimately good for the industry if there was more of a national framework with consumer protections built into it,” Martin said at a media briefing.

The early cancellation fees are a perennial complaint of wireless phone customers, and have drawn complaints from some lawmakers in Congress.

Wireless carriers such as Verizon Wireless, AT&T (T.N) and Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N) say the fees are needed to ensure they recover the subsidies they provide for handsets that customers get under the most popular service plans, as well as other up-front costs and rate discounts for those plans.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L).

Martin listed several concerns he has about the current early termination fees, including that the fees go into effect even before customers receive their first bills, and that in some cases they remain high even as a customer's contract nears expiration.

Verizon Wireless already prorates the early termination fees, reducing them as customers' contracts get closer to expiring. AT&T is scheduled to begin prorating the fees starting on Sunday. Sprint Nextel has indicated will do so by the end of this year.

The compromise floated by Verizon Wireless would place additional restrictions on the fees the carriers could charge, and it would shift oversight of the fees to the FCC from state regulators, the source said.

The deal would benefit the industry by taking the dispute over the fees out of the jurisdiction of state courts, where the companies are currently facing a number of class-action suits filed by customers.

According to a filing with the agency, executives with Verizon and Verizon Wireless met with FCC officials on Tuesday to discuss the early termination fees.

The Associated Press reported earlier this week that executives of other leading wireless companies had also agreed to the terms of the Verizon Wireless proposal.

A spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless declined to comment.

Martin said at the news briefing that consumer groups “still have concerns” about the proposal. “I'm not sure there was any consensus yet built around it.”

The commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the issue on June 12.

(Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

IBM will repay US$13 million to Massachusetts for performance management software its subsidiary, Cognos, sold to the state in August 2007, according to an agreement reached this week.

The deal came under scrutiny last year following allegations the procurement process had been rushed to favor Cognos.

IBM declined to comment beyond a brief statement confirming it will give back the money and that the state will return the software. The statement also noted that Cognos struck the deal before IBM acquired it.

An IBM spokesman, Chris Andrews, refused to provide documentation pertaining to the agreement, as did Governor Deval Patrick's office, which issued a similar statement.

Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi has been at the center of a political firestorm over the controversy, with allegations flying over his connections to Cognos. The Boston Globe reported that Cognos was a sponsor of a memorial golf tournament DiMasi helped organize and that a DiMasi friend served as a lobbyist for the vendor.

DiMasi has adamantly denied any wrongdoing. His office declined to comment on Friday.

However, a March report by state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan's office provides a time line of an investigation the agency conducted into the software deal.

The inspector general began scrutinizing the procurement following a tip from a whistleblower, as well as a December request from Patrick's administration, according to Jack McCarthy, a spokesman for Sullivan's office.

“They accomplished what we asked them to do, it appears, to get the money back from a flawed procurement process,” McCarthy said. “It's nice to know IBM recognized the flaws in the process and did the right thing for Massachusetts. We're also happy the Patrick administration hung tough and followed through.”

The report does not mention DiMasi, but describes a number of alleged flaws in the way the Cognos pact was formed.

For one, the state's Information Technology Division did not widely advertise the fact it was looking for performance management software, according to the report.

Instead, “a staff member at ITD simply consulted a chart of leaders in performance management developed by the analytical firm Gartner Group and e-mailed the Request for Quotes to four companies identified as 'leaders.' “

Three vendors– Cognos, Oracle and SAS– responded to the e-mail, according to the report. ITD staffers developed a scoring sheet containing 104 criteria. The ITD team in charge never finished evaluating the vendors with the sheet, but at the time they stopped Cognos had the high score, with 69.39 points, followed by SAS with 57.38 and Oracle with 27.49, the report states.

The IG's investigation found that due to a typographical error in the spreadsheet's formula, the scores for all three vendors were flawed, with many points going uncounted.

The ITD procurement team never finalized or submitted the scoring document to the Patrick administration, and therefore the IG's office did not attempt to rework the calculations, according to the report.

Instead, after meeting with all three vendors the procurement team “unanimously felt that much more information had to be gathered because they did not adequately understand how various agencies and administrators would use performance management software,” and recommended the procurement process be done over, the report states.

But on May 18, 2007, the acting CIO of ITD, Bethann Pepoli, told Henry Dormitzer, deputy to Patrick's secretary of administration and finance, Leslie Kirwan, that Cognos “was the best choice for performance management software procurement.”

Dormitzer relayed the information to Kirwan, who subsequently signed an agreement to buy the software in August, the report states.

DiMasi allegedly met personally with Pepoli at some point to discuss the importance of performance management software, according to The Boston Globe.. “The speaker and I never had a conversation about a vendor,” Pepoli told the Globe. “I don't feel like my recommendation was influenced by any outside sources.”

The ITD has “already approached us to help them go through the procurement process” as they once again seek to purchase performance management software,” McCarthy said.

“It may not be Cognos' software,” he noted.

It's not often you read a book and find that, 10 years on, it remains central to your thinking. Ideas come and go, paradigms shift and many books– particularly in the rapidly evolving “ICT for Development” space– become dated and surpassed by new innovation, new models and new ways of thinking. Many earlier studies gather dust, becoming windows to a history of amazing success, glorious failure or a series of what-might-have-been's. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In the spring of 1998 I was introduced to the work of E. F. Schumacher. Up until then, my development studies degree had been interesting, but at the same time rather 'cold', filled with critiques on the failure of western development efforts. Almost everyone was a critic, and every man and his dog had a theory on what had gone wrong and what continued to go wrong. This sea of depression and gloom was largely rooted in GDP's, FDI's, economic theory and theories of dependency, and although interesting never really struck a chord with me. A chance introduction to the concept of “appropriate technology” was to change all that. It was soon to become an increasing focus of my university studies and, several years later, my own work.

Appropriate technology is broadly defined as anything that is suited to the environment in which it is used. So, for example, a solar-powered radio in the middle of a Finnish winter would not be considered by many to be an appropriate technology. Although he was not the first person to study or write about it, it is widely recognized that the publication of Schumacher's “Small Is Beautiful: The Study of Economics as if People Mattered” in 1973 was a landmark event in the birth of the appropriate technology movement, a book which I finally got to read 25 years later. It was born out of what he and many perceived as the irrational technology practices of Western societies, and a frustration at the perceived failings of large scale, top-down development projects applied by development agencies, NGOs and governments at the time. To appreciate this you need to look back to the 1970's, when hydroelectric dams and other grand, expensive, mega-infrastructure high-tech projects were a favorite of the World Bank and others. (You could also argue that, today, many of our own technological solutions are not appropriate when you consider their reliance on one commodity– oil– which continues its steady climb to the dizzy heights of $150 a barrel).

Development projects based on straight-forward technology transfer are always contentious. Taking something which may well work in places like the U.S. or Europe and dumping it in rural Kenya or downtown Kampala is, in most cases, asking for trouble. I remember seeing fields of broken tractors in Zambia as late as 1993, tractors donated by a Western government without any infrastructure put in place to repair or maintain them. Clearly, with no local engineering skills or access to spare parts, these tractors were not an appropriate technology fix to whatever agriculture problem they were trying to solve. It's easy to see that now, and it begs the question why no one saw it all those years ago. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Looking back today, it's obvious that interventions such as these put themselves on the back foot before they even start. The recent emergence of the One Laptop Per Child project, which designed a laptop to meet the specific needs, issues and challenges of developing country users, is a perfect example of how attitudes have changed for the better. Of course, whether a Western organization should be doing this work in the first place is another question altogether when there are possible local alternatives in the target countries themselves.

Schumacher believed that an appropriate technology should be immensely more productive than the indigenous technology, but immensely cheaper than the sophisticated, high capital-intensive technology of modern industry. Others added that it should also contribute to meeting basic needs, overcome economic dependence, promote self-reliance and lead to creative participation. There are many definitions, but the underlying ethos is the same– that any technology solution should be either low-cost, use local materials wherever possible, create local jobs, be understood by local populations, be flexible and adaptable, or be able to be maintained and repaired locally. Looking more closely at these criteria, it is clear that understanding the local context is key, whether that be economic, geographic or cultural. Fail to understand these at your peril.

When we think about mobile technology in these terms, things are pretty interesting. Mobile phones have had a massive impact in the developing world, despite being a 'Western' invention (although one with no, apparent, local alternative). Communities are getting hold of them left, right and center, and they are seen by many as their best chance of a passport out of poverty. Interestingly, appropriate technology-wise the mobile phone does not present us with a perfect fit. Until recently they were prohibitively expensive (an issue for people earning only a few dollars a day) and for many today's $20 handset is still too expensive. Their need to be charged regularly is also a real challenge if there's no access to reliable electricity; heat, dust and humidity can put a strain on fragile electronic components. There are also issues of literacy and usability, for some.

But regardless, these devices are out there in the billions. Crucially, the “appropriate technology challenge” has now shifted from the third-world community– who are using local solutions to solve their own problems– to the developer community.

“Unlocking the potential of the mobile phone in developing regions” is a popular topic on the conference circuit, and that's where I tend to spend my time talking about what I call the developer-practitioner divide, and how we can help further understanding and appreciation of the cultural, geographical and economic issues that govern the usefulness of mobile phones– and the applications that run on them– in the developing world. Mobile solutions for this 'market' cannot be built in isolation, but many of them still are. For a start, many of the phones you come across in the field are more likely to be either older models, or lower-end handsets with limited functionality. Developing solutions based on Java technology, or mobile Internet access, will present many users with a problem. A message as simple as this is still missed by well-intentioned organizations seeking to solve some of the more pressing problems in the developing world.

Our challenge is ensure that solutions are culturally and technologically appropriate for the audiences which they are designed and built for. We can do this by helping spread the word among ourselves on the conference circuit, or we can work to empower the people who understand the problem best. To me and you, that's the users. As the well-quoted saying goes, “teach a man to fish”…

Ken Banks devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 15 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, a field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organizations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honors in Social Anthropology with Development Studies and currently divides his time between Cambridge (UK) and Stanford University in California on a MacArthur Foundation-funded Fellowship. Further details of Ken's wider work are available on his website at www.kiwanja.net.

A member of an online piracy group has been convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and faces up to five years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Barry Gitarts, 25, of Brooklyn, New York, was convicted Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In addition to up to five years in prison, Gitarts could face a fine of US$250,000, three years of probation and a requirement that he make full restitution, the DOJ said.

Gitarts was a key member of the Internet music piracy group Apocalypse Production Crew (APC) from at least June 2003 through April 2004, the DOJ said. Gitarts paid for and administered a computer server located in Texas that APC group members used to upload and download hundreds of thousands of copies of pirated music, movies, software and video games, the agency said.

Gitarts also received payment from the leader of APC, the DOJ said.

APC was a “first-provider” or “release group” of unauthorized materials online, the agency said. Release groups are the original sources for a majority of the pirated works downloaded through the Internet, the DOJ said.

“Music piracy is stealing and, unless you want to end up in a federal prison, don't do it,” Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) praised federal authorities for bringing the case to trial. The Gitarts case was the first time a federal prosecution of an online criminal copyright infringement case primarily featuring music has gone to trial, the RIAA said.

“The crimes committed here– as well as the harm to the music community– are severe, and so are the consequences,” Brad Buckles, the RIAA's executive vice president for antipiracy, said in a statement. “Groups like APC that specialize in leaking pre-release music are at the top of the piracy pyramid, and the efforts of federal law enforcement have dealt a real blow to these kinds of operations.”

The Gitarts case is part of an ongoing federal investigation into the organized piracy groups responsible for the distribution of movies, software, games and music on the Internet. There have been 15 criminal convictions of APC members and 56 total convictions in Operation FastLink, an international investigation into Internet piracy.

NEW YORK - Online social networking today is more about hanging out with friends behind gated communities than exploring the World Wide Web: Visit another site and you’ll have to rebuild your profile from scratch.

That’s like having to get a new driver’s license for every state you drive through.

Although the walls that keep users from taking their data wherever they go are starting to erode, how much three recently announced programs will help users move among the networks remains to be seen. Google Inc.’s attempt to break those fortifications was quickly blocked by Facebook.

The two leading online hangouts, News Corp.’s MySpace and Facebook, have promised to release tools in the coming weeks for Web sites to incorporate profile data, friends lists and other social functions. Google followed with its own program for bridging various networks.

MySpace users, for instance, can soon have their biographical information appear on eBay Inc. profiles. A social network focused on skiing will be able to incorporate Facebook photos and friends list rather than build its own.

It’s all done through software hooks that let eBay and others grab profile data from MySpace and Facebook. Changes made at MySpace and Facebook are quickly propagated because third-party sites can’t store the data and must check back frequently.

The new programs come as users increasingly complain about having to retype basic profile information over and over. By holding onto users’ information while letting them bring temporary copies of it elsewhere, Facebook and MySpace can remain at the core of users’ social interactions and keep them from leaving.

More important than saving keystrokes, the programs bring along the meaning and connections behind the data, allowing social circles to travel from site to site, much as friends going bar hopping together don’t have to start conversations afresh at each pub.

That said, there are no current plans to exchange profile data between MySpace and Facebook. Message postings at one won’t show up at the other, and party invites still will have to be copied and pasted to cross services.

Google’s new Friend Connect comes close to merging those lives, though. When announced, it was to pool profile data from Facebook, Google Talk, Google’s Orkut, LinkedIn, Plaxo and hi5, though not MySpace.

But within days, Facebook began blocking Google, saying it couldn’t ensure anyone’s privacy if Google were the intermediary.

Such concerns are simply a convenient way to play down underlying desires for control, said Deborah Pierce, who tracks social-networking privacy as executive director of Privacy Activism.

“They get to say, `We’re being the good guys on privacy,’ but they are still retaining control of your personal data,” Pierce said.

Some startups aren’t waiting. Minggl and Zude both promise to help users aggregate data from their various networks, including MySpace and Facebook.

There are some legitimate privacy concerns.

“In many models, something becomes public once and it becomes public forever,” said Dave Morin, a senior platform manager at Facebook. “We believe in giving users control. If we move too quickly we might not achieve that.”

Users must agree before a third-party site can access their data, but they sometimes change their minds. Facebook and MySpace say restricting outside storage of data ensures that other sites get the latest information, whether it’s an updated user photo or a revocation of consent.

Service providers also have to consider that people may agree to be friends in the specific community — not across the Web.

So with Google’s and Facebook’s programs, both parties have to agree to be on a third-party site before appearing on a friends list. Although that policy extends only to minors on MySpace, adults can opt out of appearing on friends lists on other sites by visiting a new online control panel.

E-mail addresses and other non-profile data are off limits under the programs, as are profiles the services have assembled behind the scenes for ad targeting.

MySpace said it is working on giving users even more privacy controls. Eventually, MySpace users will be able to specify that only photos go to site A and friends lists to site B, rather than all or nothing for a particular site. Facebook said third-party developers could build that granularity themselves, while Google was considering it.

Ultimately, users will have to decide whether they really want to mix work-related LinkedIn contacts with the party photos on Facebook.

“I don’t know if people want their worlds colliding,” said Rachel Happe, a research manager at IDC. “I don’t think this push to share data should go too quickly.”

Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online social networks, said users sometimes leave for other networks so they can start over.

Jim Benedetto, senior vice president for technology at MySpace, said social networks will likely open more once they sort out the technical and privacy challenges — much as AOL and CompuServe users can now send e-mail to people who use all other e-mail services. Instant-messaging services, meanwhile, remain in walled gardens even today.

Bill Washburn, whose OpenID Foundation promotes universal usernames and passwords, said social networks will come to realize that openness makes their respective services even more powerful.

They just need to work on a common approach, said Bob Bickel of Ringside Networks, a startup building tools to bridge networks.

“It’s kind of a step forward and a half-step back,” Bickel said. “It may take a year or two to shake all that out, but it definitely accelerates the timeline.”