| Paywall for The New York Times Set for March 28 The New York Times has finally announced the terms and pricing for its paywall that will go into effect beginning March 28. The paywall is porous, meaning that you'll be able to read 20 articles a month without having to pay. But once you click on that 21st article, you'll have to pony up a new subscription fee for online viewing - $15 per month for access to the website and a mobile phone app, $20 for Web access and an iPad app, and $35 for an all-access subscription plan. If you're a subscription to the paper version (remember paper versions of newspapers?), this digital access will be included.
Continue reading »
 
Report Finds Browsing on Android Over 50% Faster Than on iPhone Much attention in the battle between Android and iPhone goes to the availability of apps on each platform. But one of the most important feature of a smartphone might not be the availability and performance of native apps but the performance of the mobile web browser. According to a study released today by the web optimization company Blaze, this is a big win in the Android column. The company analyzed 45,000 page load speeds to find that Android's browser is 52% faster the iPhones. Furthermore, Android's Chrome browser beat iPhone's Safari browser by loading 84% of websites faster.
Continue reading »
7 Tech Companies that Raised Funding Today: Which Will Change the World? (Poll) Today we are featuring seven tech companies who announced today that they've raised venture capital to further their ideas and develop technologies that could change the way we live. Within this diverse body of companies, we've got an online pawn shop, a site to order in takeout in Europe, a social networking site for medical professionals and a global payroll service, amongst many others. So, which company will change our world the most? Which company won yesterday's poll? Read on to find out, and place your votes in today's poll.
Continue reading »
Netflix to Distribute Original Programming? Netflix is in "advanced talks" to distribute an original series starring Kevin Spacey, according to the Wall Street Journal. If Netflix pulls it off, they will be the first channel of distribution for the show. It will stream through their service. It will no doubt become yet another strain on traditional television.
Continue reading »
Comedy Podcasts Revitalize the Platform Social media's like punk rock, it knocks down walls for all, and that's good. But it frees up as much, or more, rubbish as it does material of quality. Nevertheless, some people, usually those with a love-hate relationship with radio, were very enthusiastic lo these many years ago, about the platform that podcasting provided. That enthusiasm has waned in recent times. (Though not for everyone.) Lately, comedy seems to be revitalizing it. Comedy podcasts run the length of the field, from one-man ruminations to frantic bit-factories to interview shows. Some are free, some cost, and many offer a combination of the two options. Below the fold, I offer a far-from-inclusive introduction to different types of comedy podcasts and have tried to include a few that are acknowledged to be influential.
Continue reading »
Group Messaging: Why Now? If 2010 was the year of location-based services, then 2011 is certainly the year of group messaging. With a slew of new group messaging apps dominating this year's SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, the big questions have been why now and why not Facebook or Twitter? The answer, it seems, could be very simple. Group messaging apps do something that sites like Facebook and Twitter don't - they take away the magic and the guesswork and provide a blunt instrument for communicating with small groups of people using both data and text messaging.
Continue reading »
Kids Can Now Build Their Own Xbox Games with Kodu Game Lab Boosting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education has become a priority for the government, for schools, and for tech companies. In emphasizing the importance of doing so, many point to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor that note that while there will be more than 2 million job openings in STEM-related fields by 2014, fewer than 15% of U.S. college undergraduates now pursue degrees in science or engineering. It isn't enough to convince college students to major in science - or rather, by the time students hit college, it may be too late to pique their interest in the field. So many STEM efforts are aimed at encouraging the scientific and technical minds of younger students. One way to ignite that interest is to give kids the skills so they can build and play their own video games. That's the idea behind Microsoft's Kodu, a visual programming language and game development tool. A product of Microsoft FUSE Labs, Kodu Game Lab enables children as young as five to design, build, and play their own games on the PC and Xbox.
Continue reading »
Ready For Zero - Bringing Transparency to Online Debt Management As of June of 2010, the total U.S. consumer debt was $2.40 trillion. As much as 98% of the revolving debt in the U.S. is credit card debt, and the average household carries about $8000 in credit card debt. As daunting as those statistics are for the country as a whole, the choices faced by the individuals who are in debt and who want to eliminate it are just as depressing. Information about debt reduction can be difficult to find, and there are plenty of questionable practices by banks and by debt consolidation companies that just serve to muddy the waters. So making the task of tackling your debt easy and transparent is a big part of the mission of the YC-backed company Ready for Zero. Ready for Zero a free service with a very simple interface that helps clarify your financial status and plan your way out of debt.
Continue reading »
Visa Announces P2P Payment Service for U.S. Customers Credit card giant Visa announced a new peer-to-peer payment service today that will soon give its U.S. customers the ability to receive and send money from their Visa accounts. The new personal payments service moves Visa's focus away from being just a handler for point-of-sale transactions and takes aim at an area that has long been dominated by PayPal. Visa's announcement includes a partnership with CashEdge and Fiserv, two person-to-person financial transactions companies, which will now have access to VisaNet, the company's payment processing network.
Continue reading »
1 in 4 College Textbooks Will Be Digital By 2015 Sales of digital textbooks still only account for a small fraction of the U.S. college market. But according to the latest report by the social learning platform Xplana, we have reached the tipping point for e-textbooks, and the company predicts that in the next five years digital textbook sales will surpass 25% of sales for the higher education and career education markets. That figure is a revision from the company's report last year, which predicted that one in five college textbooks would be digital by the year 2014. Due to the rate at which colleges are embracing digital textbooks, Xplana now projects that sales will grow by 80 to 100% over the next four years.
Continue reading »
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment