Back in the dark ages 20 or so years ago, houses across America had at least one or two shelves in their living rooms dedicated to a set of encyclopedias. As many as 30 or more volumes costing hundreds of dollars would be lined up side by side, referred to constantly by curious adults in the household or by children working on a report for school. Now, of course, we have the Internet. More →
Facebook and Internet.org on Thursday announced the Connectivity Lab, a team that will work on connecting more people to the Internet by using some new technologies including unmanned solar-powered drones, low-orbit satellites and a laser-based technology to connect the elements of the system in order to accomplish its goals. More →
Google Naps is a new service that allows tired users to find a place to sleep nearby by leveraging the power of Google’s Google Maps product. Unfortunately, it’s also a parody service that only leverages the power of Google Maps for some good fun. Google Naps will geo-locate napping spots for you automatically, as it assumes you’re browsing for places to take a nap in. The service will also let you add napping places of your own, so other tired Internet users can easily find them. More →
Does being more educated actually give you more common sense? A new Reuters poll finds that while Americans as a whole dislike the idea of a merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, people who have more education dislike the merger even more than people who are less educated. More →
While there are certainly many reasons to gripe about Comcast, being forced to rent its modems shouldn’t be one of them. As Ars Technica, Stop the Cap! and other websites reported on Wednesday, a Comcast customer in Virginia caused a bit of a stir when he posted in the DSLReports forum that a Comcast customer service representative told him he’d have to rent one of Comcast’s modems for $8 a month if he wanted to take advantage of Comcast’s 105Mbps broadband service. As evidence for his claim, the user posted a Comcast bulletin supposedly issued on February 26th this year that said subscribers to its 105Mbps service may only use “Comcast issued equipment” because it “ensures that the specifications are always met and are not altered intentionally or unintentionally.”
Take a victory lap, Microsoft: Your claims that Google is “Scroogling” its customers have stood up to scrutiny. The Guardian reports that the Advertising Standards Authority, a U.K. advertising watchdog, has ruled in favor of Microsoft and has said that Google’s data collection practices are a legitimate point of criticism for Microsoft’s “Scroogled” ad campaign. Specifically, the A.S.A. said that “because the ad made clear that the privacy claims were in relation to ad targeting, which Outlook.com does not carry out, we therefore concluded that the ad was not misleading” and that Microsoft well within bounds to call it out. Although Microsoft’s “Scroogled” campaign hasn’t exactly sent users flooding to Windows Phone or Bing, it has highlighted some serious privacy concerns with Google apps and services that Google would probably rather not be associated with.
Responding to allegations from TechCrunch former editor Michael Arrington that Google had accessed his Gmail email address to trace a leak from inside the company, the search giant said this week that it didn’t do so, and that it doesn’t employ such practices, Re/code reports.
Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes and rock-bottom customer satisfaction ratings for America’s two largest cable companies. Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports, is touting a new survey from the Consumer Reports National Research Center showing that Comcast and Time Warner Cable are two of the three least liked pay TV providers in the United States.
As the music streaming market becomes increasingly crowded, each service is finding new ways to stand out. iTunes Radio teamed up with NPR, Samsung’s Milk Music doesn’t have ads and now Spotify has revealed a new 50% discount for college students in the United States. This offer has been available to students in the UK for about two years, but this is the first time American students will have the option to get Spotify Premium for $4.99 a month. If you’re a student at any accredited university in the U.S., you can take advantage of this offer right away. You’ll also be able to reactivate the offer for three additional years, giving you the ability to “graduate to Spotify,” if you so choose. Check out the offer right here.
Google has been experimenting with putting its voice-enabled Google Now personal assistant onto desktop versions of Chrome for the past couple of months and now it looks like the company is finally ready to roll it out to everyone. Google announced on Monday that “starting today and rolling out over the next few weeks, Google Now notifications will be available to Chrome users on their desktop or laptop computers.” To get Google Now on your browser, Google says that you just have to sign into the same Google account that you use for Google Now on iOS and Android.
In an extensive post, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings called for “strong net neutrality,” as opposed to the “weak net neutrality” that currently exists, and which allows ISPs to theoretically – if not actually – bully Internet businesses into paying fees in order for consumers to be able to enjoy their services at better speeds. More →
Personally, I love that Google is so creative with my private data. I am fully aware that in order to use Google’s many great “free” services, I pay the company in information about myself that helps it serve better ads. That same information lets it create fantastic services such as Google Now, and it saves me a tremendous amount of pain and suffering. It also, of course, helps make Google Search better. But even if you’re like me and you’re happy with this model, it’s still very important to be fully aware of what Google collects and how you can control it.
With that in mind, here are 10 important URLs compiled recently by Digital Inspiration that every single Google user should be aware of. More →
