Items tagged with Online
Word of the Nintendo Switch Online service first surfaced last June, and all we really knew about it at the time was that Nintendo was promising the service would be affordable. Nintendo has gone official with most of the details of the service, and it is indeed much cheaper than similar offerings from Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo has priced its Switch Online service at $3.99 per month, $7.99 for three months, and $19.99 per year for individuals. A family plan is available for those with more people wanting to play, even if those people are on different Switch systems. That family plan supports up to eight users across systems for $34.99 per year. Family memberships are only offered on an annual...
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Aereo may be remembered as the most highly disruptive service in the technology space that the masses couldn't find a need for. Now, it'll also be remembered as a company that couldn't battle its way beyond a brutal court decision that effectively made its core service illegal to offer. For those needing a refresher, Aereo offered up an online stream of free, over-the-air network television channels. The argument was that if these stations were given away for free using an antenna, why should it be wrong to transit that same signals using modern technology (the Internet) instead? Evidently, the court did not see it the same way.It was an interesting component of the cord-cutting regime, and it...
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Californians who want to complain on Yelp about a bad experience dealing with a business are free to do so without fear of being fined. That wasn't always the case -- businesses have gotten into the dubious habit of inserting non-disparagement clauses into contracts to prevent peeved customers from leaving a negative online review, but such practice is now outlawed thanks to what's known as the "Yelp Bill." The official name is Assembly Bill 2365, but that's a bit boring, don't you think? Whatever -- Shakespeare taught us that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and in this case, the thorny bill prohibits businesses from pricking customers with sometimes hefty fines for writing negative...
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The state with the fastest average broadband speed enjoys service that is nearly twice as fast as the state with the with slowest average high-speed connection. That's according to data contained in Akamai's "State of the Internet" report. Broadview Networks, an IT and cloud services provider, took that data and put together a rather neat map of the United States showing average Internet speeds by state. States that appear green have the fastest average Internet speed, and the darker the green, the faster the speed. On the opposite end of the broadband spectrum, states that appear red have the slowest average connections, and the darker the red, the slower the service. Check it out: Source: Broadview...
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People have a tendency to get ticked off if you mess with their heads, especially without their permission. Facebook, the world's largest social network, found this out the hard way when it revealed that it had altered nearly 700,000 user feeds to study people's emotions. Not cool, but are these types of studies necessary in order to build a better online experience? Online dating site OkCupid seems to think so. "OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Neither does any other website. It’s not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something. Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. Experiments are how...
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The U.S. government might not negotiate with terrorists, but it is willing to use social media as a tool to engage in conversation with jihadists and their sympathizers online. Why bother? The U.S. government hopes that it can convince potential terrorists to go in another direction. It's an ugly world the government's stepping into, but can it work? "We are actually giving al Qaeda the benefit of the doubt because we are answering their arguments," Alberto Fernandez, coordinator of the State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), tells CNN. "The way I see it is we are participating in the marketplace of ideas." It's not a job for the faint of heart or anyone...
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Assuming you were already born, do you remember what you were doing 25 years ago? Tim Berners-Lee, a name you've likely heard many times before, was busy inventing the world wide web some two and a half decades ago. These days he's the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the web's continued development, and a lobbyist for a sort of bill of rights for freedom of speech on the Internet. Berners-Lee couldn't have envisioned how big and instrumental the Internet could become to our daily lives, nor could he have predicted the level of government spying that takes place online. Most of us couldn't, right up until former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward...
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Props go out to Reddit, the popular social news and entertainment website comprised of user-submitted content, for deciding to donate 10 percent of its advertising revenue in 2014 to charity. In keeping with the spirit of the community, Reddit's users will be the ones who determine which 10 non-profits receive a slice of the pie. "Whether it's a large ad campaign or a $5 sponsored headline on Reddit, we intend for all ad revenue this year to benefit not only Reddit as a platform but also to support the goals and causes of the entire community," Reddit stated in a blog post. Reddit users will be able to nominate non-profits at the end of the year, after which the site will hold an election. Funds...
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Nintendo said it's planning to disconnect its Wi-Fi Connection service for Wii consoles and DS handhelds on May 20, 2014. That means no more online play, matchmaking, or leaderboards for many Wii, Nintendo DS, and DSi games. In addition, users will no longer be able to share their own generated content, exchange in-game items, or download free add-on content or downloads such as new levels or in-game items. "We at Nintendo sincerely thank our fans for their continued support of our company’s legacy systems. Your enthusiasm for games made for these systems speaks to their longevity, and the passion of Nintendo fans," the company said in a statement. The announcement doesn't apply to more...
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If you're of the opinion that electronic books (e-books) are poor substitutes for the feel and smell of a physical paper-bound novel, fear not, books made out of trees are still long for this world. However, if you're willing to trade those amenities for the luxuries of technology, such as being able to hold thousands of novels in the palm in the hand, the future looks bright. Head over to Texas and you'll spy a glimpse of the future, one that would have been a foreign concept a decade ago. Over in Bexar County is a place called BiblioTech, the nation's first and still the only bookless public library. As constructed, it's very similar to an Apple Store, according to Paul J. Weber, a reporter...
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When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Such was the case when some lucky fliers discovered Delta's website was serving up some super cheap flights. By cheap we mean a mere $35 from Raleigh, North Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and $40 for a roundtrip flight from New York to Los Angeles. Roundtrip first-class tickets from Los Angeles to Hawaii were being sold for $200. The low price fares, some of which were 90 percent below regular ticket pricing, were the result of a website error, which Delta Air Lines corrected within a couple of hours, the Los Angeles Times reports. However, rather than void the tickets it sold, Delta said it would honor the erroneously discounted...
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Do you hear that noise? It's the sound of stocks changing hands, and today that's good news for Twitter. Why? Twitter's stock is currently trading at around $52 per share, up nearly 6 percent since the opening bell, and that's after gaining 9.3 percent on Monday. Shares of Twitter hit a new high of $52.58 just a little earlier, and if the excitement doesn't wane, it could close at a new high at the end of the trading day. The sudden surge in stock price and interest in Twitter by investors is mostly the result of the microblogging service announcing a tailored ad program last Thursday. Twitter's ad program lets an advertiser target their wares and services to users who've already shown an interest...
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If you stop a random stranger on the street and ask that person what a Bitcoin is, you might get a confused stare. Try asking that same question a year from now and maybe every person you ask will say, "It's a digital currency that's decentralized and uses cryptography to use control transactions to prevent double-spending." Or they'll simply tell you it's a digital currency. Either way, Bitcoins are growing too large to ignore. Bitcoins have nearly doubled in value in the just the last month alone, going from $125 at the start of October to around $310, depending on where you look. The virtual currency is currently trading at an all-time high, and that has some scratching their heads and others...
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We're being bombarded by gadgets and mobile electronic devices that offer persistent online connectivity, and if you're a parent, that means having to decide when to allow your child to have access to certain gear, like computers, tablets, smartphones, handheld gaming devices, and so forth. Every family is different and therefore there's really no correct answer, though a recent survey by Microsoft does reveal some interesting insight into how other parents are dealing with the digital age. According to Microsoft's survey, 94 percent of parents allow their kids to use at least one online service or device. What's a bit more interesting -- and perhaps surprising -- is that age 8 emerged as the...
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Dropbox helped popularize the idea of saving everything to the cloud, and by being one of the first services to offer seamless integration with the desktop and mobile devices, it has a distinct advantage in name recognition. It also faces stiff competition these days from a number of competitors like SkyDrive (Microsoft), SugarSync, and Google Drive, to name just a few. The key to staying one step ahead -- or least remaining in the race -- is to keep introducing new features, and that's what Dropbox has done. It's not a major feature addition, but with the latest update, Dropbox will automatically upload all the screenshots you take, if you want it to. "On top of that, Dropbox will also create...
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In this day an age, the Internet is so easy to use, even your grandmother can do it. Heck, she probably has a Facebook page that she updates using her Kindle Fire. Despite how easy it is to hop online, as well as convenient thanks to the mobile boom that has nearly every man, woman, and child wielding a smartphone or tablet, 15 percent of American adults ages 18 and older still do not hop online or use email, according to data released by Pew Internet. When asked why they avoid the Internet, a little over a third -- 34 percent -- said they simply don't feel it's relevant to them. Some 32 percent would disagree with the statements above pertaining to ease-of-use and feel it's difficult or frustrating...
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Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer has proven to be a spark plug for the site and brand. Before she accepted the position as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Yahoo, the site was struggling to stay relevant and trying to figure out how best to market to its brand. Now two years later, Yahoo monthly active users are up 20 percent to 800 million around the world, and the company is processing 12,000 resumes a week. That includes 350 million monthly active users on mobile, which is a testament to Mayer's ability to see the need to focus on mobile at a time when not all technology CEOs could see the writing on the wall. You could even argue that tech giants like Intel, AMD, and Microsoft all struggled to look...
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As Microsoft found out when it first announced its Xbox One console, gamers aren't reel keen on systems or platforms that require a persistent Internet connection, and so the company pulled a 180. All has been forgiven, it seems, but gamers are still sensitive to the issue, so the reaction wasn't all that positive when Peter Moore, Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Electronic Arts (EA) stated at Gamescom last week that EA no longer makes offline games. A week later, Moore stands by that statement, but says media headlines and social networks like Twitter are misinterpreting what he meant. So, what did he mean? "Today, most games are 'online' in some way, shape or form. Many games connect in online...
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It's been less than a year since Facebook implemented its online gift giving system, which allows Facebook users to purchase and send physical gifts to their friends and family on the social networking site. However brief it might have been, Facebook has already decided it makes more sense to push digital gift codes than physical codes, and so that's what the site is going to do. According to TechCrunch, 10 percent of the U.S. Facebook population will see a redesigned version of the Gifts page immediately, while the other 90 percent will start to see it in the next few weeks. For those that see it now, gone are physical gifts like teddy bears and flowers, and in their place are a variety of digital...
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You can halt your plan to sift through your Box account and delete files you may not need or want anymore. For those of you mooching off the free plan Box provides, the cloud storage provider just upped the ante to 10GB, effectively doubling the amount of space to cram your photos, documents, and other files into the cloud. The company also announced a new Starter plan tailored for small businesses. It offers 100GB of shared space for $5 per user per month, good for up to 10 users, providing SMBs with an affordable option for cloud storage. "We're focused on removing any and all barriers to cloud adoption," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO, Box. "More than ever before, the economy today is...
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There might not be another company more reviled in the U.S. than Electronic Arts, the games publisher that was chosen by Consumerist voters as "Worst Company In America" for two years in a row. To its credit, EA acknowledged the unwanted award and vowed to do a better job, though angry gamers are still finding reason to despise and, in some cases, even sue the company, with the latest lawsuit focused on online play. Justin Bassett is spearheading a federal class action lawsuit against EA claiming he was duped by the company's promise of online play. In the lawsuit, Bassett says he purchased several sports titles for the Xbox 360 for around $60 based on EA's representation that online play would...
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A new report (albeit from unnamed industry sources, not Edward Snowden) alleges that the government has used the broad powers granted it by the Patriot Act to demand broad information about a user's passwords, website security, and even encryption information from service providers. The benefits of having this type of information are enormous, as it theoretically allows the government to directly monitor an account as email is sent and received. Email is typically the central repository for website login data and username/password information at any number of sites; it's used as identity verification when resetting mobile passwords or as part of the security process when accessing a secured site...
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