Sep 14

Google launches Flight Search service, Kayak shrugs it off (video)

Posted in: Google, interface, launch, Online, price, search, Today's Chili, Travel, ui, video, web
Google’s DOJ-approved acquisition of ITA has finally borne fruit, in the form of Flight Search — a new tool that aims to streamline the chaos that is online travel booking. The Mountain View contingent unveiled the interface yesterday, with an “early look” at what appears to be a fairly straightforward service. Once you enter your starting point, destination, price range and duration, a list of results will appear in ascending order of fare and duration, below a map displaying each flight’s trajectory. From there, you can filter your results by airline, number of layovers or specific departure times, before booking your itinerary on the carrier’s site (Google was careful to point out that flight selection and results will not be “influenced by any paid relationships”). At the moment, the service is restricted to a select group of US cities and only features round-trip economy class flights, but Google says future updates and expansions are on the way. We’re eager to see how the company dresses up this relatively bare bones platform and, perhaps more importantly, how competing travel sites react to it. Kayak, for one, responded with confident nonchalance to Flight Search, explicitly describing it as an inferior product. “We’re confident in our ability to compete, and we believe our flight search technology is superior,” the company said, in a statement. “We recognize Google is a formidable competitor but they haven’t been successful in every vertical they’ve entered.” Let the games begin. Demo video after the break.

Continue reading Google launches Flight Search service, Kayak shrugs it off (video)

Google launches Flight Search service, Kayak shrugs it off (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Search Engine Land, TechCrunch  |  sourceGoogle Flight Search, Google Search Blog  | Email this | Comments

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Sep 02

Visualized: an interactive timeline of the web

Posted in: Chrome, Google, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, Today's Chili, web

Ever wondered what the World Wide Web’s illustrious history would look like if plotted in timeline form? Well, thanks to Google’s “Evolution of the web,” you won’t have to. The delectable chart traces the evolution of HTML, the web technologies that came alongside it and the browsers that’ve held it all together — all in a seriously meta HTML5 package. Ready for a trip down memory lane? Hit the source, friend, and revel at how far we’ve come.

Visualized: an interactive timeline of the web originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceThe Evolution of the Web  | Email this | Comments

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Aug 30

Web of water

Posted in: Today's Chili, web

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Aug 24

Ticketmaster’s interactive seat map brings Facebook stalking to concert venues

Posted in: Music, social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili, video, web
You desperately want to attend Katy Perry’s raucous San Antonio concert, but your kid sister has absolutely zero interest in tagging along, and the mere thought of going stag strikes fear into your heart. All seems lost, but worry not — because Ticketmaster and Facebook have just joined forces to create a new feature that weds concert-going with social networking. As of today, users purchasing tickets to select events can easily find out whether any of their Facebook friends are also attending and where they’re seated. All you have to do is connect to Ticketmaster with your Facebook account, find your concert of choice and use the interactive venue map to tag your own seats, or to see those of online friends who’ve already tagged themselves. From there, you can buy tickets right next to your intended targets and act totally surprised when you bump into them at the show. For now, the feature is only available for 300 venues (encompassing some 9,000 events), but you can find more information in the video and press release after the break.

Continue reading Ticketmaster’s interactive seat map brings Facebook stalking to concert venues

Ticketmaster’s interactive seat map brings Facebook stalking to concert venues originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Fast Company  |  sourceTicketmaster  | Email this | Comments

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Aug 19

‘Retweet,’ ‘sexting’ added to Oxford English Dictionary, alongside words that are actually words

Posted in: social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili, twitter, web

Every so often, Chuzzlewitt, Figglesworth and the rest of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary’s Council of Elders gather around a stone in Puddingshire, where they come up with ways to modernize the English language. New words are added, archaic ones are cut, goats are sacrificed. It’s all very messy — especially when internet lingo gets involved, as is so often the case. It’s no different this year, with the latest class of inductees including words like “retweet,” “sexting,” and “cyberbullying.” Also making the cut is “woot” (which is apparently spelled without zeroes) and “surveil,” which was added primarily as a reflection of today’s privacy-conscious society. In fact, the dictionary’s purveyors say they make their decisions based not on intuition or cage match results, but on cultural ubiquity, which they gauge using a database of more than two billion words culled from contemporary sites. So if you’re wondering why words like “jeggings” and “mankini” are now part of the English tome, you have only the internet to blame.

‘Retweet,’ ‘sexting’ added to Oxford English Dictionary, alongside words that are actually words originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceThe Daily Telegraph  | Email this | Comments

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Aug 14

Telex anti-censorship system promises to leap over firewalls without getting burned

Posted in: concept, free, government, politics, research, security, Software, Today's Chili, web
Human rights activists and free speech advocates have every reason to worry about the future of an open and uncensored internet, but researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Waterloo have come up with a new tool that may help put their fears to rest. Their system, called Telex, proposes to circumvent government censors by using some clever cryptographic techniques. Unlike similar schemes, which typically require users to deploy secret IP addresses and encryption keys, Telex would only ask that they download a piece of software. With the program onboard, users in firewalled countries would then be able to visit blacklisted sites by establishing a decoy connection to any unblocked address. The software would automatically recognize this connection as a Telex request and tag it with a secret code visible only to participating ISPs, which could then divert these requests to banned sites. By essentially creating a proxy server without an IP address, the concept could make verboten connections more difficult to trace, but it would still rely upon the cooperation of many ISPs stationed outside the country in question — which could pose a significant obstacle to its realization. At this point, Telex is still in a proof-of-concept phase, but you can find out more in the full press release, after the break.

Continue reading Telex anti-censorship system promises to leap over firewalls without getting burned

Telex anti-censorship system promises to leap over firewalls without getting burned originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTelex.cc (1)  | Email this | Comments

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Aug 10

Vudu starts streaming movies to the iPad, chooses the web app route

Posted in: Apple, apple ipad, AppleIpad, ios, ipad, streaming, tablet, Today's Chili, web

Now that Vudu has started streaming movies to PCs over the web, we’re not surprised that starting today, it’s moving to the iPad as well but what is surprising is the decision to stream over the web and forego a dedicated app. This approach lets the Wal-mart-owned (and fully integrated) video delivery company avoid the restrictions of Apple’s app store and any additional fees, but unfortunately still means that like the PC, it’s restricted to standard definition resolution and due to licensing issues is missing any flicks from Disney. The company plans to keep expanding onto other platforms like Android soon (if you must, the site does work on the iPhone right now but the UI isn’t optimized for it yet) but it appears accessibility is replacing high quality HDX streaming as the service’s most notable trait, for better or worse.

Continue reading Vudu starts streaming movies to the iPad, chooses the web app route

Vudu starts streaming movies to the iPad, chooses the web app route originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Aug 2011 02:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 06

The Web at 20: It Changed Everything

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, top, web

Happy Birthday, Interwebz! How far you’ve come. See, if the Internet drew its first breath in the fall of 1969, it took its first steps toward its potential on August 6, 1991. Took awhile there. But it was this first step that was just the beginning. More »

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Aug 05

Gmail’s Preview Pane brings ‘tablet-like’ layout to your browser, but kills Multiple Inboxes

Posted in: Email, Gmail, Google, preview, Today's Chili, web

Google’s still doing a fine job of ignoring Gcal’s inability to routinely provide alerts and notifications to select users (nah, we’re not bitter), but at least the Gmail team seems to be firing on all cylinders. Just this week, the outfit revealed its newest Labs feature — Preview Pane. As you’ve probably gleaned from the title, it provides a “tablet-like” layout that’s actually similar to standalone mail clients from yesteryear, and for those with more vertical space than horizontal, there’s even an option to split the divider in that manner. In practice, we found it drop-dead simple to use, and it’s largely an improvement over the stock Gmail layout. The only issue? It nukes Multiple Inboxes, so those accustomed to scrolling down and easily clicking into their Starred emails (for example) will likely be reverting back with dreams dashed. See if it’s in your Settings pane and give it a go — who knows, it might be love.

Gmail’s Preview Pane brings ‘tablet-like’ layout to your browser, but kills Multiple Inboxes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceOfficial Gmail Blog  | Email this | Comments

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Aug 03

FCC measures US wireline advertised broadband speeds, fiber dominates cable and DSL

Posted in: cable, government, research, statistics, stats, study, Today's Chili, us, usa, web

Ever wonder if the speeds your ISP advertises are actually what you’re getting while reloading Engadget all day? The FCC did, and decided to team up with 13 major broadband providers in the US to test how they performed from February to June of this year. Notably, during peak hours the average continuous download speeds of fiber connections were 14 percent faster than advertised, while cable and DSL were slower than claimed by 8 and 18 percent, respectively. Upload speeds also varied, with DSL again dipping the lowest at 95-percent of what’s advertised — might be time to ask your phone-based ISP for a partial refund, no? In addition to sustained speeds, the FCC analyzed consumer connections’ latency and the effect of ISP speed boost tech on activities like VoIP, gaming, and video streaming.

In concluding its research, the Commission noted that it should be easy to get tools in users’ hands for keeping better tabs on ISP-provided services, without needing to contact customer frustrations relations. The study is chock full of even more graphs and stats, which you’ll find by hitting that source link below. Now, if only we could get those speeds on par with our friends across the Atlantic.

Continue reading FCC measures US wireline advertised broadband speeds, fiber dominates cable and DSL

FCC measures US wireline advertised broadband speeds, fiber dominates cable and DSL originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 07:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Electronista, Gigaom  |  sourceFCC  | Email this | Comments

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