Internet & Websites - Page 41

Ah, Digg. The memories I have of spending countless hours searching for stories, or just having a read out of sheer boredom. Reddit has now replaced it, and its like going from a cheap scotch to something that is ten times smoother, as well as attracts the ladies.

Digg has just made their "Rethought" redesign live, all after their acquisition by Betaworks, and just 24 hours after the company showed off its v1 preview, which was part of a very, very quick 6-week redesign process. Old features from Digg like the Newsbar and Newsroom have been thrown away in favor of a simpler site that emphasizes top stories, popular stories, and "upcoming" stories.

One major change is that the main page of Digg will now be editorially driven, versus being based on a Digg score algorithm. Because it was an uber quick 6-week redesign, some of the main features have been left out for now, such as commenting. This means that, for now, Digg is more of a news portal, than a community. How would a commenting system work on the new redesigned Digg is another question in itself. Betaworks have said that it plans on conducting "a few experiments in commenting that will inform more permanent features".

Another Facebook update in the course of a couple of days? What a treat! This latest update is somewhat of a unique feature, something I haven't really seen on another social network before. What's the feature you ask? Something Facebook is calling Save for Later. It basically allows you to save posts for later viewing, or up your stalker game, if that's more your cup of tea.

After saving a post, you can navigate all of your saved posts as their own feed. To remove, they have to be physically selected to be unsaved. And for you creepers out there who want to save a post about Jane being single, have no fear as all saved posts are private, meaning there is no way for her to tell that you saved it, other than getting on your Facebook.

On the mobile app, just hold your finger on a post until a popup that says "save" pops up. Click that and the post will be saved. There's no need to download an update to receive this update, so once it rolls out to you, it should be live. The feature is also reportedly present on Facebook.com, however, I have yet to see it on my profile.

Google, not wanting to be outdone by Bing, has updated Google Maps and Google Earth with new high resolution imagery that encompasses 25 cities and 72 countries. Google had previously announced they were taking aerial shots of the globe to include in Maps and Earth and this imagery is finally starting to see the light of day.

Quite frankly, the imagery is gorgeous. Since the Olympics are in town, Google is of course using Olympic Park and Village in London as the poster child, as you can see in the picture above. Hands down, this level of detail makes Google Maps the number one mapping service. If you look at competitors, it isn't even close.

Google has also increased its 45* offerings with 21 U.S. cities and 7 locations internationally. Google explains which locations got what:

Google has once again proven itself a company to be reckoned with. Today, Google announced the launch of Google Fiber, their first step to becoming an internet service provider. Available to residents of Kasas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, Google will provide an incredible 1 gigabit upload and download speed for only $70.

While $70 isn't exactly cheap, it's quite a bit cheaper, and faster, than competing services. The average internet speed in the United States is about 5.8Mbps meaning that the Google provided internet is about 100 times faster. If you don't want to pay out $70 a month, Google is offering 5Mbps/1Mbps for "free." All you have to do is pay a $300 construction fee.

"No more buffering. No more loading. No more waiting. Gigabit speeds will get rid of these pesky, archaic problems and open up new opportunities for the web," writes Google Vice President Milo Medin, on the company blog. "Imagine: instantaneous sharing; truly global education; medical appointments with 3D imaging; even new industries that we haven't even dreamed of, powered by a gig."

A feature requested by many Twitter users, and partially offered by other services, will finally be offered directly by Twitter some time in the future. "We're working on a tool to let users export all of their tweets," Mr. Costolo said in a meeting with reporters and editors at The New York Times on Monday. "You'll be able to download a file of them."

However, while users will be able to go through their own Tweets, as of right now, there are no plans for a feature to allow users to dig through all of the Tweets on the site. He explained that the search problems are very different and you "can't just put three engineers on it." As of right now, there is no timeline for when a search or download feature would be available.

EU law already provides this option for users who really want to have a copy of their Tweets and several users have taken advantage of it. EU law requires Twitter to provide a copy of all data they have stored about a user. Those who have exercised that right have found that it includes your account, tweets, favorites, direct messages, saved searches and more information about you, delivered in a ZIP file.

Facebook shares were trading above $30 for a few weeks, but they dropped earlier this week, where they closed on Tuesday afternoon at a month-low of just $28.09. Facebook stock dropped 0.55-percent on Tuesday, after a huge 8.6-percent fall the day before.

Zynga shares were also hit, as the company is closely tied into the success of the Facebook platform, where they saw a drop of 5-percent on Tuesday, closing at a year-low of $4.58. The cause of these drops come after Capstone analyst Rory Maher released a report claiming Facebook's U.S. user base declined 1.1-percent over the last six months, as well as the European Facebook user base experiencing decline.

But, with 900 million monthly active users, Facebook can't see continuous growth - there will be stages of stagnation in their user growth, and maybe we're seeing the early signs of this. Looking into the future, Facebook's areas of growth seem to be international. Japan, Russia and China are their next markets to concentrate on.

In another attempt to make a pointless statement towards Washington D.C., a group of websites and privacy organizations have come together to form the Declaration of Internet Freedom. The Declaration of Internet Freedom is the start of something bigger, a movement to uphold and ensure some basic principles, much like the Declaration of Independence was.

"We've seen how the Internet has been under attack from various directions, and we recognize that it's time to make that stop," said TechDirt, a site involved with the new movement. "The Internet is an incredible platform that we want to grow and to thrive, and thus, a very large coalition got together to produce the following document as a starting point, hoping to kick off a much larger discussion which we hope you'll join in."

As it stands currently, the Declaration of Internet Freedom is composed of 5 basic values:

Over the last few months Apple have been getting hit with negative press over their OS' security, with hackers and the such gaining access to user files in less than thirty seconds, which is a concern as Apple used to always push that their operating system never got PC viruses.

But, Apple continued to run with the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign, where they focused on the "fact" that Windows-based systems got viruses, while OS X-based systems couldn't. But now that we know that is complete BS, Apple have done what they do best, marketing and using its legal system to remove any proof so that potential liability for the company is wiped away.

As you can see in the picture above, Apple used to state that a "Mac isn't susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers. That's thanks to built-in defences in Mac OS X that keep you safe, without any work on your part". So Apple more or less said that you just run the OS and you're protected, but for years we've known this isn't true.

Have you ever noticed that the views on a newly viral YouTube video seemingly pause at 301? If so, I imagine you've wondered why that is. Well, previously it had just been one of those many internet myths that seemingly don't have an answer. However, thanks to YouTube product manager Ted Hamilton, we now have an answer.

The basic reason behind the views freezing at 301 is the following: Once a video hits 300 views, subsequent views are collected and sent to YouTube's central servers for verification. This verification process takes about one-half day to a day and checks that the views weren't racked up by a bot. Mr. Hamilton explains:

A new study by McAfee is showing what teenagers are really doing online and the results are a bit scary. An incredible 70 percent of teenagers in the study say they hid at least part of their online activity and behavior from their parents. What they are hiding could be even more shocking, especially if you are a parent.

43 percent of the surveyed teens accessed some form of simulated violence while surfing the web, and likely more worrying for parents is the fact that 32 percent view nude content or pornography on the internet. Even worse yet is that half of the parents believe that their children are telling them everything they are doing online.

"While it is not necessarily surprising that teens are engaging in the same types of rebellious behaviors online that they exhibit offline, it is surprising how disconnected their parents are," Stanley Holditch, Online Safety Expert for McAfee, said today in a statement. "There is a major increase in the number of teens finding ways to hide what they do online from their parents, as compared to the 2010 study."

Here's a cool new tip and trick for you Google searchers out there, which, judging by the market share, is most of you. If you're anything like me, you're not one to clutter up your favorites list with a bunch of bookmarks. The only downside to this is finding that really informative website you found yesterday while Google'ing.

Have no fear, as Google is using the vast amount of information about you to help you! As long as you are logged in to your Google account, you can filter the results to show only pages you haven't visited or only pages you have visited. There are other filter options as well, but these are the coolest.

After searching on Google, click on "Show Search Tools" on the left hand side of the page. This will pull up a menu with various options. On that menu, all you have to do is select "Visited Pages" and only pages that you have clicked on will show up. Nifty! But what if I want to find something new? Select the option "Not yet visited" and pages you haven't visited will show up.

As if we don't already have enough internet codes, it appears there will soon need to be one more. A Google employee has offered up one option for the code that will surely soon be necessary. Tim Bray has proposed that the new code be '451' in order to honor the late author Ray Bradbury, whose science fiction classic Fahrenheit 451 warned of a dystopian world defined by government-imposed censorship.

"We can never do away entirely with legal restrictions on freedom of speech. On the other hand, I feel that when such restrictions are imposed, they should be done so transparently; for example, most civilized people find Britain's system of superinjunctions loathsome and terrifying," said Bray in an interview with the Guardian.

"While we may agree on the existence of certain restrictions, we should be nervous whenever we do it; thus the reference to the dystopian vision of Fahrenheit 451 may be helpful. Also, since the Internet exists in several of the many futures imagined by Bradbury, it would be nice for a tip of the hat in his direction from the Net, in the year of his death."

Facebook is adding subscription billing which should allow app developers to make even more money from their most loyal users. Starting next month, app developers will be able to create special plans or content that is available with a monthly fee. The lowest monthly fee that can be offered by a developer is a mere $1.

Kixeye is a perfect example of how developers can take advantage of the new system. Kixeye is planning on having a $9.95 per month subscription plan that will give subscribers access to exclusive in-game items. They are focusing on a smaller subset of players that are more inclined to pay which should yield an interesting revenue stream.

In other news, Facebook is backing away from Facebook Credits as the main currency. Just a few years ago, Facebook was pushing Credits so that Facebook and online shopping would become linked in people's minds. This, unfortunately, prevented developers from using their in-game currency for purchases.

If you thought Verizon's FiOS internet was fast, then brace yourself for Verizon FiOS Quantum. Verizon has announced today the pricing and new name for their updated FiOS internet service. The speeds, as we previously reported, have effectively doubled or tripled across the board, but at the time we didn't know the pricing.

We can now officially report the pricing and tell you that the cost will be about $10-15 higher a month for at least double the speed. That is, unless you are on the bottom tier. The Lowest 15/5 tier sees a $10 price increase without any increase in speed. Prices range from $65-210 a month for speeds ranging from 15/5 all the way up to 300/65.

Existing customers won't have to fork over an upgrade fee, but will see their bill go up, depending on bundles and such. If you are willing to sign a two-year contract, prices will drop by about $5 a month, something that's probably not worth being locked into a two-year contract for. Most people probably can't even utilize their current FiOS connection, let alone these massive new speeds.

Google continues to be an open company when it comes to censorship and the like and has released its biannual Global Transparency Report which details take-down requests by people. In the past six months, Google said it saw an "alarming" number of Government requests, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 for the period.

"Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different," Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, said in a blog post. "When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not."

Google said that they received 461 court orders for the removal of 6,989 items, of which they agreed to 68% of those orders. They also received 546 informal requests and agreed to remove content from 46% of those. The study leaves out Iran and China who block Google content without notification to the search giant.

We reported yesterday that Samsung was working on a Facebook competitor. We cited a Korea Times article as the source. Samsung has come out today on their official blog and denied the claim saying that it was groundless. They are saying that it is a rumor and no such project exists. They do admit to upgrading "Family Story," however.

The full denial, as seen in the blog post, is quoted below for reference:

In a hope to "make the internet a better place," an online retailer in Australia has decided that they have had enough developing for Internet Explorer 7. Hence, they are now charging a fee to users who insist on using the old, out-of-date browser which is extremely hard to make webpages look correct in.

Ruslan Kogan is now charging a 6.8% fee on any purchase made using the old browser in order to offset the cost of maintaining the site to be compatible with Internet Explorer 7. Dubbed "Internet Explorer 7 Tax," users are made aware of the issue via a popup. However, it's not clear just how much of an issue it is.

Internet Explorer 7 makes up only 2.99% of internet traffic, so it wouldn't kill their business not to support it if it did cost this much. It would appear that this is more of a publicity stunt than an actual business need. Kogan insists that Internet Explorer 7 use is a problem in an interview:

Reddit has found that certain websites or their operators spam links on Reddit and has banned these domains from being posted on the site. The newly created /r/BannedDomains subreddit details the sites whose links are banned from being posted. Users who try to post a message containing a link to a banned site will be denied with an informative message.

The list of banned domains contains some major sites and is as follows:

The reason behind blocking these sites? It turns out editors from the sites, some of which are highly influential, have been posting links to their site on Reddit in a rather spamming fashion. A link on Reddit can often garner the site many extra hits or views that would otherwise not have come in. These hits are monetized by advertising making the site more money.

Samsung is trying to get into the social networking game, if an article by The Korea Times is to be believed. The article, which cites a Samsung official, claims that Samsung will enter the social networking market early next year with a Facebook-like service which Samsung hopes will be able to compete with Facebook.

The new service is designed to be available on a wide variety of internet-connected devices such as TVs and cameras, as well as computers and tablets. Family Story, Samsung's current social network, provides a nice framework for Samsung's developers to build upon. The current Family Story has a focus on photo sharing and schedule reminders.

According to the official:

The internet is about to get even more confusing for old people. ICANN has been working on offering generic top-level-domains for about six years now, and today sees another step in that direction. Top-level-domains (TLD) are the endings on domains such as ".com" or ".org" and generic TLDs will come in the form of brands, ".samsung," or topics, ".lol."

"It's a historic day for the Internet," said ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. "The internet is about to change forever." Notice that he doesn't specify that it is changing for the better as no one truly knows the full impact that these domains will have. It has the possibility to create widespread confusion, or easy ways to find topic-specific sites.

Brands had to pay a whopping $185,000 just to apply for a TLD; some brands applied for multiple. Applicants also had to prove their ability to pay to run a registry by putting up additional money. The application period has ended and ICANN has finally released a listing of applicants and the TLDs that they applied for.