zalternate

Google Celebrates Chrome's 2nd Birthday with New Stable Release

Google on Thursday released an updated version of its Chrome browser, which promises faster speeds and a simplified interface.

The new stable version of Chrome is three times faster in terms of JavaScript performance than it was when the browser debuted in 2008, Google said in a blog post. http://googleblog.bl...-of-google.html

Google has also been working on "simplifying the 'chrome' of Chrome," wrote Brian Rakowski, a Google product manager.

Google combined Chrome's two menus into one, move button locations, cleaned up the URL box and Omnibox, and adjusted the color scheme (click above for larger screen shot).

"As always, we're hard at work on making Chrome even faster, and working on ways to improve graphics performance in the browser through hardware acceleration," Rakowski wrote. "With the Chrome Web Store, we hope to make it much easier to find and use great applications on the Web."

Last month, Google released a developer preview of its Google Web Store. Developers can now upload apps, experiment with packaging, and install them in Chrome. There are reports that store will make its debut in October.

Rakowski also said Google has "ratcheted up the pace of our releases so that we can get new features and improvements to everyone more quickly."

sept 1 2010

Barrett Xplore 'disappointed' with CRTC decision

Telco: Regulator orders home-phone providers to pay $310.8M rebate, extend broadband services

Officials with Barrett Xplore Inc. are "disappointed" with a decision made Tuesday by the federal telecommunications regulator, which the New Brunswick company says will give Bell Canada money to enter its territory.

In a decision delivered Tuesday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said big-city dwellers will get cash back from their phone companies, while tens of thousands of rural residents will get access to high-speed Internet.

Urban Canadians in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia will get between $20 and $90 back from the large phone companies within the next six months. Subscribers in 287 rural and remote communities will get access to high-speed Internet by 2014.

The windfall comes from a $770-million fund collected from the so-called Bell companies by the CRTC.

The CRTC said in its decision that $310.8 million will go to urban, home-phone customers. Another $421.9 million will be spent on better rural Internet access and $35 million will help improve accessibility for disabled Canadians.

The companies involved in the rebate and the improvements to rural broadband include Bell Canada (TSX:BCE) and Bell Aliant (TSX:BA.UN), Telus (TSX:T) and MTS Allstream (TSX:MBT). SaskTel will use its $1.5-million share of the fund entirely for improved access for the disabled.

C.J. Prudham, chief legal officer for Barrett Xplore, says the decision provides Bell with cash to enter Barrett Xplore's territory in Ontario and Quebec.

"The CRTC is granting money to Bell from urban subsidization to overbuild our existing footprint in the southern Ontario and Quebec area," she said in an interview.

According to Prudham, the CRTC verdict gives Bell $5,000 per household to serve 61,000 "supposedly unserved households."

The reality, she says, is that over 60 per cent of those households are already served, mainly by Barrett Xplore.

So, there is no need for Bell to receive money to provide a service that Barrett Xplore, and others, already provides, she said. As well, Prudham said Barrett Xplore and other firms could provide high-speed Internet to the remaining 40 per cent of households more quickly than Bell.

According to the CRTC, Bell Canada and Bell Aliant will connect 112 communities in Ontario and Quebec.

"There are faster, affordable and reliable services out there already - without subsidization," Prudham said. "We are disappointed. We do think there are more efficient ways of doing this."

Barrett Xplore, based in Woodstock, runs Xplornet Internet Services, Canada's largest rural broadband provider. The company operates in every Canadian province and territory, with a particular focus on providing high-speed Internet in rural areas.

Back in May, Barrett Xplore completed its province-wide Xplornet broadband network in New Brunswick - ahead of schedule.

Barrett Xplore uses both wireless and satellite technology to provide broadband access throughout New Brunswick, regardless of region or remoteness.

In a statement released Tuesday, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said his organization's announcement is "a positive solution for Canadian consumers."

"Subscribers of the major telephone companies in urban areas will enjoy a rebate on their home telephone service. And residents in hundreds of rural communities will soon be able to take advantage of the many social and economic benefits broadband Internet access provides," he said.

In 2002, the CRTC stopped the phone companies from lowering their rates in urban areas in order to protect new competition in the local, home-phone market. The commission diverted that money to a so-called deferral account.

By 2006, competition in local phone service was established and there was no more need to keep an artificial floor on the rates. The commission then had to figure out how to distribute the money.

The issue went to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2008, with a consumer group arguing that the entire amount should go back to consumers in a rebate. The phone companies wanted to spend the fund on service improvements in the rural areas. The court sided with the commission's formula for allocating the cash.

For its part, Bell also decried Tuesday's decision, which came only a day after the CRTC ruled that the large phone companies must offer smaller Internet service providers access to their highest broadband speeds.

"It's a bad week for broadband for those reasons," said Mirko Bibic, senior vice-president of regulatory and government affairs. "It's rather backward-looking ... it reflects further how out of touch CRTC thinking is."

Study: Illegal immigration from Mexico declines overall, but not in Texas

September 1, 2010

The unlawful flow of Mexican immigrants into the U.S. continues to slow, and the nation's illegal immigrant population is down by nearly 1 million people, the Pew Hispanic Center said in a report released today.

But Texas didn't show a decline in the most recent period of study, 2007 to 2009.Instead it showed an increase of 200,000, which the reports' authors said was not statistically significant.


The report by the Pew Hispanic Center avoids naming causes for the contraction to 11.1 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. But it notes that the recession and tougher immigration enforcement paralleled a trend that "represents the first significant reversal in the growth of this population over the past two decades."

The findings come at a time when the national debate over illegal immigration grows more vigorous and polarized. Rancor comes from Arizona's tough new immigration law, which is being challenged in the federal courts. And while some press for a partial legalization program for those here illegally, others have called for an end to birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

Much of the drop the Pew reports found in the unauthorized immigrant population comes from the nation's Southeast coast and the states of Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

"In the case of Mexico, the inflow has dropped but the outflow hasn't changed so those two numbers are in rough balance," said Jeffrey Passel, the report's co-author and a prominent demographer.

Why Texas' population of illegal immigrants hasn't declined is up for debate.

Mexican officials and others have speculated that Texas became a destination state for some immigrants from more economically battered U.S. states. Texas' jobless rate — now at 8.2 percent — has been 1 to 2 percentage points below the national average for much of the recession.

The Pew study follows another report this week that says in Texas one out of three young students under the age of 8 has an immigrant parent. The Washington-based Urban Institute says nationwide one out of four students under the age of 8, roughly third-graders, has an immigrant parent.

And Texas continues to have one of the nation's highest percentages of illegal immigrants in the labor force, at nearly 9 percent. Illegal immigrants account for 6.5 percent of the state's 24 million residents, or an estimated 1.6 million people in 2009. It's the third highest rate in the nation in a cluster led by California (with a 6.9 percent share).

In Dallas, Vanna Slaughter, the longtime head of immigration services for Catholic Charities, said the report reflected what she saw in the population.

"The contraction doesn't surprise me," Slaughter said. "That it doesn't show up in Texas does."

Slaughter said the State Department is seeing a similar trend in the legal flow of immigrants who petition to bring in relatives. Mexico leads in legal immigration, as well.

According to the Pew center's estimates, an average of 150,000 unauthorized immigrants from Mexico arrived annually between March 2007 and March 2009 — 70 percent below the annual average of 500,000 during the first half of the decade.

The Pew center said that the unauthorized immigrant population peaked at 12 million in March 2007, about six months after the recession officially hit the U.S. And the nonpartisan research center noted that 72 percent of the overall foreign-born population was in the U.S. legally in 2009.  

Apprehensions of illegal immigrants have decreased at the U.S-Mexican border with increased law enforcement there. But removals from the interior of the U.S. have steadily climbed.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said they'd like to expel a record 400,000 people for the fiscal year, ending this September.

aug 31 2010
Canada telcos told to extend broadband services

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada's established telecom companies must spend more than half of a C$770 million ($727 million) fund kept in escrow to expand broadband Internet to rural and remote communities and return the remainder to urban customers, the communications regulator said on Tuesday.

The decision follows years of wrangling over how to spend the money, left in accounts known as deferral funds, set up by a 2002 CRTC ruling that encouraged competition and sought to break open regional telephone monopolies.

The rollout of broadband will be due within four years and the rebate must be paid within six months, the CRTC said.

"Subscribers of the major telephone companies in urban areas will enjoy a rebate on their home telephone service," the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said.

"And residents in hundreds of rural communities will soon be able to take advantage of the many social and economic benefits broadband Internet access provides," it added.

The regulator dismissed attempts by BCE Inc companies Bell Canada and Bell Aliant to use wireless technology in proposed rollouts in Ontario and Quebec, saying the service would not be equivalent to what its urban customers received and was not the lowest cost alternative.

It said BCE companies should spend only C$306.3 million on broadband expansion, much less than the group said it would cost, and rebate C$251.6 million.

"The commission is wrong on all counts," said Mirko Bibic, Bell's senior vice-president for regulatory and government affairs. "With wireless HSPA we can deliver speeds as fast as any speed we can deliver on legacy DSL, he said, noting that Bell would soon deploy technology that would boost wireless speeds "quite significantly".

Quebecor Inc, whose Videotron arm competes with Bell and others in Quebec, said the decision banning wireless rollout was the only decision the CRTC could have made.

"The idea that the commission would step into that highly competitive context and give a half billion dollar subsidy to one of the four competitors, to us was inconceivable," said Dennis Beland Quebecor's director of regulatory affairs, .

The companies were reluctant to pay rebates, arguing they made it appear they had unfairly withheld lower rates from consumers, and said they would be costly and difficult to administer.

FUNDS SET ASIDE

In 2002, in a bid to encourage competition, the CRTC made incumbent companies freeze rates they charge urban users and mandated they set aside a portion -- 3.5 percent of the set rate minus inflation -- into the deferral funds.

The regulator ruled in 2006 that 95 percent of the funds accrued should be spent expanding rural broadband services.

About C$35 million has already been allocated to improve access for people with disabilities, the CRTC said.

Some 5 percent of Canada's population does not have access to broadband landline services, the CRTC said in a recent report. The government budgeted C$225 million in 2009 for its own broadband deployment initiative. Revenues for the industry came to C$6.6 billion in 2009.

The CRTC had ordered the companies to compile lists of communities they would connect. A period of legal wrangling ensued and new telecom entrants stepped in to connect some of the regions the incumbents had listed.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that the CRTC's initial decision should stand, at which point Bell Canada proposed it expand wireless service instead of wired broadband.

The CRTC has previously ruled that the lists can not be amended and any money left in the accounts should be rebated.