Google has spent most if its existence being an innovative web company, but the search giant has just jumped into a decidedly old-business environment: retail stores. Yes, the first ever Google store just opened in London to push ChromeBooks through the holiday season. The so-called "pop-up store" has been erected in PC World, a larger electronics retailer.
We’ve taken it as a sad fact that the US tends to lag behind the rest of the world in terms of broadband speeds. There’s no choice but to accept it, but it still sucks, especially when headlines keep popping up telling us how great they have it in London. A while back, we told you that Virgin Media was rolling out 1.5Gbps services, but only to small number of high-tech business. Now, a new ISP named Hyperoptic is promising to bring 1Gbps connections to the residential masses. There’s a catch, though.
When tyrants in Middle Eastern countries cut Internet access in the midst of political upheaval, it's pointed to as yet another symptom of a sad and brutal dictatorship. Does that thinking hold true when a Western country censors its citizen's ability to speak online? We may soon find out. In the wake of the devastating riots in the heart of London, Prime Minister David Cameron alluded to the House of Commons that the British government may consider pulling the plug on social networks when the goings get rough in the UK.
As riots and looting continue to flare up in London, a group of online sleuths have gotten together on Google Groups to track down perpetrators. The group makes it clear that is it their intention to use facial recognition to identify the rioters seen in online images. A noble effort on the surface, but it comes with its own set of ethical and practical concerns.
Remember everybody's favorite pair of deliberately acting turtles, the Slowskis? Comcast used the commercials to poke fun at the slower speeds of Verizon's DSL service back when the cable company was trying to break into the broadband provider scene. Well, the tables have turned; even Comcast's 20Mbps speeds end up looking more tortoise than hare when compared to Virgin Media's blazing new 1.5Gbps down/150Mbps up connection. 
Kids say the darnedest things, don't they? At least the ones with social skills do. But what about the group of "screenagers" who spend more than six hours a day on the Internet?
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