First 4G Android phone looks a Sprint winner
The first 4G phone in the US, the HTC Evo unveiled by Sprint at the CTIA show on Tuesday, ticks just about all the boxes for my ideal phone.
We await details of pricing and plans and exactly when the handset will be available this summer, but the features are mouth-watering enough to satisfy the thirst of smartphone addicts for the time being. Details after the jump. Read more
US Cybercrime bill would punish other countries
A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate on Tuesday would require the US to penalise countries that don’t do enough to crack down on cybercrime that attacks US individuals, companies or federal assets.
Backed by Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, the bill would have the president identify countries of concern and establish benchmarks for rectifying the problems. Read more
Twitter touts less spam
After taking so much flack for its frequent outages and the regular attacks on its system, it is only fair that Twitter gets to toot its own horn once in a while.
In a bit of very good news for the company, Twitter says it has finally gotten spam on the site under control.
As Twitter was going through its major growth spurt last year, spammers and scammers flocked to the site. From May through October, as much as 9 per cent of all tweets were spam, according to Twitter’s own numbers. Now that number is down to about 1 per cent, said Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury in a blog post. Read more
Google chooses Chinese filters over self-censorship
How would you rather see the internet – strained through a filter or mangled by a censor?
With its attempt to score an end-run round the Chinese authorities today, Google is betting on the former. But Chinese officials, who are only now waking up to Google’s middle-of-the-night gambit, don’t sound so happy about the idea.
The Google calculation is straightforward. Redirecting all the search traffic from its local Google.cn site to Hong Kong, beyond the reach of the censors, then bouncing the results back into mainland China, has two benefits. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
