Undersea cable maps are for the deeply nerdy, but Telegeography has just produced one that’s beautiful and functional. Plus it shows we’re only using about 36 percent of the purchased capacity. Read more »
What motivates 70 people to spend two days in a conference room, coding their hearts out? For the participants in this weekend’s Google hackathon, the answer was a lot bigger than just winning a new TV. Read more »
In his annual letter to shareholders of the seed-stage incubator Betaworks, founder and CEO John Borthwick argues that while closed platforms can be valuable in the short term, open systems and services will ultimately prevail. Read more »
Twitter released the second half of its 2012 transparency report, detailing the kinds of information the government has requested from Twitter including information requests, removal request, and copyright notices. Read more »
A new Google FAQ gives some detail about how the search giant deals with law enforcement and government requests for information on Google users. Read more »
Google is reportedly looking to bring a smart watch to market. That’s not too hard to believe when you consider it already has one that few people know about. Read more »
No one wants to be an annoying Facebook couple posting incessantly on each others walls, but a few couples-only apps are coming onto the market with solutions. Avocado, launched by ex-Googlers, is looking to give couples their own space online. Read more »
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told attendees at the World Economic Forum that the key to the company’s future success is partnering with other players like Apple, Google and Facebook. But is that a future worth betting on? Read more »
A startup backed by Google, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Paul Allen’s investment firm, called AltaRock Energy has delivered an important breakthrough for the next-generation of geothermal technology at a site in Bend, Oregon. Read more »
After Microsoft bought Skype, some were concerned about the security of their Skype calls. Microsoft did little to assuage those concerns, so a group of human rights organizations and journalists are demanding more transparency. Read more »
Facebook’s new social-graph search may look like a fairly boring feature of interest only to marketers, but the information it is able to reveal highlights how much we make public without even realizing it. Read more »
YouTube got a lot of play during this week’s Google earnings call, in part because the site is starting to move the needle for Google. Read more »
Google published its latest report about how often governments are asking for data about individuals. The growth of this type of surveillance means that Facebook should consider publishing a report of its own. Read more »
I was enamored with Samsung’s newest Chromebook except for one key aspect: It couldn’t run some of the same apps as my older Chrome OS device. Google just fixed this with new support for ARM chips. Read more »
Evidence of Twitter’s ambition to become a media entity continues to accumulate, but if it wants to fulfil its role as a digital-media player, it is going to have to get a lot better at finding relevant content for its users. Read more at paidContent »
Google spent more than a billion dollars on infrastructure in the fourth quarter, representing the company’s second-biggest quarterly expenditure ever. As it competes against Facebook, Apple, Yelp and Amazon, the company can’t afford to stop building data centers now. Read more »
How did the most important public companies on GigaOM’s radar fare in the fourth quarter? Here’s our roundup of quarterly report cards. Read more »
It was a confusing quarter to judge, but Google appears to have had a solid fourth-quarter when it comes to its bread-and-butter: search and internet advertising. Read more »
Delivering and managing the web experience isn’t just about mobile. Companies are also faced with new challenges in the desktop environment, including browser fragmentation, network evolution, and client-side technologies. They must invest in both the desktop environment as well as to create an optimized experience for mobile. Read more »
It makes sense that Google Drive is the only cloud service on my Chromebook’s File Manager. That doesn’t mean I have to keep that limitation though. Here’s how to get Dropbox integration through a sync service. Read more »
Russia’s answer to Google hopes to validate its core MatrixNet machine learning technology – until now best-known for improving Yandex’s search ranking – by handing it over to nuclear physicists at CERN. Read more »
Tired of seeing that “sold out” note on the Google Nexus 4 purchase page? You may not see it for much longer according to LG, which is ramping up production of the Android smartphone. Read more »
Interest may be weakening in consumer social media businesses. But social technologies are working their way deeper into enterprise computing, and social media is playing a bigger role across advertising and marketing sectors. Read more »
Sony decided it will focus only on high-end smartphones going forward and it may be doing the same in tablets if the new Xperia Tablet Z is any indication. Read more »
Apple’s biggest competitors — Facebook, Google and Amazon — are getting really good at finding ways to systematically insert themselves between Apple and its customers. Read more »
Many publishers are trying to adapt to the way media works in a digital age, but some still see Google and the web as parasites — and Harper’s publisher seems determined to stay in the latter category. Read more at paidContent »
It turns out that Google, the great proponent of net neutrality, is paying Orange to handle its traffic on the carrier’s mobile networks. That’s an unwelcome development, and here’s why. Read more »
Instagram joined the club of social media companies releasing monthly active user stats, a more helpful metric than general registered users. We broke down the metrics from some of the most popular services, taking a look at how long it’s taken each company to get there. Read more »
Is the power of the digital pen mightier than the sword? We may find out next month, when Samsung is reportedly launching the Galaxy Note 8.0, an Android 4.2 tablet similar in size to Apple’s iPad mini. Read more »
The last quarter of 2012 saw the rise of cloud-based databases, the cloud awakening of software giants such as HP, and many cloud outages that have left question marks. Enterprises found more IT dollars, and they will focus on the cloud for much of that spending. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In an effort to aid book discovery and battle Amazon’s dominance, iOS publishing platform Inkling will allow its roughly 400 ebooks to be fully indexed through Google search. The company plans to add a thousand more books this year. Read more at paidContent »
Facebook’s Lars Rasmussen and Tom Stocky gave us a brief glimpse into how the new Graph Search works, but kept the lid on details as to how much computing the new search will require. From the looks of it, this is a big infrastructure challenge. Read more »
The mobile platform wars heated up in a big way as 2012 came to a close. Among other trends, Microsoft launched Windows Phone 8, Android’s dominant market share grew, and mobile commerce reached record highs during the holidays. Read more »
After several years as a devoted Apple iPhone user, I have been tempted by the dark side — I am considering giving up my beloved iPhone for an Android device, and the main attraction is the openness of the ecosystem that Android takes advantage of. Read more »
The fourth quarter in cleantech saw attention paid to two prominent, publicly traded companies: EV maker Tesla and newly minted public listing SolarCity. It remains a transitional period for the sector as investment declines, with a shift toward those companies able to scale with little additional capital. Read more »
Android was everywhere at the 2013 International CES, but the bigger names didn’t offer much this time. Instead, companies like Huawei, ZTE and Vizio showed off new phones. Meanwhile, Dropbox gets a nice upgrade on Android and I share my favorite new Android device from CES. Read more »
Will the combination of Kickstarter-style crowd-funding and low risk investing lead to a disruptive new form of financing for the world’s solar projects. With some good execution and marketing, I think so. Read more »
Amazon is offering consumers a free digital copy when they buy a CD. It makes perfect sense to do the same for books — alas, it’s not going to happen. Here’s why. Read more at paidContent »
Good news for anyone who owns CDs — Amazon is now selling music on a two-for-one basis that gives every customer a digital and a physical version of an album. The company just raised the stakes in its fight with Google and Apple over “music lockers.” Read more at paidContent »
Google has now invested in a Hoover Dam’s worth — or 2 GW — of clean power. The latest investment, announced on Wednesday is a $200 million equity stake into a wind farm in Texas. Read more »
