The pea-soup-like air pollution in China’s cities has received a lot of attention over the past year, but its actual human toll is just now coming to light, and it’s much worse than thought. Some 1.2 million premature deaths in the country can be attributed to the outdoor air quality in 2010,...
A loss of 25 million healthy years
Facebook’s Director of Mobile Partnerships, Emily White, is heading over to Instagram, fostering partnerships and growing the hugely-popular photo sharing service’s revenues as director of business operations, reports All Things D. A lot of...
Google routinely gives monthly numbers breaking out the adoption of various versions of Android, but the company has now changed the way it calculates those numbers — providing a distinctly different portrait of the Android ecosystem in the process. As outlined on the Android Developers site, Google now uses the data collected when users visit the Google Play Store; under the previous system,...
A small controversy has been making the rounds today as some people have noticed that the searches on Google for iOS apps are no longer showing the links to iTunes. First noticed by AppsFire cofounder Ouriel Ohayon, the issue is that the search results seem to be excluding iTunes and instead showing other results higher than usual. We reached out to Google for comment and a spokesperson tells us that it has had problem "fetching" iTunes' pages on the web, and therefore they're not showing up in search results.
We've been having some issues fetching pages from the iTunes web servers, and as a result some people may have had problems finding iTunes apps in search easily. We're working with the team there to ensure search users can find what they're looking for.
The explanation lines up with a brief analysis from Danny Sullivan at...
"We've been having some issues fetching pages from the iTunes web servers." Google Statement
The initial scans weren't that promising — just an array of corridors and storage hangers, once busied with the citizenry but long since abandoned. It looked like the operation was going to be a bust after all, but then I noticed it: a blip. Nothing more than a shimmer, really; a tiny artifact in the digital latticework. You're never going to cloak something from a phase scan completely. The...
Yesterday's future technology today!
Last December, Google released Quickofffice for iPad, the company's first major release since acquiring Quickoffice in June of 2012. The app was positioned as a way for business who pay for Google's suite of apps to to open and edit documents that weren't native to Google Docs, and now its bringing that app to Android as well as the iPhone. Essentially, the new app will let businesses using...
Looking to give Tesla's Model S a spin, but can't quite afford one (despite the company's new financing option)? Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's Downtown Project may have you covered, presuming you visit Las Vegas. The Downtown Project just launched Project 100, a program it calls a "complete transportation system" for getting around without having to own a car — and the company purchased a fleet of 100 Model S sedans to be part of the initiative. This marks the biggest single Tesla purchase thus far. This comes about a month after reports that Hsieh was planning to buy 100 Teslas for a...
Tesla has seen strong sales of its Model S electric car, but Elon Musk is now hoping to bring in more buyers — and to do so, he's rolling out a new sales plan that promises to give potential owners a Model S for a mere $500 a month. On its face, that's far less than you'd pay for a luxury car lease, and a monthly payment lowers the barrier for people who couldn't buy a Model S upfront but make enough to get one through financing. But once you scratch the surface, that low number is based on some fairly creative math.
Essentially, Musk's plan is this: Tesla and Wells Fargo will offer 10 percent down financing on a Model S, with the down...
In a boost to future secret agents and a blow to their would-be eavesdroppers, German researchers report sending the first successful quantum communications from a moving source — an airplane traveling 180 miles-per-hour — to a stationary receiver on the ground. The study was first performed in 2012 but the results were just made public over the weekend in the journal Nature Photonics.
Flight of the quantums
I find myself awake, in a mysterious rowboat, heading to a lighthouse, surrounded by the sea. Walking inside, verses from the bible tickle the back of my brain. Sin and the search for redemption. And then, with a burst of light, everything changes. I ascend to a heavenly metropolis perched among...
Zynga has become one of the more ubiquitous purveyors of online games and it's also well known for its free to play mobile games — now it hopes to nickel-and-dime players to death with its entry into true online gambling. ZyngaPlusPoker and ZyngaPlusCasino are launching on April 3rd in the UK...
We're just a few days away from Facebook's big Android-focused event at which the company is expected to introduce an HTC phone with a Facebook-specific app launcher. Now, we're seeing an image that could be the first look at the device itself —...
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has wrapped up an investigation into whether Netflix CEO Reed Hastings broke federal rules by announcing company metrics on Facebook — and it's decided Hastings' decision was mostly justifiable. In a release, the SEC said that...
Game of Thrones will be coming back for a fourth season, Entertainment Weekly confirms. HBO has renewed another 10 episodes to premiere in 2014 — given the series' success so far, that's completely unsurprising, though executive producer David Benioff did note last month that it hadn't been...
Mt. Gox chief marketing officer Gonzague Gay-Bouchery, left; CEO Mark Karpeles, right.
The virtual currency Bitcoin isn’t backed by any assets or central authority. It’s only three years old and its exact origin is a mystery. And yet, for some reason, tens of thousands of people have determined that a single Bitcoin — essentially a unique sequence of letters and numbers — hit $105 US dollars earlier...
If you've been on Facebook in the past week, you've probably seen it: the red equals sign. Human Rights Campaign launched the movement last Monday, as the Supreme Court moved towards a ruling on Prop 8. According to Facebook, it spurred an extra...
Pixar is diving into its back catalog of beloved characters for a new movie set to hit theaters November 25, 2015. Finding Dory, the sequel to 2003's Oscar-winning Finding Nemo, will center on the loquacious, memory-deficient Blue Tang fish supporting character voiced by Ellen DeGeneres. The...
Following last week's Verge Mobile Show hiatus, we came to understand that skipping a week can lead to some table-flipping. So this week, all that...
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple will start producing a followup to its iPhone 5 in the coming months. According to anonymous sources, the new iPhone will begin production in the second...
The anti-robocall solution proposed by two Google engineers.
The Federal Trade Commission just announced the three winners of its Robocall Challenge, a contest meant to crowdsource the solution to...
The ending has yet to be written for Barnes & Noble's Nook story, which began with the surprise debut of the original Nook e-reader back in late 2009. But recent plot twists don't appear to bode...
Vine launched less than three months ago, but the first DMCA takedown notices are already coming in. Among the first rights holders to file a grievance with Twitter is NPG Records, Prince's music...
Solar energy has a reputation as being a clean energy source but hasn't earned it — at least not up until now. That's because in a darkly ironic...
Microsoft has long promised a calendar upgrade for its Outlook.com email service would be "coming soon," but the company is finally detailing its plans today. Microsoft will begin rolling out an updated version of its calendar for Outlook.com this week, with some improved features. One click access to event creation will be available, along with improved sharing options.
The new look and feel...
Former Microsoft Windows Phone general manager, Charlie Kindel, looks set to return to his mobile roots, following the announcement that he has been hired by Amazon. Listing his his role as director of "something secret" on his LinkedIn profile, Kindel is wasting no time in his new role and is...
