“The Internet now has 555 million websites, up from just 255 million at the end of 2010,” reports Digital Trends.
According to Web monitoring service Pingdom, 300 million sites were created in the last year alone.
Additional stats: there are currently 2.1 billion Internet users worldwide, 45 percent of users are under 25, North America leads with most citizens online at 73.3 percent penetration (although Asia has more total numbers), Facebook has more than 800 million users and there are 100 active Twitter users.
“With 39 percent market share, Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser in the world,” explains the post. “Chrome is now second, with 28 percent. And Firefox is a close third, at 25 percent. Safari only accounts for 6 percent of the browser market.”
The Pingdom report offers a thorough breakdown of Internet stats for 2011, including some helpful pie charts.
Microsoft and other gaming manufacturers are reportedly considering incorporating an anti-used game system into their new consoles.
Gamers expect to be able to buy cheaper used games and sell back their new games, but Wired notes, “the death of used games is inevitable.”
“But the success of digital-only, one-owner games on PC, phones, tablets and social networks must surely be helping to change consumers’ attitudes about what a game system is ‘supposed’ to do. So as soon as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo et al. think they can get away with it, the disc or cartridge will simply disappear, replaced entirely by digital game sales,” explains the article.
“What we are possibly looking at now is an interim period in which the disc as a delivery method is still around but it becomes more like a PC game, which are sold with one-time-use keys that grant one owner a license to play the game on his machine.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean that used games will disappear; it’s possible that vendors like GameStop will pay sellers less for used games and use that money to buy new codes from the publisher for each used game it sells.
Also, the articles notes that discs will still exist to store a library of games, “but it can fill that role while still being only tied to one owner.”
Wireless Direct from Hewlett Packard enables people to print from iOS devices with AirPrint, even without the name or password of the local wireless network.
Apple’s AirPrint standard lets iPhones and iPads print from any networked printer without setup, configuration or driver installation.
All of HP printers include AirPrint-supported ePrint, which enables wireless printing, printing documents from anywhere in the world using email, accessing documents in the cloud, and other features.
With Wireless Direct, printing is becoming entirely seamless: “Wireless Direct-enabled printers broadcast their own SSID, allowing iOS devices (or any Wi-Fi enabled computer) to connect directly without knowing any details of the local network. Users can choose ‘HP-Print-4f-LaserJet’ as their network, for instance, and as far as your iPhone is concerned, it is connected to a Wi-Fi network with an AirPrint-compatible printer,” explains ArsTechnica.
Wireless Direct should prove useful in situations where network passwords aren’t commonly shared.
Google just announced an expansion to its Business Photos program, an initiative to take high-res and panoramic pictures of businesses (inside and out) for Google Maps and Google Places profiles.
For those companies interested, the program connects owners with local “Trusted Photographers.” The photographers then take pictures according to Google’s rules, and agree on payment individually with the businesses.
“It’s pretty systematic,” says Chris Favis, a Google Trusted Photographer based in Orlando, Florida. “Google loans us the cameras, and within the business you have to follow the rules, like getting the set of panos [panoramic shots] as soon as you walk in. The timing can be complicated — it’s a very specialized thing.”
As of now, only 14 U.S. cities and locations in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and France have Trusted Photographers, but Google will expand the program based on demand.
Organizing with the hashtag #TwitterBlackout, Twitter users collaborated to speak out (or rather go silent) on January 28 for a day-long protest against Twitter’s new plan to block tweets and accounts from certain countries.
“The protest follows less than two weeks after thousands of websites, including Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit, protested two controversial anti-piracy bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, by shutting down or posting notices outlining the downsides of the proposed legislation,” reports The Huffington Post.
“Yet this online protest, and others like it, have relied on Twitter as a means of communicating between protestors and buttressing support for their movements. It remains to be seen whether silencing tweets will call attention to the cause, or whether the mute accounts will go unnoticed.”
Twitter said it remains committed to free speech online: “We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t. The Tweets must continue to flow,” Twitter wrote on its blog.
Facebook could be filing for an initial public offering this week and is “close” to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter, although rival Goldman Sachs may still “play a significant role.”
“At a valuation between $75 billion and $100 billion, Facebook is looking to raise as much as $10 billion, said people familiar with the matter,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The final valuation will be determined by a variety of factors, people familiar with the matter cautioned, such as investor demand for social media, the IPO market and the health of the European economy.”
In 2004, Google’s offering became the largest U.S. Internet IPO (and third in the world), which sold at $1.9 billion with the company valued at $23 billion.
“A $10 billion Facebook offering would rank fourth among U.S. companies, behind Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless. At a $100 billion valuation, Facebook would be worth about the same as McDonald’s Corp. and nearly half of Google Inc.,” according to WSJ.
The planned IPO is reportedly targeted for sometime between late spring and early summer 2012.
Using white space spectrum, “Super Wi-Fi” is rolling out to Hanover County in North Carolina.
In 2010, the FCC approved devices to run using this spectrum but instituted regulations on manufacturers based on concerns that the spectrum would interfere with TV signals. Now, the current requirements only mandate that the device have geolocation capabilities and access to the spectrum database.
“The white space will operate at 40 milliwatts alongside these stations,” SlashGear explains. “Without interference, the network will operate at 100 milliwatts, and users should see much faster speeds.”
If all goes well in Hanover, Super Wi-Fi could expand across the nation. “Actual purchase for these white space spectrums will be very competitive. They are essentially untouched television stations, so all broadcasting and wireless companies will be potential buyers,” SlashGear notes.
According to the GSMA, worldwide association of mobile operators and related companies, more than half of the devices launched at CES were Internet connected.
“GSMA calculated that more than 90 percent of TVs at CES, 70 percent of automotive devices, 44 percent of healthcare devices and 30 percent of cameras were connected,” reports ReadWriteWeb.
The association predicts 24 billion connected devices by 2020, up from 9 billion today. Automobile connectivity is expected to be an emerging product category.
It also estimates that connected devices will become a $1.2 trillion market by 2020.
“At this year’s CES, more than 40 percent of the connected devices announced were gadgets such as laptops and smartphones. The rest were non-gadgets, such as those in the ‘home lifestyle’ category, which, according to the GSMA, made up 30 percent of the connected devices at CES. The products in the home lifestyle category included connected TVs, smart refrigerators and Internet-connected washers and dryers.”
GSMA has labeled this trend “The Connected Life,” defining it as “a world where all technology devices intelligently connect.”
The ReadWriteWeb post features several interesting charts and infographics from GSMA.
UK-based Juniper Research is forecasting that sales of ultrabooks will increase at three times the rate of tablets over the next five years.
“However, tablet volume will remain higher, with 253 million expected to be shipped in 2016, compared with 178 million ultrabooks,” reports MediaPost.
Ultrabook was a major buzzword at CES in Las Vegas, where a number of compelling new models debuted.
Intel, a major proponent of the sleek lightweight laptops, expects more than 75 new ultrabooks to launch in 2012, including models with 14- and 15-inch screens.
“Samsung, Lenovo, Acer and Vizio are among the manufacturers that have jumped on the ultrabook bandwagon,” explains the post. “Among other findings, the study said Windows 8 will play a key role in driving ultrabook adoption, with extended battery life, an always-on connection and other features coming with an updated version of Microsoft’s operating system.”
Google announced that beginning on March 1st, the company will combine data about users’ activities on most of their sites and services including YouTube, Android, Gmail and the search engine. This aggregated user profile is designed for “a simpler, more intuitive Google experience,” according to the company.
While this might lead to new services, it will also create a detailed picture to better tailor ads. There will be no way to opt out unless users are not logged in.
GigaOM writes that the new policy “seems to have highlighted for many a crucial question: Is Google having all of that info about you — including Web searches, Google Analytics data from your website, even location information — a good thing?”
This sharing may be problematic for some. As GigaOM points out, “for those who want to ‘compartmentalize’ their lives, with some services reserved for personal use and others for business or public use, the pooling of information is a very real threat.”
This new policy is a break with Google’s previous privacy position. Analysts say that Google is responding to Apple and Facebook which have more unified ecosystems. Still, this new approach will invite antitrust scrutiny as Google is the dominant online search engine.
Google has already faced the Federal Trade Commission over privacy issues and recently received heavy criticism about its personalized G+ results in searches.
The co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, Rep. Edward Markey, said: “It is imperative that users will be able to decide whether they want their information shared across the spectrum of Google’s offerings.”
In the wake of CES, analysts continue to report on emerging trends such as smartphones, tablets and connected TVs.
“However, in the content creation industry, the big trends heading into 2012 are more esoteric — concepts that will impact consumers without them ever knowing, or caring, much about them,” reports SMPTE Newswatch.
“That’s because, as SMPTE President Peter Ludé suggests, all the amazing new ways for consumers to download, display, and manipulate content more sharply in the home or on handheld devices are beside the point unless content creators keep developing newer/better ways to make, format, and distribute that content for all those platforms in the first place.”
SMPTE Newswatch offers this compelling report on the key trends expected to have an impact on content creators in 2012. The report comes from a recent discussion with SMPTE’s Ludé, who also serves as SVP of Engineering at Sony Electronics, and Wendy Aylsworth, SMPTE Executive VP and Senior VP of Technology at Warner Bros. Technical Operations.
The article addresses the following areas: 4K, high frame rates, 3D, processing power, storage, streamlining standards and more.
For anyone who goes by the California Science Center just south of USC, you may have seen this curious-looking CHIP Solar House, a prototype of a highly efficient, futuristic living space.
The “Compact, Hyper-Insulated Prototype” was created by students from CalTech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
“CHIP’s flexible, stepped interior adopts the ethic of ‘doing-more-with-less,’ allowing a single, continuous volume to perform in a variety of different ways to serve the occupants’ daily needs. The program is divided into a series of platforms which are terraced upward and inwards, from the most public to most private. The distribution of program from north-to-south, and high-to-low, facilitates the occupants’ daily rhythms: a progression downhill in the morning in the form of sleep/groom/dress/eat/live – and vice versa in the evening,” the team explained.
CHIP produces all the energy it requires and can even save and sell back power to the grid in some parts of the country.
An Xbox Kinect command station enables occupants to use hand gestures to operate home systems. Also, a 3D camera tracks movement and turns off lights when an area becomes empty.
The Mashable post includes pictures. The house is on display until May 31.
In 1963, six years before “Sesame Street,” Jim Henson produced a short film called “Robot.”
Originally produced for business seminars, AT&T recently made the lost film available online.
“The short tells an archetypal man and machine story,” reports Forrest Wickman for Slate. “Still, it’s unexpected to see a robot imagined in 1963 not just as a possible weapon of war or spaceship pilot but as a means for ‘digesting vast oceans of information.'”
It’s interesting to speculate whether the film reveals Henson’s own thinking about smart machines. Nevertheless, it does showcase his talent creating an entertaining personality, an ability that would later serve him well.
“I’m struck not only by the robot’s campy resemblance to the tin-can creations of movies like ‘Forbidden Planet,’ but also by its hilariously open disdain for humans,” writes Wickman, “which reminds me above all of Flight of the Conchords’ much more recent ‘The Humans Are Dead.'”
SITA and Orange have announced a joint proof-of-concept NFC-based check-in solution designed for air travelers.
The new NFC-capable SIM card allows travelers to get through check-ins and security, enter lounges and board planes without worries of bad service or batteries dying. “And because you’re not futzing with loading a webpage, nor relying on a fussy image-based scanner, the tech should mean less time spent waiting at checkpoints,” reports Engadget.
With the NFC SIM, there is no need to run an application or to have a data connection. The communication works with the phone turned off and simply requires the user to tap their phone on the airport’s NFC sensor.
The companies hope this will reduce wait times and streamline usage of mobile boarding passes.
The 4-minute video explains NFC technology and shows the card in action.
Apple reported record-breaking earnings for its last quarter yesterday. The company generated $46.3 billion in revenue with a profit of $13.06 billion, reports AllThingsD.
The sales figures: 37.04 million iPhones, a 128 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago; 15.43 million iPads, up 111 percent; and 5.2 million Macs, an increase of 26 percent.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the figures represent record-breaking numbers for iPhones, iPads and Macs. The iPod was the only product to see a drop; Apple sold 15.4 million units, down 21 percent.
Apple also announced that by the end of this month, iOS developers will have earned more than $4 billion in total sales.
In a related Tech.pinions post, analyst Ben Bajarin suggests “Apple is just getting started,” citing continued innovation and new markets in Asia.
“There are still industries for Apple to disrupt,” he writes. “There are still new products to be made for new types of customers. We are only half way through this 50+ year journey of bringing technology to the masses… Lots of OEMs better get their tablet strategies in order.”