Hasta La Gadget!

While you might use Firefox to access your social media of choice already, preliminary support for a new API has been introduced that could integrate key features into the browser itself. The aptly named Social API, will allow developers to embed services into the browser directly, letting you interact with friends and stay updated without having to open new windows, or keep hopping into different tabs. There’s no solid info just yet on how this will manifest itself, or how issues such as security and privacy might be addressed, but with testing beginning soon, we’re expecting the curtain to lift on the finer details soon. Interested developers can head to the source, for the other billion, you’ll just have to wait.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile

Firefox introduces preliminary support for Social API, brings your networks into the browser originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Mozilla (Blog), Mozilla (Dev Blog)  | Email this | Comments

Best Buy will match online pricing during the holiday season, so as to reduce the impact of “showrooming” where would-be buyers play with products in-store but then order them from cheaper internet vendors. Meanwhile, free home delivery will be offered for products currently out of stock, sources speaking to the WSJ claim, though it’s possible that Best Buy may exclude some items from the price matching program, which is still being worked out.

Like other retailers, Best Buy has seen a growth in shoppers who come to brick & mortar stores to browse through and play with the physical products on display, but then fail to actually complete a transaction. Instead, having used that hands-on experience to settle on a specific product, they buy it online at reduced rates from retailers without the costs of maintaining stores and sales teams that Best Buy must cover.

The process is known as “showrooming,” though Best Buy has argued that it is not such a significant problem as analysts have suggested. The company’s own estimates suggest that the number of “showrooming” customers using its stores are in the mid-teens, having seen a rise of roughly 3-percent over the past 24-months.

“We have a tremendous opportunity to increase [our] close rate” Best Buy spokesperson Matthew Furman said, referring to the roughly 40-percent of shoppers who browse the store but leave without making a purchase. Back in July, the company revealed plans to borrow store strategy from Apple with, among other things, a “Solution Central” help desk in the center.

Nonetheless, Best Buy VP of consumer insights Bill Hoffman insists that showrooming is “still very low” in terms of the risks to overall profit. “We need to pay attention to it” he concedes, however, and the online price-match policy will go some way to addressing it. It’s unclear whether the scheme will be a one-time promotion during the holidays, or if it will continue.

Best Buy battles “showrooming” with internet price-matching is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re trying to get on Facebook at the moment and the site isn’t cooperating, you’re definitely not alone. The Next Web is reporting that throughout the day, Facebook has gone down in places like Austria, Norway, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, and Sweden. Making things much more interesting is Twitter user AnonymousOwn3r, who is claiming to be the one bringing Facebook to its knees.

If AnonymousOwn3r is telling the truth, then that would mean the now-infamous group Anonymous is behind the Facebook outage. Just a few minutes ago, he tweeted that he’d be halting his attack so people could get back on the social network, but it’s hard to tell if he’s telling the truth. As far as we can see, he hasn’t given a reason for his attack on Facebook, only saying that he tried to carry out the attack yesterday but was unsuccessful.

It seems that he has enjoyed plenty of success today, though, apparently bringing Facebook down across Europe. The Next Web reminds us that this is the same Anonymous member who claimed the attack on GoDaddy last month. That attack brought down millions of GoDaddy-hosted sites and kept them down for hours, effectively making millions of site owners angry in the process.

It seems that this was an attack on Facebook’s DNS servers, as trying to access touch.facebook.com brings up the site with no problems. If AnonymousOwn3r is serious when he says that he’s halting his attack on Facebook (and he’s responsible for bringing Facebook down in the first place), then the service should be coming back across Europe soon. If you live in Europe, do you have access to Facebook yet, or is it still down for you?

Facebook goes down around the world in apparent Anonymous attack is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The road to become the best it can be will surely be a long one, but Netflix is certainly doing all it can to be covered on all grounds. Most recently, the streaming giant announced that it has reached a settlement with the National Association for the Deaf which ensures that the company will offer captioning services on its entire video library by 2014. Currently Netflix has caption options on nearly 85 percent of its hefty entertainment repertoire, with the outfit expected to make it 90 percent by next year and, shortly thereafter, have its full set CC-ready. Needless to say, this is a win-win for all parties involved.

Continue reading Netflix to bring closed captioning to all video content by 2014

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD

Netflix to bring closed captioning to all video content by 2014 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MobileBurn  |  Ars Technica, Boston.com, NAD  | Email this | Comments

Indian Railways has just made it a little easier for rail travelers with a new web app called RailRadar, which uses Google Maps to track trains on a real-time basis. This is certainly welcome on one of the largest rail networks in the world — it operates more than 10,000 trains everyday — though the service is only available on 6,500 trains for now. To find out where your train is, simply search for its name or number and RailRadar will spot it for you. You can also find trains by entering the name of the station. Blue highlights indicate trains that are on time while red means it’s behind schedule. If you click on a train, it’ll show its entire route from start to finish. The logical next step would be for this to be on smartphones like how it is in Japan, though we’re not sure if that’s in the cards just yet.

[Thanks, dil]

Filed under: Transportation, Internet

Indian Railways launches RailRadar, lets you track trains via Google Maps originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 02:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Economic Times  |  Indian Railways  | Email this | Comments