The Denver Post

Colorado regulators are capping the fund at $54 million annually.

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission has capped a two-decade-old fund that’s still paying tens of millions annually to land-line phone companies for providing service in rural areas.

Starting this year, the Colorado High Cost Support Mechanism will top off at $54 million, or $13.5 million per quarter. The high-cost mechanism is funded by a monthly surcharge of about $1 on land-line and cellphone bills. Colorado ratepayers contributed $56 million to the fund in 2011 and were expected to pay $65 million this year, according to the program’s 2011 report.

The Federal Communications Commission is shifting a similar program, called the Universal Service Fund, toward broadband expansion.

The three-member PUC commission cited Read more…

JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images

A Norton report says Denver is the 6th riskiest online city.

Think twice the next time you plan to send an online payment from a public WiFi network.

Denver is near the top of the charts when it comes to cities with the “most potential risk of cybercrime,” according to a report released by Norton this week.

The Mile High City ranks 6th on the list of the “Riskiest Online Cities in the U.S.,” up from 8th in the previous study.

The Norton study examined cybercrime data and several consumer behaviors in 50 of the nation’s largest cities, including the prevalence of PCs and smartphones, the use of ecommerce and social networking sites and the potential Read more…

Getty / Torsten Silz

Google is under fire for reportedly circumventing privacy settings.

About a week ago, I “liked” Jeremy Lin’s Facebook page after the Knicks point guard stormed The Association. Now every time I log into my own account, I see an ad on the right rail for Lin jerseys.

That’s completely fine. Facebook users understand (or at least they should) that the social network will lean on voluntarily provided information to deliver targeted ads.

Google, on the other hand, has reportedly tracked millions of users’ web browsing activity after telling them that they couldn’t be tracked.

The search giant sidestepped Read more…

(AP Photo/Bill Kostroun)

In this Feb. 4, 2012 file photo, New York Knicks' Jeremy Lin reacts during the fourth quarter of an NBA basketball game against the New Jersey Nets, at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Fair or not, the rise of N.Y. Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin will continue to see comparisons to Tim Tebow’s miraculous run this past season with the Denver Broncos.

From a business standpoint, Lin will mean more financially to the Knicks and the NBA because he holds court in the nation’s largest media market. Other factors on Lin’s side include the sheer volume of games played in the Association and his global appeal, particularly in Asia.

One area where Lin may not match Tebow is on the Internet domain front. Tebowing.com, a website and phrase created by a Denver native less than six months ago, is potentially worth six figures.

Two of the most promising Lin domains, Linsanity.com and Linderella.com, have been snatched up. The latter promises to soon start selling Lin T-shirts. It currently redirects to a YouTube video of Lin’s last-second game winner against the Toronto Raptors, uploaded by a user with the name “justinebieber.” Read more…

AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post

Jennifer and Jean Spencer, creators of Agloves, pose for a portrait in Boulder on Dec. 1.

A tiny company in Boulder, founded by a mother/daughter team, has beaten giants such as North Face in the battle to supply the U.S. Army and Air Force with gloves that work on smartphone touchscreens.

The Army has already sent many pairs of Agloves overseas to fighters, according to CNN.

The news agency reported on its What’s Next blog that the U.S. decided to test existing technology rather than create its own smartphone gloves. Read more…

Apple is reportedly testing an iPad with an 8-inch touchscreen, which is about 2 inches smaller than the existing models.

Even at 8 inches, the screen size is closer to that of a 10-inch tablet than a 7-inch tablet in terms of user experience, based on my testing of various tablet models, including the 7-inch Galaxy Tab, the 8-inch Pantech Element and, of course, the two iPads released thus far.

One of the better features of the 8-inch Element Read more…

Screen grab

Southwest's iPhone app has a security flaw, says a CU masters student.

Southwest Airlines’ iPhone app leaves a user’s information vulnerable to hackers, according to a recent study by a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs master’s student.

David Stites performed security audits on more than 230 iOS applications and found that the “largest single potential security breach” was with the Southwest app.

Because the app submits username and password information as plain text to a remote server, a potential attacker can simply sniff for the data, Stites said.

“If an example was captured, one could use those credentials to log into a particular account and book travel, use award miles and possibly change information in the victims profile,” Stites said. “The possibility of being able to capture this data is especially probable since Denver International offers free WiFi Read more…

John Prieto/The Denver Post.

Consumers wait in line in February 2011 at the Verizon Wireless store at 2073 S. Colorado Blvd. for the iPhone.

Amid widespread consumer backlash, Verizon Wireless last month reversed course on plans to charge a $2 convenience fee on one-time online credit card payments.

But the nation’s largest wireless carrier went ahead with a small increase to its monthly “administrative charge.” That fee went up in January from 83 cents per line to 99 cents per line.

Coupled with a bump in the government-mandated Universal Service Fund fee, which will go toward broadband expansion in rural areas, some consumers may have seen their monthly bills jump by a buck or two Read more…

Kimihiro Hoshino, Agence France-Presse

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg delivers a keynote speech during a conference in September.

A new report suggests that Facebook is providing a social good to users – giving them higher levels of emotional support and allowing them to reach thousands of people even if they’re friends with just a couple of hundred.

The reason: their ties to the power user, which make up about 20 to 30 percent of the Facebook community, according to a wide-ranging study released today by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Power users tend to be younger and are more likely to be women, said Rutgers University associate professor Keith Hampton, the study’s lead author.

“As a result of these power users, the average Facebook user receives friend requests, receives personal messages, is tagged in photos, and receives feedback in terms of “likes” at a higher frequency than they contribute,” the report states.

Among the key findings from the study: Read more…

The so-called Form S-1 from Facebook’s IPO filing features a series of images to help describe the company’s business. Here are a few of the notables:

SEC

Facebook leads its IPO filing with this image.

Read more…