Information technology can make electricity grids less wasteful and much greener. Businesses have lots of ideas and governments are keen, but obstacles remainWHAT was the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century? The motor car, perhaps, or the computer? In 2000 America’s National Academy of Engineering gave a different answer: “the vast networks of electrification”. These, the academy concluded, made most of the century’s other advances possible.But whereas cars, computers and so forth have become ever more sophisticated, power grids have remained, in essence, sets of dumb wires. Thomas Edison, a pioneer of electrification in the 1880s, would be able to run them. Power is fed into the grid from power stations in the hope that it will arrive in factories, offices and homes. To this day most utilities rely on consumers to tell them that the power is out—and may then have to put in a lot of detective work to discover the cause. ...

  As internet-capable handsets become more popular, they are also changingIF THE recession is the cloud hanging over the mobile-phone business, “smart” phones are the silver lining. Sales of mobile phones were 10% lower in the second quarter of this year than in the same period last year, but sales of smart-phones were up by nearly 15%, according to IDC, a market-research firm. By some estimates, half of all handsets sold will be “smart” in four years and by 2015 almost all will be.The market for smart-phones is expected to grow so quickly in part because they are changing. Expensive pocket computers such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, which let users watch videos and download whatever applications they want, are giving way to new models that come with popular services built in, but are less versatile or run on open-source operating systems, and are often cheaper. All this reflects a broader trend in the industry, where value is migrating from firms that run networks and make hardware to those that make software and offer services (see article). ...

  America is poised to loosen its control over cyberspaceFORTY years ago this month American academics sent the first message over the ARPANET, a military network that was the precursor of today’s internet. A legacy of those efforts is that the American government continues to control the internet’s underlying technology—notably the system of allocating addresses. This is about to change, albeit slightly.For the past decade America has delegated some of its authority over the internet to a non-profit organisation called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—an arrangement other countries have complained about, both because they have little say in it and because ICANN’s management has occasionally proved erratic. ICANN’s latest mandate is due to expire on September 30th. The day before, a new accord is planned to come into effect, whereby America will pass some of its authority over ICANN to the “internet community” of businesses, individual users and other governments. ...

  A controversial plan for keeping digital arteries open to allWHEN he was still a mere senator, Barack Obama pledged to take swift action to ensure that the internet remained a level playing field if he were elected president. After Mr Obama’s victorious campaign, some folk predicted that this issue would be sidelined as the new administration grappled with more pressing matters. But on September 21st Julius Genachowski, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), fulfilled his boss’s promise, unveiling a proposed set of rules to govern the way that data flows around the internet. Some aspects of the FCC’s plans were criticised by telecoms firms, which claim that the government is meddling without cause. At the heart of the spat is the principle of “net neutrality”, which holds that network operators should treat all internet traffic equally. It also stipulates that packets of data should be held back only if they are illegal or risk upsetting the smooth running of a system. Proponents of net neutrality say it reinforces the internet’s role as a spur to innovation by preventing the networks’ traffic wardens from hindering access to sites that could become the next Google or Facebook. ...

  Chinese websites come to the defence of Western intellectual propertyTHE government of China allows only a trickle of foreign films and television shows to be imported, claiming the restrictions are “necessary to protect public morals”. Yet there is no better place in the world for fans of Western television and cinema to live than in China. Although the authorities censor the internet heavily in other respects, the pearls of Western entertainment are usually just a click away.Because foreign entertainment companies cannot sell their products in China, they cannot claim damages from the pirates. China’s government has vowed to protect intellectual property, but its enthusiasm is manifestly limited. Foreign spluttering has had little effect; observers had assumed that the government would not crack down until there was a domestic constituency demanding action. But now, for unexpected reasons, there is. ...

  Mobile-phone access will soon be universal. The next task is to do the same for the internetHOW long will it be before everyone on Earth has a mobile phone? “It looks highly likely that global mobile cellular teledensity will surpass 100% within the next decade, and probably earlier,” says Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, a body set up in 1865 to regulate international telecoms. Mobile teledensity (the number of phones per 100 people) went above 100% in western Europe in 2007, and many developing countries have since followed suit. South Africa passed the 100% mark in January, and Ghana reached 98% in the same month. Kenya and Tanzania are expected to get to 100% by 2013.Even 100% teledensity does not mean that everyone has a phone, because many people have several handsets or SIMs. But nor is everyone a potential customer: the under-fives, for instance, still usually manage without. But at current rates of growth it seems likely that within five years, and certainly within ten, everyone in the world who wants a mobile phone will probably have one. 3G networks capable of broadband speeds will be widespread even in developing countries, and even faster 4G networks will be spreading rapidly in some places. Then what? ...

  What is a Facebook friend worth?ONLINE social networks are handy not just as a means of wasting time but also as a communications tool for business. Dell, a computer-maker, has made $3m in sales from Twitter since it started “tweeting” about its outlet that sells refurbished computers in 2007. Marketers are eager to use fast-growing networks to tout their products. An Australian online-marketing company, uSocial, wants to help them—for a price. On September 16th the firm started selling Facebook friends and fans.After trawling Facebook for users by criteria like age, location and interests, uSocial then recommends potential friends to companies, who approach them directly. A firm pays $727 for each 5,000 users who agree to be its friend, or 15 cents each. “Fans”, who merely express support for a firm, are cheaper. ...

  The internet giant seeks new ways to foster innovationFEW companies are as creative as Google, which serves up innovations almost as fast as its popular search-engine serves up results. This week the firm unveiled a new version of its Chrome web browser and launched Fast Flip, which lets users scroll through the contents of an online newspaper in much the same way that they leaf through its pages in print. On September 30th the company will roll out another fledgling product, Google Wave, for a test involving some 100,000 people. Billed as a revolutionary way to collaborate online, Wave is also the product of a new, more structured approach to innovation within the company.For years Google has had a fairly informal product-development system. Ideas percolated upwards from Googlers without any formal processfor senior managers to review them. Teams working on innovative stuff were generally kept small. Such a system worked fairly well while Google was in its infancy. But now that it is a giant with 20,000 employees, the firm risks stifling potential money-spinners with a burgeoning bureaucracy. ...

  Google goes in search of an instant operating systemNEWS that Sony would be installing Google’s Chrome browser on its sleek, if pricey, Vaio laptops instead of the ubiquitous Internet Explorer from Microsoft has prompted your correspondent to re-examine the internet-search company’s foray into the world of web browsers and operating systems. The announcement came just as he began to notice how the latest version of Mozilla’s highly regarded Firefox browser was dragging its feet.From cold, it was taking anything from 20 to 25 seconds for Firefox 3.5 to load his home page. Even Internet Explorer 8 was five seconds nimbler. Opera 10, the latest version of an oldfavourite from Norway, was faster still. But Chrome 3 blew everything away, loading the home page in half Firefox’s time. Once they had been started from cold and had loaded their innards into memory, all four browsers could be restarted and load the home page in five seconds or so. ...

  A big industry in northern Los Angeles is among the worst hit by the recessionEVEN Nina Hartley, who became a pornographic actress in 1984 and continues to be one of its most sought-after performers at the age of 50, is feeling the recession. “Last year I did a scene a week, this year I do a scene a month,” she says. As a sex celebrity, she has not dropped her fees, charging about $1,200 for a “straight boy-girl” scene. But production has collapsed, and for younger performers so have prices. The adult-film industry is concentrated in the San Fernando Valley—“the Valley” to Angelenos—on the northern edge of Los Angeles, so the slump in porn is yet another factor depressing the local economy. Pornography had been immune to previous recessions, so the current downturn has come as a shock. ...

  A crackdown on online patriotismIN A country as fiercely patriotic as Vietnam, you would expect the government to cheer a plan by citizens to distribute T-shirts bearing nationalistic slogans. However, the T-shirts in question carried messages of hostility towards China, Vietnam’s biggest trading partner. Worse, their pedlars were popular and sometimes critical bloggers.Two well-known bloggers and an online reporter have been detained after the police uncovered an apparent attempt to print T-shirts opposing Chinese investment in a controversial new bauxite-mining project in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and casting doubt on China’s claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea. ...

  The rise of Xavier Niel, a controversial internet entrepreneur, says a lot about French business“IF I commit suicide, or if I die in a car accident in the next three months or so, you will know the threats were serious, because I am not feeling at all suicidal and I drive very slowly.” Xavier Niel, the founder of Iliad, a young broadband firm which has upended France’s internet-access market and wants to do the same for mobile telephony, says he is prepared for any attempts at intimidation. In 2004 an executive from TF1, a French television firm which was withholding its programming from Iliad’s multimedia packages, reportedly told one of Mr Niel’s colleagues: “I am going to nail you down on the wall in blood.”He may be a bit paranoid, but Mr Niel plans to wreak financial violence on France’s dominant telecoms firms. After years of deliberation and fierce opposition from the big three—Orange, owned by the former monopoly, France Telecom; SFR, part of Vivendi, a media giant; and Bouygues Telecom, part of a conglomerate which also part-owns TF1—the government invited bids for a fourth mobile licence on August 1st. If Iliad wins, as is expected, it aims to launch a service under its brand, Free, by 2012. By halving prices and lifting limits on the length of calls, Mr Niel hopes to take a big slice of the market. If he succeeds, says Nicolas Didio of Exane BNP Paribas, a stockbroking firm, Iliad could eventually lift its operating profit by 50% while cutting profits at Orange by 10%, at SFR by 17% and at Bouygues Telecom by 23%. ...

  A mid-life crisis threatens its futureTHIS past week marked the 40th birthday of the internet. And, like most other things on the brink of middle-age, the internet is struggling with its own mid-life crisis. At issue is whether it can continue to provide equal access for everyone and everything, or must evolve into something entirely different in order to cope with changing circumstances. Such contentious issues never dawned on the dozen or so engineers who gathered in the laboratory of Leonard Kleinrock (pictured below) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on September 2nd, 1969, to watch two computers transmit data from one to the other through a 15-foot cable. The success heralded the start of ARPANET, a telecommunications network designed to link researchers around America who were working on projects for the Pentagon. ARPANET, conceived and paid for by the defence department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (nowadays called DARPA), was unquestionably the most important of the pioneering “packet-switched” networks that were to give birth eventually to the internet. ...

  Computing: Can online puzzles that force internet users to prove that they really are human be kept secure from attackers?ON THE internet, goes the old joke, nobody knows you’re a dog. This is untrue, of course. There are many situations where internet users are required to prove that they are human—not because they might be dogs, but because they might be nefarious pieces of software trying to gain access to things. That is why, when you try to post a message on a blog, sign up with a new website or make a purchase online, you will often be asked to examine an image of mangled text and type the letters into a box. Because humans are much better at pattern recognition than software, these online puzzles—called CAPTCHAs—can help prevent spammers from using software to automate the creation of large numbers of bogus e-mail accounts, for example.Unlike a user login, which proves a specific identity, CAPTCHAs merely show that “there’s really a human on the other end”, says Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the people responsible for the ubiquity of these puzzles. Together with Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper and John Langford, Dr von Ahn coined the term CAPTCHA (which stands for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”) in a paper published in 2000. ...