comcast ditches 250gb data cap, tests tiered pricing
the consumer advocacy group public knowledge is encouraged by comcast's step toward more flexibility in its data plan for consumers. but the group said it is taking a wait-and-see approach to making any final judgment on the new pricing model.
"comcast recognized the need to increase the cap on data 'usage' that the company set in 2008 and to experiment with additional flexibility for customers," harold feld, legal director of public knowledge, said in a statement. "as time warner cable's recent decision to offer a capped plan as a discounted alternative shows, more flexible pricing plans can benefit consumers where they offer opportunities for savings without compromising quality or an open internet. we await further details of comcast's plan so that subscribers can fully assess how these changes will impact their user experience."
netflix said that the increased data cap is a step in the right direction. but it maintains that comcast must not be allowed to favor its own services over those of its potential competitors offering alternative video services over the internet.
"increasing the data cap is a small step in the right direction," the company said in a statement. "but unfortunately comcast continues to treat its own internet delivered video different under the cap than other internet delivered video. we continue to stand by the principle that internet service providers should treat all providers of video services equally."
updated 1:04 p.m. pt:
this story has been updated multiple times with comments from comcast executives, netflix, and public knowledge. background information has also been added.
stunning iphone app is our first taste of the new google
the big question mark is how well it will scale. right now, google+ is mostly inhabited by a rabid group of technophiles so the updates don't flow by nearly as fast as twitter. obviously, that also depends on how many people and who you follow. but, if google+ were to take off and people started posting more, i think i'd have to follow fewer people, check google+ more often, or simply find that it wasn't as effective for scanning updates since each google+ post takes up about 3-4 times as much screen space as a twitter update, for example.
the other big question is why google released this redesign for the iphone before releasing a version for google's own
android platform. the original version of the google+ mobile app was nearly identical on the two platforms.
gundotra said, "it's just the way schedule worked out."
the google+ team is building additional functionality into the android app. the iphone app with the core functionality was finished before the android app was ready, so gundotra made the decision to go ahead and release it. however, even in the blog post he wrote announcing the redesigned app, he teased that the android app was coming in a "few weeks" and that would include some "extra surprises."
when i pressed gundotra, he wouldn't reveal any hints about the additional functionality in the android version of the app. he simply said, "i think you'll be delighted by the few more surprises we have in store."
but, he also all-but-guaranteed that a
tablet app was also in the works. "it's one of our most requested pieces of feedback, and we pay very close attention to feedback," he said.
bigger implications
design has never been a core competency at google. in fact, the company has almost been anti-design from the beginning. in many ways, the secret of the success of google.com has always been its sparseness. it has had virtually no design except for the multi-colored google logo pared with a simple text entry field, and then when you click "google search" or hit enter you get a straight list of search results without much additional clutter on the page.
5 lessons from a lost iphone
2. i'll always pay for my nyc cabs with credit cards. turns out the taxi medallion number (the unique number displayed on top of all yellow cabs in manhattan) is recorded with every credit card purchase, meaning you have way of tracking down cabs you've taken. it was also the first time i had a reason to use mayor bloomberg's much-promoted 311 system, which you can use to report lost property (and much, much more) by dialing 311 or by filling in a form. very impressive service -- and it works. one digital way to note the medallion number: check-in via foursquare even though taxis aren't official venues on the service, you can likely find your cab on it, or create a "venue" yourself, like in this example. the non-digital way, of course, is to just ask for a receipt every time you pay via cash or credit card.
3. i got a lot done without my iphone. not having the distraction of the iphone turned out mostly to be a good thing. the instinct to check your smartphone every few minutes means that you are wasting a good deal of time and are distracted from the task at hand. you also pay a lot more attention to people you are with, instead of looking down at your phone.
between losing my phone and president obama's graduation speech at barnard college shutting down the columbia journalism school (where i work) for the day, i've had plenty of time to work on my most important task this week: getting the names right for 300+ graduates (for 40 countries and 35 states) at our wednesday afternoon ceremony. i practice the names (and hometowns) for about 2-3 weeks. with a name like mine, it's critical that i get others' names right. not having my iphone helped a lot.
4. being without a mobile phone is like being in the early '90s again. i recently met a professor in his 30s who doesn't carry a cell phone of any kind. he says people can leave him voice mail and/or e-mail him as necessary. he doesn't miss carrying around a device all the time. i marveled at his approach, not knowing i was going to be in his situation for a 48-hour period myself. the really hard part, it turns out, has to do with plans outside your office.
yesterday, for example, i had to meet someone at a new address, and, for the first time in four years, i had to write down on a piece of paper the exact address before leaving the house. otherwise, i usually have just a vague idea of where i'm heading and look up exact coordinates as i get closer. also, while heading to our school's graduating cruise at a downtown pier, i ran into massive gridlock caused by president obama's visit, but had no way to tell my colleagues that i was going to be late.
5. i really, really missed my iphone. you get so used to having your smartphone with you at all times that you don't realize all the things you use it for. i keep up with the news (the real kind and that of my friends) using my hootsuite, flipboard and facebook apps. i take photos throughout my day to post on facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. i check-in using foursquare. i record five-minute audio interviews on soundcloud with interesting people for a series i call "5xsree". i shoot and share 15-second video clips using tout. i do a dozen searches a day using the google app. i read parts of a e-book or two using kindle app's whispersync (which means you don't lose your spot on your real kindle or the ipad. and on and on and on. i even found myself in front of the presidential motorcade for the first time in my life (on his way to the airport after his fundraiser at the rubin museum of art), but was unable to snap a photo or video.
over christmas last year, my family and i went on a cruise that took me offline for seven days for the first time in 15+ years. while i had withdrawal symptoms, i did have my iphone with me to take pictures and jot down thoughts and such. i was forced off social media this year for an entire day by my students for the annual #silencesree scholarship fundraiser (we raised $1,000+ from 100+ people around the world). but this particular experience has been different from both of those situations..
netflix disgruntled customers rejoining service
a netflix executive said today the company has taken its brand hit for pricing changes last year, but a third of new subscribers are former customers who are rejoining the service.
speaking at the j.p. morgan technology media and telecom conference, netflix cfo david wells talked about churn, customer satisfaction, and the overall vibe around the company's brand. wells sounded like a person who thinks the worst is over. netflix showed improvement in the first quarter, but spooked investors with talk about competition.
netflix is a few months shy of the first anniversary of its price increases, which went over like a lead balloon with customers.
according to a transcript of his talk, wells said:
best buy write down your e-mail password (and give it to us)
one of the great intellectual new talents of this century has been training one's mind to remember all one's passwords.
because writing them down always seems so very dangerous.
however, it seems that best buy's geek squad is rather keen for you to write down your password and, um, pass it to them.
ars technica's jon brodkin says he experienced this revealing phenomenon when he shopping with his brother for a new computer at best buy in scottsdale, ariz.
as his brother completed his purchase of a fine hp
windows 7 machine, brodkin says his brother was given a "pc recommendation worksheet." on it was a little box for you to write down your e-mail password.
yes, it was right below the boxes for name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address.
brodkin says that he questioned the best buy employee who reportedly told his brother to ignore that box. still, brodkin and his brother asked and received a clean sheet.
asked to explain this oddity, best buy said that its geek squad staff liked to have the passwords so that they can set up the user's password for logging in to their new purchase. so, in fact, it's where you're supposed to write your desired password, rather than your current one.
surely, though, some people might not realize this. it's right there below your e-mail address.
surely, you might imagine, once it's written down, lots of people would take a look at it. and your address would be there too. doesn't that sound a trifle difficult?
and, wait, isn't best buy the place that one gentleman accused recently of falsely outing him on facebook after he left this phone there?
in any case, when you use windows, couldn't the geek squadder set up a temporary password, which a customer could then alter? you know, privately.
best buy told ars that it was reviewing the piece of paper. which might make some wonder who had reviewed the piece of paper before it was given to customers.
google bringing new smarts to search with knowledge graph
the new, fact-enabled google will also help you disambiguate search results. if you're looking for "kings," for example, google will guess that you might be referring to the hockey team, the nba team, or the tv show, and you'll have the opportunity, alongside the usual search results, to select one of those topics to narrow down your search results.
menzel says that before the rollout of knowledge graph, google didn't reflect any "knowledge that a word refers to anything in the world." while some keywords would fire off specialized results with data in them (like searching for a sports score, a city's weather, or flight information), those results weren't linked together in a web of knowledge. they were islands. knowledge graph changes that.
"we would like to be able to model everything," says menzel. "anything to get you to the information that solves your task as fast as we can. we want to guide you through your query a bit like a map."
stealing traffic?
google, of course, is built on top of the open web of sites and pages. that's where google gets its data and it's also the information economy that google supports. knowledge graph provides data to users without requiring them to go to the sites that the data may come from. one might deduce that knowledge graph would end up hurting sites by stealing traffic from them.
menzel says that's not the case. "we found that by doing better information summaries, the vast majority of the time people don't just get facts and walk away. actually, it entices them to go a little deeper. and now they have the time for it since their research was faster."
he does acknowledge that in some cases, the most satisfactory outcome to a user's search may be a knowledge graph data point. "we want to point people to the most relevant info. occasionally that is just a fact." he says it's google's mission to get people those facts as quickly and efficiently as possible. but it's against mission to harm web publishers. "we really respect the ecosystem. it makes no sense for us to obviate the web," he says.
not the first online knowledge engine
other companies have tried to add context to search results. there's also a rich history of startups who have tried to "understand" web pages. powerset is one; it was acquired by microsoft. and then there was the unfortunate failure of cuil.
even google has previously tried to create a database of things, as opposed to simply an index of web pages. in 2010, google acquired metaweb, the creator of the knowledge base freebase. menzel says freebase is one of the most important "concept
cars" from google's past that ultimately became the knowledge graph.
tech from google's squared labs project also ended up in knowledge graph. squared attempted to extract structured data from non-structured web pages.
google has also tried its hand at creating its own topic dossiers before: the knol project was conceptually similar to wikipedia. it was discontinued in late 2011.
as far as the disambiguation technology in knowledge graph, menzel points to the technology behind the search query spelling corrector as "the ultimate grandfather of all this."
what this latest knowledge extraction and display project brings to search users, menzel says, is "comprehensiveness and sheer volume." also, he points out that google will show just that data that is most relevant to a query, making use of google's expertise in ranking search results.
menzel pitches knowledge graph without using the word "semantic" even once. while he says, "i dream of the semantic web," he takes pains to point out that what google is announcing today is not what people talk about when they discuss semantic web concepts. "we do continue to work on how to make search semantic," he says, "but talking about it brings out the crazy people."
How to Use Multimeter to Check a Circuit Breaker
A circuit breaker can ensure the security of your home or working biulding and prevent a possible fire accident.Multimeter is an useful tool to test the performance of your circuit breaker. Here are some simple steps that you can follow in using multimeter to check your breaker.
1. Open your circuit box. You can easily notice which breaker you should fix by taking a look at the label. You would find a bunch of breakers
2. Turn off all the appliances and lights that are being powered by the certain breaker that you want to check. It is very important to prevent any serious problems such as damaged appliances and lights or even fire.
3. Put on necessary safety protection. A pair of rubber-soled shoes is ideal on and make sure that the area near your circuit box is completely dry. Besides, you should also be very careful off puddles that you might find on the ground.
4. Unscrew the metal frame around your breakers. Simply use your screwdriver to unscrew it and you can set it aside. Behind the metal frame, you will find wiring that run through the breakers and also the breakers themselves.
5. Set your multimeter to Volts AC. Mostly, wiring systems in home use alternating current, so the Volts AC setting let the multimeter to read the current correctly. DC is usually used in testing the voltage of battery-powered electronics.
6. Touch one prong of the multimeter to the terminal screw of the breaker and then touch another prong on the breaker to the ground screw. Your multimeter will give you the readout on how much electricity that flows through your breaker. The ideal readout will be either 120 or 240 volts. Replace your breaker if your meter does not read anything.
Advantages of Wireless Computer Speakers
Wireless computer speakers can facilitate your computer using experience. There are wireless computer speakers that can easily be located on your terrace, porch, veranda or pool-side.With any personal computer you can pre-format play listings and get them sent via your wireless computer speakers. There is a wide range of selections, from entry level to professional models.
To decide which model to buy, you can first go on the net and study via search engines or shopping websites and examine buyer product star ratings and review selling prices. This is a useful tool in deciding which type of wireless computer speakers may perhaps be ideal for you. Right after your analysis you will certainly be an educated buyer and be far better situated to initiate the appropriate selection in your purchase of wireless computer speakers.
The most outstanding advantage of wireless computer speaker is convenience. TThe various other strengths are that wireless computer speakers are a major acustic enhancement over the models that came standard with your desktop computer. Additionally, when compared, in contrast to laptop speakers, the inclusion of wireless computer speakers is by leaps and bounds a substantial change in the audio quality that comes from most laptops.
The wireless computer speakers is cost-effective, convenient and fast equipment providing with you a brand-new experience. You may consider update your ordinary speakers to the wireless computer speaker and truly enjoy the advantages it brings to you.
Tips to Maintain Computer Hardware and Clean Computer Fan
You may regulately clear your computer system and software to clear all the system trash and ensure a efficient reaction of your computer. However, one thing most people will neglect is maintaining the hardware. Once covered with dust, the machine can generate and accumulate the heat and hurt your whole system. Since the replacing cost is high, it is better for you to maintain the computer hardware regulately as well.
The most important component of a computer's hardware system is the fan, which is located on the computer's CPU unit and when that thing gets clogged with dirt and dust, it can run down a computer faster than you can say, More importantly, the fan is responsible for keeping a computer's motor cool and this motor is what keeps the computer's hard drive fast.
KTo prevent the fan from getting dirty or dusty in the first place, you should use the computer in a dust-free environment and never smoke around it. Nicotine and tar mean certain death when it comes to computer fans, however should you find a need to clean the fan, do so with extreme care.
It's quite easy to cause more damage from cleaning so if you're not comfortable with cleaning your PC yourself, take it to a shop for servicing. Otherwise, you can unplug and disassemble the computer to do it yourself.
You'll need a can of compressed air and an anti-static rag to remove stubborn clumps of dust. Hold the can perfectly vertical and spray the fan being careful not to spray the dust off the fan onto other sensitive parts of the computer like circuit boards or inside the motor casing. Wipe up remaining dust with your anti-static rag and then reassemble the computer.
Preventing dust from entering the computer is extremely important and will reduce the need to open and dust your system in the first place. The severity of outside elements (smoking, humidity, pets, etc.) will ultimately determine how often you'll need to de-dust your machine. But as an average, you shouldn't need to perform this procedure any more than once or twice a year.
The entire exercise should take no more than twenty minutes tops and once complete, you'll immediately see and hear the difference in your machine. The computer's keyboard and mouse will run more smoothly, hardware won't take as long to connect, and the entire machine won't be as loud as one that's corroded with ugly dust bunnies.
Remember, never use a vacuum clearner to clean your computer!
Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes on Computer Industry
Steve Jobs is definitely one of the most influencial and talented leader in business and technology fields. He is a passionate master with enormous innovation and original views. Below are some of the famous quote of Steve Jobs and maybe we could tget some clues and prediction of the tendency of computer industry.
1. “Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won’t work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are the “slash q-zs” and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel––one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about.”
2. “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”
3. “The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.
4. “It’s like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there’s some fundamental technology shift, it’s just over.”
5. The desktop metaphor was invented because one, you were a stand-alone device, and two, you had to manage your own storage. That’s a very big thing in a desktop world. And that may go away. You may not have to manage your own storage. You may not store much before too long.
6. “But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea."
