Latest Gear Live Videos
Check out TakeThisLollipop immediately for a creepy thrill
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Videos
You know how they say that you shouldn't put all your business out there on the Internet, especially nothing that you wouldn't want to fall into the wrong hands? TakeThisLollipop grabs onto this concept and takes it to the next spooky level by connecting to your Facebook account and creating a short movie based on you. We won't ruin it, but it's definitely a cool trick, and we enjoyed viewing the results when we did it.
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Comcast Internet Essentials brings broadband to low-income families for $10 a month
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Corporate News, Internet
Comcast is tapping into its altruistic side a little bit and deploying a brand-new service tier, one that's designed to bring the Internet to families that would otherwise be unable to pony up $40 to $60 for the company's lowest tiered plan.
Dubbed "Internet Essentials," Comcast's new plan will cost a family only $9.95 per month for a connection that features 1.5 Mbps download and 384 Kbps upload speeds. There's a guarantee of no price increases after-the-fact, as well as no activation fees or equipment rental fees for families signed up for the program. Enrollees will even be able to purchase a netbook computer via the Internet Essentials program for $149.99 (plus tax), and Comcast is offering free online and in-person "Internet training."
To join the program, however, families have to meet four different criteria: They have to be located in an area where Comcast can actually deliver Internet service (obviously), one of their children has to be receiving free school lunches via the National School Lunch Program, families must not have had Comcast Internet service up to 90 days prior to requesting to join the program, and families must not have an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned Comcast equipment.
Get a preview of the new YouTube
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Design, Google, Internet
YouTube is offering a preview of a possible redesign, and if you wanna get in on the action to check it out now, you can enable it yourself right now. They're calling is Cosmic Panda, and it definitely brings much more focus to the actual video content across the site, giving much more real estate to the video content (which is what you're there for, right?) and highlighting related content as well. Head on over to the link below to enable the Cosmic Panda design for yourself, and be sure to subscribe to Gear Live's YouTube while you're at it, kay?
The YouTube redesign follows two other Google property redesigns that we saw last week with Gmail and Google Calendar.
Read More 
| YouTube Cosmic Panda
Google Calendar picks up new Google+ inspired minimalist design
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Design, Google, Internet
Looks like Google Calendar is also getting a new redesign to put it in line with Google+, similar to the redesign that Gmail is getting. You should be seeing the new design live in Google Calendar now, but know that there aren't any new features to go along with it. It's purely cosmetic. Do you like it?
iCloud: Can Apple make the cloud mainstream?
I've long since stopped kvetching over the number of things Apple chief executive Steve Jobs can attach an "i" to and call his own. The maverick CEO's track record is just too darn good. Now that we know that Apple's iCloud is a real thing, there's no sense in wondering how Jobs can have the gall to rebrand cloud computing. I'd rather focus on what Apple will do with the cl...er... iCloud now that Apple has adopted it as its own.
Is Apple new to the cloud? If you accept that at the most fundamental level, cloud computing is simply a matter of thin clients (hardware or software) accessing Internet-based services and intelligence, then the answer is no. Consider Apple's reliance on streaming services for Apple TV's TV show and movie rentals, or the way genius playlists work.
iCloud, which Apple will officially unveil at next week's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), will be more, and streaming content is only the beginning. Obviously, we expect some sort of cloud-based, access-anywhere music library. Apple may even cave and offer a subscription-based music service. These plans will only succeed if Apple has done what Google failed to do with Google Music Beta: convince the major labels to let consumers store and access purchased (and rented) music from central servers.
I think music labels fear this not only because they worry about losing further control of the digital bits that make up their vast song libraries, but because no one will ever buy more than one copy of a song again, and if they get subscription access, they're done buying music—period.
Click to continue reading iCloud: Can Apple make the cloud mainstream?
Wi-Fi reduces broadband speeds by 30 percent
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Broadband, Wireless / WiFi
Wired broadband is nearly 30 percent faster than wireless broadband within the same household, an Internet research company has found.
UK-based research firm Epitiro surveyed 2,761 U.S. broadband consumers between November 2010 and February 2011. Forty-five percent used a wired connection to their broadband routers and 55 percent connected via Wi-Fi. The respondents were asked to embed a speed test application on their computers in order to measure download times.
Wired download speeds were 29.7 percent faster than Wi-Fi connections. The average actual speed was 7.4 Mbps for wired connections, compared to 5.2 Mbps for wireless ones. Furthermore, latency was 10-20 percent higher over Wi-Fi. Packet loss and jitter were also detected.
Why is Wi-Fi so much slower than older wired technology? According to Epitiro, wireless speeds are degraded because most wireless routers, by default, are set to the same channel, which causes "radio congestion." Signal strength is also hindered by physical objects like walls, doors, floors, furniture, even people. Other common radio-based devices, like microwave ovens and baby monitors, also hog your home's wireless spectrum.
With more consumers now using wireless connections than the technically superior wired connections, Epitiro concluded that consumers prioritized "quality of experience" over the "quality of service." Put another way, consumers still prefer the convenience of mobility over the extra minutes of download time saved. Furthermore, Web browsing times were roughly the same between types of connections.
Click to continue reading Wi-Fi reduces broadband speeds by 30 percent
Google Chrome extension blocks content farms from search results
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Google, Internet, Software
Google announced a new extension for their Chrome browser, which allows users to block specific sites from search results. As an example, they show that when looking for a specific query, some content farms may have top spots in the engine, but you may not want to see these results. With the extension, you'll be able to block those results, never seeing that site appear in search results anymore. This extension only works on Chrome right now, and is being called an early test.
Read More | Google Blog
Metered Internet coming to Canada [Update: Maybe not!]
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Broadband, Internet
UPDATE: Looks like Canada officials aren't gonna let this one slide - good on them! The CRTC "should be under no illusion—the Prime Minister and Minister of Industry will reverse this decision unless the CRTC does it itself," a member of Canada's conservative government told the Toronto Star on Wednesday.
"Frankly, a decision like this is clearly not in the best interest of consumers," the unnamed senior official added. "This is a bread-and-butter issue."In a move that may well be a sign of things to come in the US and elswhere, Canada's CRTC (the equivalent to the FCC) made a very controversial decision recently, which allows incumbent telcos like Bell Canada to enact usage based billing, not only to their own customers, but to those of the local ISPs that resell bandwidth. Since Bell Canada is the major telephone company in Canada, that basically means that this applies to all local DSL providers. As a striking example, TekSavvy, which is a local ISP in Ontario, is forced to bring down the bandwidth cap from 200GB per month to 25GB. It's likely that most Canadians will feel the much increased charges at some point if they wish to use the Internet for large downloads, such as streaming Netflix, downloading games on Steam, buying music on iTunes, or anything that requires a lot of bandwidth.
Since then, there's been a lot of grassroots movements to protest these new rules. The group OpenMedia has a petition which has been signed over 350,000 times so far, as well as a good account of what goes on politically and in the media about the situation. Some point out at the conflict of interest that incumbent telcos are in, like in Bell Canada's case, the fact that they own the CTV television network, and thus compete directly with Netflix. The Prime Minister has heard the complaints and will review the CRTC's decision. This could be a major turning point for the Internet, first across Canada, and potentially elsewhere too.
Read More | StopTheMeter
Will the US get an Internet Kill Switch like Egypt?
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Editorial, Internet
With reports of Egypt's government completing shutting down the Internet in the country, talk about an "Internet kill switch" bill in the U.S. has reemerged. Could it happen here?
The bill in question is the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, a cyber-security measure introduced in June by Sen. Joseph Lieberman. It was an over-arching cyber-security measure that, among other things, would create an office of cyberspace policy within the White House and a new cyber-security center within the Homeland Security Department.
A provision that got the most attention, however, was one that gave the president the power to "authorize emergency measures to protect the nation's most critical infrastructure if a cyber vulnerability is being exploited or is about to be exploited."
Some interpreted that to mean that the president would have the authority to shut off the Internet at random. Lieberman refuted the "Internet kill switch" assertion as "misinformation" during an appearance on CNN, and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which he chairs, later published a "myth vs. reality" fact sheet on the bill.
Click to continue reading Will the US get an Internet Kill Switch like Egypt?
The Egypt Internet blackout
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Editorial, Internet
As the violence and protests develop in Egypt, Renesys, an Internet research firm, published a fascinating overview of what happened to the country's Internet connections. At 22:34 UTC, all the entry points into the country were cut in a matter of minutes. The four major Internet providers in Egypt were ordered to cut all links, by removing the 3,500 routes that packets could take, leading to no valid path for the traffic to reach any addresses inside of the country, save for one small network. Almost a day later, they estimate that around 93% of traffic is still cut off.
Unlike earlier protests in Tunisia and other countries, where governments tried unsuccessfully to block invidual sites like Twitter and Facebook, people still finding ways around the blocks through proxies, this time the complete isolation from the global Internet was an unprecedented event. It's still not known what will happen to the economy of the country if these measures stay for longer than a few days.
Read More | Renesys
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