When Google announced it was rolling out a fiber network in Provo, Utah, it wasn’t clear how or why it had chosen the city. Turns out, Google has managed to secure a deal to buy its entire municipal fiber network—which cost $39 million to build—for just a single dollar. More »
Curious as to the effect that your poking wars are having on the planet? Facebook is outing power and water usage data for its Oregon and North Carolina data centers to show off its sustainability chops. The information is updated in near-real time, and the company will add its Swedish facility to the charts as soon as it’s built. The stats for the Forest City, NC plant show a very efficient power usage effectiveness ratio of 1.09 — thanks, in part, to that balmy (North) Carolina air.
Filed under: Internet, Facebook
Via: GigaOm
Source: Facebook, Open Compute Project
The concept of a Twitter-aware cuckoo clock has certainly been done — just not by Twitter itself, until now. Twitter UK has teamed up with Berg to produce #Flock, a smarter-than-average clock that both marks time and pops out a bird whenever there are new followers, replies and retweets. It’s comparatively simple underneath the wood, as a Berg Cloud developer kit links an arm mechanism to the owner’s Twitter account. The trick will be owning one in the first place. As much as we’d like Twitter to sell #Flock on a general basis, the company is giving away its hand-built creation only to companies and people that “push the creative boundaries,” which will mostly involve advertisers rather than any of us common folk.
Filed under: Household, Internet
Via: The Verge
Source: Twitter Ads UK (Twitter)
While it’s well-established that Google Fiber’s expansion into Provo, Utah hinges on Google buying the city’s existing iProvo network, we didn’t immediately learn what it took to land the tentative deal. Newly available details of the agreement reveal that the up-front cost is largely in the visitor’s favor — it’s the long-term development that rewards the locals. Google only pays $1 to buy the local fiber network, but it has five years to finish upgrades and deployments that could ultimately cost $30 million, according to the Deputy Mayor’s estimates. About the only remaining costs for Provo are its already existing (if significant) development loans, and the city can always buy the network back for $1 if things go sour. The pact also leaves the door open to public WiFi, although there are no guarantees that Google will mirror its New York City efforts anytime soon. When the search giant has a very healthy bank balance, we doubt there will be much quibbling over the exact terms; just know that the arrangement isn’t strictly one-sided.
Filed under: Networking, Internet, Google
Source: AP
YouTube trends may have changed over the last few years, but the company’s legal standing hasn’t: according to a federal judge, the DMCA still protects the streaming site from Viacom’s copyright claims. The ruling responds to Viacom’s appeal of a 2010 case, which stated that YouTube couldn’t be held responsible for copyright infringing content uploaded by its users. Viacom sought to revise the ruling, insisting that YouTube was “willfully blind” of the activity. That may be the case, but Judge Louis Stanton sees things differently. “Knowledge of the prevalence of infringing activity, and welcoming it, does not itself forfeit the safe harbor. To forfeit that, the provider must influence or participate in the infringement.” Since YouTube doesn’t pre-screen content before throwing it live, and because it always takes down infringing content upon request, it simply isn’t liable.
Viacom says that the decision “ignores the opinions of the higher courts and completely disregards the rights of creative artists,” and promises to appeal the decision again with hopes of taking the case to a jury. Google, on the other hand, is playing it cool. “The court correctly rejected Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube, reaffirming that Congress got it right when it comes to copyright on the Internet. This is a win not just for YouTube, but for people everywhere who depend on the Internet to exchange ideas and information.” Looking for a side to pick? Check out the court’s full decision after the break.
Source: AllThingsD, YouTube
While select outfits race to make satellite broadband an acceptable solution for those who need ping times south of three digits, there’s another game in town looking to quietly revolutionize rural access. As LTE slowly rolls out to major metropolitan areas in the United States, vacated spectrum is allowing companies like Carlson Wireless to offer up another option. TV white spaces — unused TV channels freed up after the analog-to-digital transition of 2009 — have long since been eyed as the answer for distributing high-speed internet to areas that aren’t economical to reach via wireline, or are otherwise shunned by conventional wireless operators.
Armed with an FCC-granted Special Temporary Authority to validate the efficacy of the product in real-world scenarios, Carlson has partnered with Cal.net in order to bring internet to sections of California’s Gold Country; the project comprises multiple transmission sites delivering broadband to several hundred heretofore un-serviceable subscribers in El Dorado County. There’s no word on pricing, but we’re sure hoping it’s a runaway hit — we can think of plenty of gorgeous locales in this country that could stand a pinch of internet. (Yellowstone National Park, we’re looking at you.)
Filed under: Networking, Internet
Source: Carlson Wireless, Cal.net
The first city in the country to get the incredibly fast Google Fiber Internet service was Kansas City. Earlier this month, Google announced the second city to get access to its incredibly fast Internet service would be Austin, Texas. I continue to be insanely jealous that people in these cities will be able to get gigabit Internet speeds while my “broadband” at home is measured in Kbps on a good day.
Google has now announced that the next city to get Google Fiber Internet will be Provo, Utah. Google says that the city of Provo currently has an existing fiber-optic network that it has agreed to purchase and upgrade. That network is called iProvo and all that stands between Google and the city of Provo on the quest to bring incredibly fast Internet speeds is a city council vote scheduled for next week.
Google will offer every home along the path of the existing fiber-optic network free access to Internet service at up to 5 Mbps speeds for seven years with the only out-of-pocket cost being a $30(USD) activation fee. I currently pay more than twice that per month. 25 public institutions including schools, hospitals, and libraries will get free gigabit access. Google also plans on offering its faster Gigabit service and Google Fiber TV service in Provo as well.
If you happen to live in Provo, you can sign up to register your interest in Google Fiber service here.
Retailers will try any number of stunts to get our feet in the door when they’ve got inventory to clear or services to push, whether they’re offering straight-up discounts or giving away devices. UK retailer John Lewis would really, really like us to try its home broadband, so it’s trying a related yet uncommon strategy: buy an internet-capable device by April 15th, 2014 and John Lewis will supply half a year of broadband for free, even at fiber optic speeds. As always, though, there’s an asterisk at the end. Would-be customers need to sign up for a year-long service contract to qualify, so they’ll be paying between £25 to £39 per month ($38 to $60) for at least another half-year. We doubt many will shift their laptop or tablet purchases just to get cheap data, but the promo may tip the balance for those experimenting with internet providers or wiring up a new flat.
Filed under: Internet
Via: Tech Digest
Source: John Lewis
Remember when the internet was hailed as the “information superhighway” and then we all realized it was just some pot hole-filled, five-lane freeway overrun with humanity’s virtual flotsam and jetsam? Well, now there’s a virtual institution to gather the best cultural bits that float to the top, make ’em freely accessible and archive it all for the perpetuity of the digital age. Beginning today, the Digital Public Library of America, a two-year-old non-profit organization, is going live to the public in a beta launch. Featuring historical works culled from six state libraries and various cultural outposts (including the likes of the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian, the National Archives and Records Administration, as well as Harvard University), the site will primarily offer users the ability to search its vast archives (about 2.4 million resources at present) and browse virtual exhibitions, but will also host any dedicated third-party apps built using its open data set. So, there you have it, folks — a highbrow antidote to the rampant disinformation made possible by Google search.
Filed under: Internet
Source: DPLA
We haven’t been hearing a whole lot about Blogger amid all the changes at Google in recent months, but the company hasn’t entirely forgotten about the pioneering blogging platform it acquired way back in 2003. It’s today introduced Google+ Comments for Blogger, a fairly self-explanatory new feature that will let you bring G+ comments to your Blogger-based site. Blogger users can enable that feature in their dashboard, which will let them see both comments left directly on their blog and those made about their blog on Google+. Notably, it will also let users chose to either comment publicly or privately to only those in their Google+ circles — and, conversely, choose to only view comments from their circles instead of the teeming masses.
Source: Official Google Blog
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