Companies make the silliest product launch videos, supposing the world's an unhappier place without them: "This is Chrome...it's the faster, simpler way to use the web on your computer," declares Google's latest. "But what if you're away from your computer doing stuff...you love to do stuff, what then?"
Google unveils a new project it describes as “a forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork” to tackle everything from cancer to climate change.
I can’t say I’ve seen a single app crash on my iPhone 4 since I upgraded to iOS 5 last October, but a new study from app-monitoring outfit Crittercism found that apps running on Apple’s newest mobile platform for iPhones, iPads and its iPod Touch media players is presently more prone to app crashes than Google’s Android.
Today YouTube announced that the site gets four billion video views every single day. That’s a 25% increase over the last eight months.
Say you want to start a Google Account so you can use Google Calendar or create personalized searches. Now, you automatically get a Gmail and Google+ account, apparently.
Google engineers have slowed down the search engine’s web crawlers, meaning sites that are blacked out today in protest of SOPA won’t suffer as much in Google’s search rankings.
Like Kanye West at the MTV Video Music Awards, memes have burst onto the internet and refuse to leave, no matter how annoying you might find them. Before, you had to have some minor knowledge of Photoshop or at least know the url of a meme generator site to contribute. Now, all you need is Google+.
With all the concern and conversation surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) these days, you’re forgiven if you forgot about Carrier IQ and the possibility that your cellphone contains hidden keystroke-tracking software monitoring every click. Washington lawmakers have forgotten nothing — in fact they’re pushing for an official investigation into the matter.
It’s on — at least partially: Reddit has announced that it will be going dark for 12 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said that he hopes to coordinate with the site so that Wikipedia does the same. Will other sites join in? Should we prepare for the Great Internet Strike of 2012?
After reading DigiTimes’ latest scuttlebutt — that Google may launch a cheap 7-inch tablet to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire — I keep coming back to the question of why I should care: So far, nothing’s coming.
On the one hand, it’s easy to predict where social media’s going over the next 12 months: more of the same, with the sublime, ridiculous and mundane occurring in equal amounts, both reaffirming and quashing our faith in humanity and technology. But a social media roadmap for 2012? I’m not sure anyone knows what that looks like at this point.
