Google Denies Net Neutrality Deal
About 2 days ago, the NYT broke a story about Google and Verizon making a back-room deal which would have a serious effect on the network neutrality debate. It was reported that Google, who had come out in favor of the FCC’s direction regarding net neutrality, would turn a blind eye to Verizon. This would allow companies including Google to pay a premium for priority data traffic on the Verizon network. Closely following the articles release, Google and Verizon both countered the claims by the New York Times.
The Google Public Policy Twitter account tweeted “@NYTimes is wrong. We’ve not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage of our traffic. We remain committed to an open internet.” Verizon posted a statement on their policy blog saying, “The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken. It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose.” The NYT stands by their claims, so it remains to be seen who is telling the truth. via BuzzMachine
JailbreakMe 2.0 Frees Your iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G on iOS 4 / 4.0.1 and iPad on iOS 3.2.1
On Monday, iPhone Dev-Team (Comex) and company made an “official” jailbreak application. This comes a short while after The Library of Congress ruled that jailbreaking did not violate any laws. What is most interesting about this method of jailbreaking is that all you have to do is visit the JailbreakMe website to get the ball rolling. Be sure to visit Redmond Pie for a full how-to about how to jailbreak your specific iDevice.
Disqus Adds Likes and Dislikes
It’s a phenomenon that continues to spread across the web. It’s the Like feature, first introduced by FriendFeed and later co-opted by Facebook. It seems that Likes are an expected feature for most social applications at this point. Disqus, switching to Likes on comments a while back, has now extended the feature in what they call Community Likes. These are for when you don’t really have anything to add, but still want to make your presence known. They also function as an easy way to share content on Facebook and Twitter. Visitors can also Dislike content, but Disqus reports over 90% Likes over Dislikes.
Social Media and Games Dominate American Online Activity
Ever wonder why Google is so persistent in breaking into the social media game? They are all about ads and eyeballs and social media is exactly the place to find both. A recent Nielsen study confirms what Google seems to already know. 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on social networking, playing games, or email. Google probably has a good share of the last, but is definitely working hard to break into the first two.
Google Activates Multiple Sign-In
I’ve heard the interface is somewhat clunky and there are a few caveats, but you can now sign in to multiple Google accounts on the same browser at the same time. Once you’ve visited your Google Accounts page and activated the feature, you can choose which account you want to use via drop-down where your email address usually shows up. This will only work on Google Calendar, Reader, Sites, Code, and Gmail. When you visit an unsupported service, the first account you logged in with takes precedence. If you sign out at any point on any site, all your accounts are signed out.
There are some known issues related to multiple sign-in: this feature is not available on mobile devices, Google Calendar’s gadget doesn’t work properly in Gmail, you can no longer use offline Gmail and offline Google Calendar and the “note in Reader” bookmarklet only works for the default account.