Hasta La Gadget!

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has just announced the introduction of internet.org. Just what is internet.org? It happens to be a global partnership that will have the ultimate goal of making internet access available to the other 5 billion people on the planet. Now, where have we heard of such an idea before? Ah right – Google’s Project Loon does have the possibility of delivering internet connectivity at decent speeds due to the nature of its design, but I guess internet.org will do things a little bit differently.

Wanting to bring internet connectivity to the remaining population outside of the 2.7 billion connected folks, the ultimate aim is to offer everyone similar opportunities to remain hooked up (and perhaps increase Facebook’s subscription rate along the way?). The list of founding members of internet.org include Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung, and with their powers combined, Captain Planet – er, nay, it will result in joint projects, shared knowledge, and be a platform to mobilize industry and governments in order to bring the rest of the world to an online future. Do you think that this particular initiative would be able to achieve its goal at long last? The three key challenges internet.org are focusing on would be to make access more affordable, to use data more efficiently, and to assist businesses to drive access. [Press Release]

Internet.org Announced By Mark Zuckerberg original content from Ubergizmo.

AOC introduced a USB monitor a few years ago which was lightweight and featured a built-in USB port that would both receive power and its signal through the use of plug-and-play. It now looks like AOC is releasing a brand-new USB-powered monitor, but instead of being a full-fledged display, the company has made it more of a secondary display.

The AOC e1659Fwu features a 16-inch 1366 x 768 resolution display and a USB 3.0 connection which, just like with the previous USB monitor, can be used to power the monitor as well as act as a secondary display. The monitor offers a 500:1 contrast ratio, 5ms response time and has a foldable flexi-stand that allows the display to be viewed in either landscape or portrait mode. The AOC e1659Fwu is also extremely lightweight and portable, which comes with a carrying case as well as a VESA 75 x 75mm Mount Compliment feature that allows you to easily mount the USB monitor on your wall.

If you’re interested in adding a slim, USB-powered monitor to your current setup, the AOC e1659Fwu is currently available on Amazon for $129.99, which seems like a pretty fair price considering the monitor will be used as a secondary display for the most part.

AOC e1659Fwu USB-Powered Lightweight Display Improves On The Original original content from Ubergizmo.

I recently spotted a meme over on 9gag that showed that right at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid lies something that most of us take for granted these days – Wi-Fi connectivity. Now I had a real good laugh over that, but have you ever wondered just how many folks in the US have yet to use the Internet? After all, it is 2013 now, and long gone are the days of the dial-up connection and 56k modems. In fact, 98% of the US is said to be able to access some kind of broadband Internet service today. The thing is, The New York Times reported that approximately 20% of US residents do not use the Internet – at all. That means they are not connected be it at home, at school or at work, and would most probably use a feature phone, too. 20% would translate to roughly 60 million people, which is a whole lot.

This has definitely gotten the US government concerned, since the percentage remained more or less the same since 4 years back, when the Obama Administration rolled out a $7 billion program to expand broadband Internet access to different parts of the US. It would be nice to hear why the remaining 20% remain averse to the Internet, but since they aren’t online, they can’t leave a comment here and tell us why. Hopefully Google’s Project Balloon will be able to change things eventually.

20% Of US Residents Do Not Use The Internet, Says The New York Times original content from Ubergizmo.

Ark PC has dropped another slim desktop PC, the BUXTON BX-IC2DS47. Adopting Shuttle’s DS47 slim barebone PC, this space-saving system is packed with a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 processor, an Intel NM70 Express Chipset, an Intel HD Graphics, a 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, WiFi and runs on either Windows 7 or 8 OS. The BUXTON BX-IC2DS47 is available now for 39,800 Yen (about $408). [Product Page]

Just how valuable is your time, really? Some lawyers and psychologists might charge a few hundred dollars an hour for their expertise, but when you take into consideration the Internet search giant Google’s recent 5 minute outage, the amount of revenue loss was pretty astronomical by any estimates. Last Friday, when Google went down from about 3:52 p.m. to 3:57 p.m Pacific Time, additional services also went offline alongside Google, but some simple mathematical calculations had resulted in an estimated $545,000 revenue loss for Google.

How was this particular figure derived from? Well, in Q2 this year, Google reported revenues of $14.1 billion. A little bit of basic division and that would translate to approximately $108,000 in revenue on average for a single minute that Google is up and running. $545,000 might sound like a drop in the ocean for a company like Google, but the average American household could certainly make do with such money at any moment – as that is what the average American household makes throughout a decade. Apart from that, the 5 minute outage is said to have caused a global drop in website traffic of up to 40% percent, before it spiked back to normal levels when Google was back online.

5 Minute Google Outage Estimated To Cost Google $545,000 In Revenue original content from Ubergizmo.