FTTN makes sense for NBN, AAPT says It makes more sense to roll out fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) for the National Broadband Network (NBN) than the government’s current fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) approach, according to the CEO of internet service provider AAPT. David Yuile told Computerworld Australia that while consumers may prefer FTTP, rolling out FTTN is more economical. “Our view has always been that you build networks progressively from the centre out as and when the economics make sense,” Yuile said....

How to Deal With Panda, Penguin & other Google Algorithms In an average year, Google makes about 500 changes to its search engine algorithms. If it seems like Google has been making more-and bigger-algorithm adjustments lately, you’re not just imaging things. “Google is making big changes, and they’re doing it faster than they used to,” says Pete Meyers, president of User Effect, awebsite usability consulting firm, and a data scientist withSEOMoz....

Twitter leaves placeholder message for copyright violations Under a new policy, Twitter will leave a placeholder message when it removes content resulting from a complaint by a copyright holder. Previously, the content was removed entirely, making it more difficult for people to figure out why it disappeared. “In an effort to be as transparent as possible regarding the removal or restriction of access to user-posted content, we clearly mark withheld Tweets and media to indicate to viewers when content has been withheld,” according to itsinformation pagedealing with copyright and Digital Millennium Copyright Act issues....

‘World’s largest’ telecom deal turns out to be a dud Originally billed as the world’s largest telecommunications purchase, the U.S. government’s Networx contract is turning out to be chump change for the five carriers involved in the deal. Halfway through its 10-year term, the contract has driven around $2 billion in revenue compared to projections as high as $34 billion for this stage of the program. Networx is an umbrella program that allows federal agencies to buy voice, data and video services from five carriers: AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink (formerly Qwest), Sprint and Level 3....

Big data the NASA way When the Curiosity rover arrived on Mars two months ago it was just about the best public relations exercise that NASA could have hoped for, short of actually landing a human on the red planet. “They’ve really done a lot for the agency to make people think it’s cool to work at NASA again,” says senior computer scientist Chris Mattmann, who works at Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL), one of ten NASA centres....