Hasta La Gadget!

For those of you who are currently subscribed to Comcast’s Performance Xfinity Internet speed plans, you’re in for a treat. Comcast has decided to upgrade your data speeds at no added cost. Your download speeds will be increased from 15Mbps to 25Mbps, and your upload speeds will be increased from 2Mbps to 5Mbps. Comcast is upgrading its data speeds because it knows that there is a growing trend of consumers using more than one wireless device in their homes to access the internet.

This follows the same bonus that both Blast! and Extreme 50 Xfinity Internet subscribers were given. Last month, Comcast increased the download speeds for Blast! customers from 25Mbps to 50Mbps and their upload speeds from 4Mbps to 10Mbps. Extreme 50 customers had their download speeds increased from 50Mbps to 105Mbps, and their upload speeds increased from 15Mbps to 20Mbps, all for free.

These free increases in internet speeds should do well in keeping customers subscribed to Comcast’s internet speed plans. Comcast issued the same statement it made when it increased the data speeds for Blast! and Extreme 50 subscribers. It stated that as customer demands increase, it continues to increase its data speeds to allow users the best internet experience possible, no matter what they’re doing.

It’s easy to access your newly upgraded speeds. All you need to do is power down your modem by disconnecting it from its power source. You then wait 15 seconds before plugging it back in. After that, doing a simple speed test should show you an increase in your data speeds. Unlike the data speed upgrades for Blast! and Extreme 50 customers, you shouldn’t be required to upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.0 modem to access your speeds.

[via Business Wire]

Comcast upgrades speeds for Xfinity Internet Performance users for free is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Get ready to say goodbye to another another batch of Yahoo products at the end of this month. As the company continues to streamline and focus its services, March 31st will be the last day of stand-alone existence for Upcoming, Yahoo Deals, Yahoo Kids, Yahoo SMS Alerts, Yahoo Mail and Messages for feature phones. Noting an aim to slim down to roughly 15 offerings from 75, as The Register points out, this follows a few weeks after the company nixed other services like its BlackBerry app. Additionally, if you’ve been hanging onto the old version of Yahoo Mail, you’ll have no choice but to switch to the new version by June 3rd. There’s not word on what we can expect next, although EVP of Platforms Jay Rossiter notes that cuts like these are needed so it can focus on more experiences like its new Mail and Weather apps. You’ll find the details for each cut at the source link.

Update: The total number of offerings being killed this time around is six, not seven as initially reported.

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Via: The Register

Source: Yahoo

It’s not secret that Google’s Fiber Internet program is growing by leaps and bounds – and here in Provo, Utah, it’s being initiated in a deal that’s costing Google only $1 USD at the outset. This deal is being made by Google to purchase the city’s municipal fiber-optic system that originally cost around $39 million to build. The Provo City Council will still have to make a final approval – this approval is expected to come to light by next Tuesday.

This will be just the newest in a line of Google Fiber systems being set up, Kansas City, Missouri and Austin, Texas already coming up quick. Google is making a big effort to become the premiere brand for fiber-optic internet in the United States here in 2013 as the rest of the industry remains relatively silent. Just this past month AT&T Fiber Internet was announced for Austin, Texas as well.

With the network being purchased today by Google being nearly ready to rock before they arrive, they’ll be able to set up a final system well before they’ve got marketable sales ready for Austin. Residents of Provo have been paying a charge of $5.35 per household per month on their utilities for an all-inclusive internet, television, and phone service for approximately 12 years – this update should have some effect on how that charge is assessed.

“Provo City’s vision has long been one where our residents have access to reliable high-speed broadband Internet. We know that communities are better – and communities are stronger – when people are connected. With this agreement, we have an opportunity to do things that few communities in this country get to do.” – Mayor John Curtis

Residents have been paying said fee regardless of their use of said services, and would have had to pay a rather sizable fee to activate the internet service they’d already been paying for: $700 USD. With Google onboard, they’ll be grabbing internet service at no additional fee just so long as they pay a much more reasonable $30 hook-up charge.

Google will have five years to build out Provo’s current system in place if the deal is finalized. They will also have just 180 days to take over the network successfully after the deal is signed. At the moment it does not appear that Google has any deals signed for TV service.

[via Provo]

Google buys fiber internet system in Utah for one dollar is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week a chat between Google’s own Eric Schmidt and the head of the organization known as WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been revealed in full. This conversation has been typed out in transcript form and revealed to the public by none other than WikiLeaks itself, releasing this document just ahead of the publication of the book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future. This is significant due to the book’s co-author, Jared Cohen, also apparently being present at the meeting with Assange.

The transcript at hand – which you can access [here] – is said to be a complete write-up of a five-hour chat between Schmidt, Assange, Cohen, and Lisa Shields. Cohen is otherwise known as a former Secretary of State advisor to Hillary Clinton. Lisa Shields hails from the Council on Foreign Relations.

At the time of the recording from which the transcript was transcribed, Assange was under house arrest in the UK. The meeting took place in a single day, the 23rd of June, 2011, and according to WikiLeaks, it was Schmidt and Cohen that requested the meeting “to discuss ideas for” their book.

“To be used in a book by Eric Schmidt, due to be published by Knopf in October 2012. I have been given a guarantee that I will see the transcript and will be able to adjust it for accuracy and clarity.” – Assange

One of the first subjects that has turned up as telling – and will almost certainly appear in the forthcoming book – is Schmidt and Assange’s words exchanged on a government’s ability to turn off the internet. Using mobile phones, they note, things have changed drastically.

ES: When we were sort of chatting initially we talked about my idea that powering, mobile phones being powered, is sort of changing society. A rough summary of your answer for everybody else is that people are very much the same and something big has to change their behaviour, and this might be one of them, and you said, you were very interested in someone building phone to phone encryption.

Can you talk a little bit about, roughly, the architecture where you would have a broad open network and you have person to person encryption. What does that mean technically, how would it work, why is it important. That kind of stuff. I mean, I think people don’t understand any of this area in my view.

JA: When we were dealing with Egypt we saw the Mubarak government cut off the internet and we saw only one – there was one ISP that quite few of us were involved in trying to keep its connections open, it had maybe 6% of the market. Eventually they cut.. eventually the Mubarak government also cut off the mobile phone system. And why is it that that can be done?

People with mobile phones have a device that can communicate in a radio spectrum. In a city there is a high density… there is always, if you like, a path between one person and another person. That is there is always a continuous path of mobile phones, each one can in theory hear the radio of the other.

This conversation continues for over 25000 words – you’ll want to take a deep dive as we continue investigating throughout the day (and through the future, too). If you’re feeling really intrepid, you may want to download the page just incase it’s taken down or redacted in any way in the near future as well.

For this particular situation we’d love for you, the reader, to engage with us in taking a look at this WikiLeaks document. In our Facebook Chat today we’ll be discussing this document in-depth. Please feel free to join in!

Eric Schmidt WikiLeaks meeting turns up details on internet shut-down is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Don’t want to trek it to Provo, Utah — or Austin or Kansas City — to get 1Gbps internet courtesy of Google Fiber? By the end of this year, you can venture Down Under to get comparable speeds courtesy of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN). The wholesale price for the network’s 1Gbps service will be AU$150 (about $155) per month, with an additional fee to be tacked on by ISPs. NBN will also roll out 250Mbps and 500Mbps services by December, naturally for a lower monthly cost. Sure, 1Gbps speeds may not be necessary for the average household, but leave it to Japan to make those numbers look positively puny with its recently launched service offering 2 Gbps down. Planning that next vacation around internet speeds might just be the way to go.

Filed under: Internet

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Via: The Age