As reported on The Verge. Here’s how it works By Sean O’Kane Using Photoshop usually requires lugging a typically cumbersome, expensive computer around, and changing that experience has been the dream of many creatives for years. As we found out back in September, it’s a problem that Adobe has been actively working with Google to solve. The two companies have been working together for almost two years to bring Photoshop to the browser, and they…
As reported on Engadget. by Steve Dent While some high profile Google projects (*cough Glass*) have been withering on the vine,Project Loon is a bright spot and even has a carrier partner. Mountain View says it can now autofill the internet-enabling, weather-tracking balloons in five minutes and launch up to 20 a day. They also last up to ten times longer than early versions, letting them stay in the stratosphere for over 100 days. Google…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Natasha Lomas Do we have the Internet we deserve? There’s an argument to say that yes, we absolutely do. Given web users’ general reluctance to pay for content. We are of course, paying. Just not with cold hard cash, but with our privacy — as digital business models rely on gathering and selling intel on their users to make the money to pay (the investors who paid) for the free service.…
As reported on Engadget. BY DANIEL COOPER Maybe you’ve seen Into the Wild, or (gasp) have actually read it. It’s the true story of an ordinary person who, one day, decided to abandon society, pack some rice and a rifle into a bag and head off into the wilderness never to return. It’s the sort of drastic move you rarely hear about in our modern life. But in next week’s final installment of How to Disappear, we’ll meet some people who’ve…
As reported on The Verge. By Russell Brandom What do you do when the network goes out? How do you build a network that survives when the rest of the web goes down? It’s a strange question, but one with a surprisingly concrete answer. You can find the networks in Athens, Berlin, and Red Hook, Brooklyn — small-scale traffic webs that let computers connect peer-to-peer without going through the larger web. It’s called a mesh network,…
As reported on Wired. BY LIZ STINSON Arnall gained access to Telefónica, a 65,700-square-meter data center in Alcalá, Spain that handles much of Europe’s cloud computing services. TIMO ARNALL We know the internet as a 2-D screen, but in reality, the web is an immensely physical thing. The cloud isn’t an ephemeral, immaterial place where our pictures just happen to hang out, but rather a series of massive servers, wires and equipment tucked away in high-security buildings.…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Greg Kumparak About.com CEO Darline Jean Joins Ad Tech Company PulsePoint If you’re a Comcast customer living in one of the many states where they’ve imposed no real limits on bandwidth usage for the last few years… enjoy it while it lasts. During an investor call today (link via Ars), Comcast executive VP David Cohen said that he predicts bandwidth caps (or, as ISPs prefer to put it, “usage-based billing”) to be rolled out…
As reported on The Verge. By T.C. Sottek Cowardice and capitulation could mess up a vital utility The internet is fucked, and the US government is making it worse. Political cowardice caused the FCC to lose its first battle for net neutrality regulation: the rules that keep the internet as you know it free and open. The idea of net neutrality is that all traffic is created equal — whether you’re a movie streaming from Netflix, or a…
As reported on Engadget. BY TIMOTHY J. SEPPALA When it comes to internet speeds, “you get what you pay for” is pretty far from the truth a majority of the time. The Wall Street Journal used Ookla’s speed-testing data to survey some 800 US cities and 27 ISPs in terms of advertised transfer rates and what customers are actually getting, and the results are pretty surprising. A vast majority of providers give their customers the short shrift on speed (Verizon Internet Services and…
As reported on Engadget. BY JON FINGAS Forget carrying a separate hotspot router to have a local network wherever you go — what if you were the hotspot? Fashion designer Borre Akkersdijk has come very, very close to making that vision a reality with his experimental BB.Suit. The goofy-looking cotton onesie is knitted using a special 3D technique that leaves space for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC connections, turning the owner into an access point. Akkersdijk showed off the potential of…