Internet & Websites - Page 40

Google is king of producing high quality useless features. Think about it: the doodles are high-quality and cool, but not really useful. They may be good for a little bit of entertainment, but other than that, they serve no purpose. Today's addition is in the same vein in that it's fun, it's cute, but doesn't really serve any purpose other than that.

The new feature is called The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The game, with tools, has been around for a while and spawned offshoots such as The Six Degrees of Wikipedia. The idea is that only six movies or fewer connect Kevin Bacon with any other actor, due to his wide appearances in movies.

To use the new tool, just type "bacon number" and an actor name. The number represents how many "degrees" apart they are. For example, in the picture, Bacon never worked with Willis, but they both worked with Bill Murray. If you're having a bit of trouble understanding the game, allow Wikipedia to explain:

If you missed it the first time around, Google has brought back its online course "Power Searching with Google" to equip users with the knowledge to use Google effectively and efficiently. You can sign up for the class now for free and take the six 50-minute sessions over two weeks beginning September 24.

A description directly from Google:

GoDaddy is rejecting the claims that they were hacked in a statement released today. The statement claims that "the service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a "hack" and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables."

This claim refutes yesterday's claim by an Anonymous member that he was responsible for bringing GoDaddy down. The outage lasted for six hours, by GoDaddy's account, lasting from 10am PDT to around 4pm PDT. They have reiterated that since it wasn't a hack, at no time was any customer data at risk. They then proceed to admit they let customers down and apologize for doing so:

A website, GoDarkForIE.org, is encouraging other websites to black out on October 26, 2012 to users of Internet Explorer below version 9. Dabbling in web development a bit myself, I know first-hand just how frustrating it can be to develop for all the browsers, especially fixing bugs in older IE versions.

GoDarkForIE argues "old browsers hurt the web! They don't understand modern technologies, lack features, they're buggy, have security holes and prevent you from seeing the web the way it should be seen." They liken it to not upgrading your TV ever. "Imagine if everyone didn't upgrade their TV or computer? It would mean all the great advancements like HD, DVD's etc would all go to waste. Imagine what you'd be missing out on!"

The mission? "To get websites to go dark on October 26, 2012 to users of Internet Explorer below version 9."

"The web is evolving and so should the JavaScript benchmarks that measure its performance," says the Google blog announcing Octane, a new JavaScript benchmark. Due to this, Google has ditched the traditional method of making a benchmark--artificial tests designed to test one feature at a time--and opted to use common web apps and JavaScript libraries.

Since they are based on web apps that are used everyday, this real world scenario allows the benchmark's numbers to be better. Google claims that "a high score in the new benchmarks directly translates to better and smoother performance in similar web applications" since it is based off of real applications.

Google has provided us with an overview of the tests:

Facebook are looking to go a bit exotic with their new backup plans, with their upcoming backup looking to tap some low-power deep-storage hardware that'll be housed in a 62,000 square-foot building in Prineville, Oregon.

This is situated near their Beaver State data center, with the new back up referred to "Sub-Zero". Sub-Zero will store a copy of Facebook's data in case the social network's primary servers need to be restored in the case of an emergency. Instead of continuously powering HDDs that are only occasionally used, Sub-Zero can conserve energy by lighting-up drives only when they're actually needed.

Just a single of Facebook's existing server racks chews up around 4.5 kilowatts, whilst the ones that will be found at Sub-Zero will only consume approximately 1.5 kilowatts when they're running, which is quite the power conservation. Facebook's vice president of site operations, Tom Furlong, talked to Wired that there are talks of a similar structure to be built next to the social network's North Carolina-based data center.

I still remember getting a Nintendo 64 for Christmas as a young gamer, I was unbelievably excited. Gaming back in the 90s was just another thing compared to gaming now, and it seems that a brand new Nintendo 64 emulator has been developed by Paul Holden.

Holden's new emulator uses JavaScript and is still in its early stages, as it only works with a handful of titles, one of which is Super Mario 64. If you want to use the emulator, you'll need to be rocking Google Chrome or a Firefox Nightly build, as they are the only browsers that have the features required to run the emulator. You'll also need to have your own ROMs on hand.

The video above shows off the emulator, and of course whilst not perfect, it runs. Early days yet, and you can see it runs pretty slow, but that's probably because of a software issue, as today's computers have enough horsepower to run something from the mid-90s without a problem.

Retina MacBook Pro owners might not be enjoying that high-res display as much as they could. This is because if apps don't support the native 2880x1800 resolution, the apps are displayed as a blurry, pixel-doubled app. But, there are plenty of Retina-made apps right now, but they're not easy to find.

Even with Apple's Mac App Store, the apps aren't easy to find, which is why RetinaMacApps.com has stepped in, bringing a list of Retina-compatible apps. The website looks quite simple, lacking any form of search function, as it just sports a drop-down menu on the left that lets you look through the most recent submissions, category or name.

If you don't want to check through the whole site, you can just hook yourself up to a weekly e-mail that will be sent out to you with a list of submitted apps from the week just gone. Retina-powered apps won't automatically appear in this listing, though, as developers will need to submit their apps manually, which means there'll only be a few apps out there that meet these requirements, but won't jump up onto the listing.

Microsoft's new Outlook.com looks to be a success. In the first 24 hours of it being live, Outlook.com saw 1 million users sign up for the newest webmail service on the block. Now, Microsoft is reporting that the service has seen 10 million users sign up and starting using Outlook.com since its launch just two weeks ago.

This stat was released alongside an announcement about the updated SkyDrive updates. The number could be slightly inflated by users grabbing vanity e-mails, but even still it is an impressive feat. In other news, SkyDrive has been revamped by Microsoft to feature a new, modern design and will soon be getting an Android app:

Multi-lingual users will like this news, with Google announcing that they've introduced a new text input tool that lets you type in Russian, Chinese and Hindi within their Google Docs product.

Normally other languages require special characters which aren't available on US keyboard configurations, but here is what the Google Drive team had to say about it:

It would appear that Google has partially caved to the music and movie industry. An update to the way search results are ranked will see pirate sites and other illegitimate content sources showing up lower in the results. As you may or may not know, Google looks at around 200 different signals to rank pages and the newest one is directly tied to piracy.

The latest signal to be used in ranking pages will be directly related to "the number of valid copyright removal notices" received for a given site. This means that sites which receive a large number of valid removal notices may appear lower in Google's search results. Google explains why this is a good thing:

Facebook is trying out a new feature that allows users to send a postcard with one of your pictures on it to a friend. The new feature is powered by Sincerely and allows you to mail a physical postcard to a friend. You can even add a message that will be sent to the friend with the card or send prints of their pictures.

Of course, Facebook isn't doing this for free. The sender is charged a fee, right now at varying price points for the people who have access to the trial, and the card goes out in the mail through Sincerely's service. Sincerely is the company behind Postagram, the service that does basically the same thing for Instagram pictures.

This feature came about from a Hackathon project. If successful, and instituted, the new service could garner Facebook some more earnings through increased interaction with pictures (higher advertising value) and through a possible small profit from the selling of the postcards and prints.

Google needs your help so that they can better help you. Earlier this year, Google launched a stock image library as part of its Google Drive product. Thanks to lots of positive feedback, they are now planning on expanding that library with images that are selected by the people who use the product. That's why they've enlisted your help.

Want to help decide what goes in? It's a simple task, really. Just head over to ThinkStock.com, select up to 10 images to nominate, and fill out Google's nomination form with the information they require. Easy, and you have helped make Google, and the Internet, a better place. Not to mention you should then be able to use these photos in your Google Drive docs.

Google explains the process in a bit more detail:

Today, Google has been doing a lot of talking. They debuted their exclusive field trial of integrating Gmail emails with searches and they've been talking about the future of search. But, how can you look towards the future without knowing the present? You can't and that's why Google has provided us with some incredible numbers about the current state of search.

To make an average day, Google crawls an incredible 20 billion pages. However, to put that number in perspective, there are about 30 trillion URLs on the Internet. An average month is made up of serving 100 billion searches. Google's current Knowledge Graph is composed of 500 million items and that is just a baby step towards the future of search.

Google's vision of the future of search:

Google launched their PageSpeed Service last year with the aim of improving the experience of web surfing, without making them a dime. The idea sounded great, as it worked like similar services such as Akamai, where it would boost web browsing speeds by caching pages in the same way, but as always, there's always improvements that can be made.

Google's latest PageSpeed beta uses some simple techniques that improve performance even more, using a new rewriter called "Cache and Prioritize Visible Content". Using this new tool, your browser will load content before it even appears "above the fold" before fetching text and photos that would be initially hidden on the page, all while prioritizing other content ahead of Javascript, which isn't needed as much as more basic elements.

Also, for pages that include HTML that isn't cacheable, such as personalized info, is returned, standard portions of the side and cache are displayed immediately, whilst other content loads in its normal fashion. This new tool isn't the best for every website on the web, but it's great to see these changes, all for free.

Facebook had their first earnings report as a public company last week, where a bunch of facts, and figures were released. But, according to some information released during their 10-Q filing this week, approximately 8.7% of active Facebook users don't represent real people.

8.7% may not sound like a huge amount of people, but considering that the social network has a staggering 955 million users, 8.7% represents a 83.09 million accounts. That figure has also ballooned out from the social network's pre-IPO estimate of between 5-6%, but CNET has said that its probably the result of Facebook adjusting the way it calculates the bogus accounts.

CNET also says that someone can quality as an "active" Facebook user if they use the service to log into other websites, but don't actually need to visit Facebook. The document also shows that 4.8% of Facebook's monthly active users (MAUs) are duplicates, or an extra account that someone created in addition to their main profile. This could be by mistake, to 'cheat' in social games, or because of other reasons.

Google have updated the developer program policy page, which has now made the platform more secure and easier to navigate for users. Google had sent out an e-mail to its developer community with the news that Google Play would be undergoing some changes to clamp down on suspect behavior in the Android market.

Google outlined the types of apps that aren't allowed on the platform, with apps that disclose personal information like credit card and social security numbers without authorization are now, not allowed. Google are also restricting developers from using names, or icons that are similar to existing apps, which should cut down on piracy and dodgy apps that look the same as real apps, but aren't.

Google have said on their policy page:

Facebook have officially launched their App Center, which is the social network's storefront of desktop and mobile applications, which is now available in every country that Facebook is. The App Center first debuted in English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Then, last week the App Center hit Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey. Now, it is completely global, in every country Facebook can be used in, the App Center is there. If you log into Facebook.com, you'll see an App Center bookmark on the left side of your homepage, as well as in the Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.

Facebook continues to grow, and needs to feed itself into new markets, with mobile being a very important one. Considering that international users make up 81-percent of Facebook's staggering 995 million monthly active users, it's a step in the right direction. I don't personally play any games on Facebook anymore, I'm tied up working so much that I don't have the time to mess with them anymore. But it's nice to know that my wife can jump into SongPop now, direct from the App Center on her notebook, or Galaxy S III.

Google have finally opened up an official Android blog, as up until now, all of the Android-based news had to find its home in the Google Mobile blog. Now, it has its own home, its own man cave, dungeon and experimental lab. Call it what you will, but Android has its own home within a blog.

The Google Mobile team had some words to express for the new home for Android:

You know what? I love numbers. I think this is why I love technology so much, specs, GHz, core clocks, frame rates, power consumption, I could go on forever. Social networking site, Facebook, have released their energy usage report for the year of 2011, with some interesting details.

Facebook's total annual carbon footprint for each monthly active Facebook user is 269 grams. Facebook have put this into context in the report as detailing that for one person's Facebook use for the entire of 2011, had roughly the same carbon footprint as one medium latte, or three large bananas, or a couple of glasses of wine. I'll take the latter, thanks.

Facebook's total energy usage from office space, data centers, and other facilities was approximately 532 million kWh. Greenhouse gas emissions, also known as our carbon footprint, comes from many different areas: data centers, office space, employee commuting, employee air travel, data center construction and server transportation totaled approximately 285,000 metric tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent, which includes greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, N2O, and HFCs).