The year 2011 was one year that we will all never forget. Even though they were all in the beginning of the year, the floods in Queensland and Brazil, the earthquakes in Christchurch and the tsunami in the north of Japan are still present in all of our minds. We also saw the death of a tech luminary, Steve Jobs; and the powerful News Corporation losing its influence over politicians in the UK after the phone hacking scandal took a drastic turn from celebrities to victims of crime.
This week saw Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the number of tablets have expanded with Samsung, LG and HTC getting in the mix; while publishers are angry with Apple and Telstra gains some love with us with its announcement over 4G.
The internet has run out of IPv4 addresses and also Intel has a bad batch of Sandy Bridge chips that needs replacing. But it’s not all bad news – Murdoch is spreading his empire on the iPad, while Google’s Honeycomb is looking delicious with its sexy user interface. That’s this week on the TECHGEEK Weekly podcast.
Image: Al Jazeera English/Creative Commons
We are hearing reports across the web and over Twitter that the last ISP in Egypt, the Noor Group, who was not affected by the previous shutdown, has been taken offline. The closure of Noor means that there is no longer any Internet access in Egypt.
Wow. We’ve reached 30 episodes – who knew from the beginning we would actually have reached this far. Anyway, we discuss the IPv4 running out of addresses, the new PSP2 by Sony and the Egypt Internet Blackout.
Image: Al Jazeera English/Creative Commons
The internet may be blocked in Egypt, and what we can tell on Twitter, many of the other communication services are also down; but that hasn’t stopped many people trying to bypass the blocks, with many finding alternative services to disseminate information to the entire world.
The Egyptian Government have now shut off all Internet connections coming to and from the country, just hours before a protest planned on Facebook. This comes after reports of the SMS network and the BlackBerry Messaging service had also been taken down by the Government.
Reports are now circulating that both Twitter and Facebook have now been re-blocked by the Egyptian government as protests in the country continue as it reaches its third day with calls for President Hosni Mubarak to leave his position.
Egypt authorities have blocked many social networking sites – including Twitter, Facebook – in an effort to contain any news coming out of the country, as riots escalate. Meanwhile, the group Anonymous have threatened denial-of-service attacks on the Egyptian government over its censorship.
Telecommunication lines between Europe, the Middle East and Asia have been severed, resulting in lost connections via phone and the internet in the affected regions. This is the second time in this year when these cables have been cut, with the first happening earlier in the year, where two lines were only snapped – all in the Egyptian coast.