Hasta La Gadget!

Twitter turns 5 years old today! What an adorable and accomplished and incredibly rich little tot. Twitter’s become internet-ubiquitous in those five years. It’s also become the most singularly idiotic and wonderful thing in internet history. More »

The controversial step to approve .xxx domain names has today been taken by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, paving the way for a whole slew of new addresses suffixed by the famous triplicate x. Funnily enough, before the decision was made today, opposition to it was proffered by both conservative groups opposed to pornography and adult entertainment companies fearing they’d be more easily compartmentalized and potentially blocked by overzealous governments. Moreover, every popular adult website at present will pretty much be forced to buy its .xxx version, which, for an industry famous for its frugality, will be an understandably tough pill to swallow. We are surprised not to see the people of Amsterdam consulted, however — their city’s emblem features three Xs too, shouldn’t they have a say in this?

A further meeting is scheduled by ICANN for June 20th to discuss opening up all possible domain name suffixes to registration, pending the validation of a set of guidelines for approval. That’s looking quite likely to be passed too, as the AFP sagely notes that there’s a celebratory party scheduled for two days after the event. URLs are about to get a lot more varied, it seems; they’re certainly going to feature a lot more of the (English) alphabet’s 24th letter, whatever the case.

ICANN has .xxx domain names? Yes! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sun Microsystems, one of the original gangsters responsible for supplying all the electronics and infrastructure we now know as the internet, ceased to be Sun Microsystems in January of last year. Assimilated into the Oracle juggernaut, its operations no longer carry that familiar logo and soon they’ll no longer even be referenced in the same spot on the internet. Yes, after 25 years of answering the call of sun.com, the company that no longer is will be letting go of its former domain name as well. The site has already been redirecting users to Oracle for quite a while, but come June 1st, it’ll be like the Sun we knew had never even risen.

[Thanks, Jeroen]

Sun.com, the twelfth oldest domain on the internet, will be decommissioned on June 1st originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you can’t fix it, buy someone who can. That must be Google’s rationale behind this latest acquisition, as the proprietor of YouTube has just bought Green Parrot Pictures, a company concerned solely with enhancing and improving the quality of video content. Through the use of some fancy motion prediction algorithms, the Irish startup has been able to build a name for itself over the past few years, and now it’s been snapped up by the biggest fish in the online video ocean. The removal of flicker, noise and blotches from poorly executed recordings sounds nice, but we’re most excited by Green Parrot’s video stabilization feature. With all the cameraphone video being uploaded nowadays, there’s plenty of camera shake populating YouTube’s archives, and the addition of such a potent post-production technique seems like a veritable boon to us. Check out video demos of the stabilization algorithm and Green Parrot’s other technologies below.

Continue reading Google buys Green Parrot Pictures, looking to make YouTube vids easier on the eye

Google buys Green Parrot Pictures, looking to make YouTube vids easier on the eye originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ladies and gentlemen, the days of unlimited broadband may be numbered in the United States, and we’re not talking wireless this time — AT&T says it will implement a 150GB monthly cap on landline DSL customers and a 250GB cap on subscribers to U-Verse high speed internet starting on May 2nd. AT&T will also charge overage fees of $10 for every additional 50GB of data, with two grace periods to start out — in other words, the third month you go over the cap is when you’ll get charged. DSLReports says it has confirmation from AT&T that these rates are legitimate, and that letters will go out to customers starting March 18th.

How does AT&T defend the move? The company explains it will only impact two percent of consumers who use “a disproportionate amount of bandwidth,” and poses the caps as an alternative to throttling transfer speeds or disconnecting excessive users from the service completely. Customers will be able to check their usage with an online tool, and get notifications when they reach 65 percent, 90 percent and 100 percent of their monthly rates.

We just spoke with AT&T representative Seth Bloom and confirmed the whole thing — rates are exactly as described above, and the company will actually begin notifying customers this week. He also told us that those customers who don’t yet have access to the bandwidth usage tool won’t get charged until they do, and that AT&T U-Verse TV service won’t count towards the GB cap.

Update: What prompted this change to begin with? That’s what we just asked AT&T. Read the company’s statement after the break.

Continue reading AT&T will cap DSL and U-Verse internet, impose overage fees (update)

AT&T will cap DSL and U-Verse internet, impose overage fees (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 19:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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