Internet

The majority of people in the world could be using the Internet within a couple of years according to new projections. The growth has largely been driven by cheaper and more widely accessible mobile Internet service. The figures come from the ... International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency. It says that in the year 2000, just 400 million people were online, around 6.5 percent of the world's population. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) Based on collating international figures, the ITU expects that figure to be 3.2 billion at the end of 2015. That equates to 43.4 percent of people, ... (view more)

One of the key figures in the creation of the Internet has warned that adding billions of gadgets with online connections could mean a slower Internet for many users. Vint Cerf said users need to enable a newer Internet addressing system to get the ... best results. Cerf is sometimes referred to as one of the "fathers of the Internet." He played a key role in the creation of ARPANET , the military network that established many of the technologies that were later at the heart of the Internet. Cerf also helped design the basic system by which Internet data is broken into small pieces, ... (view more)

The company that operates website addresses ending in ".sucks" has been accused of trying to exploit people worried about sites set up to attack them. However, nobody seems quite sure if it breaks any rules or who, if anyone, has the authority to do ... something about it. The controversy involves a major change to the way website registration works that took effect in 2012. Until then, all website addresses ended in one of a limited number of "top level domains" such as .com, .org, or country-specific domains such as .ca for Canada. Anyone Can Become an Administrator of a Top ... (view more)

More ambitious users of trial versions of Windows 10 have now got their hands on the replacement for Internet Explorer . The consensus is that it still needs work, but displays some impressive new features. The new browser is codenamed Spartan , ... though that may not be the final name. It will be the default browser in Windows 10, with Internet Explorer only available by going through the Accessories section of the Programs menu. Internet Explorer is only being included for the sake of compatibility with very old websites that use outdated technology. (Source: networkworld.com ) For the first ... (view more)

A newly-published study shows that the average person could manage without a smartphone for many common tasks. However, for a select group, smartphones are the only realistic option for accessing online services. The report comes from the Pew ... Research Center, which brought together several surveys, each of around 2,000 smartphone users. The results provide very differing meanings, depending on how they are viewed. (Source: pewinternet.org ) Most Tasks Achievable Without Phones On one hand, the study suggests smartphones are by no means vital for many everyday tasks. Participants were asked if ... (view more)

Facebook has clarified its rules on what can and cannot be posted on the site. The changes are designed to bring more common sense, but critics say the rules still have inconsistencies. The decision to remove posts, photos or videos is based on a ... set of rules known as Facebook's community guidelines. In the past, the guidelines have come under heavy criticism for being either too vague and broad, often seeming to outlaw content many people would consider acceptable, or allow content widely considered unacceptable. Three years ago, leaked documents showed the instructions for previous ... (view more)

A recent article published by Facebook suggests that less than 40 percent of the world's population has an Internet connection. While that figure continues to increase each year, the rate of growth has now slowed for four consecutive years. The ... figure combines data from multiple sources around the world, plus Facebook's own activity logs. The data suggest that as of December 2014, approximately 37.9 percent of people in the world use the Internet, even if that involves going online as little as once a year. In 2010, the number of people using the Internet grew by 14.7 percent year on ... (view more)

Facebook is to implement a new feature to help cut down on the number of fake news stories that appear on the site, but says 'genuine parodies' will be unaffected. The report system won't lead to stories being removed from Facebook altogether; ... instead, it will make them less likely to appear on user newsfeeds. Links to news stories are becoming increasingly important on Facebook. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center found that 30 percent of Americans say they get some of their daily news from Facebook, which is more than three times the figure for any other site. (Source: pewresearch. ... (view more)

Facebook is to issue missing child alerts in user news feeds to US citizens. The alerts will be based on the user's location and will tie in with existing alert systems. The updates will be based on the AMBER Alert program that has been run for 20 ... years in the United States. AMBER Alert updates already go out via a range of media including: radio and television, highway electronic billboards, electronic signs outside participating retailers, and text alerts to users who have chosen to receive such messages. Whether and when to send an alert is the decision of local police, using their own ... (view more)

How often do you check your email each day? A new study suggests that consulting your inbox more than three times a day could significantly increase your stress levels. The study, which comes from researchers at the University of British Columbia, ... involved asking 124 adults to restrict their inbox-checking to just three times a day for a one-week period. Once that week was over, study participants were allowed to check their email as much as they liked. Less Email, Less Stress, Study Suggests Throughout the process participants were asked to fill out daily 10-minute questionnaires about their ... (view more)