Europe

We're not sure how they feel in lands where fiber op­tic con­nec­tions flow like wine, but in most of the de­vel­oped world a up to 42 megabit per sec­ond in­ter­net con­nec­tion feels mighty fine. Fine enough, in fact, that it can make sense to share it with your peers, and that's why Netgear's new MBR1310 and MBR2000 routers are here. They're quad-band DC-HSPA+ units that dole out that pre­cious 3G data over 802.11n WiFi or via four 10/100 wired eth­er­net ports, with the MBR2000 adding ADSL2+ for a (...)

Sure took a long while, but the Android 2.2 up­date is now avail­able to all HTC Legends re­sid­ing in Europe and... no, sor­ry, this isn't the just-an­nounced Gingerbread. It's Froyo, the one be­fore it -- trust us, this isn't a frozen dessert you won't mind in the mid­st of win­ter. And don't both­er ask­ing about 2.3 be­cause HTC isn't giv­ing specifics yet. Wildfire? That's "com­ing soon," ac­cord­ing to the per­son be­hind the HTC UK Facebook cur­tain. HTC Legend fi­nal­ly up­dates to Android 2.2 in Europe (...)

From 2009 through 2010 Facebook has in­creased their size by leaps and bounds, not on­ly in the United States and Canada, but in coun­tries through­out the world. Based on data tak­en from Alexa and Google Trends, Vincenzo Cosenza post­ed the December 2010 map for Facebook dom­i­nance by coun­try. As the le­gend on the map shows, Facebook, col­or cod­ed in blue, has for the most part tak­en up a stronghold in more coun­tries, although Orkut has man­aged to con­tin­ue some of their dom­i­nance in some of the (...)

Facebook seems to be a bit of an om­nipresent en­ti­ty the­se days. On­ce the do­main of col­lege kids, it now fea­tures users of all ages and has al­so turned in­to a pro­mo­tion­al tool for artists, politi­cians and busi­ness­es. Vincenzo Cosenza has been track­ing var­i­ous so­cial net­works’ pop­u­lar­i­ty through­out the world, and he just post­ed a December 2010 map — based on data by Alexa and Google Trends for Websites — show­ing just how promi­nent Facebook has be­come through­out the world. A com­par­ison be­tween (...)

Canon's lat­est midrange SD4500 point and shoot -- known as the IXUS 1000 HS in Europe -- has scored a "Recommended" re­view by the folks at Photography Blog thanks large­ly to its ex­cel­lent im­age qual­i­ty (par­tic­u­lar­ly with night shots) and the pres­ence of a big 10x zoom lens packed in­side its Elph body. The testers were con­cerned, though, with the cam­era's poor 150-shot bat­tery life, 36mm not-so-wide-an­gle set­ting and min­i­mal phys­i­cal con­trols -- which may drive ex­pe­ri­enced users lo­co from (...)

This post is made pos­si­ble by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that fo­cus­es on a new and in­no­va­tive star­tup each day. Every Thursday, the pro­gram fo­cus­es on star­tups with­in the BizSpark pro­gram and what they’re do­ing to grow. Notes — they’re not sexy or flashy. But when one is the dif­fer­ence be­tween re­mem­ber­ing some­thing of sig­nif­i­cance and for­get­ting it, then it takes on an indis­pens­able pur­pose. Perhaps that ex­plains the me­te­oric rise of Evernote — the (...)

It’s the most in­fa­mous abuse again­st chil­dren. Online pe­dophil­ia reached huge pro­por­tions and it’s a grow­ing phe­nomenon hard to fight. Within a few years Internet has be­come the pre­ferred means by those crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions, which man­age the busi­ness of child pornog­ra­phy, for the ex­change and dis­sem­i­na­tion of con­tent. The anonymi­ty pro­vid­ed by the Web and the reck­less tol­er­ance of some Internet Service Providers have sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribut­ed to the growth of de­mand and, con­se­quent­ly, (...)

Just in case you had any doubts about the fact we live in the age of Facebook, just check out Vincenzo Cosenza’s lat­est edi­tion of the World Map Of Social Networks. Based on this mon­th’s Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traf­fic data, Cosenza posits that Facebook has man­aged to over­take some lo­cal in­cum­bent so­cial net­works in the past few months, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Europe. According to his anal­y­sis, the site is now mar­ket lead­er in 115 out of 132 coun­tries. Other so­cial net­works on the (...)

By Frances Robinson, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal EBay Inc. may have to change the way it pro­tects L’Oréal SA’s trade­marks after Europe’s high­est court said Thursday that the cos­met­ics com­pa­ny can pro­hibit the sale on the auc­tion site of free sam­ples and prod­ucts in­tend­ed for out­side Europe. However, the European Court of Justice’s ad­vo­cate gen­er­al, Niilo Jaaskinen, in giv­ing his opin­ion, said eBay could con­tin­ue to pur­chase ad­ver­tis­ing key­words, in­clud­ing L’Oréal trade­marks, in order to (...)

Matt Mullengweg (the founder of WordPress and Automattic) re­cent­ly was able to an­swer some ques­tions re­gard­ing the strength of WordPress at Le Web (one of the lead­ing tech con­fer­ence in Europe). While some of the ques­tions an­swered at Le Web were not sur­pris­ing (i.e.  his de­sire for Automattic to avoid be­ing ac­quired), a few an­swers re­gard­ing rev­enues for WP.com were. Are you mak­ing money? We’re fo­cused on growth right now, so we’ve in­vest­ed a lot in in­fras­truc­ture and so on. We haven’t been (...)

Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, who made a for­tune from the sale of the so­cial net­work to AOL (NYSE: AOL) two and a half years ago, is on­ce again in­vest­ing in the site. AOL sold Bebo to pri­vate equity firm Criterion Capital Partners this sum­mer; Criterion now says Birch is join­ing the com­pa­ny as a strate­gic ad­vi­sor and will be tak­ing an un­spec­i­fied stake in the com­pa­ny. Since pur­chas­ing Bebo, Criterion has made a num­ber of big-name hires who have promised to add new fea­tures to the site. (...)

This week we cel­e­brate and rec­og­nize the sec­ond an­nu­al Computer Science Education Week (December 5-11). We’re proud to con­tin­ue our sup­port for CSEd Week and our com­mit­ment to Computer Science ed­u­ca­tion. We be­lieve that all stu­dents should have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come ac­tive cre­ators of to­mor­row's tech­nol­o­gy. With that in mind, our goal is to use Google’s strengths and in­fras­truc­ture to in­crease ac­cess to high-qual­i­ty open ed­u­ca­tion­al con­tent and tech­nol­o­gy in order to in­vest in the next (...)

I think most of you know how we have felt about the EU / EC’s at­tempts to in­ves­ti­gate Google as a monopoly based on com­plaints by a few whin­ers in the search space. Well, it is re­fresh­ing to see some­one who doesn’t have a US ac­cent talk about the EU’s ap­par­ent lack of un­der­stand­ing of the dig­i­tal world of busi­ness. Matthew Lynn of Bloomberg gives his point of view in the video be­low (there is an ad at the start). Lynn Says EU Trust Busters Fail to Understand Monopolies Uploaded by (...)

The United States ac­counts for 5% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion but 34% of to­tal world­wide ad­ver­tis­ing. That means we’re the largest ad mar­ket but it doesn’t mean we’re the on­ly mar­ket. According to a new study by Ad Age, China is one of the fastest grow­ing coun­tries in re­gard to ad­ver­tis­ing dol­lars. With 20% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, they cur­rent­ly ac­count for on­ly 5% of the world­wide ad bud­get but ex­perts say they’re on track to dis­place Germany as the third largest mar­ket come 2011. Sitting (...)

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree! Much plea­sure thine COLOR can'st give me... So much so that there are over 200 Christmas tree col­ors in the COLOURlovers Library. Below you will find com­mon va­ri­eties of trees used in North America & Europe as "Christmas trees," and col­ors ex­tract­ed from, or in­spired by, them.

SAP cer­ti­fied part­ner Taulia, provider of a “Dy­nam­ic Discounting” plat­form for cor­po­ra­tions us­ing SAP, an­nounced this morn­ing that it raised $3.2 mil­lion in fi­nanc­ing from new in­vestors nclud­ing Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures. Previous back­ers such as The Angels’ Forum al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the round. The com­pa­ny says the fresh­ly se­cured cap­i­tal will be used to ex­pand its sales teams in the United States and Europe. Taulia essen­tial­ly en­ables cor­po­ra­tions to pay their in­voic­es ear­ly (...)

Sorry for the ab­sence. The Pandia ed­i­tors have been out trav­el­ling (from ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the Korea con­flict in Seoul to tak­ing part in the Online Information Conference in London). Now we are back onhspace=”4″ track, how­ev­er, with a new list of search engine rel­e­vant ar­ti­cles and posts from around the Web. Making Copyright Work Better Online Google Public Policy Blog: We will pre­vent terms that are close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with pira­cy from ap­pear­ing in Autocomplete. We’ll act on re­li­able copy­right (...)

Google has moved from be­ing con­sid­ered the in­no­va­tive un­der­dog to a dom­i­nant play­er. Both the European Commission and the US Federal Trade Commission are look­ing in­to its prac­tices. But there is hope for Google yet. Google is no longer ev­ery­body’s dar­ling, i.e. the bril­liant lit­tle cre­ative kid with chub­by cheeks who we for­give ev­ery­thing due to his cre­ativ­i­ty and dis­arm­ing charm. In fact, Google (GOOG) is start­ing to look more and more like Microsoft used to 10 years ago, an old and (...)

Google Insurance: 8 Steps to Protect Your Reputation It doesn’t take much to set off a tsunami of pub­lic re­la­tions headaches in the dig­i­tal world. As the last 12 months have shown us-what with BP’s en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter and a va­ri­ety of on­line scan­dals-the dam­age that a dis­grun­tled client or au­di­ence can do can’t be mea­sured in in­come alone but can easi­ly swell to ridicu­lous pro­por­tions. 80 Examples of Snow Photography To Freeze Your Screen Christmas is com­ing and some coun­tries (...)

(Cross-post­ed from the Google Voice Blog) Keeping in touch with fam­i­ly dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son can be chal­leng­ing for any­one, but it’s espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for mil­i­tary fam­i­lies with loved ones serv­ing around the coun­try or over­seas. Gmail’s built in video chat and free calls to the U.S. and Canada can help keep friends and fam­i­ly in con­tact re­gard­less of how far apart they may be. To make stay­ing in touch this hol­i­day sea­son even easier for mil­i­tary fam­i­lies, we’re of­fer­ing a $10 call­ing (...)