Microsoft outlines Internet Explorer 10 differences between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 together mark a rare confluence for Microsoft: they represent the first instance of the company's desktop and phone platforms sharing the same browser base, and that has wide-reaching implications for what developers can do. The Redmond team doesn't want anyone plunging headlong into web apps without knowing what to expect, however, and it just reminded us in a blog post that there are still a few off-limits areas for Internet Explorer 10 on the mobile side. Not surprisingly, elements that demand a truly big screen or a windowed interface won't fly -- there's nowhere to drag-and-drop from or open a new window to. A few other aspects are more likely to catch web developers off-guard, such as the lack of in-line video, a handful of touch inputs, ActiveX and the level of file access. The most important common ground stems from simply having a modern rendering engine whose HTML5 and CSS3 support will prevent any rude shocks. There's much more at the source link, although Microsoft and designers may just be happy that any Windows Phone web development is a question of finding those few things that won't work, rather than reinventing the wheel.

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ESA, NASA test interplanetary internet by remote controlling a Lego robot from the ISS

By Jon Fingas posted Nov 9th 2012 11:40AM

NASA (and the ESA) have long been working on a multi-planet internet that can link up spaceships, probes and rovers, but they've at last brought the experimentation from the broad scale to smaller dimensions. Lego bricks, to be exact. International Space Station expedition lead Sunita Williams recently steered a Lego Mindstorms robot at an ESA facility in Darmstadt while she orbited overhead, proving that future space explorers could directly control a vehicle on a planetary surface while staying out of harm's way. As in the past, the key to the latest dry run was a Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) system; the focus was more on reliably getting packets through to the brick-based vehicle than on pure speed. As tame as that Earth-bound test drive might sound relative to an in-the-field use on a less familiar world, it demonstrates that the DTN approach can work when it really counts. We just wouldn't hold our breath for any Martian RC car races.

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Sandvine: Netflix up to 29 percent of North American internet traffic, YouTube is fast on the rise

By Jon Fingas posted Nov 8th 2012 4:54AM

When we last checked in on one of Sandvine's traffic studies, Netflix had just edged past BitTorrent as the largest source of internet traffic in North America while YouTube was still a small-timer. A year has made quite the difference. Netflix is up to 28.8 percent in a new study, while YouTube has moved up to second place with 13.1 percent and demands even more than ordinary web requests. Rivals like Hulu don't register in the top 10, and YouTube is by far the ruler of mobile with nearly 31 percent of smartphone traffic headed its way. Overall usage is moving up rapidly, no matter what kind of network the continent uses -- the typical North American chews up 659MB per month when mobile and a hefty 51GB through a landline. There's little reason to dispute worries of the impact on bandwidth-strained internet providers, although we suspect most would disagree with Sandvine on what's to be done. The company naturally sees the study as a chance for business with carriers wanting to curb usage or charge extra through its tools; a generation that grew up with internet access, however, would likely see it as a better excuse to roll out more capacity for all those streaming videos.

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