Facebook-Led Tech Group Seeks to Expand Internet Access

From the New York Times:

On Wednesday, Facebook announced an effort aimed at drastically cutting the cost of delivering basic Internet services on mobile phones, particularly in developing countries, where Facebook and other tech companies need to find new users. Half a dozen of the world’s tech giants, including Samsung, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ericsson, have agreed to work with the company as partners on the initiative, which they call Internet.org.

The companies intend to accomplish their goal in part by simplifying phone applications so they run more efficiently and by improving the components of phones and networks so that they transmit more data while using less battery power.

Mother Jones Profiles a Few Meshnets

From Mother Jones:

JOSEPH BONICIOLI mostly uses the same internet you and I do. He pays a service provider a monthly fee to get him online. But to talk to his friends and neighbors in Athens, Greece, he's also got something much weirder and more interesting: a private, parallel internet.

He and his fellow Athenians built it. They did so by linking up a set of rooftop wifi antennas to create a "mesh," a sort of bucket brigade that can pass along data and signals. It's actually faster than the Net we pay for: Data travels through the mesh at no less than 14 megabits a second, and up to 150 Mbs a second, about 30 times faster than the commercial pipeline I get at home. Bonicioli and the others can send messages, video chat, and trade huge files without ever appearing on the regular internet. And it's a pretty big group of people: Their Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network has more than 1,000 members, from Athens proper to nearby islands. Anyone can join for free by installing some equipment. "It's like a whole other web," Bonicioli told me recently. "It's our network, but it's also a playground."

Indeed, the mesh has become a major social hub . . . 

Google Eye Tracker: Watching You Watch Them

And you thought tracking your browser and search history was intrusive!  From The Verge:

Advertisers spend heaps of cash on branding, bannering, and product-placing. But does anyone really look at those ads? Google could be betting that advertisers will pay to know whether consumers are actually looking at their billboards, magazine spreads, and online ads. The company was just granted a patent for "pay-per-gaze" advertising, which would employ a Google Glass-like eye sensor in order to identify when consumers are looking at advertisements in the real world and online.

Google Goes Offline, Internet Traffic Drops 40%

What did you do during the blackout?  From The Register:

The event began at approximately 4:37pm Pacific Time and lasted between one and five minutes, according to the Google Apps Dashboard. All of the Google Apps services reported being back online by 4:48pm.

The incident apparently blacked out every service Mountain View has to offer simultaneously, from Google Search to Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, and beyond.
Big deal, right? Everyone has technical difficulties every once in a while. It goes with the territory.

But then, not everyone is Google. According to web analytics firm GoSquared, worldwide internet traffic dipped by a stunning 40 per cent during the brief minutes that the Chocolate Factory's services were offline.

Depressed? Get Off Facebook

Concerned about your privacy?  You should probably logout of Facebook.  Concerned about your mental health and well being?  You should probably logout of Facebook.  From the BBC:

Using Facebook can reduce young adults' sense of well-being and satisfaction with life, a study has found.  Checking Facebook made people feel worse about both issues, and the more they browsed, the worse they felt, the University of Michigan research said.  The study, which tracked participants for two weeks, adds to a growing body of research saying Facebook can have negative psychological consequences.

Facebook has more than a billion members and half log in daily.  "On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it," said the researchers.

Microsoft Sends DMCA Takedown Notices for Links to Open Source Competitors

From Torrent Freak:

Every week copyright holders send millions of DMCA takedown notices to Google in the hope of making pirated content harder to find.  Microsoft has been one of the most active senders and over the past month alone has asked Google to remove more than a million infringing URLs from its indexes. In addition the software giant also strips infringing links from its own search engine Bing.

While most of the submitted URLs do indeed link to infringing content, not all requests sent by Microsoft and other copyright holders are correct. Their often automated anti-piracy systems regularly trigger notices that include links to perfectly legitimate content, sometimes from direct competitors.

The latter happened with several recent DMCA takedown requests sent to Google on behalf of Microsoft. The notices, which contain references to unauthorized copies of Microsoft Office, also list many links to Apache’s open source office suite, OpenOffice . . .

Google: No Expectation of Privacy in Gmail Emails

From Slate:

If you happen to be one of the 400 million people who use Google's Gmail service for sending and receiving emails, you shouldn't have any expectation of privacy, according to a court briefing obtained by the Consumer Watchdog website. In a motion filed last month by Google to have a class action complaint dismissed, Google's lawyers reference a 1979 ruling, holding that people who turn over information to third parties shouldn't expect that information to remain private.