networking

Twitter has been pushing into the international market by making its service available on feature phones, according to Bloomberg.

The move comes as users in the U.S. are topping off and the microblogging service has to expand its boundaries in search of new members.

One of the ways Twitter is gaining new users is by partnering with wireless carriers in different countries that let people tweet on feature phones for free or for the cost of a text message. For example, the social network is now working with Turkish carrier Turkcell, according to Bloomberg. The partnership lets users tweet … Read more

Two days ago, I griped that the new photo zoom feature in Google+ didn't work with high-resolution images. But today, it does.

"The blurriness issue you mention has already been fixed," said Dave Cohen, a photographer and Google+ team leader, in response to my experiments posting images ranging from 22 to 80 megapixels.

If you want to take advantage of the full-immersion view that's now available, I uploaded a batch of high-resolution photos from a trip to New Mexico and some even higher-resolution 60- and 80-megapixel shots taken with medium-format Phase One cameras of San Francisco … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Finally, CES 2013 has come to an end.

It's pretty much impossible for one person to experience the entire show, but from the perspective of my beat, which is networking and storage, here are the highlights.

802.11ac Wi-Fi made a strong appearance 802.11ac has been on the market for just about a year, starting with CES 2012. At this year's show, virtually all networking vendors, including but not limited to Cisco, Netgear, D-Link, Trendnet, and TP-Link, presented at least one networking product that supports this new and faster standard.

Furthermore, Netgear introduced at this year'… Read more

California's attorney general issued long-promised guidelines on mobile privacy today. The "Privacy on the Go (PDF)" report address the varied interests in smartphone and mobile app development, including app developers, carriers, ad networks, and operating system makers.

"We are now offering this set of privacy practice recommendations to assist app developers, and others, in considering privacy early in the development process," Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote in an introduction to the guidelines.

Sarah Downey, online privacy analyst at online privacy firm Abine, agreed that it's important to get the various mobile interests focused on … Read more

President Obama signed Netflix-backed legislation today that makes it easier for people to share their video-viewing habits online.

With his signature on H.R. 6671, Obama approved an amendment to the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act that allows video rental companies to obtain customer consent to share information about their viewing preferences on social networks such as Facebook. The law was enacted after a weekly newspaper printed the video rental history of Judge Robert H. Bork during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

The House bill is similar to a proposal approved last November by the Senate Judiciary Committee, minus language … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Nearly three years after the formation of Sony Network Entertainment, the company still struggles to capture consumer attention with its Music Unlimited media-streaming service, but things look better than ever for the PlayStation Store.

Sony Network Entertainment COO Shawn Layden remains upbeat despite his company living in the shadow of Pandora, Xbox Live, and other competitors. In a conversation with CNET, Layden relayed the primary goals for Sony's entertainment services: bring content to more regions, expand the number of compatible devices, and design a common user interface across device categories.… Read more

After upgrading to Mountain Lion, some OS X users have run into what appears at first glance to be a DNS-related problem in which they can't access certain Web pages. While most Web connectivity seems to work just fine, when accessing special pages like HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) connections the connection times out, resulting in programs like Safari claiming the server could not be contacted.

If you are having this problem, then try copying the server URL from your browser or other application and pinging it directly in the OS X Terminal using the following command:

ping www.… Read more

Google, which found early success for Google+ among photographers and has been working to keep them happily sharing on its social network, has added the ability to zoom into pictures.

Flickr, Facebook, and other photo-sharing sites offer a larger view of photos, but it's usually at least one click away from the smaller photo that shows by default. Google offers that ability, and last night went one step further by letting people use the mouse scroll wheel to dive further into a photo.

Once zoomed in, clicking and dragging lets people pan around to explore the photo at the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Amped Wireless has invested a lot in the new 802.11ac standard.

In addition to its first 802.11ac router, the RTA15, shown here at CES 2013, the company also showed off its first USB 802.11ac adapter and range extender, which may be the first 802.11ac range extender on the market.

The ACA1 High Power Dual Band AC Wi-Fi USB Adapter is designed to add long-range 802.11ac Wi-Fi connectivity to Windows or Mac computers. Amped Wireless says it features two high-gain, dual-band antennas and four total amplifiers to maximize performance. The adapter supports USB 3.0 … Read more