Steam is gathering on the rumors that Google is planing to launch a Facebook competitor that will focus on social gaming. The company is supposedly in talks with a number of online game makers in order to build a stable for launch, according to unnamed individuals speaking to the Wall Street Journal . However, even if Google succeeds in launching a social network that will keep users’ interest, it seems unlikely that it will make much of a dent in Facebook in the near term. According to the WSJ ’s sources, Google is currently talking to Playdom, Electronic Arts’ Playfish, and Zynga (maker of the popular Facebook game Farmville ).
iPad Apple has posted a new web page highlighting some third-party apps made for the iPad, complete with their own Apple-produced demo videos. Each highlighted app gets a description, App Store link and demo clip. The clips are short and to the point while showing off an app’s main features. Among ‘The Chosen Apps’ are Things for iPad , Popular Science+ and Epicurious (a favorite of yours truly)
MobileMe MobileMe emerged from its downtime this morning with a new app , improved navigation and significant changes to Mail. The app is MobileMe for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Now customers can locate, lock or even wipe their lost device from another iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Of course, that means you’ll need access to two devices, but that’s a minor technicality, right?
iPad Developer Saied Ghaffari’s company, It’s About Time, should be well known to TUAW readers. We highlighted the widget iPad app the company created , which regretfully never made it to the App Store. Apple essentially banned all widget apps, so Saied and company decided to try something different: creating a web browser optimized for touch navigation on the iPad . The result is the Life Web Browser
Nick Carr is worried the Internet is making us stupid. It’s not so much our preoccupation with LOLCat photos or videos of fat girls flying off of swings that concerns him as it is the way we read and consume information on the Internet itself. He thinks the Internet is rewiring our brains, perhaps for the worse, and he’s written a book to warn us all about it called The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains .
Move over, Mr. President, for the world is here, with its cup , and the whole hot mess is setting crazy new Internet traffic records thanks in part to the massive video streaming efforts covering the games in South Africa. More » World Cup – Soccer – Sports – Competitions – 2006
Software At long last, Adobe has released Flash Player 10.1 for Mac OS X . There’s a huge list of changes with this update; hopefully one will address “… the number one reason Macs crash .” The major changes are aimed at developers, and include GPU hardware acceleration, support for dynamic quality during video streaming, dynamic sound generators, and upload/download functions in web apps. The 7.44MB download requires Safari, Firefox or Opera and Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Buffalo today unveiled two new devices at press conference here in Tokyo : WLAE-AG300N series “wireless unit” and the Airstation series flagship model, NFiniti High Power Wireless Router WZR-HP-AG300. The first one was born based on the fact that although 90% of the TVs come with a LAN port the actual internet usage is somewhere
I must be seeing things… is that an official WWE YouTube page , and one that already has last night’s episode of Monday Night Raw online? This is so unlike WWE, embracing technology. They must have hired someone new in recent weeks, someone who told them that, you know, the Internet isn’t merely for “geeks” anymore. So the YouTube page is up and running, and there are, in fact, past episodes of shows like Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown
According to the New York Times, HP will this week introduce a new series of web-connected printers that are designed for life in the “iPhone age.” Different from its existing line of printers, the new printers will contain something unique — its own email address. The entire idea behind the new printers is simple. Instead of having having people install special applications to their smartphone to print files, all they need to do is email the file to their printer. It sounds incredibly novel, but companies such as Google believe they have a chance and and have partnered with HP to allow for easy printing of Google Docs and Calendar.
iPad This wild little graph was derived from recent data that was provided by Net Applications (the same data that provided those iPhone stats earlier today). The iPad ’s Internet traffic has been growing by leaps and bounds on the weekends. As you can see above, over weekend periods since launch, iPad traffic almost doubles, and then it drops back down again during the week.
According to Net Index, a new website operated by Seattle-based Ookla (the people behind Speedtest.net), the United States is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to wired broadband speeds. Based on user test info generated over the past 30 days, Net Index ranked the US 26th in the world for downlink speeds with an average downlink speed of 10.16Mbps. Such speeds might not seem all that bad at first glance, but considering that the global average is 7.67Mbps, it’s clear that US ISPs have a lot of ground to make up. South Korea finished first with an average of 34.14Mbps, followed by Latvia, the Republic of Moldova, and Japan at 24.29, 21.37 and 20.39Mbps respectively.
iPhone This little list of factoids from last fall’s Survey of the American Consumer is pretty interesting. It runs down a few of the things that iPhone owners are more likely to do than the average American. Some of them are obvious (iPhone owners are more likely to make calls over the Internet , see their phone as entertainment, or even pay a subscription to watch live TV on the device), but did you know that iPhone owners are even more likely to own an elliptical trainer or be snowboarders? In fact, they’re 282% more likely than the average American to order a product from Zappos .
iPhone Recent MIT comp sci grad Chris Varenhorst found a cheap soda machine on Craigslist a while back, and he decided to do what any self-respecting computer science student would do nowadays: hook it up to the Internet . He created wiring to make the machine believe it had credits whenever a circuit was connected, and then wired that to an Internet service. He also created an iPhone app that sent messages to the server, so he could press a button from anywhere and make the machine dispense a cold drink. Unfortunately, he says he would sometimes press the button while out and about, and come back to his apartment to find a warm beer sitting in the machine.
Darpa is going at securing cyberspace again , and this time they’ve got an open call to everyone to help them devise a program that will flag threats through irregular activity. More » Darpa – Security – Consultants – General and Freelance – United States
