The three-month, multi-million pound campaign kicks off today with three TV ads. More details here.

Originally, parliamentary ministers had sought to extend powers allowing them to amend existing copyright law and penalise copyright infringements with tougher penalties and hefty fines. These were overturned by both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, replacing them with a more specific and damaging proposal.

Amendments to the Digital Economy Bill look set to hand power to courts to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites. Signatories of the letter believe the Bill and it’s associated measures will threaten “freedom of speech and the open internet” and would not tackle copyright infringement as intended.

The bill has complete party support Westminster (the revisions approved by 165 votes to 140), it’s members believing new measures would protect the creative industries by preventing access to websites where films and music were being provided illegally.

Parliament face stiff opposition from some of the largest telecoms (BT, Virgin Media, Carphone Warehouse, Talk Talk) and internet companies in the UK (Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, Google) aswell as backing from Stephen Fry, Labour MP’s and a whole host of digital rights groups and activists.

The letter states:

“Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended.

To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor lawmaking.”

The bill will be put before a House of Lords vote next week before passing it to the House of Commons.

We will keep you updated as this story progresses.

[Source - Telegraph]

The plan is simple – get 25 entrepreneurs on a bus for 2 days and get them to create 5 startups that will be pitched to investors when they arrive in Austin.

The website the team has created is great, showing, amongst other things, exactly where the bus is at all times and displaying geo-located tweets from the trip

You can also keep up to date in real time by following the Startup Bus’ Twitter account.

The bus is the brainchild of Elias Bizannes, an Australian now living in San Francisco, who proposed it on the Silicon Beach Google Group, a leading Australian tech entrepreneur  forum which Bizannes also started, a couple of months ago.

Since then, the support that has come from the Australian tech community (some of who have flown across to the US for the trip) has been amazing. That having been said, it’s not only Aussies on the bus – there’s a large mix of international talent, all looking for what will no doubt be the experience of a lifetime.

The idea has also generated a lot of interest in the media, some positive and some questioning the quality of the startups that will come out of the experiment.

Those critics clearly have missed the point on what the trip is about. I don’t think anybody is suggesting that a world class startup will be created in 2 days, and on a bus – the real point here are the relationships that will be formed and the experience of working under pressure to get something from idea to launch to pitch in 48 hours.

Remember, the trip is only for 48 hours, so make sure you check them out soon.

Quite simply, Mozilla’s new design for Jetpack, a platform that lets developers build new and improved add-ons for Firefox, is a complete rip off of Metalab’s own website.

In a post, Metalab outlines how the company had in fact been contacted by Mozilla regarding the project and had even sent in a proposal which Mozilla eventually rejected. Metalab even go so far as to include the estimate:

This isn’t the first time a company who should know better has completely ripped off another site. Microsoft recently launched and then pulled their own new site after it had been proven to be an exact rip off (design and code) of Plurk.

It’s surprising to see this sort of thing from a company like Mozilla who generally receive a great deal of respect within the technology and Internet community. Whether we’ll see Mozilla pull the design and/or issue an apology, we’ll wait and see. Metalab requests you tweet @MozillaNews to let them know “this isn’t ok.”

The store comes out of the desire for increased functionality among Google Apps users, and the wish of developers to reach the millions of businesses that depend on Google Apps every day.

There have been companies developing for Google Apps for some time, such as SocialWok. However, the process has always been difficult, and overly complex for both developers and users alike. The new App store will change that by creating a central location for applications, a central management areas, “universal navigation,” data security, and simple sign in.

Google is taking Apps and bringing the masses in to make it harder, faster, better, and simpler.

Developers will be able to use tools such as OpenID, and OAuth, meaning that users will be given use scenarios that they are familiar with, and that developers will have a very simple time developing for the new app store as it uses tools that they are already familiar with.

Google claims that its 2+ million Apps using businesses with 25 million users and over 1000 resellers will be developer accessable with some 12 integration points. Open the floodgates, and let the developers in.

Not coming with launch, but by mid-2010 Google will offer billing for the developers. Developers will use Google billing APIs, but Google itself will handle the billing according to the rules that the developers set in terms of price and time duration. Google will not be doing that for free, the company will take a 20% cut of those revenues.

Who is working with Google for the launch to bring in apps right away? More than 50 companies, take a look:

While it may seem greedy on the surface for Google take such a large cut, but recall that Apple takes 30% in the iPhone app store, and that higher percentages are the norm in the advertising business. 20% for Google to handle the headache of billing and providing such massive market access is quite fair.

Of course what we have yet to discuss is the impact that will have on the average Google Apps user. This means more, better applications with simpler controls,  and simpler billing. This will create a large, serious cottage industry around Google Apps the likes of which we do not see now.

And of course, this will make the cloud one step more powerful against  desktop applications that used to reign supreme. Desktop might still rule for now, but how many more blows like this can it withstand?

In case you’re unaware, Twt.tl is Twitter’s own URL shortener and has been used sparingly to combat phishing attacks and to protect its users. Today the company is renewing its efforts to combat these attacks by sending virtually all URLs sent via direct messages or email through a filtering system.

In a blog post the company says:

“By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.”

This will mean all harmless URLs, you will reach without concern, but any URLs Twitter consider’s unsafe you will see a warning page.

The Twt.tl URL was first announced in 2008 but only now, after the frequent phishing attacks on its users will it be put to full effect. Whether we’ll see this replace bit.ly as Twitter’s default URL shortener, we’ll have to wait and see.

The app is being built using 3D models in Google Earth combined with Google Street View and using a user’s GPS coordinates. In theory, users will be able to point their camera at a building to be able to see through a building to the building behind it (but not into the building, according to the professor, although we could certainly see retail business applications for such an app).

Also in the works are apps called Meltvision and Distortvision, which are explained in the article like this:

“Meltvision works using a similar process to the X-ray vision application, but the image of the front of the building ”melts away” to reveal what is behind. Distortvision alters the mobile video image so that objects out of the line of sight can be ”bent” into vision.”

Watch out Superman.

Comscore reported that usage of Bing went up from 11.3% in January to 11.5% in February, while Yahoo’s stats during the same period dropped to 16.8% from 17%. Google’s stats remained essentially unchanged.

The most impressive figures for Bing, however, come from a report written by Morgan Stanley analyst Imran Khan. Khan stated that Microsoft’s year on year search growth for the month of February was 55.4%, up from January’s similarly impressive 49% year on year search growth. In the same period, Yahoo’s seen year on year search volume shrink 9.8% in February and 8.9% in January.

So what does this mean for the search market? It means that Bing has continued to grow, and more importantly, that Bing’s growth appears to be accelerating.

This appears to be due to a combination of factors. First, Bing is apparently luring considerable numbers of users away from Yahoo. This suggests that Bing’s extensive marketing efforts have succeeded to some extent.

Second, Google’s growth appears to be slowing down a little bit. Year on Year total searches for January and February increased by 12.4% and 10.4% respectively. Google’s Year on Year search growth for these months barely outpaced total search growth, coming in at 16.7% and 14.3% respectively.

It appears that the search market is consolidating somewhat. Bing’s market share is inching upwards, at the expense of everyone else except Google. When Yahoo essentially concedes their search engine to Bing, it will be interesting to see if Bing is able to take a bite out of Google

In a statement delivered at the Digital Inclusion Summit today, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps outlined potential means to achieve the goal of free or very low-cost broadband access. Copps stated that a possible way to make broadband access universal and cheap would be to “consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low cost wireless broadband service.”

Has the US decided to take the Finnish route and make broadband access a universal right?

Not quite, but close. Politicians, especially Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), have long trumpeted the need for universal broadband access. As Copps said in his remarks today, “there is no greater benefit that broadband can deliverthan its ability to help inform our civic dialogue and stimulate citizen engagement in our

And yet, the goal of universal broadband has remained out of reach. In 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that this type of plan was approved, with rollout scheduled for 2010. However, that plan had stalled. While it’s not clear yet, it could be that this plan has been rubber stamped again.

Copps said that the details of this plan will be revealed in the National Broadband Plan, slated to be revealed next week. Until then, it’s tough to know what tack the FCC will take to make free broadband happen. Still, it’s a good sign to see this issue back before the committee again, and hopefully this time it will be successful.

Location buzz is reaching epic proportions.

Today alone, Facebook and Twitter gave not so subtle hints about their Location ambitions.  Google is already in.  Yelp is already in.  Foursquare and Gowalla are running like hell to stay ahead of the check-in pack – as evidence, Gowalla is apparently sitting on 788 pounds of freshly delivered schwag for the SXSW festivities (or perhaps one large, branded Kangaroo).

Burbn is up to something.  Fourwhere is getting nice press with their mash-up.  Postabon just announced funding.

Who else is lurking out there?  What other contenders will emerge this weekend in Austin?

Don’t be shy: tips@thenextweb.com

Google have corrected many of the privacy concerns, other features we lie in wait for.

One of the most anticipated feature releases is Buzz for Google Apps, Google’s corporate webmail and PIM service.

Today it appears Google is rolling Buzz out to selected users. Not available on the fullemail client just yet, some users (including myself) now have Buzz available on the mobile version of Buzz. This is similar to the roll out of Buzz in Gmail, which saw it available on the iPhone before Gmail.com. We can expect to see Buzz arrive in Google Apps email inboxes very soon.

The URL of Google Buzz for your domain on your mobile http://m.google.com/app/buzz/a/YOURDOMAIN.com, on a standard browser (after a few tries) we believe you should find buzz appear at http://google.com/buzz/a/YOURDOMAIN.com. Although at the moment that redirects to a page not found url.

Strangely enough, although I can “buzz” away on my iPhone, I can’t seem to find my account via my standard gmail.com buzz account. I’ve even tried following myself but no luck, I’m well and truly hidden.

This evening, at 7pm PST Time, we’ll see Google make a major announcement. Whether this has something to do with it is possible but unlikely. We’ve been reliably informed Google has bigger news in store.

H/T Sam

Sample badges include the “Groupie,” and the appropriately named “Hangover.” This is South By, after all.

People left and right are dubbing this years South By Southwest the ‘location SXSW’. Like Twitter was in 2007 at the event, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt are to be this year.

To take part in this free wave of PR and usership, Foursquare is partnering with a number of companies to make using their service the best service to use during the multi-day event. A partnership with PayPal is raising money from Haiti. Bing, Sobe, and Pepsi are giving away Foursquare temporary tattoos to people with the new SXSW badges.

Heck you can even play Foursquare with the company, the game with a ball of course. Free t-shirts will abound.

Why all the hubbub? Location is no longer the cute new playground of the technological elite. With Foursquare growing at more than 50% a month, the company is refusing to give up an ounce of its momentum. It may feel like they are trying too hard, but with Facebook moving in to their space in short order, their actions begin to make more sense.

Still, Gowalla and others are not throwing in the towel. Expect to see a full court press from everyone on everyone at the same time. Gowalla, Foursquare, and SimpleGeo are all throwing parties, let the good times roll.

Ever since Retweet.com launched as a Tweetmeme competitor I have not been a fan of the company. Their offensively annoying introductory video, ugly interface, and lack of concept innovation irked me.

I gave them a negative review at launch, and actually had the gumption to put them verbally deadpool them on their launch day. I was vindicated recently when the service put itself up for auction on the bidding website Flippa. I expected the saga to end there, with the site selling for a few dollars.

However, lo and behold, someone bought them out for a higher than expected sum. The final bid jumped from just over $200,000 to the quarter million dollar buy it now price on the last day of the auction. Perhaps the site could have gone for more. The website is still live as of 1 Pm PST.

However, it is nearly certain that most of the value in the company is its domain name, which everyone has long agreed to be excellent. Possible trademark infringement, that part of the service was always better than Tweetmeme. The website never found a large audience, and when compared to Tweetmeme is barely a dot to be registered. Check Alexa, it’s not pretty.

Whatever happens to the site, Tweetmeme is still the market leader. Best of luck to the sites new owners, whoever you are.

The system will focus on two main thrusts, the first allowing users to share their location with their assorted friends on Facebook, and another letting developers interact with Facebook users and their locations via new location-centric APIs.

Of course, this would raise a firestorm of controversy if Facebook had not already battened down the legal hatches. Back in November they changed Terms of Service to include several references to location-based capabilities. That means that like it or not, everyone using Facebook has already given the social networking giant permission to share their location with their friends if they state it.

That said, the terms of service do say that the service, when it comes to be, will be opt-in. That is, Facebook will not share your status without you giving it. However, once you do it is off to the races.

Facebook has declined to comment thus far.

Of course, bringing Facebook into the location game is bad news for every location-heavy startup in the market right now. With Google and Facebook both moving into the location space with Buzz, Latitude, and the forthcoming Facebook release, startups like Foursquare and Gowalla are going to find increasing difficulty in convincing users to adopt their products over the offerings of the giants.

Facebook and Google can offer better location integration into the services that users already use and have deep investments in. Of course, Facebook could commit a serious privacy error (as they are wont to do), but shy of that Facebook will become a player in the location space on April 21, at its f8 conference.

Sounds excellent, right? Not to everyone. Cisco had previously told the world that its coming announcement would “forever change the Internet” and effect a change that would demonstrate “what’s possible when networking gets an adrenaline boost.”

They did that; their new router is an impressive technological piece. However, the market has been less tickled perhaps than AT&T who is currently testing the router. Cisco’s stock (CSCO), after a Monday rally due to the hype has stalled in today’s trading, at one point falling some 7.4% from its overnight peak.

The stock has since recovered and is up a fraction on the day, on general strength in its sector.

This just goes to show the higher stakes in hype when a company is public. If a startup claims that it is about to change the world, people might actually give it less credence. When a public company does so, the market moves and billions of dollars are created and dissipated.

The router itself is a technological marvel. It can transmit some 322 terabits a second. According to Cisco this would allow the machine to host video calls between every man woman and child in China, and stream every motion picture ever made in four minutes.

AT&T is testing the new router as part of a High-Speed 100 Gigabit backbone network between Miami and New Orleans. This network, which is more than ten times the bandwidth of a normal data trunk line, will help alleviate the strain on AT&T’s overtaxed wireless data network, as well as allowing AT&T to ramp up consumer data speeds.

Don’t tell that to the market, they were probably looking for a strategic partnership with Twitter.

For the past couple of years, advertising via Facebook and Twitter has been a “Wild West” of experimentation where brands could do pretty much whatever they liked. We’ve seen innovative ideas like Ikea’s Facebook photo-tagging and just about every brand you can think of has started to use Twitter to varying degrees of success.

Social media marketing has had a number of ‘fail moments’ as it has grown (just think of Habitat and its ill-judged use of hashtags), so it was only a matter of time before rules were tightened up.

Under the proposals, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) would control digital marketing to ensure that it is “responsible, legal, honest and truthful”. The ASA currently oversees print, TV and radio advertising in much the same way. The proposals, first reported by The Guardian, would regulate advertising by UK companies across their websites and all social media activity.

According to Clickz, the new advertising rules are to be published this month and should be in force later this year. Details of exactly how offenders will be punished have yet to be decided.

Wireless telecoms giant Vodafone has been distributing malware to it’s customers via it’s mobile phones, a recent blog post from the Panda Research Team shows.

A member of the research team had a brand new Vodafone HTC Magic delivered, a device powered by the open-source Android mobile operating system.

Upon connecting it to her computer, the employee received a warning from her Panda Cloud Antivirus warning her about a potential threat from files already on the device.

Two malicious files were found to be mounted on the external drive, a close inspection revealed that these files; autorun.inf and autorun.exe, had already spread to the computer the phone was plugged into, by way of a Mariposa bot client starting to take effect.

It appears the malware on the HTC Magic handset was a modified version of the the Mariposa bot client created by a Spanish malware collective called the Días de Pesadilla (Nightmare Days) Team.

Once the computer was infected, the malware would “phone home” to a remote server to receive further instructions. It is thought the malware would steal confidential credentials, change on the results shown in search engines and displaying pop-up ads, indicating the main aim was to profit from the botnet.

Vodafone’s blushes weren’t limited to the Botnet either; both the Confiker and a Lineage password stealing malware were also found on the device.

There is no indication whether the HTC Magic handset was the only device infected with the botnet malware or whether it was a fault on Vodafones or HTC’s part.

As Pedro Bustamante, the author of the Panda Research report highlights, it makes you wonder who is keeping an eye on the Quality Assurance over at Vodafone and HTC these days.

Update: Vodafone have released a statement highlighting the incident was isolated but they are investigating further:

Vodafone takes the security and privacy of its customers extremely seriously and launched an immediate investigation into this incident.

Following extensive Quality Assurance testing on HTC Magic handsets in several of our operating companies, early indications are that this was an isolated local incident

Vodafone keeps its security processes under constant review as new threats arise, and we will take all appropriate actions to safeguard our customers’ privacy.

This version will come in 2011, following the release of the consumer edition later this year. Chrome OS has been causing a stir in tech circles since it was initially rumored to exist. Its focus on internet applications, and the dependance on the cloud by the consumer for daily computing tasks does mark a paradigm shift in personal computer use.

With the weight of Google behind the operating system, it is expected to become a popular option for casual computer users. It will be able to find a niche inside of the currently explosive global netbook market.

Especially given recent economic conditions, sales of the diminutive machines have skyrocketed, accelerating PC shipments around the world. In fact, netbooks have become a second computer to many PC owners who before had tended to stick to a single desktop or laptop.

Chrome OS is a different model from what the current market has to offer, and given its differences, it is hard to see where it fits into an enterprise field. With little to no physical storage, and a focus on internet use, it seems unlikely that security focused IT departments will be quick to assign them to employees.

It is unclear at the moment if eventual enterprise edition will feature a tool-set to allow for the machines to be locked down. If it does not, we will be surprised. More when we have it.

China is promising to handle any hackers with swift, hard justice.

On the surface that sounds quite impressive. However, the context of the quote takes away enough of its bite to make us wonder if it is all bark. From Miao Wei, China’s vice minister of Industry and Information Technology, on state television:

“If Google has had evidence that the attacks came from China, the Chinese government will welcome them to provide the information and will severely punish the offenders according to the law. We never support hacking attacks because China also falls victim to hacking attacks”

Not to be antagonistic, but that is just not good enough. When the story broke, the only thought on everyone’s mind was whether the attacks had come from the Chinese government. The way that Google worded its announcement made it seem like it was possible.

Later information came out from Google that the hackers came from two Chinese schools. One of the schools has strong ties to the Chinese government and the Chinese military. This ties the Chinese government to the attacks, at least indirectly.

China states that Google has not yet filed  a formal complaint, and therefore the country has yet to take any punitive actions. The schools are denying any involvement or wrongdoing. China is saying things in public that make it seem like they are willing to take some responsibility for the future of the situation, but will they? Even more so, by claiming to be anti-hacking, they are trying to sound like they identify with Google. If they can sell that in the public eye, any move by Google against the Chinese market will paint Google the antagonist, not the victim.

Read their pronouncement again: “If Google has…… welcome them to provide the information…” How proactive does that sound? Google, send them a document with everything you know. If they need more information, Google it and email it to Mr. Wei, he seems to not know what has been going on.

Just how big is Google? Gigantic. In response to possible consumer fear of its massive size, Australian news show Hungry Beast compiled a simply amazing video-look into the company. You will not find a more fascinating clip in under three minutes anywhere else this week.

Is Google becoming larger than it should? Is it trying to be everything to everyone? Is it a monopoly? Check the clip after the jump, but put on your tin-foil hat just in case.

Source: Hungry Beast. Via Business Insider.