As our regular readers will know, we here at Bandwidth Blog like infographics, or basically anything that makes data more visually appealing, or easier to understand. I recently came across this tool from Ionz which generates a cool looking, albeit simple “view” of your own profile. When you open up the site it will ask you a few questions, and then based on percentages of the average user, generate something like this:

From there you can go and save a high resolution version for desktop. While I realize its a very simple little tool, I wish it had a few more metrics.

If you want to go and try it out – get it here. Once it fires up, just click the Union Jack at the top right to switch to english. From there answer the questions, and just wait for he infograph to generate. You can then personalize it in terms of orientation, colour, etc. Enjoy.

Google‘s rich history of acquisitions is put together in a very good format here by the guys at Scores.org. Where this infographic is handy is that they quickly identify whether a purchase was a way to enhance existing Google revenue streams, or to get rid of competitors. What I want to know is how many of these acquisitions have been enhanced since falling inside Google’s empire, and how many have died since…

Source: Scores.org

Pretty good infographic over at Mashable today detailing the usage patterns of text messaging across the world. Clearly teens are texting each other at an incredible rate, and Mashable claims that this form of  communication has surpassed normal face to face communication with many people.

The scary part of all of this is of course that the networks make around 25 – 85c per every 160 characters. 160 bytes of data for that amount of money – you can clearly see why the networks want people to SMS. Clearly someone should let people know of IM – hell, use Mxit, Google Talk, BB Messenger etc.

But enough with the rant – here’s the infographic.

Wired’s cover story for September is quite a big one – Charles Anderson argues that the Web is dead – and this might sound ridiculous. But he does make quite a few very good points. Slowly but surely, we are moving away from a Web only use of the internet, and starting to choose to use the internet in “App form”. Instead of  accessing sites using our PC browser we are preferring to use dedicated applications devoted to a task – which in most cases improves our user experience of these services. Instead of going through the schlep of logging on to Facebook, we instead choose to use a dumbed down, well designed app on iPhone or Android. We prefer to access Twitter through dedicated apps on our phones than going to the Twitter site. Same can be said of music services, and the recent boom in location based services also drives the point further. The interface is better, its easier to use, and the functionality is focussed.

He goes on further mentioning that the traditional “open is good” mindset is not necessarily the most successful anymore. I am not referring to iPhone vs Android, but instead that people like using closed systems in general, nevermind the ethics or “lock in” problems. Good examples include the iTunes store, but Facebook is a prime example. Its closed nature is perhaps what made people want to use it – the fact that your activities are generally kept away from Google’s crawlers makes the platform seem more welcoming. Of course I realize there is a lot wrong in that sentence – you be the judge:

Enter Facebook. The site began as a free but closed system. It required not just registration but an acceptable email address (from a university, or later, from any school). Google was forbidden to search through its servers. By the time it opened to the general public in 2006, its clublike, ritualistic, highly regulated foundation was already in place. Its very attraction was that it was a closed system. Indeed, Facebook’s organization of information and relationships became, in a remarkably short period of time, a redoubt from the Web — a simpler, more habit-forming place. The company invited developers to create games and applications specifically for use on Facebook, turning the site into a full-fledged platform. And then, at some critical-mass point, not just in terms of registration numbers but of sheer time spent, of habituation and loyalty, Facebook became a parallel world to the Web, an experience that was vastly different and arguably more fulfilling and compelling and that consumed the time previously spent idly drifting from site to site. Even more to the point, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg possessed a clear vision of empire: one in which the developers who built applications on top of the platform that his company owned and controlled would always be subservient to the platform itself. It was, all of a sudden, not just a radical displacement but also an extraordinary concentration of power. The Web of countless entrepreneurs was being overshadowed by the single entrepreneur-mogul-visionary model, a ruthless paragon of everything the Web was not: rigid standards, high design, centralized control.

I highly recommend you go read it here. It makes you think twice about the way we will use the internet in the future.

Its finally happening – Telkom is starting its rollout of upgrading certain 4Mbps lines to 10Mbps, but it will at first focus on metropolitan areas. While the cost stays the same, users can expect big speed increases from their existing lines – but only users who have 4Mbps line speed activated. No good news to customers with slower ADSL lines.

While this is great news, I expected a bit more from Telkom. True, our infrastructure might not support much faster lines yet, but I at least expect Telkom to increase the speeds of its lower end offerings. At present, its lower end 348kbps and 512kbps lines can hardly be considered “broadband” (click here to see how SA stacks up against the rest of the world in terms of internet speed). Despite Telkom’s misleading advertising, SA is still firmly in the stoneage of internet connectivity, with users paying ridiculous prices for slow internet. At present ADSL clients have a choice of 348kbps, 512 kpbs or 4Mbps lines, with the 4Mbps lines getting upgraded to 10Mbps lines eventually. My opinion is that this should at least be 1Mbps, 2Mbps and then finally the 4-10Mbps offering.

At least in the past year things improved with uncapped internet becoming more affordable, and many people have moved to this method of how the internet is supposed to be used. The whole idea of thinking about how much money this youtube video will cost you in bandwidth is a very antiquated idea by world standards. The problem is now that people who  might have 10Mbps capable lines will need to pay more to their ISP if they want to stick with uncapped.

At present Mweb has made public that they are working towards a 10Mbps uncapped offering, but pricing is still unavailable.

Now if Telkom can just increase the speeds of their lower end ADSL offerings…

As a commenter on IOL said, it seems its “To hell with peasants with slower lines”.

As previously mentioned, the recent Saudi insistence on gaining access to the Blackberry Messenger servers have indeed opened up a can of worms for RIM. Long the secure benchmark in the mobile communication world, Blackberrys are being targeted by many officials in the North African and Middle East areas, and as such is under threat to be shut down if RIM does not comply.

India is the latest country to want access to the encrypted BB communication systems – but they perhaps have a good reason to do so. Remember those attacks on Mumbai in 2008? Those terrorists used Blackberry’s as their primary communication method. Why? Because its encrypted… and cannot be seen by governments.

On Thursday the Indian government will make a deadline avaiable to RIM to comply with, otherwise they also threaten to shut down service to BB phones. For a long time Blackberry’s biggest selling point was the secure communication it granted to executives, but now that advantage is quickly coming to a close. In fact in the past month the German government has banned the use of BB with its politicians and civil servants, and the European Union Commission moved to Apple iPhone and HTC smartphones.

Reuters makes a good point in the fact that China and India are the world’s largest mobile phone markets, and if BB is shutdown in these countries, it can pose a significant threat to RIM.

You might have heard that RIM eventually opened up their communications to the UAE – so it is possible that a similiar situation will occur in India, a country with over 600 million cellular subscibers.

Very interesting infographic from the folks at GigaOM. You might want to glance at the figures for South Africa – as you can see, we are very much behind the rest of the world once it comes to broadband connectivity. Our mobile-only phone access looks impressive – but this is of course because of Telkom’s ridiculous pricing and poor service levels. Or that is my interpretation anyway.

Here’s hoping that EASSY and WACS will set things right.

You might have heard by now that Blackberry’s in the UAE will be banned soon if they do not open up their encryption of their BIS servers to the government – well that is the simple explanation, and there is rumours that a few other countries are also wanting to do the same.  They say this is for security reasons, but naturally there are some high profile people out there who do not want their communication to be opened up to governments.

But one should also understand the reason why these governments want – just like South Africa is currently implementing RICA in order to keep track of cellphone users, there are many security reasons for this. Police would like to be able to keep track of certain people or use electronic communication as evidence in court, and I am all for it.

It is for this very reason that I dont know whether RIM’s CEO, Mike Lazaridis, is brave or foolish. In a recent interview with Wallstreet Journal, he says these issues comes down to governments “not understanding the reality of the internet”. He mentions that “everything on the internet is encrypted, this not a Blackberry only issue”. This is of course very true, and I agree that many governments not understanding the internet. Hell, just look at SA.

And then finally he stated – “if they can’t deal with the internet, they should shut it off”. I dont know if he refers here to the internet or Blackberrys, but its a pretty brash statement.

I really hope Blackberry sorts this out, because I have a feeling that more governments will start asking similiar questions. This is a difficult situation for Blackberry – on the one hand they should open up their servers so that governments can access communication logs, and in that way the phones wont be banned, keeping Blackberry clients happy.

On the other hand, if they do open up their records, some Blackberry clients will suddenly feel that their communication is insecure – something that Blackberry has always emphasized in the past.

Lets see how this one plays out.

So you want to know where that son of a deposed Nigerian king is really emailling you from? Google made this handy little tool to track where the most Spam is sent from everyday. This is actually tracking in real time as well…

This Postini tool works by scanning identified malicious IPs accross the world - Postini is Google’s messaging encryption and security suite for Google Apps. It seems SA is very busy spamming as well – hey guys, we have too little bandwidth already, cut us some slack, OK?

Thanks to Distimo, we can look at what is the most popular apps in the various appstores of the different mobile platforms – the report covers the Apple App Store for iPad and iPhone (with specific focus on in-app purchases), as well as BlackBerry App World (Worldwide), Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog and Windows Marketplace for Mobile for June 2010 in the United States.

Here are the top selling apps by platform:

True to form, the top selling apps on Android remain tools and utilities, which pretty much confirms who the Android phone’s current target market is:

On the iPhone, games dominate the top selling apps. Its clearly the preferred platform for game developers currently.

On the iPad, things look a little more productive. Like in the last report, Apple’s Pages word processor app is the top seller. It seems people are willing to actually pay for apps to make work easier on the iPad.

And then on the Blackberry front, here are the top sellers. The best sellers are themes for the OS:

Some other interesting tidbits out of the report:

The percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the Apple App Store for iPad (10%) than in the
Apple App Store for iPhone (2%). The Games and Social Networking categories in both stores have the highest proportion of
applications with in-app purchases available.

The most successful free applications that monetized using in-app purchases this month in the Apple App Store for iPhone are
MobiTV (MobiTV), ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup (ESPN) and Tap Fish (BayView Labs).

The most successful paid applications that monetized using in-app purchases this month in the Apple App Store for iPhone are
Guitar Hero (Activision Publishing, Inc.), TomTom U.S.A. (TomTom International BV) and Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies II
(Activision Publishing, Inc.).

Mirroring the Distimo report covering May 2010, Pages and iBooks, published by Apple Inc, are again the number one paid and free
applications on the Apple App Store for iPad, respectively.

Three out of the ten most popular applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone were published by Electronic Arts.

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad entered the top 10 highest ranked paid applications chart in the 6th position. It was the
top grossing application in the Apple App Store for iPad after Pages by Apple Inc.

Nine out of the ten most popular paid applications on the Apple App Store for iPhone are Games, however only two out of the ten
most popular free applications are Games. In the Nokia Ovi Store, seven out of ten of the most popular paid applications are
Games, while only three out of ten of the most popular free applications are Games.

If you want to see the report for yourself, go look at it here.