Internet & Media

Facebook to unveil Instagram video on June 20, report says

Facebook and Instagram might have a new feature up their sleeves.

At its special press event on June 20, Facebook will unveil video support for Instagram, TechCrunch is reporting, citing a person who claims to have knowledge of its plans. Similar to Twitter's Vine, which allows users to post 6-second videos, Instagram's videos would be limited to 5 to 10 seconds.

Vine has been growing rapidly, as users have found it to be a worthwhile alternative to tweeting or sharing pictures. Users are able to record several seconds of video, and then share it with friends. Vine videos … Read more

Samsung mass-producing speedier solid-state drives

Apple's new MacBook Air has adopted faster solid-state drives made by Samsung. But Apple won't be the only beneficiary.

Samsung announced Monday that it has started mass-producing new PCIe solid-state drives aimed at the next generation of ultrabooks. SSDs that use a PCIe connection offer faster speeds than those outfitted with SATA (Serial ATA) connections.

As one example, Samsung's XP941 SSD can read data sequentially at 1,400 megabytes (1.4 gigabytes) per second, the highest speed offered by a PCIe 2.0 interface. In the real world, that means the drive can read 500GB of data … Read more

Is cable holding back superfast broadband adoption on purpose?

The cable industry insists that it's ready and able to compete with Google Fiber when it comes to delivering ultra high-speed broadband.

Indeed, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts last week showed off a 3Gbps cable broadband connection at the industry's annual trade show in Washington, D.C. That's three times faster than Google Fiber, which itself is nearly 150 times faster than the current average broadband connection in the U.S. Armed with that capability, he confidently welcomed Google's challenge to deliver ultra high-speed broadband to consumers.

"I hope there's a demand for (Google Fiber),&… Read more

Google plans to wipe child porn from the Web

Photos and videos of child pornography on the Web have multiplied at an alarming rate over the past few years. In 2011, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said it received 17.3 million images and videos of suspected child abuse, which is four times more than 2007.

Google has announced that it wants to help curb this proliferation of child pornography. In fact, the Web giant plans to take it even a step further -- it wants to completely eradicate child porn from the Internet.

"Behind these images are real, vulnerable kids who are sexually victimized … Read more

Google's Father's Day doodle celebrates dads' multiple roles

Sunday is the day when fathers are celebrated for what they are: bankers.

Well, and stoics, gardeners, philosophers, carpenters, tap dancers, soccer coaches, barbecuers -- and, of course, miserable, grouchy men.

For all these reasons and many more, Google would like you to celebrate the man whose chemicals helped bring you into the world.

In another touching little doodle, you click Google's second "o" and you see in the "l" a compendium of different dads' roles and personalities, as if it's just one day in a dad's life.

Naturally, Google would like to … Read more

Saudi Arabia may block WhatsApp within weeks

Saudi Arabia plans to block WhatsApp in coming weeks if the makers of the mobile chat app don't comply with local regulations.

The warning comes after the Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked popular voice and messaging app Viber last week.

"We have been communicating with WhatsApp and other similar communication platforms to get them to cooperate and comply with the Saudi telecom providers, however nothing has come of this communication yet," Abdullah Al-Darrab, governor of the CITC, told English language Arab News.

One of the regulations stipulates that WhatsApp establish a local server that allows officials … Read more

Meet Google's 'Project Loon': Balloon-powered Net access

Google has officially announced "Project Loon," its plan to connect the entire world to the Internet that uses a decidedly 19th century technology: Balloons.

According to a post on the official company blog:

We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It's very early days, but we've built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today's 3G networks or faster.… Read more

It's curtains for Songbird

Songbird, an iTunes alternative that originally combined music playback and management with Web-based music discovery, will exit stage left permanently at the end of the month.

CEO Eric Wittman revealed in a blog post that Songbird will no longer be maintained as of June 28, and that its parent company, Pioneers of the Inevitable, also would be closing down.

"[T]he company has found ourselves unable to fund further business operations," he said. The open-source desktop version of Songbird, its mobile apps for Android and iOS, and its music discovery service Songbird.me will all go dark. Wittman … Read more

Take a 3D tour of Paris -- as a rat

Let's say you're a cat touring Paris, and you swing by the Place Vendome. What does it look like? Well, a lot like what humans see, it turns out, only much greener. That's because cats are dichromats and don't see the color red.

I viewed the Place Vendome from a feline perspective while scrolling around All Eyes on Paris, an interactive 3D digital simulation that shows the City of Light through the eyes of common critters.

Now on display at the Futur en Seine international digital festival in Paris, the project aims to teach about animal vision by letting you see a bit of the world as a cat, dog, bee, hawk, or rat would. And let me just say that rats don't have Paris anywhere near as gorgeous as they do when Pixar takes them there. … Read more