Google has cracked down on what has been described as the most ambitious attempt to unfairly influence its search rankings. And the offender? J.C. Penney. An online search expert says the retail store benefited from a mass-scale exploitation of one of the key elements of Google’s ranking: inbound links. While the exact algorithm Google uses […]
A Russian and an Italian have climbed out of their craft and walked on the surface of Mars. But while the men know it is merely a sandpit near Moscow, their bodies might not be so sure. The pair are among six men in their 20s and 30s who are taking part in a global […]
We already knew that our direct ancestors were by no means a bunch of knuckle-draggers. Now fossil analysis suggests they walked permanently rather than swinging from trees. The findings come from a fossilised footbone from an Australopithecus afarensis, which was a hominid. That’s the family which eventually developed into humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and gibbons. The […]
Activision has announced it will be scrapping the Guitar Hero franchise later this year, saying it was no longer possible to produce the games at a profit. The company will continue selling previously-released games, including DJ Hero, along with downloadable content. However, there’ll be no new material after this month. According to the company, “we […]
WUT? So, for those that don’t know: The world recently lost Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch. Reed, Sue and the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing have decided to re-brand themselves in their mourning. No longer calling themselves the Fantastic Four, FF now stands for “Future Foundation” whose mission is to “Save the Marvel Universe from its […]
America’s enemies include those who are “trolling social networks, blogs and forums,” a new Army document claims. But don’t worry: leaving snarky comments won’t get you an early hours visit from the Green Berets. Trolling in this sense refers to foreign operatives reading through such sites for information that could compromise military security. The warning […]
On Saturday, after two failed attempts of trying to get their tickets out, San Diego Comic Con sold out of all tickets in one day. Tickets were released at 9am PST and TicketLeap, the company handling distribution this time, had already crashed by 8:58am. (For some reason they allowed people to go the registration page […]
The Internet has finally run out of addresses. Well, sort of. As we noted last year, the issue involves public IP addresses, which points to a physical computer or server that stores a website, rather than the domain names (such as geeksaresexy.net) that most human users type in. The current system, Internet Protocol version 4 […]
The first iPad exclusive daily newspaper — known simply as The Daily — has now launched, along with Apple’s new option for customers to pay for subscriptions within an application itself. I’ve downloaded and read the first two issues, and here’s my take. The Daily certainly makes use of the iPad’s multimedia capabilities, and largely […]
Anyone who’s been to elementary school soon learns that larger children tend to hold the social power — or at least hold a physically dominant position. Now, though, it appears that lesson may be learned even earlier. Researchers at Harvard and UCLA, led by an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Copenhagen, made […]