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To many U.S. observers, this might be just another case of tensions flaring up in the Middle East. Do not be fooled. This is all about telecommunications policy–and the design of secure, attack-resistant data networks.

It seems that recently, the U.S.-backed central government of Lebanon tried to put an end to Hezbollah’s private network. Hezbollah responded with force, eventually taking over West Beirut. As the Boston Globe recently reported:

Over the past few weeks, things have heated up again in Lebanon, with the U.S.-backed government on one side and the Syrian-backed Hezbollah on the other.

Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and other U.S. companies have been heavily criticized for their assistance of China and its so-called Great Firewall. Thinking along these lines, I asked Robb which U.S. companies might be manufacturing Hezbollah’s equipment.

(Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah) said the government’s decision to shut down Hezbollah’s fiber-optic communications network was tantamount to a declaration of war. For the (central) government, the network represented an intolerable example of Hezbollah’s efforts to set up an Iranian- and Syrian-backed state within Lebanon. Hezbollah justifies the network, which carried its communications during a 2006 war with Israel, as a vital security asset.

With that out of the way, I thought it’d be fun to end on a snarky note. For the last six months, I suffered with an AT&T 3Mbps DSL line. So how would Hezbollah act as an ISP? Consider these questions:

This sort of thing, as interesting as it is, is way out of my league. To get a better grasp of the situation, I spoke with John Robb, an expert in modern asymmetrical warfare, an author, and blogger.

Robb said Hezbollah is not alone in building out its own communications infrastructure. He said that it is fairly common for such groups and that a similar situation exists in the Sadr City area of Baghdad.

Jamming cell phones is relatively easy, as it is simply a matter of sending out radio waves. Disrupting a fiber-optic network, on the other hand, is extremely difficult. The Israelis would need to locate the individual fiber-optic lines, and then cut them. To do that, they’d need boots on the ground, in control. This is not something that Israel, or even the central Lebanese government, can currently do.

Update:For more info on Hezbollah’s network infrastructure, check out this detailed report.

But first, a bit of background. Hezbollah and Israel have been at war for some time. In an effort to stop Hezbollah’s guerrilla fighters from communicating, Israel has in the past jammed the cell phone towers in the Hezbollah-controlled areas in southern Lebanon. Eager to make sure that didn’t happen again, Hezbollah has covertly built out a fiber-optic network throughout the areas it controls.

What, exactly, does Hezbollah consider to be “reasonable network management,” and are its views on this area the same as Comcast’s? Does Hezbollah block BitTorrent? Does it use Linux? Does Hezbollah offer so-called “naked” DSL? If I do not get satisfactory customer service from the Hezbollah ISP, what happens if I resort to a Consumerist.com-style executive e-mail carpet bomb? Will its executives bomb me back? How does Hezbollah respond to Digital Millennium Copyright Act cease-and-desist threats? If the RIAA and MPAA are too scared to send DMCA threats to Harvard, will they risk sending them to Hezbollah? If I pay my fiber network bill late, will Hezbollah terminate my connection, or me? We do not have competition in most U.S. markets, but instead have a duopoly of crappy DSL and evil cable. How many Americans would switch to Hezbollah’s fiber network if it meant that they could use BitTorrent without Comcast “temporarily delaying” their data transfers? Could Hezbollah force the Federal Communications Commission to open up the market to real competition?

As a technologist, and someone interested in tech policy, this is fascinating. We typically hear that developing countries are leapfrogging over the traditional wire-based network infrastructure, due to the costs involved, and going straight to mobile or Wi-Fi technologies. It’s interesting to see that fiber-optic networks can play a vital role in these countries. It seems that when there is a real threat of network interruption and jamming, the cost and difficulty of laying the cable is worth it.

At the Freedom To Connect conference a few weeks back, Doc Searls coined the term “glass roots” to describe community-built fiber networks. That term doesn’t quite apply here, so I’m going to quickly stake my claim to “fiber warfare” (fiber vs. cyber, get it?). Remember, you heard it here first.

He responded that there is no reason to suspect that U.S. equipment was being used. He added that Chinese-made, no-name optical-networking gear is available in most of these markets and certainly available to Hezbollah. Even equipment five to seven years old, Robb said, would work for Hezbollah’s needs.

It is this opportunity that led to the creation of Marc Fleury and Mark Spencer’s OpenRemote project, and that recently led them to release the Beehive database, a “Web-based open-source application to collect, format, and distribute home automation codes.”

Similar to the Volantis Mobile Device Database which serves as a central repository for the growing array of disparate mobile devices (i.e., data on screen size and resolution, keyboard, etc.), Beehive promises to be a central repository to manage the profusion of home-automation codes.

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Until now, no Web-based open source central database effort of this scope existed to bring cohesiveness to a fragmented home automation, or domotics, market. Beehive is seeded with 100,000 codes that are compatible with 2,500 devices. Anyone can browse through Beehive, download whichever codes they need, and contribute new codes.

From the OpenRemote release:

There are relatively few markets that would benefit more from open source than home automation, with its myriads of different electrical nodes and associated complexity.

It’s an ambitious effort, one worthy of and conducive to open source. The same sorts of people likely to be fiddling with home-automation setups (as opposed to buying expensive home-automation setups) are the same people who are capable and interested in contributing back to an open-source project focused on home automation. Beehive is an important step in this effort.

“Today, there is simply no central database for these kinds of codes–only scattered collections in different and proprietary formats,” said Christian Bauer, Beehive project lead. “Beehive attempts to change this. We believe there is a need for a truly open, unified way to collect and share all code formats and enforce a clean database schema for easy consumption by both professionals and hobbyists alike.”

MyPunchbowl’s pitch is that it helps with the entire planning process, not just the invitation, and that there are plenty of people looking for that. “We’ve seen explosive growth since our first…funding last year,” CEO Matt Douglas said in a statement.

MyPunchbowl’s team said that the fruits of the Series A round will be visible soon, with new features and new hires on the way. But invitation start-ups are in a tough spot; IAC’s Evite is as big as most of its smaller competitors combined, and Facebook’s “events” application has become popular for casual and large-scale get-togethers.

Total cash raised was $2.1 million; the other investors in the round include Intel Capital and eCoast Angels.

Previously, Framingham, Mass.-based Punchbowl Software had raised seed funding from Intel and eCoast.

Contour Venture Partners is the lead investor in Series A funding for Punchbowl Software, which is behind the event-planning and invitation site MyPunchbowl.

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer stepped onstage Thursday to tell an assembly of Wall Street analysts and reporters that, Yahoo or no Yahoo, the company plans to continue to invest until it achieves greater scale in online services.

Mark Stevens

Microsoft: Windows 7 on track

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Speaking of Yahoo, CNET News’ Leslie Katz interviews Mark Stevens, author of King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist, to find out what has pushed this activist investor to challenge the powers that be. And Webware’s Rafe Needleman wraps context around Facebook’s bevy of announcements, including the social-networking company’s renewed commitment to engage its development community.

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Today’s stories:

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Got a big file you need to send to a friend or family member? You can either spend time uploading it to a hosting service, or start a one-time transfer that will be deleted from the cloud within 24 hours. Streamfile is a service that does just that and with a high level of simplicity, making it pretty close to perfect for sending large files to non-tech savvy individuals.

Huge security fraud potential aside, it’s blissfully simple to use and a huge asset for passing big files to friends. If you’ve been wary of installing a software solution and paying for premium services that let you break that 500MB to 1GB barrier found on most services, Streamfile makes a highly desirable solution.

One HUGE potential danger of the service is that you can spoof other people’s identities and send executables–something that’s been banned on most Web mail services both on the sending and receiving end. It lets you to pick both the name and e-mail of the sender which comes through as an e-mail from them instead of the service itself. If you’re targeting someone and know they’ll click on what you’re sending them, you could easily rename malicious files and get them to open them unless they’ve got capable antivirus software installed.

[via SimpleSpark]

Streamfile lets you send as many files as you want, up to 2GB, either in total or per single file.

Just pick what file you want to transfer to your friend (up to 2GB in size) and the service will spit out two URLs for you to send either on your own or via e-mail. One is a generic URL, while the other is secured with AES 256-bit SSL encryption, the same level of security you’d find on most banking sites. Whomever clicks that link will begin downloading the file in their browser’s download manager as the uploader on your site seeds the file onto a temporary spot on its servers. Even before you’ve managed to finish uploading your recipient can begin their download. Pretty cool.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

The interface in Chrome is very different from other browsers and takes a little getting used to. Instead of the traditional Netscape/IE-style toolbar across the top, Chrome uses tabs. Moreover, the tabs are detachable, so the terms "tabs" and "windows" become interchangeable within Chrome. Detached tabs can be dragged and dropped into the browser, and tabs can be rearranged at any time.

For more details, see the Chrome First Take on CNET.

Chrome is based on the open-source project Webkit, the same rendering engine used by Apple
Safari. If a page renders in Safari, it will render in Chrome. Webkit is also the basis for Android, Google’s mobile platform, so it seems that Google is planning to use Chrome in mobile environments.

(Credit:
Robert Vamosi / CNET)

At the moment, only the Windows version of Chrome is available for download. Plans call for
Mac OS X and Linux versions in the near future. That said, Google has released Chrome in 43 languages and in 122 countries.

Google has released the beta version of a new browser, Chrome. In its comic-book pre-announcement, Google stated correctly that watching videos, chatting, and even playing Web-based games didn’t exist when browsers were first invented. For the user, Google wants the browser to disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools, and such. Google has rethought the Internet browser–some of its basic underpinnings are quite novel–but users will recognize some features as they exist in other, open-source browsers on the market today.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

The company, founded by Wendell Brown and Craig Gold, veterans of previous ventures like Teleo and eVoice, is expected to launch an iPhone app Monday at the DemoFall conference in San Diego. The app is designed to give people the information they need to eat better when they eat out.

It is designed to keep track of what people eat–so long as they are committed to entering that information on an ongoing basis–and will make meal suggestions based on what people have already eaten on a given day.

For example, Gold said, McDonald’s will wrap a hamburger in lettuce instead of a bun for those looking for lower carb diets.

In the early going, the company is focusing on restaurants and restaurant chains with online menus. This means that some of the early restaurants in the system include fast-food chains like McDonald’s.

According to Brown, it works by having people enter various dietary criteria that are important to them–such as being vegetarian, vegan, kosher, or wanting low- calorie or low-carb meals–and then combines that information with location-based data.

So far, WebDiet has added a quarter-million UPC codes into its system and expects to add more over time.

And that’s precisely one of the points of the software: It aggregates and suggests off-the-menu options so that people can find food that meets their needs even at places they wouldn’t expect.

The second major part of the service, which works in combination with Mealsearch, is a meal-by-meal guidance system, Brown said.

The service will be available initially for the iPhone but will also be coming to the BlackBerry, Nokia phones, and potentially Google’s Android down the line, Brown said.

(Credit:
WebDiet)

And while it might be counter-intuitive to include fast-food, Gold, himself a vegan, said the idea is that even such restaurants have some items that are healthier than, say, a Big
Mac.

If you’ve got an
iPhone and a desire to maintain a healthier diet, the folks at a start-up called WebDiet may have your order.

Finally, the software lets people enter UPC bar codes of foods to build a database of things they like to eat and to learn about the nutritional value of what they’re consuming.

WebDiet’s new iPhone app searches for restaurants that meet certain dietary criteria. The service is expected to be available on additional mobile devices later this year.

The first, called Mealsearch, is built to help people find healthy restaurant food no matter where they are.

So, Brown said, if a person has a large lunch, the system will (politely) suggest a dinner lighter on calories.

And as it grows, WebDiet is hoping to bring in revenue through commissions on orders placed at restaurants through a “buy now” system that lets people place advance orders. WebDiet will also collect revenue from some location-based ads that appear on people’s devices when they’re using the software.

The company’s new iPhone app has two major elements.

“Instead of playing favorites, our government should level the playing field for all alcohol fuels that break the monopoly of gasoline, lowering both gasoline prices and carbon emissions. And this can be done with a simple federal standard to hasten the conversion of all new vehicles in America to flex-fuel technology–allowing drivers to use alcohol fuels instead of gas in their cars,” he said.

(Credit:
McCain's Senate site)

He said he would provide incentives to automakers to manufacture flex-fuel vehicles that can run on ethanol or gasoline. He said Brazil, which gets about half of its auto fuel from sugar cane ethanol, has shown that a country can change its fuel mix in just a few years.

Domestically producing ethanol “ultimately helps our national security, because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth,” the Times quoted Obama saying during a campaign stop last August.

McCain said that, if elected, his administration would issue a Clean Car Challenge that would give give a $5,000 tax credit to people who purchase “zero-emissions cars.”

By contrast, Senator Obama is in favor of continued supportive ethanol policies.

In an energy policy speech at Fresno State University in California, McCain also called for an overhaul to existing policies that favor domestic ethanol production–one of the biggest differences he has with his expected opponent, Senator Barack Obama.

Presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Monday proposed a $300 million prize to develop a
car battery that will “leapfrog” today’s plug-in hybrids.

There would be a sliding scale so that vehicles, regardless of type, with lower carbon dioxide emissions will have larger tax credits.

His $300 million car battery prize is meant to spur creativity among automakers to make energy-efficient products.

The New York Times on Monday detailed the Illinois senator’s close ties to ethanol, including maintaining Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader who now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies, as an adviser.

Diverging ethanol plans
In the same speech, McCain repeated his opposition to policies that encourage corn-ethanol and said the U.S. should eliminate a tariff on ethanol from Brazil because it hinders free trade.

Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain

“This is one dollar for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.–a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency–and should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs,” he said.

Apple will look to put the last six weeks behind it with the expected launch of new iPods this week during one of its trademark media events in San Francisco on Tuesday. This summer, the company received a stark reminder that while its singular ability to produce a technology event still generates buzz, the products must match that hype.

Ever since CEO Steve Jobs stunned a September 2005 crowd with the unveiling of the super-slim iPod Nano, Apple’s ability to (mostly) follow through on the hype generated by its events has turned the company into a tech powerhouse.

(Credit:
Tom Krazit/CNET News)

Apple has been forced to give away two months worth of MobileMe subscriptions in order to try to make up for the debacle that was the migration from .Mac to MobileMe, an Internet service that’s designed to let you share data between Macs, PCs, and iPhones. And it’s scrambling to patch perhaps its buggiest software release in years, the iPhone 2.0 software, which has produced a laundry list of problems, such as fuzzy reception, persistent application crashes, a laggy keyboard, and the bizarre “iPhone cubism” camera issue.

More than any of its rivals, Apple has managed to continuously release products that are hip, stylish, easy to use, and functional (we’ll forget about the iPod Hi-Fi for the purposes of this discussion). It’s why Apple has the best consumer satisfaction scores by far in its industry, and why the
Mac and the iPhone are hot sellers.

In any event, it’s not like there is any other company pushing Apple in the personal-music player market these days. Microsoft’s new Zune player made an appearance last week without provoking a stampede to Best Buy. While some old foes have made a little noise in recent months, few other competitors seem all that interested in taking down the 800-pound gorilla of the MP3 player market.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils a redesigned iPod Nano at last year's September iPod event. This year's is Tuesday.

A chink in Apple’s armor has surfaced: its secretive nature creates a mystique around the company when the products are excellent, but that same communications strategy makes it appear aloof and indifferent when customers are angry over product glitches.

Those products aren’t quite as ambitious as the
iPhone 3G, or the MobileMe service, the launches of which went somewhat awry this July. But in a way, perhaps they are more important, because the iPod represents Apple to more people around the world than any other Apple product by far.

Expect the usual dog-and-pony show on Tuesday as Apple shows off its latest batch of iPods, perhaps augmented by some hip cool rock band all the rage with the kids these days. But watch the pace of iPod sales following the event to see if Apple has truly moved past its summer of woe and regained its launch event magic.

So if the new iPods live up to Apple’s usual standard for its products, Apple should be able to shrug off the months of July and August, and get ready for the last quarter of the calendar year, which is usually a blowout one for the company.

Apple employees and customers mill about during the iPhone 3G's glitch-filled launch. Apple needs a problem-free rollout from the expected new lineup of iPods.

Other than football fans, there are probably few people in America happier to see the month of September than Apple executives.

The rumors regarding this particular launch event, Apple’s fourth September
iPod-related event in as many years, have been fairly consistent and sensible. We expect new iPod Nanos that do away with the ugly squat design, a revamped iPod Touch at a lower price, a higher-capacity iPod Shuffle, and a possible grab-bag item from the MacBook/Beatles/iTablet bin.

Thankfully for Apple, none of these issues seem to have really affected sales as of yet. Mac sales are growing at a rapid pace, and new notebooks arriving in relatively short order should help that trend continue. And despite all its glitches, the iPhone 3G is selling briskly; expect Jobs to reveal just how many Apple has sold to date during a week in which the mobile industry is gathering in San Francisco for the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment Show.

But for a company so skilled at one form of communication–the carefully orchestrated product release–Apple has had a hard time this summer connecting with disgruntled customers.

(Credit:
Ina Fried/CNET News)

For the first time in a long time, even die-hard Apple fans may be thinking twice about being the first on their block to snap up Apple’s latest offering.

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Slovakia signed the agreement, while the United States signed aboard as an observer of the effort.

That evaluation led to the Allied Defense Ministers report in October, which recommended the establishment of a NATO cyberdefense policy and a number of new measures to improve the countries’ cyberattack defense. The allied nations agreed to the policy earlier this year.

Last spring, Estonia’s public and private institutions were hit with a major denial of service attack over a two-month period. That, in turn, prompted NATO to re-evaluate its cyberdefense strategy.

Seven NATO allies signed an agreement Wednesday to open a cyberdefense center in Estonia, according to the Associated Press.

The center, which is scheduled to become operational in August, is designed to offer training and research on cyberterrorism and simulate cyberwar games, the report states. The NATO allies will kick in funding and a staff of 30 cyberexperts to operate the center.