Technology, Internet | featured news

Google Fiber has a lot going for it, both as an ISP and a pay-TV platform. There was was one gaping hole in the service though: no HBO. Lets be honest with ourselves, its the big geeks that are looking to hop on that 1Gbps service first. And what do geeks love almost as much as blazing-fast Google-branded internet? Game of Thrones. Now Kansas City (and soon Austin) based nerds will be able to watch Joffrey become an even bigger monster live, rather than wait for some torrent site to get an illegal copy of it up (or, if they're smart, mooch off of someone's HBO GO account). Alongside HBO, Google Fiber has also added Cinemax: Home Box Office's less cool sibling. The branded families of channels are both available today for $20 a month or $10 a month respectively. Or, if you're a real premium TV fan, you can get both, plus STARZ and Showtime for $40 a month. Hit up the source for a few more details.

What's the difference between Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services? Very little – or so says Microsoft, which has made a new commitment to match the web bazaar's pricing for basic cloud services. The price-matching announcement was made by Microsoft on Tuesday, alongside news that Redmond thinks its infrastructure-as-a-service cloud is now ready for general consumption.

As a company whose business proposition has gone from kind of weird to utterly commonplace in the space of a few years, OK Cupid has always been comfortable with novelty. Now it's embracing a new technology that strikes a lot of people as too futuristic for comfort: Bitcoin.

Fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott got drunk at a party and passed out. What happened next, according to her family, was that she was sexually assaulted by multiple young men, who took photos and circulated them in their high school of more than 1,000 students. Not long afterward, Audrie, devastated and hopeless, committed suicide.

Twitter like all other social media is a virtual Aladdin’s cave. It is a gateway to riches. But just like in the story, this Aladdin’s cave is also booby-trapped. Use it right and you will come away with the genie of knowledge ready to do your bidding. Use it wrong and you will be a casualty of wasted time. So, ‘rub’ it just right.

All in all, Facebook Home is ideal for true social network addicts. But those who aren’t constantly checking Facebook mobile for updates might find it more distracting than helpful.

Twitter appears to be getting ready to push into the music space with a service that shows users which artists are trending and features emerging artists. Twitter hasn’t officially announced the new service but it is being tested, according to a tweet from “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest — a message that was subsequently retweeted by Twitter’s vice president of business and corporate development, Kevin Thau.

A federal jury in Seattle on Thursday rejected a claim brought by a little-known actress who first lied about how old she was on the popular Internet Movie Database, then sued the company when it published her true age.

Yahoo is expected soon to hire a new chief of its crucial Americas division from Internet rival AOL Inc., said a person familiar with the matter. Ned Brody, who was the top advertising-sales executive at AOL, has resigned from the post to pursue "other opportunities," AOL said on Thursday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.