Items tagged with Users
Unfortunately, this milestone occurred just a few months too late in order to be included in the 50 Most Significant Moments In Internet History, but you can rest assured that it'll be high on the list of the Top 100. According to digital research firm comScore, the total number of Internet users across the globe has just surpassed the one billion mark.Not surprisingly, China is pegged as have the largest population of Internet surfers, with nearly 180 million people going online in December of 2008. Following closely behind was the United States with 163 million, and taking a distant third was Japan with 60 million. If you're curious about a breakdown by region, we're told that Asia-Pacific...
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Social-networking giant Facebook is continuing to grow like mad. In fact, the company grew its active membership total from 90 million users in early July to 120 million now, according to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer. While speaking at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference, Sandberg also noted, “We got more (members) in the last three months than in the first three years of our existence.”If you consider the current population of the world is estimated to be about 6.7 billion, then almost 2% of the world’s population has a Facebook account. Facebook isn’t calling it quits, either. The company is hoping to continue to grow, and is adding partnerships in the process.Facebook...
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AMD Empowers Professional Graphics Users with Must-Have Features and Price-Performance Leadership - New ATI FirePro™ V8700 graphics accelerator designed for ultra high-end professionals; ATI FirePro™ V3750 graphics accelerator delivers superior performance for entry-level 3D users -Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS (IBC 2008) — Sept. 11, 2008 — Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Digital Content Creation (DCC) professionals who require maximum performance from their workstations can turn to AMD (NYSE: AMD) and the powerful new ATI FirePro™ V8700 graphics accelerator, which provides a 40 percent performance gain for memory intensive applications. Additionally, the new ATI FirePro™ V3750...
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This smacks somewhat of those old blindfold taste tests you see on commerials. It goes a little something like this... "I hate Diet Coke." "Here, try this new soda!""Wow, it's great!""That was Diet Coke!""Ooops!" In a similar move, Microsoft took Windows XP fans and showed them a new OS, "Mojave." What's interesting is that this "new" OS wasn't really new at all... Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named...
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In the latest results from market research company, Ipsos's quarterly study of the U.S. online video market, Ipsos found that most users are willing to accept advertising within free, online video content. The percentage of folks who find the inclusion of advertising in their free streaming or downloaded videos acceptable, however, depends significantly on the type and length of the content. Of the different video types included in the study, full-length TV shows had the highest acceptance rate of people who felt that it is at least somewhat reasonable to expect advertising, such as commercials, embedded into the free shows. As this online video format most closely matches that of existing, "offline"...
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A study detailed in Nature exposes the local nature of humans: we like to hang around our homes. But that's not what caught our interest. It's the way the study was conducted.Researchers used cell phone towers to track individuals' locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months. In a second set of records, researchers took another 206 cell phones that had tracking devices in them and got records for their locations every two hours over a week's time period.The study was based on cell phone records from a private company, whose name also was not disclosed.Study co-author Cesar Hidalgo, a physics researcher at Northeastern, said he and his colleagues didn't...
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Pure Digital came out of nowhere last year with one of the hottest consumer electronics devices on the market. Their compact Flip Camcorder cost just $149, had four buttons and a hatch for a couple of alkaline batteries, took pretty good quality video, and plugged right into your USB port to download the video bits of your life. Simple, easy, fun, and inexpensive quickly added up to almost a million units sold, and an instant 20 percent market share. They even let you upload your video direct to YouTube with the software interface included. Pure Digital isn't resting on its success, though; it's come out with a second, even smaller and simpler unit they call the Flip Video Mino. The...
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NetApplications.com's Market Share reports a large spike in the percentage of Windows users using Apples' Safari browser for the months of March and April. They theorize that this signifiant spike is a direct result of Apple's sneaky approach of getting Windows users to unwittingly install Safari 3.1 and have it automatically set as the default browser:"On March 18th, Apple released the Safari 3.1 web browser for Windows and the Mac. With the release, Apple also included Safari 3.1 with Apple's Software Update service on Windows. It was labeled as an update with the option to install pre-selected. The update has been pushed to millions of Windows users of Apple's other software products, like...
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Microsoft has already indicated there is going to be a six week wait for Windows Vista SP1 because of driver issues. Even without that, they seem to have issues with just the prerequisite downloads for SP1.In most cases, they reported that the final update hung while displaying the message "Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 - 0% Complete," which was followed by a reboot of the PC. Which was followed by another reboot, and another. "[It] reboots ad infinitum," said Frank Melk on the Microsoft support newsgroup. A smaller number reported a different problem: After the update, their computer refused to boot normally.Messages left on the newsgroup indicate that Microsoft is aware of the problem....
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In addition to WoW's recent announcement that they've sucked 10 million paying customers into the world of Azeroth, it seems that a player in the world of online piracy has reached the same milestone. Sweden's own Pirate Bay has topped 10 million unique and simultaneous peer-to-peer users.“Let's consider these staggering numbers. 10 million simultaneous users represents a number never duplicated by any file-sharing entity. The largest P2P networks, such as FastTrack and eDonkey2000, both topped out with approximately 5 million users. Gnutella, fronted by LimeWire, is more difficult to calculate, however reasonable estimates place Gnutella's population among the P2P heavyweights. Despite...
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Some users of online community Facebook are complaining that Facebook's latest marketing widget, called Beacon, allows other users to see what you're buying online from vendors participating in the program. They feel it's an invasion of their privacy. You're allowed to opt out of the process, and given two opportunities to do so for each automatic listing, but there doesn't seem to be any way to opt out of the program entirely. The idea is that if users see a friend buy or do something, they'd take that action as an endorsement for a movie, a band or a soft drink.But it also raises privacy concerns.Mike Mayer, for instance, saw a feed item saying his boyfriend, Adam Sofen, just...
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For years there has been concern over just who has been using peer to peer networks that offer illicit copies of copyrighted material. Not all of those concerns come from copyright holders or their agents.In fact it seems that there is, and has been, a large concern from those using P2P networks. It might seem strange on the surface for alleged pirates to be worried about spies in their midst, but there are lots of people who claim to have reasons to want to use P2P networks that seem reasonable such as: backups for lost discs, etc.Here's the scoop:“For years, P2P communities have suspected that affiliates of the RIAA, the MPAA, and others have been haunting P2P networks to look for...
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Will Poole is tasked with leading Microsoft's push into emerging markets like China, South America, and Africa. His job is simple, really: Find Microsoft another billion computer users. He outlined his approach in a question and answer meeting, touching on interesting approaches to get technology to very poor and isolated places, including making a workable computer out of readily available electronic devices.(Q.) How close is that to being a product? You take the phone that people are already getting, hook it up to the TV they already have and you've got a computer. The phones that we use today in the U.S. certainly are capable of that from a technology perspective. How close is that? Poole:...
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently made some interesting claims about Microsoft code appearing in various Linux distributions, especially Red Hat. Now he's made a comment that all Red Hat users 'owe' Microsoft. He hasn't put a dollar amount on what they owe, or made his claims on exactly why 100% clear. All we know is that the claim has to do with 'borrowed' code, a term that Microsoft themselves aren't exactly unfamiliar with.This isn't the first time that Microsoft has made such claims about Linux, in fact the Redmond software firm ranks only behind SCO when it comes to organizations who actively pursue legal action against various forms of Linux.You'd think that being in...
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YouTube users are starting to gripe about spam being sent over the messaging system. Considering that Google owns YouTube, and has had a working spam filter for their own e-mail service, G-Mail, it makes one wonder why the software hasn't been adapted to work on YouTube.After all, a message is a message, and most of the techniques for identifying e-mail text as spam should still work with minimal re-coding.“Unfortunately even if the sitemail spam was brought under control there will always be content spam on any social media platform. Witness the once proud brand of Tivo and its reported use of the insipid service PayPerPost to amass video testimonies on YouTube. I'm a believer that commercial...
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Some have suggested that the terms and conditions in the EULA for Google Docs & Spreadsheets imply that Google actually "owns" the words "held" within those documents. Looking at the clause in question carefully, it looks like the sentence simply needs rewording for clarity.The controversy centers on Google's use of the word "public" in its terms and conditions for Google Docs. One clause states, "By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such content on Google services...
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If you are a user in the United States, you can no longer use TorrentSpy. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing as the site had been ordered to start tracking users. Citing privacy, TorrentSpy now gives an error message if a user with a U.S. IP address tries to search. US users of the popular Torrent search site TorrentSpy can use the site no more—at least not for now. TorrentSpy has begun to block all searches by US visitors, instead redirecting search requests to a page with the headline "TorrentSpy Acts to Protect Privacy." The page says that TorrentSpy has chosen to block US visitors because of an "uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparently...
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After a flurry of stories, and even a YouTube video showing the huge iPhone bills some users were getting - not in terms of money, but in terms of pages - AT&T has put an end to them. This is likely to be a great relief to mail carriers, some of whom were totiing bills so big that they numbered in the hundreds of pages, and were too large to put into an envelope. Many users began to complain about it to AT&T, saying the bills were far too detailed. The company responded Wednesday by sending all iPhone owners a text message saying that it will be simplifying the bill for those using Apple’s phone. "We are simplifying your paper bill, removing itemized detail. To view...
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There has been much concern over the security and privacy of social networking sites. Much of the flak has been directed at the sites themselves. But a study run by security company Sophos showed, once again, that the real security hole, lies in users.By creating a fake ID around a green frog name "Freddi Staur" (which is an anagram of ID Fraudster), and inviting 200 real users to be its friend, Sophos showed just how easy it is to get private info. Without any "hacking" whatsoever, the tub toy managed to acquire a treasure trove of personal data. About 73 people were willing to post their birthday, while others willingly included places of birth, employers' names and addresses,...
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Reports of the unpopularity of Microsoft Windows Vista operating system are widespread -- and according to Bill Gates -- wrong. Forty million copies have been sold already, which is faster than the sales rate for Windows XP. That already exceeds the entire number of people using anything offered by Microsoft's main competitiors. Gates also announced several new partners for its Windows Home Server product, including Gateway and Medion. Microsoft has already said HP will have home servers based on the technology later this year. Gates said Windows Home Server will launch in the autumn. He also said smaller computer makers, known as system builders, will be able to build...
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ExtremeTech is reporting that updating to the newest release (7.3) of the Catalyst drivers might cause your Vista system to experience the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD). If you're not sure what a BSOD is, it's that blue screen with white text that crops up whenever a computer and Windows have a serious disagreement. Luckily, ExtremeTech has a solution, but you'll have to read the article here. "Looking to boost your system's performance? A driver upgrade is often a great way to do it, but in the case of AMD's new Catalyst 7.3 driver package for Radeon graphics cards and Windows Vista, you might want to hold off before you take...
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What if you could rig it so that competing with your flagship product was against the law? Under 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, breaking an anti-copying system is illegal, even if you're breaking it for a legal reason. For example, it's against the law to compete head-on with the iPod by making a device that plays Apple's proprietary music, or by making an iPod add-on that plays your own proprietary music. Nice deal for Apple. gets the same deal, courtesy of something called "Information Rights Management," a use-restriction system for Office files, such as Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets....
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