Look at it this way: That $US100 up front for the 3G model? It’s insurance. Because if you need 3G and don’t have it, you’re just screwed. But if you have it and never use data, it’s no bigs, ’cause you’re not on a contract. [Apple via MacRumors]

At NASA Goddard, a crew is working to assemble components of the James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2014. Their “webbcam” (embedded within 836sqm of HEPA filters) will be feeding a photo a minute to anyone who’d like to watch.

You should be able to see activity 8am to 4.30pm Eastern, Monday to Friday (11pm to 7.30am, AEDT). But wait wait wait… those NASA employees are ditching out half an hour early? No wonder we’re not playing golf on Mars right now! [Webbcam via NASA via MAKE]

Their clash of values has been well-publicised, with Google halting the release of certain Android phones and even cancelling a developer event over there. Eric Schmidt from Google warned that “something will happen soon”, with the Wall Street Journal claiming sources have tipped them off that they may stop censoring search results this month.

Li Yizhong, a Minister of Industry and Information Technology in China, responded with “if you don’t respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you” when asked about how China will retaliate if Google stayed true to its word.

However, the rather boring (for spectators, at least) conclusion might just be for Google to work with individual agencies and sectors within China, censoring and un-censoring as they see fit. [WSJ via Reuters]

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a vocal opponent to the Government’s policy, and the country’s name in the RSF report is valid and alarming at the same time. But reading through the report, at no point in time is Australia mentioned in the same breath as the two communist nations.

Australia is only mentioned twice in the entire report. Here are the relevant excerpts:

More and more states are enacting or considering repressive laws pertaining to the Web, or are applying those that already exist, which is the case with Jordan, Kazakhstan, and Iraq. Western democracies are not immune from the Net regulation trend. In the name of the fight against child pornography or the theft of intellectual property, laws and decrees have been adopted, or are being deliberated, notably in Australia, France, Italy and Great Britain. On a global scale, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), whose aim is to fight counterfeiting, is being negotiated behind closed doors, without consulting NGOs and civil society. It could possibly introduce potentially liberticidal measures such as the option to implement a filtering system without a court decision.

Among the countries “under surveillance” are several democracies: Australia, because of the upcoming implementation of a highly developed Internet filtering system, and South Korea, where draconian laws are creating too many specific restrictions on Web users by challenging their anonymity and promoting selfcensorship.

This second mention is the one that matters. The agency lists Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam all as “enemies of the Internet”. Australia is not on that list. They have, however been placed “under surveillance”, alongside South Korea, Russia, Turkey United Arab Emirates, Belarus and Thailand.

So what does this all actually mean? It means that there’s a little bit more international attention on the Australian government’s policy for mandatory internet filtering. Maybe that attention will put pressure on them to shelve the idea, but probably not.

It’s important to understand that even though this filter is a huge mistake, we’re still a very long way from being on the same level as North Korea and Iran, despite what the media may infer. At least we have a choice to vote for our Government – something you should all remember come the next Federal election…

[RSF]

The reasoning? Videochat could be used to coordinate terrorist attacks. Good thing he didn’t have email or IM access!

So what’s a curious guy to do? To the Internet! Which is exactly what I did. Responses starting pouring in. Including one from a pal at the State Department, who echoed my basic goal: To use video chat to tuck my kids into bed isn’t a crime. Or at least, shouldn’t be.

The flight attendant just showed me the United policy manual which prohibits “two way devices” from communicating with the ground. However, the PLANE HAS WIFI. To combat this, not unlike China, United and other airlines have blocked Skype and other known video chat offenders. Apparently, they missed Apple iChat. Oops.

The reason that in-flight video chat is frowned about is because it’s annoying to fellow passengers, not because of terrorists. But who needs to know that when you can just claim something is against the law? [Battelle Media via Boing Boing]

Faster than you could say Google Fibre (though not faster than the company’s proposed gigabit speeds) metros whipped up Facebook pages and took to Twitter to raise awareness and offer instruction on how to nominate their hometown. FastCompany.com combed through this rapidly growing list of cities and pulled together a few of the more creative efforts – some snarky, some tongue-in-cheek, all earnestly hoping that when the application process ends on March 26 and the dust clears in this social media-fuelled Thunderdome, they’ll claim Google Fibre’s bountiful business. Many towns enter. One burgh leaves.

Columbia, Missouri

Columbia has all the advantages of a big city coupled with the access problems of small-town America: low-performance, high-cost broadband and next to no fibre infrastructure, says Amberly Engert, a social media manager. So she created a Facebook page, and Ian Eyberg, a software developer started the Como Fibre Group to tout the potentially massive opportunity Google Fibre posed. Engert says that while no one in Columbia is jumping in a lake or renaming the town (read on), residents have submitted video kudos to the growing art scene and the “groovy culture” on the group’s website. The effort really coalesced on Saturday when some 15,000 signs printed with Google’s logo were distributed to the sell-out crowd at the nationally televised Missouri-Kansas men’s basketball game.

Grand Rapids, Michigan

The Google Fibre for Grand Rapids steering committee points out that the typical Comcast & AT&T U-verse connection is about 6mbps – a far cry from Google’s gigs. So they’re planning a “Flash Mob” citywide rally on March 19 that is expected to include a “human fibre” chain of joined hands (Hands Across Grand Rapids?) to create what organisers hope will be a huge show of support. As it is, Grand Rapids currently has the distinction of collecting the most fans on its Facebook fan page (over 22,000 at last count) since it started on February 10. And, hey! Here’s a local “television personality” making her case.

Greenville, South Carolina

Greenville’s feeling lucky. The campaign to woo Google started by a group of 12 well-connected individuals and has spread like wildfire through the local tech community. Trey Pennington, an organiser, says this is not surprising given the community’s mindset “dominated by commitment to collaborate”. The group quickly produced a video playing off of Google’s “Feeling Lucky” search theme and is planning a unique “community expression project” – Google on Main. Set to unfold the night of March 20, citizens armed with glowsticks will gather in downtown Greenville – on Main Street – to rave show their support for the coming of Google Fibre. Rumour has it the event will be filmed by helicopter.

Peoria, Illinois

The denizens of Peoria, Illinois, want Google to know that it hasn’t yet taken a turn in the “geographic centre of the universe”. Not yet anyway. A special website, Google Plays in Peoria, features a video rife with slides of bucolic cityscapes and stirring music from Vangelis. Peoria announces that on March 26, Google “will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to play in Peoria”. But that’s not all. Photographs of the seven wonders of Peoria ensue, and once again the city pitches Google, this time for a chance to join the ranks of a larger-than-life bikini clad sculpture, a Twistee Treat, and others as the city’s “eighth wonder”. If all else fails, Peoria says to Google, “Do it for the children.” Media coverage includes a story of ways Peoria schools could benefit from faster internet access.

Topeka, Kansas

Jared Starkey, the president of LAMP Development, LLC, says the campaign started as Facebook group and spun out into a new group called “Think Big Topeka“. Now over 14,000 volunteer members strong (with no dues, and therefore, no bank account), they are relying on donated advertising and promotional support to spread the word further. Most famously, Topeka’s mayor issued a proclamation (on Google Docs, natch) that for the entire month of March, Topeka would be renamed Google, Kansas. Starkey would like to remind Google that the city served as the testbed for Pokemon in the US back in 1998, so they are uniquely qualified to be Google’s control group. And he says, theirs is the only city to make international headlines with their bid for Fibre.

Sarasota, Florida

Taking note of the gauntlets thrown by Topeka and Duluth, Sarasota renamed its City Island, Google Island, and produced a (rather hilarious) video juxtaposing the positives of the city nestled in the Sunshine State with the less-than-picturesque landscape of the Heartland, and the shoulder-high snow drifts and freezing temperature of Minnesota. ‘Nuff said.

Duluth, Minnesota

But wait! Patrick Garmoe, public information officer of the Google Twin Ports Initiative laughs sheepishly as he explains Googlefest, an event that is one part rally, one part carnival and all parts enthusiasm for the promise of Google fibre. In the midst of bands, choirs and other entertainment, “We’ll be shooting a movie with real actors and a Hollywood director and live-streaming the event to impress Google,” Garmoe says. The new initiative comes on the heels of Deluth mayor Don Ness’s own stunts. In a spoof video proclamation that in honour of Google, all first born males would be henceforth named GoogleFiber and first born females would of course be Googlette. Also, he literally sunk to a new low in the brutal battle for business. He jumped into the freezing waters of Lake Superior. Hizzoner, perhaps you’ll be deterred from further lunacy by these extremely gnarly Google Image results for “frostbite“.

Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business.

The new feature works on the iPhone and any PalmOS or Android device. When you search for Shopping results, Google now returns not only pricing information for the item you’re looking for, but a blue dot indicates which retailers have it nearby and whether they’ve got it in stock. It’s basically there to save yourself a trip.

The catch – there’s always a catch! – is that currently only a few retail partners are signed up. There are some major ones in there, like Best Buy, Sears,and Williams-Sonoma, but the feature needs participation from both big box stores and local merchants to be truly helpful. You hear that, sellers of goods? Go here now to sign up. Buyers of goods, you’re beautiful. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and look for that blue dot. [Google Mobile Blog]

Chatroulette is a pretty slapdash application. It was built by a Russian teenager, after all! So it just connects you with a stranger directly rather than routing you both through another server, allowing you to see the IP address of everyone you connect to. And an IP address can point to where that person is on a map.

ChatrouletteMaps doesn’t let you pinpoint everyone you connect with on Chatroulette, unfortunately. Instead it just lets you poke around a global Google Map for screenshots of people who’s IP its captured. And obviously an IP address isn’t like GPS; these things aren’t going to be totally accurate to the street level. But if you’re curious about which country has the most perverts, say hello to your new research tool. [ChatrouletteMap via Laughing Squid]

Google Reader Play is a full-screen treatment that shows you an image, video or text from websites that are popular on Google Reader. You can navigate from page to page with right and left arrows at the sides of the screen, or by selecting a site from the assorted options below. You don’t have to be signed in to use it, although if you are you’ll have more control over the type of content you’re seeing: when you use Google Reader Play from your account, you can star an item for later, say that you like it to be shown similar content in the future, and share it with friends.

The interface is certainly easy to use on a desktop, although not ideal for sorting through a large number of feeds if you’re looking for news or a specific site. But where it’s really going to shine is on a tablet, where the large display, simple interaction and random stream of content lend themselves perfectly to wasting away an afternoon on a couch, scrolling through the best parts of the internet.

It’s still in Labs right now, but can be used by anyone, and it’s more than worth a shot! To be clear, it’s not a replacement for Google Reader, nor is it meant to be. It’s just a new way of browsing the web, and just in time for the tablets it’ll work best on. [Official Google Reader Blog]

Jan Ozer at Streaming Learning Centre decided to run some tests – simple tests – comparing CPU utilisation for HTML5-embedded and Flash-embedded h.264 videos, in different browsers, and across Windows and OS X. Spoiler: It didn’t go so well for anyone involved.

So, this whole test is just a mess of incompatibilities. For HTML5, they’re obvious: a lot of browsers just don’t have h.264 decoding support, so they can’t decode the HTML5 video at all. For Flash, the incompatibilities are more subtle: On Mac, Flash 10.1 doesn’t support hardware video acceleration, whereas on PC, it does. In the cases where Flash video is actually more efficient than HTML5, the reason is that it’s accelerated by the PC’s graphics hardware.

To make it all worse, neither set of incompatibilities will be resolved soon. Adobe claims that Apple’s reluctance to give them access to relevant APIs in OS X has made it impossible to implement hardware acceleration, which is why videos require so much less CPU power in Windows than on OS X. And for what it’s worth, this is a defensible philosophical choice. Says Gruber:

The Apple way to play H.264 is through the QuickTime APIs (and really, as of Snow Leopard the new QuickTime X APIs), not to write your own H.264 playback code that seeks to directly access hardware accelerators.

Apple could make Flash better on Mac, but it would be a break in tradition, and judging by Steve Jobs apparently disdain for Flash in general, Adobe shouldn’t expect any extra help to come from Cupertino.

And as for the terrible browser compatibility problems, these are just as insidious, and much less calculable. Mozilla says they’ll never support h.264 video, and even if Microsoft decided to in Internet Explorer 9, for example, the vast masses of people who still use older versions of IE – including IE6, which is still one of the most popular browsers on the internet, despite being originally released in 2001 – will never support it. (See our Giz Explains on the subject for more.) And so there’s that!

The moral of the story, weirdly enough, is that we should frame this whole issue in terms of video performance. Flash is widely used for ads and other dynamic content as well – both of which could theoretically be replaced by some combination of HTML5 and JavaScript, but which face the same browser compatibility issues as HTML5 video. In theory, HTML5 video sounds like it ought to be more efficient than plugin-based Flash, but right now, minor differences in CPU utilisation? That’s the least of our worries. [Jan Ozer via ReadWriteWeb]