The Internet education portal OnlineColleges recently gathered data from a number of sources including Gazelle, comScore and the Pew Internet & American Life Project to produce the following infographic. It shows not only that we may be getting a little too attached to our smartphones, but also why we love our devices and what we use them for most. Among many interesting findings: - iPhone and Android owners have more positive outlooks on life than their Blackberry-carrying brethren; city dwellers are the most mobile savvy - social media, gaming and weather apps rule the market But whether addicted or simply enthusiastic, it’s easy to
Read MoreWolfram Alpha is offering you the chance to mine your own Facebook data. Wolfram Alpha bills itself as a “computational knowledge engine.” In contrast to other search engines such as Google and Bing, which return pages of blue hyperlinks in response to queries, Wolfram Alpha offers up objective data: type in the name of a person, for example, and you might receive their dates of birth and death, a timeline, and a graph of Wikipedia page hits. That’s a pretty far cry from more conventional search engines, which might take the same keyword and deliver tons of photos, video, blog pages,
Read MoreThe animated infographic below, created by bestedsites.com, shows just how far technology has come in the past decade.
Google's enabled a new function in its search engine, which will now hold onto your preferences, assigning them to your Google account and activating across all your web-ready devices and browsers. Saved settings include language preference, results per page and whether to enable Google Instant. It has also separated mobile and desktop options, to ensure your phone isn't clogged up with hundreds of results on a weedy 3G connection. Hit the settings tag on the Google search page to enable the feature. How to save settings to your account To get saved search settings, regardless of which computer or browser you’re using,
Read MoreNorton has introduced a new tool called Norton Top Search that lets you control the top search result for your name, for free. To change your top search result, all you need to do is pick a URL that you would like to pop up first when people search your name. The form to do so, found here looks like this: After inputting your desired URL, Norton then shows you how the search result will eventually look: Then the site asks you to verify your identity via Facebook. After that, you receive the following message: “Congratulations! Your online reputation is now protected.
Read MoreThe online reputation management company BrandYourself explored just that question for three of the United States Olympic team’s hottest names: swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, and gymnast Gabby Douglas.
Google is changing its search algorithm to knock down websites that have repeatedly been found to allow users access to pirated content. According to Singhal, search results will instead favor websites that offer legally downloadable content such as music and movies. Google’s algorithm will now take into account the number of “valid copyright removal notices” against a site when determining its rank in search, according to a blog post written by Amit Singhal, Google’s vice president of engineering. The new data point is being added to the approximately 200 other factors Google considers during search queries. He wrote “This ranking change should
Read MoreGoogle has put together an infographic that shows the journey of a search on the site, from how a query travels 1,500 miles at nearly the speed of light to hit different data centers around the world to how it ranks its results. In an infographic given to Mashable, Google likens the web to a book with millions of pages. The search engine giant has spent one million computing hours building the index, which consists of over 100 million gigabytes. When you conduct a search, Google’s algorithms kick in and the query travels hundreds of millions of miles per hour to
Read MoreThis infographic from Statista shows the amazing growth of Google’s business over the last couple of years in terms of revenues, stock price, net income and market share.
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Bing expand Facebook integration, offers Facebook friends’ photos search feature
Bing has added a new feature which allows users to search through their friends’ Facebook photos directly within the search engine. Users can access this through the Bing social sidebar or at www.bing.com/friendsphotos. With a reported 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook daily, the feature looks to enable users to quickly find desired images. With users’ privacy in mind, the feature only searches through friends’ photos that they have been made viewable. Once users access the tool, the images appear in a news feed displaying the most recently uploaded photos first. The tool allows for users to engage with the photos
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