Cox

Adorning the walls of Facebook's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters are multiple prints of Rene Magritte's iconic painting The Son of Man. The image of a man's face partly obscured by a green apple is considered a critique of people's attempts to conceal their true selves. It's also an apt metaphor for the millions who spend time on the Web trying to keep their own identities hidden, say executives at Facebook, the world's largest social network. "Part of what Facebook is trying to do is help people take the apple away," says Facebook Vice-President of Product Chris Cox.

Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books:

Cox Communications, the third-largest U.S. cable company, stepped on to the battleground of the "Net Neutrality" issue Tuesday, saying it will be trying out a new way to keep its subscribers' Internet traffic from jamming up.

Starting on Feb. 9 in parts of Kansas and Arkansas, Cox will give priority to Internet traffic it judges to be time-sensitive, like Web pages, streaming video and online games. File downloads, software updates and other non-time sensitive data may be slowed if there is congestion on the local network, Cox said.

AT&T has become the latest Internet service provider to test limits on bandwidth usage, with a trial this month of caps for subscribers in Reno, Nevada.

The company -- the largest Internet service provider in the United States -- said about five percent of subscribers use about 50 percent of capacity.

$1 Per Gigabyte

Cable, Internet and telephone service provider Cox Communications just added wireless to its list of bundled offerings.

Atlanta-based Cox, the third-largest cable provider in the nation, announced Monday that it is teaming with Sprint to give its customers access to a wireless network. With the new offering, customers will be able to use mobile devices to access television shows, program a DVR, and access content on a home computer.

Web-savvy viewers routinely catch up with missed TV episodes online, but networks are split on screening them before their premiere.

For the third year, NBC plans an aggressive campaign to make new series widely available a week before their premieres.

Cox Communications appears to be interfering with file-sharing by its Internet subscribers in the same manner that has landed Comcast Corp. in hot water with regulators, according to research obtained by The Associated Press.

A study based on the participation of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked file-sharing connections only at three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S. and StarHub in Singapore.