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It was just a little over a month ago now that the Cuban Government decided to begin easing up on restrictions with electronics, namely computers, and as we have already seen Cuba citizens lining up for cell phones, the same is happening with computers.

Reports of “more than a dozen prospective buyers” began to line up when they first went on sale. While “just” a dozen people may not sound like a lot, you also must consider that these computers are not coming cheap. Havana’s Carlos III shopping center began to sell the Qtech PC along with a CRT monitor for $780. Sounds expensive enough already, but consider further that these PC’s are not exactly high powered either, they are featuring Intel Celeron processors with 80GB hard drives, 512MB of RAM and running Windows XP.

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The Internet access while tightly controlled does not seem to be stopping Cuban bloggers from telling their story. Computers have just recently became legal for Cuban citizens to own and even with the hard to come by Internet access many are turning towards the web to share their story.

Some of the blogs, have been going on for longer than the two-months that computers have been legal to access. A site we have mentioned before, “Generacion Y” which is written by Yoani Sanchez receives more than one-million hits a month. But for Sanchez and other Cuban bloggers, most of whom choose to do so anonymously getting their stories posted is not as simple as sitting in front of a computer and typing away.

For example Sanchez has to pretend to be a tourist in order to obtain her web access, which costs about $6 an hour from local Havana hotels. Others are willing to pay upwards of $40 a month to get black-market dial-up access. Regular or authorized service includes access to an island-wide network that allows for sending or receiving emails, this is available at youth clubs, post offices and a handful of cafes however the rest of the web is blocked.

While its still illegal and potentially dangerous for bloggers such as Sanchez to write as she does, especially under her real name, she is quick to note that “with each step we take in that direction, it’s harder for the government to push us back.” Hopefully, as we have seen the recent relaxing of what Cuban citizens can legally purchase electronics wise, we will soon see the same to happen with other services such as unfiltered or unblocked Internet access.

Read [USA Today]

Chinese Internet users from Beijing and Shanghai are reporting that they can now access the English-language version of Wikipedia after it was blocked by the Chinese authorities a couple of months ago. However, the Chinese version and other sites which have politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square remained restricted at this time.

The decision to remove the restriction followed after an inspector from the International Olympic Committee (OIC) told the Beijing Olympic organizers that the Chinese government should remove the restriction even just for the duration of the 2008 Olympics. According to the inspector, continually blocking the access to Wikipedia might reflect a bad impression about the host country.

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Samsung and AT&T are finally bringing the Samsung Access (aka SGH-827) to the US market in May 2008. Access is the first mobile phone from Samsung that fully supports AT&T Mobile TV.

AT&T’s Mobile TV is a high-quality programming mobile television service that features direct access to full-length television content, sporting events from top US networks. Currently, AT&T Mobile TV offers programming from top entertainment brands such as CBS Mobile, Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile TV, FOX Mobile, MTV, NBC 2GO, NBC News2Go and Nickelodeon.

Giving justice to the high-quality programming offered by AT&T Mobile TV is the Samsung Access’ 2.5-inch LCD display which can be set in landscape mode for widescreen viewing. Samsung and AT&T also tout the Access as a multimedia device featuring VideoShare, AT&T Mobile Music, stereo Bluetooth, external stereo speakers, external memory microSD card slot for story expansion and a 1.3-megapixel camera with video recording functionality. 

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If you are a heavy user of high-speed Internet, your happy days of peer-to-peer downloading might soon be over. Time Warner Cable, currently the second largest U.S. cable operator, plans to shift from the standard flat fee to a usage-based billing scheme.

The Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas are the chosen guinea pigs for the first trial run. The test is slated later this year but the terms had not been set yet.

Since video downloading and streaming are very popular nowadays, the cable operator claims this is a strategy to minimize network congestion. Moreover, it assured the public that its impact is very minimal for only 5% of all customers are considered heavy users. In fact, this new billing scheme is claimed to be very favorable for the majority of light users.

Other cable companies are quietly observing the results of this new pricing test. If proven effective without much hullabaloo, this could entice other players to adopt this scheme and abandon flat fee pricing totally.

Read [Reuters]