Internet & Websites News - Page 28

The latest and most important Internet & Websites news - Page 28.

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Facebook now has over 1.7 billion monthly active users

Anthony Garreffa | Jul 28, 2016 10:15 PM CDT

Facebook has somehow continued its growth into 2016, with the company reporting its second quarter earnings, where we now know just how many people use Facebook daily, and monthly.

Facebook is now home to over 1.7 billion monthly active users (MAUs), which is a nice increase of 15% year-over-year, while we have 1.57 billion monthly active users on mobile. Facebook has also hit another milestone, where the social network is now home to over 1 billion mobile daily active users (DAUs).

The company defines MAUs as "Mobile-only MAUs are defined as users who accessed Facebook solely through mobile apps or mobile versions of our website, or used our Messenger app, in the last 30 days of the given quarter. The number of mobile-only MAUs do not include Instagram users unless they would otherwise qualify as such users based on their other activities on Facebook".

Continue reading: Facebook now has over 1.7 billion monthly active users (full post)

American Crime Story will stream exclusively on Netflix

Sean Ridgeley | Jul 26, 2016 9:20 AM CDT

Fox has signed a deal that will see American Crime Story stream exclusively on Netflix as of 2017. Available everywhere but Canada (where Rogers' holds rights to FX content), each season will launch on the service after their broadcast windows are up.

The first season of the show -- which earned 22 Emmy nominations -- centers on the fevered trial of O.J. Simpson that began in the mid-90s and gained worldwide attention and earning the title "Trial of the Century." It stars John Travolta, Cuba Gooding Jr., Sarah Paulson (who funnily enough also has a role in American Horror Story), and David Schwimmer.

The second season focuses on Hurrican Katrina and will debut on FX next year.

Continue reading: American Crime Story will stream exclusively on Netflix (full post)

Weekly 'Star Trek' series coming to Netflix, but prime time only in NA

Sean Ridgeley | Jul 18, 2016 1:54 PM CDT

The upcoming Star Trek TV series will be available for almost anyone anywhere to watch on Netflix. The online video streaming company has signed an exclusive agreement with CBS that will see the show broadcast weekly on its service to users in 188 countries, which is to say all of them except for the US and Canada. Each episode will release within 24 hours of the US premiere.

If you live in North America, you'll have to watch the show the old-fashioned way (or through CBS All Access), at least until CBS eventually releases the show to all Netflix regions.

Star Trek, which is based on the original series, will begin production in Toronto as of September and will premiere in January; it is created and produced by Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller, who combined have worked on Deep Space Nine, Voyager, the Star Trek Movie, and Into Darkness.

Continue reading: Weekly 'Star Trek' series coming to Netflix, but prime time only in NA (full post)

200,000 Canadians cancel TV while TV companies increase prices

Sean Ridgeley | Jul 13, 2016 12:30 PM CDT

Television provider companies are under threat in Canada, where approximately 200,000 customers cut the cord in 2015, according to a new Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) report.

The companies' response to the shift as well has an increased cost of business has been to increase prices to offset the losses, which for now at least, appears to have worked, with revenues declining just 0.1 percent to $8.9 billion after the adjustments. The average TV bill increased from $65.25 in 2014 to $66.08 in 2015.

The CRTC states the cost of business increased by 1.3 percent to $7.2 billion over the one year period. Meanwhile, the industry employed 6.3 less people during that time, down to 27,244 people.

Continue reading: 200,000 Canadians cancel TV while TV companies increase prices (full post)

Comcast rolls out 1TB cap, calls it 'Terabyte Internet Experience'

Sean Ridgeley | Jul 8, 2016 1:53 PM CDT

Comcast user reports from residents all over Illinois, USA indicate the company has introduced a 1TB data cap on its internet services in the region, which it refers to as a "Terabyte Internet Experience."

The e-mail sent out to customers reads: "We're writing to let you know that we will be trialing a new XFINITY internet data usage plan in your area. Starting August 1, 2016, your monthly XFINITY internet service will include a terabyte data usage plan."

It later goes on to say that if you need more data, there's always the Unlimited Data option, but that it's only relevant to less than 1% of its customers. As well, that less than 1% will remain unlimited for two "courtesy months."

Continue reading: Comcast rolls out 1TB cap, calls it 'Terabyte Internet Experience' (full post)

AMD launches its new Radeon website, a new hub for all things Radeon

Anthony Garreffa | Jul 5, 2016 8:45 PM CDT

AMD has just launched its new Radeon.com website, with it being a new hub for all things Radeon.

Radeon.com offers feature articles, details on RTG's new Radeon RX 480 video card, and entire section at the bottom dedicated to recent social media posts, and so much more.

AMD's new Polaris architecture is detailed, with the latest 'VR For All' featured article at the top, and an easier spot to grab the latest Radeon Software drivers for your video card in an easy-to-reach location at Radeon.com.

Continue reading: AMD launches its new Radeon website, a new hub for all things Radeon (full post)

YouTube happy with Red subscriptions so far

Sean Ridgeley | Jun 22, 2016 4:43 PM CDT

YouTube launched its ad-free subscription service YouTube Red back in February. If you were wondering how it's doing, the company says it's still "early days" but that it's "happy" and "encouraged" by numbers so far. That said, it was never really about numbers, as VP of content partnerships Kelly Merryman explains.

"YouTube Red just launched in the US and really for us it's all about consumer choice," she says. "Ads continue to be our core business and we are really thrilled about the business of reaching over a billion users a month and with momentum continuing behind that business, so there's no shift in where our business focuses. But we believe in consumer choice. One of the nice things about YouTube Red is we have created a subscription product that allows consumers to have an offline experience or ad-free experience, but we've also chosen that's another way we can invest in our creators to allow for our creators to actually bring a different cost structure to the platform."

That last bit is referring to YouTube's plans for introducing 15 to 20 original shows to the service this year, adding further value. Said shows will come from popular YouTubers like PewDiePie as well as more traditional creators.

Continue reading: YouTube happy with Red subscriptions so far (full post)

360 million MySpace passwords can be purchased for just $2,800

Anthony Garreffa | May 27, 2016 11:34 PM CDT

We all remember the days of MySpace, and if you don't... well, you're probably too young. The social network has been hacked, with over 360 million passwords taken.

The 360 million passwords are being sold, of course, with the hacker being the same one who was selling the data of the 160 million users that were hacked on LinkedIn recently. The data was taken by a hacker called Peace, as well as LeakedSource, a search engine of hacked data.

The credentials haven't been shared just yet, but to verify the data, Motherboard gave the email addresses of five MySpace users and LeakedSource "was able to send back" passwords on all five accounts. The database has 427,484,128 passwords, but only 360 million emails that had a second password attached. Each of the 360 million records contain "an email address, a username, one password and in some cases a second password".

Continue reading: 360 million MySpace passwords can be purchased for just $2,800 (full post)

Usernames, media won't count toward Twitter character limit soon

Sean Ridgeley | May 25, 2016 2:09 PM CDT

Mostly in line with earlier rumors, Twitter has confirmed that media and @names in replies won't count toward its 140 character limit before too long.

A source previously indicated links wouldn't count either, and while that's not specifically pointed out by Twitter in its blog post, it does say it's "exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones, all without compromising [the service's] unique brevity and speed."

Other changes include the ability to retweet and quote yourself with a simple button click, and new tweets (not replies) that begin with @name will reach all of your followers, eliminating the need for the ".@name" workaround. The latter is good if that's what you want, but bad if you want to privately ask a question, for example; hopefully Twitter creates an option to enable or disable this behaviour, whether per tweet or globally.

Continue reading: Usernames, media won't count toward Twitter character limit soon (full post)

AT&T begins enforcing broadband caps, offers $30 waiver option

Sean Ridgeley | May 24, 2016 11:07 AM CDT

AT&T began data capping its U-Verse broadband customers back in 2011, although it didn't enforce its new rules. That changes this week as May 23 has arrived: the date the company said it would begin enforcing caps.

Whereas the cap was 250GB per month in 2011, that's been increased to 300GB for those with 768 Kbps-6Mbps plans; 12Mbps-75Mbps plans will have a 600GB cap, and 100 Mbps-1Gbps means a 1TB cap. Should you exceed the limit (and you'll receive plenty of e-mail warnings before you do), you'll be charged $10 for each 50GB of extra data. Alternately, you can pay a flat $30 extra per month for unlimited data.

AT&T says about 4% of its customers go over the new limits.

Continue reading: AT&T begins enforcing broadband caps, offers $30 waiver option (full post)