Latest News - Page 3018

Facebook has a lot of data about you. They know what you like, you who know, and what you post and they use all of that information to allow advertisers to target you while you're surfing Facebook. But what if that information could be used to target you when you're running around the rest of the web?

Well, it looks as though we'll soon find out. Facebook is reportedly looking to start up an external advertising agency. This means that Facebook would allow advertisers to use Facebook information about you to target ads at you as you surf around the net. The whole reason Facebook would want to do this is because it would bring it lots of revenue.

One estimate says that they could double their current revenue by doing this. Increasing revenue is an important thing for Facebook as they are now a publicly traded company. The model would be similar to Google's AdSense, something that has proven popular and effective. Facebook, if they do this right, could possibly compete with Google's advertising, something that has previously been unobtainable by anyone.

A few users of Android have had to deal with a bug for two and a half years now prompting some to question Google as to why it hasn't been fixed as of yet. Well, all of this questioning has finally made some progress with Google as they have now promised to fix the bug in the next version of Android.

The bug is a very specific and limited bug that only affects a few groups of users. In April 2010, it was discovered and reported that Android wouldn't allow a given device to resolve a hostname to the correct IP address on a local domain. This bug is only really a problem for some university students and IT professionals.

Since it had limited scope, Google wasn't in a rush to fix it as they had more pressing matters to attend to. However, Google has finally stated that a fix for this bug is coming...in the next version of Android. Unfortunately for those experiencing the bug, Google missed putting the fix into Android 4.2, so they'll have to wait for 4.3.

It's a constant message repeated by the RIAA, MPAA, and others: Pirating is bad. However, a new study conducted in the UK has shown that UK customers who pirate end up spending way more at the box office than those who don't do any sort of illegal file sharing. It's the type of findings that the RIAA don't like people to hear.

The survey, conducted by OFCOM, interviewed 4,400 Internet users aged 12 and up. The resulting 94-page report shows that 16 percent of respondents had downloaded at least one item illegally and one-quarter of the group consumed only pirated content. The flip-side of this is that 75 percent of the pirates also pay for digital content.

The so-called "hybrid" pirates make up roughly 12 percent of the British population and the report claims that people in this group spend up to three times as much as non-pirates on legal purchases. 48 percent of respondents said they download illegally because it's convenient and 44 percent said they do it because it's quick.

The founder of McAfee, John McAfee, has been on the run from authorities for a while now, and has added an interesting new twist to the already interesting story.

McAfee is currently wanted by the police in Belize, for questioning in regards to the murder of his neighbor, Gregory Faull. McAfee of course denies that he murdered Faull, and is now stating that he is the victim of a murder plot. Forgetting that he's not starring in his own movie, McAfee is posted a transcript of a conversation that allegedly took place between an ex-employee, and another employee, which McAfee says he taped using "secret recording devices" on the grounds of his $1.5 million property.

The post shows that the two men were talking about planting a bomb at McAfee's house, and afterwards calling officials in the police force, which they suggest are involved in the conspiracy. But, if this post isn't a troll, it would explain why McAfee is afraid that the police will kill him if he comes in for questioning.

I still remember the days of optical discs, where they played an important role in my life. There was a time I burnt myself "system discs", that I had drivers, pictures, updates (for software/games), and much more on it. In the days of dial-up, and in the days when tech didn't change so quickly with updates being freely available over the Internet.

These days, I don't use optical discs - period. Nearly everything I use is online, or on my QNAP NAS - but that hasn't stopped the world of optical discs from moving forward. We're now staring down the barrel of 1TB of data on a single optical disc. Fujifilm have developed a new recording method which is reportedly capable of delivering up to 1TB per disc.

This is done through 25GB per layer, which is the same amount of data a single-layer Blu-ray disc holds. But Fujifilm's new tech can cram in up to 20 layer of 25GB, amounting to 1TB in total.

It has nearly been a month since Windows 8 has launched, so just how is Microsoft's Windows Store faring? Well, they've seen 2,000 more apps added to the store, bringing the total to over 20,000 apps.

Better yet, nearly 18,000 of those apps are actually free - an impressive feat. But, are all of those apps worthwhile? That's the real question. Win App Update keeps tracks of the totals, posting on Twitter that the milestone was probably passed on Tuesday. Not all of the apps are available in all regions and languages, with your particular market sporting much less than that 20,000 apps market.

Out of the 20,000 apps, Win App Update says that almost 18,000 of those are free. Breaking them down into locations, the US has nearly 13,000, Canada has almost 14,000 and the UK sits pretty with just 11,000.

Google updated its Transparency Report last month and it now shows more data than it previously did. The new information includes numbers on government requests to Google for user data. This means Google is reporting how many warrants or other requests for information (subpoena, etc) they get by which governments.

I'm sure you can guess which country makes the most requests of Google, and, no, it isn't Iran or China. In fact, it's the United States and Google says most of the requests are to aid in criminal investigations, however, Google "can't always be sure that a request necessarily relates to a criminal investigation."

Go figure. Following the United States, India, Brazil, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have the next highest number of requests, but they are a good distance behind the good ol' US. The US has requested nearly 8,000 times about more than 16,000 users. 90 percent of these requests have been partially or fully complied with.

What kind of world do we live in where police raid a house and take a 9-year-old's laptop that is adorned with Winnie the Pooh stickers? Well, apparently Finnish police feel this is an acceptable thing to do. According to TorrentFreak, police showed up at the girl's house after her dad didn't pay a fine.

CIAPC, an anti-piracy company, managed to get Finnish ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. They started tracking BitTorrent users and, in particular, this one little girl. They sent a letter, which was received by the father and owner of the internet connection, demanding a cash settlement without any sort of trial.

The father, of course, refused to pay. This prompted police to raid the home of the 9-year-old suspect and confiscate her laptop, which was decorated with Winne the Pooh stickers, mind you. "It would have been easier for all concerned if you had paid the compensation," the police advised.

And just like that, Mozilla has ended nightly builds of Firefox 64-bit for Windows. The reasoning behind doing so is logical and was laid out by Engineering Manager Benjamin Smedberg. Only 5 days after his post on the mozilla.dev.planning discussion board, nightly builds were turned off.

Browsing through the discussions, it was clear that a large portion were against disabling the 64-bit version, however, some did agree with him. He then posted "Thank you to everyone who participated in this thread. Given the existing information, I have decided to proceed with disabling windows 64-bit nightly and hourly builds. Please let us consider this discussion closed unless there is critical new information which needs to be presented."

Windows users who would like a 64-bit browser can switch to OS X or Linux, which both have 64-bit Firefox. Windows users can also select from Internet Explorer or Opera as Chrome and Safari do not currently have a 64-bit version available for Windows.

Patrick Gibson posted up an interesting, and rather accurate, portrayal of Google and Apple. The biggest takeaway from the post is that Google is getting better at design, something they've been weak at, quicker than Apple is getting better at web services, something they have been weak at.

Take a look at Apple's web fails:

With each revision of Android, it's UI and polish gets closer and closer to that of Apple and iOS. With the latest version, it's really starting to approach the quality of Apple's design. Apple's mantra that everything "Just Works" is more true for Google's web services, and increasingly, its hardware and Android.

According to comScore's latest estimates, consumers are to spend $43.4 billion on web-based shopping during November and December. This would mark an increase of 17% year-over-year for the same two-month period of 2011.

2011's online spending was around 15% higher than it was in 2010, showing that it has increased year-on-year for a while now. This year's forecast is actually much higher than the industry's overall retail expectation, which expects a 4.1% rise in consumer spending during the 2012 holiday season.

Considering the US going through a huge recession, natural disasters, and a very uncertain economic future, consumers shopping online has actually increased. ComScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni, has said that if the estimates are true, it would be a great finale to a great year for retail e-commerce. Fulgoni has an optimistic outlook on the season based on the strong lead-up to the 32 shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Apple's new 'Spaceship' campus was meant to open in 2015, but Apple have reportedly filed a new timetable with the City of Cupertino on November 14, adapting its development timetable. Apple have had delays that affect Cupertino's environmental impact report. This report monitors traffic, noise, air quality levels, and allows local residents to comment on its development.

This has caused Apple to push back the completion of the report from the expected late-2012 date, to June 2013. This could mean that Apple won't start work on the new HQ until 2014, pushing back the move-in date into 2016.

The new 'Spaceship' HQ boasts 2.8 million square feet of a research and development building, a 1000-seat corporate auditorium, a fitness center, central plant, parking and another 300,000 square-foot research facility. Apple hopes that the new campus will maximize efficiency and convenience to their employees, where it will provide a co-location of services and a consolidation of employees in a single distinctive office R&D building.

Fans of augmented reality are excited for Google's upcoming Project Glass, which aims to put a computer into a wearable pair of glasses. Those glasses will be capable of overlaying information as wearers walk around cities, take hands-free pictures, and all kinds of other cool stuff that we can't even fathom yet.

Unfortunately, it looks like they still are a few years off. Google originally announced the glasses back in June. They could be preordered for $1,500, for which purchasers got a plaque with their queue number on it. Google isn't saying when the glasses will be completed or when they will be released, though Sergey Brin has worn them out in public.

TIME magazine may have let slip some information that puts a date on the release. According to their "Best Inventions of the Year 2012" column, TIME provides the date that we will have them by as 2014. "Consumers should be able to buy Google Glass by 2014." They don't provide a source or explanation for the time frame, but we're sure they have checked up on that date with people in the know.

Google is an unstoppable force. The company's search market share has practically continued to increase month-over-month and it saw its highest ever market share this past October. Coming in at 66.9 percent, it beat out its previous record of 66.8 percent, which it achieved in both June and July of this year.

Looking year-over-year, Google's search dominance has increased 1.5 percent. Bing, too, is increasing in market share, though it has a long road in front of it if they hope to reach anywhere near what Google has. Sitting at a mere 16 percent this October, they have grown only 1.2 percent year-over-year.

Yahoo managed to get 12.2 percent of search traffic, down from 15.2 percent year-over-year. Ask pulled in a mere 3.2 percent and AOL managed to get 1.8 percent, both absolutely tiny in comparison to Google's results. These numbers come from comScore, who measures desktop searches. This means searches executed by mobile devices aren't included.

OCZ, our troubled SSD-making friends, have been served a subpoena requesting documents and information that relate to press releases the company provided on September 5, 2012 and October 10, 2012. They've also been requested to turn over financial reports dealing with customer incentive programs.

OCZ is in a bit of hot water right now after its earnings were delayed and quite a bit lower than expectations. Many investors have filed lawsuits alleging that the company broke the law in financial reporting. Theories as to why they did this run the gamut, but most settle on the idea they were looking to be acquired.

Ralph Schmitt, president and chief executive officer, noted that, "Since we delayed the filing of our second quarter 10-Q, we had proactively contacted the Commission and have been expecting them to conduct an investigation. We intend to cooperate fully regarding this non-public, fact-finding inquiry and are also continuing with our own internal investigation as previously announced."

Facebook has sent out an e-mail to all 1 billion users informing them of the proposal to modify governance of the site. The proposed changes look to take away the users' right to force a vote by getting more than 7,000 comments on the proposed changes. Instead, Facebook would like to make sure they get high-quality feedback on proposed changes.

To prevent Facebook from taking away this right, users will need to comment on the proposal and then vote, if the proposal comments number in excess of 7,000 after the 7 day period is up. In all likelihood, this change will probably go up for a vote and then not get enough votes to go anywhere.

Facebook requires a 30 percent vote, either yes or no, to make it binding. So even if vocal users get the 7,000 comments, the likeliness of 300 million users voting to block the changes is a pretty slim chance. Instead of voting, Facebook is offering up a way to ask the Chief Privacy Officer questions and they would also have the CPO hold livestreamed webcasts, during which questions would be asked and answered.

Next time you're walking around a store checking out what the mannequin is wearing, it may just be checking you out back. A new mannequin is being sold by Almax SpA called the EyeSee. This new mannequin differs from the traditional mannequin in that it has a camera in its eye that feeds back data to facial recognition software.

It's similar to the technology used at airports by police, however, these fashion companies aren't looking to catch criminals. Instead, they want to gather as much data as possible so that they have a fighting chance of keeping up with online retailers. Online retailers currently have access to loads more personal information than traditional stores do.

It's really a bit creepy, actually. The facial recognition software logs the age, gender, and race of people who walk by. It probably logs other information, such as people who stay in front of the mannequin for long periods of time. According to the manufacturer, companies have already made changes because of the data.

Last year, Grand Theft Auto III: Anniversary Edition was released onto iOS and Android devices and brought back a ton of great memories I had with the game 11 years ago. Now, it's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's turn as Rockstar Games has announced it will also be releasing an anniversary edition of the game onto mobile devices.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 10th Anniversary Edition will be making its way onto iOS and Android devices on December 6th for $4.99, nearly one year after the released of Grand Theft Auto III: Anniversary Edition.

Just like Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City will have a number of enhancements over the original game such as native high-resolution graphics, updated character models and improvements to the game's targeting system. Controls will also be fully customizable allowing you to move its layout to however you like.

You might remember a little game called Wing Commander, and if you're like me, you'll remember it quite fondly as one of the best games of its time in the 90s. Well, the man behind that, Chris Roberts, has another game coming out under his company Cloud Imperium Games Corporation called Star Citizen. Star Citizen is powered by a modified version of CryEngine 3.

Star Citizen is a crowd funded game which has just finished its round of funding, closing at an astonishing $6.4 million. This breaks all previous crowd funding records, with its original goal of $2 million being blown out of the water. The crowdfunding took place on Kickstarter, as well as the game's home page at Roberts Space Industries (RSI).

$4,290,962 was raised on RSI, with the remaining $2,134,374 being raised on Kickstarter. This gave Star Citizen a total of $6,425,336 in funding - quite the achievement indeed. The minimum pledge in order to get a copy of the finished game is $37, with the game set to be completed and distributed in two years' time, in November 2014. The game is explained as "a rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person".

For those of you running the 'yakju' international GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus, you should be receiving the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OTA (over the air) update right about now. If not, the factory Android 4.2 JB image is also available, if that's how you roll.

The only Galaxy Nexus receiving this update is the above-mentioned 'yakju' version, which is the version available in Hong Kong and the UK, the "takju" Galaxy Nexus owners had their updates last week, but at the moment the Verizon or Sprint bound updates are nowhere to be seen.

If you want to download the new update, check out this link courtesy of Android Central, they've also been kind enough to offer up a guide.