Hasta La Gadget!

Google is moving from being an information engine to becoming a knowledge engine when it introduced Knowledge Graph earlier this year. Today, at a small event in San Francisco, the Internet search giant broke the news that it will be launching its highly-anticipated Knowledge Graph worldwide beginning tomorrow. Amit Singhal, head of Google search, said that the launch will be rolling out slowly to all English users worldwide. Google also announced a redesign of the Knowledge Graph that will help users search through items on Google.

In an example shown, a quick search for “Chiefs” revealed present information about the football team in the U.S. as well as the rugby team in Australia. SearchEngineLand notes that the problem with rolling out Knowledge Graph on a global scale is that it will be harder to make predictions because the same word can mean different things. Google also showed its improved expandable knowledge graph, now called the Knowledge Graph Carousel, and it showed how users can pivot the results around the sets of things being searched. “We’ve begun to gradually roll out this view of the Knowledge Graph to U.S. English users. It’s also going to be available on smartphones and tablets,” Singhal previously said.

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Facebook hosted its first earnings conference call last month with Mark Zuckerberg highlighting the social network’s vision and strategy in moving forward. Facebook was quick to admit that it was not doing so well in terms of advertising, prompting the team to work on new ways to generate more revenue from mobile ads. Today, the developers at Facebook are introducing a new mobile ad system for applications. Facebook’s Vijaye Raji said that the new system aims to boost app downloads while helping developers grow their business with an ad unit that helps them reach and reengage their users.

Talking about the initial success it has done so far, Raji added that during the past 30 days, they were able direct people to the Apple App Store and Google Play 146 million times via clicks from channels such as news feed, timeline, bookmarks and App Center.”Mobile ads are an additional way to drive people to apps. When a person clicks on one of these ads, if they do not have the app installed they will be sent to the App Store or Google Play to get it.” he said. Facebook is conducting the tests together with a few sets of beta partners. To learn more about how it works, you can visit Facebook’s developer blog.

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Popular microblogging platform Tumblr is launching a new curated site for user-generated original content. It’s called Reblorg, and we are wondering how different it is when compared to Tumblr’s Storyboard. But according to the company, Reblorg will be Tumblr’s hub for original creative work.

“Video, animation, GIFs, glitches, music, paintings, challenge posts, contests, games, tech toys, collage, haiku, limericks, and kabuki coding are all welcome here, among other art forms,” the team behind Reblorg said. The submission rules are simple – it has to be new and it has to be made personally by the user.

When you will head over to the newly launched site now, you will be able to see a couple of images and animated GIFs including a hotdog wearing sunglasses, a pigeon with tacos on its head, a man on the moon, cheeseburgers, and people eating in a restaurant. It may seem bizarre, but it can be a perfect place for artists like you. You can check out Reblorg here.

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Kno’s tablet textbooks have only ever been available to the college crowd; the younger among us have typically had to get a comprehensive digital education from either the tablet maker’s own solution, like Apple’s iBooks 2, or less-than-integrated options. A new deal for K-12 books is giving the students, if not necessarily the teachers, a fresh alternative. Parents can now rent books for home studying at prices under $10 per title. They’re not state-specific books, but their Common Core roots will keep learners on the same (virtual) page as classmates while adding Kno’s usual 3D, links, notes and videos. Just to sweeten the pot further, Kno says its current catalog centers around a pact with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt — a publisher that hasn’t offered K-12 books on any tablet platform until now, according to Kno. The initial focus is on iPad, web and Windows 7 readers, although Android-loving parents looking for that at-home edge will have to wait until sometime “soon” to leap in.

Continue reading Kno starts offering K-12 textbooks on tablets, scores industry-first deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Filed under: Tablet PCs, Software

Kno starts offering K-12 textbooks on tablets, scores industry-first deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I was about to search for more information regarding the updated OpenGL this morning via Wikipedia when I noticed that it didn’t return any search results. It turns out that the  world’s beloved free online encyclopedia has experienced a technical outage. Basically, I noticed an error message on the site’s homepage (seen above) saying that Wikipedia servers are experiencing some sort of a technical problem. The outage, which lasted for about an hour and a half, started around 6:30 AM PST and it was finally restored by 8:30 AM PST.

Wikipedia confirmed the outage via Twitter, saying, “We’re having some technical issues, but our engineers are working on it. We’ll be back soon!” If you’ll check out Wikipedia’s Performance and Availability History, you’ll notice several service disruptions on its API, https services, Images and media, Mail (SMTP), and many others. A Wikimedia spokesperson has confirmed in a statement that the outage was due to some networking issues with its servers in Tampa, Florida. When asked if the site has been recently hacked or attack, the spokesperson denied the assumption saying, “We certainly haven’t been hit by a denial of service attack.”

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