| Facebook Now Powers Comments All Around the Web This morning, Facebook released its much-feared commenting solution. The idea made big news earlier this year, despite the fact that Facebook has already offered a commenting solution for more than a year, but today the company has announced the feature officially. So what's new? There are a number of features for both publishers and users, although some of the most exciting features we've seen displayed on Facebook late last year don't appear to be a part of the release. Is Facebook's massive social graph enough to push it into the default slot for comments, where it already resides for things like social sharing and third-party login?
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Good News for Android Users: Screenshots Coming without Root An update to the Android mobile operating system at last delivers the ability to take screenshots without needing to root your phone. The latest version of Gingerbread (version 2.3.3) has introduced changes that will permit applications to take advantage of this new functionality. However, it won't be a feature of the operating system itself - that is, it won't work unless you have an app. That's different than how screenshots work on the iPhone - users there only have to press a couple of buttons in order to take a snapshot of what's on their screen, no app required.
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StatCounter: Bing Just Beat Yahoo Worldwide According to analytics firm StatCounter, the Bing search engine has just overtaken Yahoo for the first time worldwide during the month of February 2011. From StatCounter Global Stats, Bing closed out the month with a 4.37% search share compared with Yahoo's 3.93%. However, both still fall far behind Google's search share of 89.94% of the global market.
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Evernote Totally Redesigns Its iPhone App Evernote is releasing a completely redesigned app for iPhone and iPod Touch today (iTunes link). Noting that its iPhone app was first released the same day as Apple launched the iTunes App Store, Evernote says it's learned a lot about what it takes to make a great app. And equipped with two years worth of feedback, the notetaking and storage platform says it's gone "back to the drawing board and reconsidered every single aspect of Evernote for iPhone. The changes are pretty impressive, and if you're reliant on Evernote for your mobile device you'll find the app faster and the interface more intuitive - all making the app a lot easier for not just note-taking but for note retrieval.
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Sponsor Post: Cloud Freedom or Cloud Control? Why Not Both? Editor's note: We offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write posts and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products. Let's face it. As users, we all love the cloud model. Cloud enables us with self-service freedom, on-demand resources and pay-as-you go flexibility. In a matter of minutes we can get access to cloud resources without too many constraints. That freedom leaves users wanting more. The proof of this adoption is evident in both market growth estimates (Gartner1 predicts cloud services to grow 49% annually until 2014) and overall usage growth. At Skytap we have seen our usage grow by 400% from last year).
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Here's What UStream's Big iPhone App Update Will Include Live video viewing and broadcasting service UStream appears set to unveil a dramatic update to its iPhone app, the first update the app has seen in many months. UStream, a deep-pocketed gamble on the future, really needs a better iPhone app. This new version looks a lot better; these changes are long overdue. This app looks like something I want to use to view and create live mobile video. The company put up a post on its blog this evening with screenshots and details of the launch, but pulled the post, probably because the app isn't live yet in the iTunes store. None the less, you can see the screenshots and highlights of the new version below.
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Report Finds Connected Devices, Not Phones, Leading the Explosion in Mobile Wireless Wireless consultant Chetan Sharma has just released an updated report on U.S. mobile data for the last quarter of 2010, and it points to the growth in the wireless market, in mobile penetration and in data usage. According to Sharma, the U.S. wireless data market grew 5% from the third quarter of 2010 and was up 23% from 2009 For the entire year, revenues were $55 billion, a figure that Sharma predicts will increase to $67 billion by the end of 2011. As Sharma observes, the mobile market crossed a number of important thresholds in the last quarter of 2010. Mobile subscriptions crossed the 100% penetration mark, for example. And smartphone shipments exceeded PC shipments for the first time.
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DEMO 2011: CoinStar for Smartphones, Mind Reading & Virtual Dressing Rooms While the majority of companies launching at DEMO are entirely Web-based, there are some exceptions. This morning, we saw a handful companies hit the stage with gadgets in-hand (or in tow) that offer interesting perspectives on the future. What does the future look like? If DEMO is any indication, it's filled with mind-reading headbands, and augmented reality dressing rooms, and kiosks that eat your old devices and spit out cash in return.
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Gmail Access (& Emails) To Be Restored "Soon" to All Those Impacted By Yesterday's Outage As we reported yesterday, many Gmail users woke up Sunday to find that their email inboxes were empty - and not in a good way. Users reported their entire Gmail history - inboxes, outboxes, and archives - were wiped clean. Google reports now that it has identified the problem, which it says was a bug resulting from a software storage update. Users affected will have access to their Gmail accounts again, and their email messages will be restored "though it may take longer than we originally expected."
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Light Painting Wifi (Haunting Video)
Above: WiFi signal spills gently into the street from an old Oslo apartment building built in the 1890's. Video below.
Wireless communication channels are all around us all the time, but their variable strengths in different places create a textured, invisible part of the urban landscape. A team of Norwegian researchers, arguing that WiFi is "a fundamental part of the construction of networked cities," created the beautiful video below visualizing the strength of WiFi signals around their neighborhood in Oslo. They used a four meter pole that measured signal strength and lit up to a great or lesser degree. Then they took time delayed photos of themselves walking through the snowy streets. "The strength, consistency and reach of the network says something about the built environment where it is set up, as well as reflecting the size and status of the host," writes the team in Immaterials: Light painting WiFi "Small, domestic networks in old apartment buildings flow into the streets in different ways than the networks of large institutions. Dense residential areas have more, but shorter range networks than parks and campuses."
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