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Internet revolution has bypassed rural India with less than half a per cent of families having the facility at home as against 6 per cent in cities, reveals a government survey.

At all India level only about 0.4 per cent of rural households had access to Internet at home as compared to about 6 per cent of urban households, said the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report on expenditure in 2009-10.

Reflecting the digital divide in India, the study said just 3.5 households per 1,000 families, had access to Internet services at home in rural areas in the year.

However, in urban areas, Internet connectivity was much better in 2009-10 as 59.5 families out of every 1000 households had the facility at home.

Among the major States, Maharashtra was on top with the 104 out of 1,000 families had Internet in cities, followed by Kerala and Himachal Pradesh at 95 each and Haryana at 81.5.

The penetration of digital services was highest in rural areas in Goa with 50 out of 1,000 households having Internet connection. Kerala came next with 34 families having such a facility at home.

Among the hilly States, Arunachal Pradesh had the best reach of the Internet service in rural areas with 19 out of 1,000 households have such facility at home, followed by Himachal Pradesh at 16.

The study further states that among the major states, Kerala had by far the highest proportion of households with Internet access in the rural areas at 3 per cent followed by Himachal Pradesh at 2 per cent.

In cities, Maharashtra reported the highest percentage of household having access to Internet connection (10 per cent) followed closely by Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.

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Internet revolution bypasses rural India: Survey

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Suzanne Choney

Once again, the British government may try to get Internet service providers to be the babysitters charged with keeping onlineporn away from children. A similar effortin late2010 failed, but now it's back in a different form.

The previous plan would haverequired adult, at-home Internet users toasktheir ISPs for access to porn. That went over well with the Brits (not): "Yes, please, may I have my daily dose of Internet porn now, and thank you."

The revamped approach is only slightly less humiliating for adults: They would be required to "opt in" with their Internet service provider if they don't want all adult content blocked. And, as many of us know first-hand, opt in/opt out lingo can be mighty confusing, with the user ofteninadvertentlypicking the "wrong" choice.

There are other concerns.

"Forcing ISPs to filter adult content at the network level, which users would then have to opt out of, is neither the most effective nor most appropriate way to prevent access to inappropriate material online," saidNicholas Lansman, secretary general of Britain's Internet Service Providers Association, in a pressstatement.

"It is easy to circumvent, reduces the degree of active interest and parental mediation and has clear implications for freedom of speech. Instead parents should choose how they restrict access to content, be it on the device or network level, with the tools provided."

Ah, the parents.

Britain's Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection said in a recent report that the problem is too overwhelming for parents alone to deal with:

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UK wants Internet providers to block porn by default

NEW YORK (AP) The organization in charge of expanding the number of Internet address suffixes the ".com" part of domain names is apologizing for delays but says it's favoring "quality, not speed."

Three weeks ago, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers abruptly shut down a system for letting companies and organizations propose new suffixes, after it discovered a software glitch that exposed some private data. At the time, ICANN planned to reopen the system within four business days. The system remains suspended indefinitely.

"We've very focused on the quality of what we do," ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said. "We take this very seriously. That's why we're moving very methodologically and professionally."

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Beckstrom added, "We apologize for the delay, but we're committed to getting this right."

ICANN has said it needed time to figure out why the software failed and how to fix it. That was completed last week, Beckstrom said, but ICANN still must undergo extensive testing on the fixes and inform companies and organizations whose data had been exposed. He declined to offer a timetable; ICANN said Friday that it planned to provide an update after Tuesday.

Up to 1,000 domain name suffixes could be added each year in the most sweeping change to the domain name system since its creation in the 1980s.

The idea is to let Las Vegas hotels, casinos and other attractions congregate around ".Vegas," or a company such as Canon Inc. draw customers to "cameras.Canon" or "printers.Canon." The new system will also make Chinese, Japanese and Swahili versions of ".com" possible.

After several years of deliberations, ICANN began accepting applications in mid-January. The application window was to have closed on April 12 the same day ICANN had to shut down the system, just hours before the deadline.

The glitch did not affect general availability of the Internet's domain name system the databases that let Internet-connected computers know where to send email and locate websites. It also did not affect the ability to register new names under existing suffixes.

Rather, the glitch was with the software ICANN had set up to take applications for new suffixes.

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Internet group: Quality over speed in new domains

01-05-2012 11:31 SUBSCRIBE to The Internet Adventure Hour! New Episode every Tuesday! TJ & Cozmo interview My Drunk Kitchen's Hannah Hart!

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Internet Adventure Hour: Interview with Hannah Hart - Video

Paul Miller, a technology blogger, is trying life without the Internet for a year.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Maybe it seems like the fastest way for a gadget-and-technology blogger to commit career suicide, but Paul Miller gave up the Internet at midnight Tuesday.

Miller, who was and still is a senior editor at a tech news site called The Verge, plans to stay offline for a full year. When he needs to post something to the website that employs him, he will hand his editors a thumb drive with his stories saved in offline files. If he needs to look up a phone number, he'll get on the phone and start calling people -- who hopefully know people who know the person that he's trying to reach for an interview. There's no other way without access to professional websites and directories, he said.

"I'm going to try to use the six degrees of separation a little bit," he said on Tuesday afternoon in an interview -- by phone, of course. "I have a lot of co-workers and they know a lot of people and so anybody I can get a phone number for I'll call that person and maybe they have a phone number for another person. So I'll have to follow that sort of chain."

Why go to all this trouble? For years, the idea of a digital sabbatical has appealed to the hyper-connected set -- people who spend most of their days in front of computer screens, checking blogs, reading Twitter and somehow trying to figure out how to get their work done in between. At the office, they dodge dozens of click-me-now messages per minute, each demanding instant attention.

Even away from work, phones chime and vibrate to the point that, according to a market research study from Martin Lindstrom, the buzz of a vibrating phone is now one of the top three "most powerful, affecting sounds" -- after a baby giggling and the Intel chime, he wrote in The New York Times.

Depending on your perspective, it may be either surprising or fitting that a technology blogger would get so caught up in the online tornado that he would quit, completely, and for a full year.

On one hand, the Internet is Miller's passion and livelihood.

"I love the Internet," he said. "It allows people to interact in really deep and meaningful ways and to create awesome things and do awesome things. I think it's a wonderful invention and I have no ill will against it."

The rest is here:
Blogger: 'I'm leaving the Internet'