internet

With IE11, Microsoft gets all touchy-feely

The latest version of Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer 11, comes complete with a host of touch features designed for Windows 8.1.

In a blog post announcing the launch of the preview version of IE11, Microsoft focused much of its time on the "touch optimized" feature set available. The browser includes a "stick to your finger" feature that allows users to pan, zoom, and swipe around a Web site. That swipe feaoture can also be used for folks to go back to a previous page or forward to a previously viewed page. In addition, the … Read more

Internet Hall of Fame to induct top names in tech

What do Ethernet co-founder Bob Metcalfe, tech investor Marc Andreessen, and the late Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz have in common? They are new inductees into the Internet Hall of Fame.

The Internet Society announced the names of 32 influential people Wednesday who helped shaped the Web into what it is today. This is the second year for the annual event.

"This year's inductees represent a group of people as diverse and dynamic as the Internet itself," Internet Society President and CEO Lynn St. Amour said in a statement. "As some of the world's leading thinkers, … Read more

Tim Berners-Lee warns against governments controlling the Web

The so-called father of the World Wide Web wants to protect his child from governments and corporations.

Tim Berners-Lee was in the U.K. on Tuesday and was one of several people to receive the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. At the event, the inventor of the Web was asked about the allegations made by Edward Snowden that governments are using the Web to tap into the communications of private citizens, The Guardian reported Wednesday.

In response, Berners-Lee said: "The original design of the Web of 24 years ago was for a universal space, we didn't have a … Read more

Leak confirms WebGL, SPDY for IE11

If Internet Explorer 10 impressed you, you're going to love what we now expect from IE11 at Microsoft's Build conference on Wednesday.

Information leaked by a Microsoft Developer Network subscriber appears to confirm long-rumored details on what's going to be included in Internet Explorer 11.

The next major version of the browser, expected to arrive with Windows 8.1 later this year, will include support for many under-the-hood features that Firefox and Chrome already offer, and some that they don't.

According to Microsoft-News.com, IE11 will include WebGL support, a standard originally from Mozilla that makes … Read more

Review: PasswordBox lets you keep all of your online log-ins in one place

PasswordBox keeps all of your online passwords in one convenient location and accessible from any computer. This application is slowly becoming a preferred tool around the office, as it's known for decreasing log-in time on Facebook and Tumblr.

The installation file will you set you up with the PasswordBox add-ons for popular browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE. It runs from within the browser environment and works the same way across the board. Installation was quick and relatively painless.

Essentially a vault for all of your online passwords, PasswordBox sets itself apart from competitors with some innovative … Read more

Review: Mozilla Firefox 22

Developers are still heading full-speed toward the modern holy grail of development on the Web--reaching native app-level speeds and performance. Chrome and Firefox have gone two drastically different directions; whereas Google's very NaCl approach utilizes standardized C-code within a specially secure sandboxed environment, Mozilla opts to continue optimizing an existing, leaner subset of Javascript under some of its own specific restricted functions. The Mozilla dev team believes that focusing on combination of ASM.JS and Mozilla's very own Emscripten compiler will encourage easier Web development, due to wider familiarity among developers, as well as the lack of need … Read more

Internet pioneers to collect first Queen Elizabeth Prizes

Sweden has the Nobel Prize, Japan the Kyoto Prize, and the United States the Pulitzers. Now the royalty of the United Kingdom has its own contribution, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, and those who made the Internet possible are sharing the award for 1 million pounds.

The queen will present trophies to Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Kahn, Marc Andreessen, Vint Cerf, and Louis Pouzin on Wednesday, the foundation behind the prize said.

Kahn, Pouzin, and Cerf made contributions to the packet-switching design of the Internet, in which information is broken into small chunks of data that individually are routed across … Read more

Gigabit Seattle sets price for its high-speed Internet service

While setting up gigabit infrastructure can be prohibitively expensive for many local communities, it appears that the cost users will have to pay for Gigabit Squared's high-speed Internet in Seattle won't be off the charts.

Gigabit Squared announced the pricing for its local fiber network in the Seattle area on Monday -- and, the monthly cost is actually cheaper than what people pay for Comcast broadband.

The fastest level of service from Gigabit Squared will cost $80 per month, which includes 1000 Mbps download and 1000 Mbps upload. The next level is $45 per month with 100 Mbps … Read more

Pink Floyd to Pandora: Shut up, you crazy cubic zirconium

The wrangling between those who'd like to be paid for creating music and those who would like to pay them a shoelace and a Mars bar may never end.

In the latest edition of "Oh, No You Don't," Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd have buried the hatchet, then together picked it up and embedded it into Pandora's (Voice) Box.

They are royally miffed at what they see is Pandora's attempt to hoodwink artists into supporting a reduction on their royalties of 85 percent.

So in a USA Today editorial aimed squarely at Pandora, … Read more

Yahoo completes blockbuster $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition

Exactly one month after announcing plans to acquire microblogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Yahoo has closed the deal.

The Internet giant announced Thursday that it officially owns Tumblr. The company announced the acquisition last month, saying that the $1.1 billion purchase price would be "substantially all...in cash." The company also promised at that time "not to screw [Tumblr] up."

Tumblr is highly popular site with over 300 million monthly unique visitors. The company was founded in 2007. Under the terms of the deal, Tumblr will remain its own entity under the Yahoo … Read more