Internet.Org to Connect the Whole World

On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook, along with Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung are launching a huge initiative called internet.org.  The objective is pretty giant—they want to bring the internet to the 5 billion people not currently connected. The press release notes that

[t]oday, only 2.7 billion people – just over one-third of the world’s population — have access to the internet. Internet adoption is growing by less than 9% each year, which is slow considering how early we are in its development.

Internet.org lays out three ways they intend to do this. First, they want to make access affordable, especially by focusing on cheaper smartphones, which are cheaper than standard computers and can use the wireless infrastructure already available in much of the world. There is also a data engineering component: in the developed world (with the possible exception of the United States), bandwidth is fairly plentiful, so there’s not a lot of focus on making things as efficient as possible. Read More

Google Apps Scheduled to Drop Older Browser Support

If you’re a small business, you should definitely look into Google Apps for your one-stop-shop of online services to support your business. Most of the services are free, and you can access your apps from any device connected to the web.

But take note, if you’ve decided to go with Google Apps for your business, be aware that the cloud service will be dropping support for older web browsers. Those specifically mentioned include Firefox 3.5, IE7 and Safari 3. Google’s Vice President of Engineering, Venkat Panchapakesan stated:

Older browsers just don’t have the chops to provide you with the same high-quality experience…In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites…

Google Apps is looking towards the future in favor quicker browsers that fully support HTML5. What’s the cutoff date you ask? You have until August 1st to upgrade your web browser or “Eventually these apps may stop working entirely.” The good news for you is that web browsers are free, so it’s just a matter of if your laptop can handle a browser upgrade. The latest browsers really improve your experience on the web, so what are you waiting for? Grab the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or Google’s Chrome today!