The Year in News: What Happened Next (Stories From November-December 2014)

Concluding our look back at the stories we covered during 2014 and what happened next, we turn to November. The Unicode Consortium, which develops standards to make sure characters appear consistently across different software and systems, unveiled proposals for changes to emoji, a system of characters for expressing emotions. It suggested the option to choose between […]

The Year in News: What Happened Next (Stories From September-October 2014)

Continuing our look at the stories we covered in 2014 and subsequent developments, we turn to September. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani argued that blocking Internet access to cut down political protest was harming the country’s scientific progress. He also lifted a ban on broadband providers offering fast speeds on fixed lines and cellphone networks, something seen as […]

World’s Fastest Internet Comes To… Minneapolis

Minneapolis is to get what’s being billed as the world’s fastest broadband connection, a whopping 10 gigabits per second. The service is available to around 30,000 homes and businesses in the city and is provided by US Internet. It already provides a gigabit service but has now flipped the switch to increase that ten-fold. Although […]

“Gangnam Style” Breaks Youtube’s 32-Bit Barrier

Psy’s Gangnam Style video has long been the most watched clip on YouTube. Now it’s forced a rethink of the site’s “hit counter.” The video recently passed the 2,147,483,647-view mark. Maths and computing geeks among us may already have spotted the significance of that, but for the rest of us, it’s all down to that […]

European Politicians: Break Google Up

European politicians have voted to break up Google’s business. The vote has no immediate practical effect but is politically symbolic. Strictly speaking the motion, which passed the European Parliament by 384 votes to 174, does not apply solely or specifically to Google, but rather all online search companies. However, with Google used for around 90 […]