Google to transform Internet experience
Google is tired of waiting on the Internet.
At least that’s the message the Internet giant is sending with its newest foray outside of its search beginnings. The company is tired of waiting on phone companies and other Internet service providers to catch up with the rest of the Web. It wants to crank the speed up a bit.
Or more like 1,000,000,000 bits.
The project goes like this: Google wants to increase the speed information travels from the cloud that is the Internet to your computer. Sure, so-called high-speed access from the average ISP is blazingly fast compared to the painstakingly slow dial-up access the world was shackled to for much of the Internet’s life, but today’s Web apps are making even the fastest connections wave a white flag of surrender.
The problem is today’s connections are built on yesterday’s technology, technology that was never really meant to deliver the mind-boggling amount of information that crosses telephone and cable lines today. They’re fine for watching TV, talking on the phone, searching the Web, sending e-mails, all that fun stuff, but as more and more of a person’s life jumps online, the pipes are getting a little clogged.
So Google has decided it’s time some new pipes were laid, and since nobody else is taking this project on, Google is ready to put its money where its mouth is. The company, based out of Mountain View, Calif., is asking cities and towns to offer to be Google’s guinea pig in its Google Fiber for Communities project. Google comes in, lays down some super-fast Internet and then steps back and sees what happens.
I am glad to see that the Topeka community has swallowed the Google Kool-Aid. Think Big Topeka sprouted up practically overnight to rally support for Topeka’s quest to become Mountain View 2. Facebook pages exploded with fans, county commissioners and city council threw their support behind the effort, local media offered to help citizens film nomination videos and Topeka was even unofficially renamed “Google” for the month of March. The groundswell of support for the project has been impressive, but it’s just beginning.
Internet, TV main news sources for Americans
A third of cell phone owners access stories on their mobiles, study says
The Internet is now the third most-popular resource for Americans' daily news, behind local and national television news, and about a third of cell phone owners are using their devices to catch up on the latest information, according to a new study.
An "overwhelming majority" of Americans — 92 percent — say they use multiple resources for news, from Web-based news sites, blogs and social networking programs like Twitter and Facebook, to more traditional fare including television, newspapers and radio, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
But, on a "typical day," six in 10 American adults get their news online, "placing it third among the six major news platforms asked about in the survey, behind local television news and national or cable television news," according to the report.
The study, which focused on trying to understand "the new news landscape" in the United States, comes at a time when many newspapers and TV stations around the country are struggling, as more Americans turn to other avenues to get their information.