Consumer content

NYC turns to pilot program for app to hail taxis

Whether people call a taxi or hail one can be a contentious matter in New York City -- because of rules set up between yellow cabs and for-hire vehicles. So, it's no surprise that a smartphone app that lets users beckon yellow cabs has been a topic of hot debate with the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.

The commission announced Wednesday that it will vote on whether to allow such apps in a pilot program, according to the New York Times. The vote is scheduled for Thursday. Update December 13 at 10:04 a.m. PT: On … Read more

Tumblr goes dark with massive outage

Tumblr has been hit with another sweeping outage. The blogging platform has been completely inaccessible to all users, as of the last couple of hours.

Tumblr confirmed its outage via a tweet from its official Twitter account earlier this afternoon that said, "We're experiencing slow loading or intermittent errors on certain pages and are working quickly to restore performance."

Since then, the company tweeted that it took down the entire site "in order to resolve a network issue."

The blogging platform has had a rough go the past couple of months. In October, it was … Read more

FreedomPop launches free home broadband

Expensive in-home Internet service may soon be a thing of the past, at least if FreedomPop has anything to say about it.

The startup, backed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, today said it's now taking preorders for its FreedomPop Hub Burst home modem that allows users to access the high-speed Internet for free.

The company noted that the device, available for an $89 deposit, will ship next month. If a user decides to turn off the service within the first year, he or she can return the modem to FreedomPop and receive the deposit back. There are no contracts … Read more

Facebook's Year in Review: Obama, Sandy, Whitney

Facebook has offered up the most popular trends across its service in 2012, as well as a new feature that lets users check out their last year.

Facebook's 2012 Trends, which the social network compiles by analyzing the most popular topics across its service this year, doesn't offer up many surprises. This year's top event on Facebook was the U.S. presidential election, followed by Super Bowl XLVI and Whitney Houston's death. Superstorm Sandy and the London Olympics rounded out the top five.

"We Are Young" by Fun was this year's top song, … Read more

Amazon to start charging sales tax in Massachusetts

Amazon buyers in Massachusetts have another 11 months to enjoy before the retail giant starts collecting sales tax on their purchases.

In a deal reached with Massachusetts regulators, Amazon will begin imposing a sales tax on all online purchases made by state residents as of November 1, 2013. The agreement was reached only after several months of negotiations, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Amazon has naturally resisted charging its shoppers state-by-state sales tax. In the past, the company has instead proposed using a national law that would regulate the collection of all online sale tax rather than leaving it … Read more

Blessed are they who follow as the pope starts tweeting

Offering a blessing to his many followers, the pope's first tweet quickly traveled far and wide through the Twittersphere.

In the first few hours, the tweet picked up more than 38,000 retweets and was tagged as a favorite by nearly 13,000 people.

The first tweet from the head of the Roman Catholic church:

Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.

iTunes expands movie sales to 42 more countries

iTunes users in a wider range of countries can now buy or rent movies, though some will bump into certain limitations.

Citing reports from some of its readers, AppleInsider says that iTunes movies are now up for sale or rental in more countries, such as South Africa. However, the movies available vary from country to country.

Some countries provide only films from Disney, Sony, and their subsidiaries, AppleInsider noted. Others don't offer movie rentals or high-definition films.

Last week, Apple expanded its iTunes Store into Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa, and 52 other countries. At that time, movies were … Read more

Google Zeitgeist 2012: Whitney, Gangnam, iPad 3 and more

The death of Whitney Houston in February led to Google's top search for 2012.

Looking at the world's most popular searches for the year, Google's Zeitgeist 2012 uncovered a variety of people, events, and even a couple of tech products.

In second place behind Houston was music video phenom Gangnam Style. Hurricane Sandy took third place, followed by the iPad 3, Diablo 3, Kate Middleton, the 2012 Olympics, Amanda Todd, Michael Clarke Duncan, and BBB12.

The list also drilled down to the top searches among specific categories, including people, movies, TV shows, and consumer electronics.

The iPad … Read more

Hulu Plus for Android rolls out children's section

Watching "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Caillou" on Android devices just got a little easier today.

Hulu Plus announced that it updated its Android app with Hulu Kids integration. With this new feature, parents are able to make sure their children don't stray from their kid's shows by using a "Lock For Kids" button. Parents can also search Hulu Kids to find popular shows from different networks and age groups.

Hulu Kids launched in November featuring dozens of children's TV shows from Nickelodeon, PBS, Lionsgate, and more. The kid's feature has its … Read more

Instagram photos still visible in tweets (in TweetDeck)

TweetDeck users can still view Instagram photos directly in tweets, despite a much-publicized move by the popular photo-sharing service to shut off its users' ability to tweet images.

Last week, Instagram announced it was ending Twitter Card integration, its most aggressive step to date in its ongoing turf war with Twitter. The upshot of the decision, which Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom announced at Le Web in Paris, was that Twitter users could no longer view Instagram photos directly in tweets.

But for some reason, those photos are still visible when viewing tweets in TweetDeck. Whether that's because of an … Read more