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ComScore: Facebook overtakes Yahoo, is now the third most trafficked website in the world
ComScore -- a common metric used to measure internet traffic -- is showing off some impressive stats these days. In the month of November, for instance, Facebook overtook Yahoo! for the first time in worldwide traffic, with the social network nabbing 648 million unique visitors while the portal named after Gulliver's Travels pulled in 630 million. What does this mean to? Well, to point out the obvious, it seems that while Facebook continues its epic growth, the relatively flat state of Yahoo!'s traffic is simply not enough to retain its third place spot behind Google and Microsoft's sites, which grab up places one and two consistently. One note about these ComScore statistics, just in case you're wondering about that last one: it 'groups' sites together rather than counting individual URLS, so for instance, the Microsoft sites take the number two spot en masse. In terms of U.S. traffic, Facebook still trails Yahoo! a bit, with 152 million visitors and 181 million, respectively, so if they're truly hoping for world domination, they have their work cut out for them. We're looking at you, Mark!
FCC looking into Comcast / Netflix blocking threat, Level 3 responds as analysts chime in
News that Comcast had threatened to block internet backbone Level 3, which is one of the companies delivering Watch Instantly streams, sent shockwaves through the industry yesterday. Net neutrality advocates geared up for battle, Comcast insisted it was only enforcing the same arrangements other networks abide by while Roger Ebert and the rest of us fretted over Netflix access. Today, Level 3 issued a response to Comcast, claiming it is "distracting from the fundamental issue" which is free use of all content on the internet for its customers. Meanwhile, Multichannel News points out industry analysts say Level 3's claims of traffic discrimination "appear unfounded" while VideoNuze editor Will Richmond supposes Level 3 may have "bid too aggressively for the Netflix business and is now trying to recover." Most damaging to Level 3's argument are its own words from a dispute where it sought financial compensation from Cogent for using too much of its network's bandwidth: "For example, Cogent was sending far more traffic to the Level 3 network than Level 3 was sending to Cogent's network. It is important to keep in mind that traffic received by Level 3 in a peering relationship must be moved across Level 3's network at considerable expense. Simply put, this means that, without paying, Cogent was using far more of Level 3's network, far more of the time, than the reverse. Following our review, we decided that it was unfair for us to be subsidizing Cogent's business." Beyond analyst opinions and posturing the question of whether or not Comcast has the power to set pricing for access to its network, creating the toll road Level 3 is accusing it of being, is still at issue. That will certainly come into play at the FCC, where chairman Julius Genachowski mentioned at today's meeting that the agency is looking into Level 3's claims at the same time it continues to review the joining of Comcast and NBC. As far as your Netflix streams? Safe for now, though the company isn't commenting, Level 3 isn't the only provider it relies on for access and how any deal it might reach with Comcast could affect the service is still unclear. Update: Comcast has issued its own salvo of PR, including a video meant to breakdown exactly what internet peering is and what it wants to charge Level 3 for, 10 of its own facts about what it is, and is not doing, and a copy of the letter it's sent to the FCC about the issue. You can them all out in full after the break.
NAVTEQ Shocker! New York City, other populated places have terrible traffic problems
Do you enjoy driving? Do you adore the open road? Are you willing to do anything and everything to avoid being patted down by Patrick Downy of the TSA? Well by Golly, you might just need yourself a GPS! But look out! If you're headed to New York City, you might run into a small amount of "traffic," and that could very well cause an unwanted, but not at all unexpected, delay. Other North American spots -- most of which are "densely populated" -- just so happened to make the cut in a new traffic study from NAVTEQ, a respected leader in the navigation industry. Best steer clear of Denver, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Philly, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington D.C. if you're looking to keep the wheels moving this Thanksgiving, and we're totally under the assumption that you actually needed a research project to inform you of that. Consider yourself schooled!
Magellan updates RoadMate with free traffic and iOS 4 support
It was almost exactly a year ago that I reviewed the first version of the Magellan RoadMate app for the iPhone. Over the last several months the price has dropped, and features have been added. In the latest update of the app, released this week, RoadMate USA now fully supports multitasking and fast application switching. If you are listening to music, it fades it for voice announcements, and voice guidance continues if you switch to another app. There is also an option to pause audio, which is nice if you're listening to an audio book and the voice guidance needs to interrupt. More value from Magellan: traffic info is now free (with a catch, see below). You won't need an in-app purchase or any kind of subscription. I consider that a big plus if you commute in an urban area. The app also allows you to share your route or points of interest via email or with another Magellan user. In a test drive, everything functioned very well. The voice guidance is clear, and you can choose a male or female voice, as well as other languages. If you zoom out and are in 3D mode, you can see the terrain, which is a nice feature. In downtown areas of bigger cities, you get 3D renderings of major buildings. %Gallery-107896%
RIM tries to patent billboards that adjust to roadside traffic
Looks like our pals at Research In Motion are taking the company name literally this week -- they've got a pair of patent applications target ads to automobiles and pedestrians on the street by dynamically changing their information density. By taking a page out of Google's book and measuring the relative position of GPS-equipped phones (or using traditional sensors should that fail), RIM wants to create digital billboards that automatically add details the slower traffic gets. In one example, a "Road House Restaurant" could display only the name and exit number of the joint in giant letters when traffic moves quickly, but pitch that delectable pecan pie more thoroughly when it's stop and go -- but RIM's thinking a bit further than that, suggesting that when vehicles are particularly slow, you could pull out your phone and get a coupon by photographing a projected QR code. The future, ladies and gentlemen.
Optical illusion lets you safely run over fake children
Traffic: it's one of our least favorite things in the universe, especially when it's caused by rubbernecking. A Canadian organization called Preventable has taken a bizarrely proactive twist on the motorist's compulsion to stare at accidents by putting the "accident" in front of the car. Drivers on 22nd Street in West Vancouver approach a large decal on the road that takes on the image of a little girl chasing a ball -- it becomes realistic-looking about 100 feet out -- hopefully causing them to be so weirded out that they slow down and think about it for a second. Of course, it's hard to tell whether this will do more good than harm in practice (also see: Road SMS), so the decal is just in place for one week as officials observe changes in driver behavior around the little lady. Check out a test drive after the break.
TUAW's Daily App: Texto SMS Favorites
There are a lot of weird texting applications for the iPhone, and some of them are pretty hinky in terms of design or function. But Texto is probably the best looking SMS app I've seen -- it doesn't do any weird non-SMS text messaging or have all kinds of neon graphics running around. All it does is hook up with your iPhone's standard texting service to let you get quick shortcuts to your most commonly used people and messages. Thanks to LA traffic, I'm often running just a little late for meetings, and with Texto, I can just tap a few buttons to send an "I'll be there soon" to my friends and colleagues rather than trying to type the whole thing out as I frantically drive across town. The app's only 99 cents, but I'll admit it's not for everybody. If you don't text a whole lot already, you probably don't need a whole other app to handle your most frequently-sent messages. And obviously, sending a pre-written message is a little impersonal. Your significant other might realize you're blowing them off the fifth time you send a "Sorry, I'm busy, call you soon," message to them. There's one other caveat: you can only use this one in iOS 4.0, due to the way it interacts with the SMS app. For the right user, Texto can be really helpful, and it's got the bonus of having a great and simple interface that's free of ads and clutter.
Visualized: world's most trafficked websites and their favicons
We knew Google Search was an iconic service (we had to), but seeing it dwarf the rest of the web like this is pretty humbling. This here map of the internets uses Alexa data from earlier this year to assign the favicon dimensions of each of the top 288,945 sites around the world. Oh, and if you don't have an icon sidled up next to your URL, tough luck, you're not on here. See how many you can spot before your eyes start bleeding, then hit up the source to look up your favorite sites. As to your absolute favoritest site of them all, you can spot us somewhere in the space between vBulletin and Wikipedia.
Waze still has a 'waze' to go
The free nav app for the iPhone, Waze, has just been updated with a new 2.0 version that sports some new features and some of the same old problems. Waze is basically a navigation app with some crowdsourced features. If you are using the app, Waze keeps track of your location, and if you get stuck in traffic, it will tell others along or near your route that something is amiss. It's a good idea, but only if there are a lot of people using the app on your route. New to this version are commuting groups, which allows you to create groups of drivers and see them on the map. There is an improved 3D view, and a better, simpler, search menu. The app works in landscape as well as portrait mode, and does give voice directions.
Audi shows off Travolution vehicle-to-infrastructure communication system (update: video!)
We've already seen Audi show off a car-to-traffic light communication system, but the automaker has stepped things up considerably with a recent demonstration of its new Travolution system, which not only lets cars communicate with traffic lights, but other cars as well. The basic idea is the same as before: to cut down on pollution and fuel-consumption by reducing idling at stop lights and, in some cases, the need to stop at all. To do that, the system relies on a combination of WiFi and 3G, which currently lets Audi's 15 test cars communicate with some 150 traffic lights in Ingolstadt, Germany -- and with each other to further avoid accidents. What's more, the system can now also even take control of the vehicles in some instances to prevent them from running a red light, and it will give drivers a heads up about the status of upcoming traffic lights -- saying, for instance, if the next light will be red or green if you continue at your current speed. As if that wasn't enough, the system also helps keep track of traffic jams, and Audi has even thrown in online payment at gas stations and parking garages for good measure. Head on past the break for the complete press release. Update: Video after the break! [Thanks, Christopher]
iPad traffic spikes on the weekends
This wild little graph was derived from recent data that was provided by Net Applications (the same data that provided those iPhone stats earlier today). The iPad's Internet traffic has been growing by leaps and bounds on the weekends. As you can see above, over weekend periods since launch, iPad traffic almost doubles, and then it drops back down again during the week. Last weekend was the international release, which resulted in that last big jump. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see traffic drop back down, even if not as much, this coming week. That's one of the weirdest usage patterns I've seen, but it makes sense; people are coming home on the weekends and using their iPads while away from their usual work and home computers. When they go out on the weekend to relax, they're taking the iPad with them, and most interestingly, they're "learning" to use the iPad; you can see steady growth in usage during the week and more usage on the weekends. That's a fascinating little packet of data about a fascinating new kind of computer. [via Fortune]
Ford SYNC owners to get stock quotes, horoscopes and movie listings shouted at them
Hooray for voice command systems... that no one uses. Okay, so maybe someone uses 'em, but until voice recognition software improves drastically and / or our own memory banks swell dramatically, we still see most motorists reaching for buttons, toggles and wheels when it comes time to interact with their vehicle. That said, existing Ford owners with SYNC'd rides can soon do a lot more talking with their system thanks to a few complimentary updates hitting the Traffic, Directions & Information (TDI) sector. The cloud-based service will allow drivers to demand that a given stock quote, horoscope, movie time or travel inquiry be sorted and shouted, and just in case you glossed that last sentence over, we're going to reiterate once more that your SYNC system will now read back your horoscope. And guess what? These updates should be taking effect immediately, so feel free to make a mad dash for your garage and try 'er out.
IBM seeks patent for intelligent traffic lights
In the great pantheon of things unlikely to happen, this IBM idea ranks pretty highly, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad one. Big Blue has applied for a patent covering a sophisticated new traffic lights system, which judges how long cars have to wait and sends them ominous-sounding "stop-engine notifications" when the pause is long enough to make switching off optimal. This is done by communicating with queuing vehicles and collecting their positional data, and subsequent start-engine notices are also distributed intelligently, as the first car in the queue gets it earlier than the second and so on right to the back. We don't know how many dudes would abide by the instructions of a lightbox up in the sky, but it's still a neat little concept -- maybe we'll see it in action when hovercars go mainstream. [Thanks, Yuka]
Report: iPad grabbed 0.03 percent of all web traffic in its first week on earth
Yesterday, when Apple announced it was pushing back the international launch of the iPad until the end of May, high demand was cited -- over 500,000 units delivered, it said. And today, we've got a report out from NetApplications that indicates the iPad might be quickly making inroads with users. Over the first week of the device's public availability, the report says, the iPad nabbed about 0.03 percent of all web traffic. For comparison, the iPhone averages about 0.51 percent of traffic. This number nearly matches web traffic for BlackBerrys in March -- 0.04 percent (Android grabbed up 0.07 percent, as did Windows Mobile). Of course, NetApplications tracks only a sampling of website traffic to gather its data, so we'll keep our eyes peeled for longer term trends.
Universal's back with more DVD / Blu-ray flip discs later this month
We're still not sure if those Jason Bourne DVD / Blu-ray combo discs went over well, but Universal is already gearing up its second go round of "flipper" combos with Out of Africa 25th Anniversary Edition, Traffic and The Jackal all set to arrive April 27. With $27 MSRP and sub-$20 pricing on Amazon there's not a huge price premium on these catalog releases, but unless they're personal favorites we're leaning towards waiting for their inevitable appearance in a bargain bin. Are there any among us who just have to have a little old and a little new all in one?
Don't panic over these iPad delivery exceptions
Lots of TUAW readers have written in today, worried about their iPad deliveries. Since they received shipment notices, many folks have been tracking their progress, and are now seeing messages like: UPS INTERNAL ACTIVITY. SHIPMENT IS HELD TO VERIFY COMMODITY DESCRIPTION WITH THE CUSTOMER FOR CORRECT CLASSIFICATION "Your package has experienced an exception" If you received one of these notices, you are not alone. Apple has taken similar measures in the past to make sure that deliveries do not arrive before the official release date. In fact, Boy Genius Report suggests that Apple is purposefully withholding clearance papers for the iPads to make sure that they are not delivered early. As anxious as these next few days of waiting will be, and as nerve-racking as it is when this is your iPad, I fully expect that 99.99% of the iPads scheduled for delivery on Saturday will be delivered on Saturday. We've also heard directly from someone who works "for a certain shipping company" who reports that they will have double the number of drivers out in their particular delivery area on Saturday, due to the increased traffic. I would expect that other areas would see similar increases. Nobody who works for a shipping company wants to have to go back to Apple and explain why they couldn't meet delivery needs. That being said, the same source does not expect exceptions to be made for areas without Saturday delivery, so you may have to wait until Monday for your iPad to be delivered. Don't panic -- we're sure UPS will do everything it can to get your iPad to you on time. If you're not sure about the delivery policy in your area, you may want to contact UPS to verify. Image via UPS.com. Please note, this man is not actually delivering an iPad. If you see him, do not try to wrest it from his hand.
MapQuest iPhone gets free voice navigation; TomTom lifetime map and traffic PNDs now available (update: Navigon MobileNavigator 1.5 too)
Chalk up another two wins for cheap consumer GPS. Like Google Maps Navigation before it, the MapQuest 4 Mobile iPhone app has just now added gratis turn-by-turn voice directions... and ahead of schedule, TomTom has begun bundling its new 2010 Personal Navigation Devices, including the XL 340S and the XXL 540S -- with lifetime traffic and maps subscriptions. The latter are now available on Amazon for a $30-per-lifetime-subscription premium in a variety of increasingly feature-filled flavors, with helpful T (traffic), M (maps) and TM (traffic and maps) suffixes so you know which TomTom is which. If you prefer buying from brick and mortar, TomTom expects retail availability beginning in April. Full list of supported TomTom models and expected MSRP after the break. Update: The 1.5.0 iPhone update to MobileNavigator from Navigon that includes MyRoutes, Facebook and Twitter integration, and Panorama View 3D is finally up on iTunes as well.
Flurry data: 44% of apps tested on the iPad are games
Sunday night on the Talkcast, we pointed out that we didn't know exactly which developers were getting those test iPads to play with. However, we might know just which apps they're testing. According to Flurry Analytics, who have (somehow) been watching traffic from the iPhone OS 3.2, 44% of the apps being tested on the iPad right now are games. Entertainment apps (which seems like a broad category) falls into second place with 14%, and then the list evens out around there -- social networking claims 7% of the apps, sports 6%, travel 5%, and so on. It's not completely clear where this data comes from -- presumably, Flurry is finding web traffic somewhere that's marked as coming to or from an iPad. Of course, that doesn't guarantee that these numbers are legit. Some apps are more likely to send traffic than others, and all we see here are percentages, as Flurry hasn't released actual numbers. "Games," as we speculated last night, probably means that bigger companies like EA and Gameloft have test iPads to try out, and "social networking" probably means that Facebook and possibly Foursquare are testing their apps. "Sports" could mean that MLB is testing its app, and so on. It looks like gamers who have an iPad on day one will at least have plenty of game titles to choose from. The iPhone's App Store took a little while to get rolling with some hit apps, but developers and Apple seem to be doing everything they can to ensure that there are some popular downloads in the iPad's App Store right away. [via TheAppleBlog]
Ford adding HOV logic, ability to download outside Mapquest destinations to 2011 NAV systems
Ford's been keeping itself busy on the navigation front, and while you may have noticed that 2010 just began a few weeks ago (on the Gregorian calendar, anyway), 2011 model year vehicles are already on the minds of those in Dearborn. 2011 models with voice-activated navigation systems will be getting an update that brings along HOV logic, helping users who travel with a buddy to get from point A to point B more hastily if carpool lanes are nearby. Of course, only 2,500 miles of those blanket America, so a few other updates might be intriguing to those of you who are sane enough to live outside of the rat race. Branded POI icons, higher density street labeling and HD Radio will come standard on voice-controlled NAV systems, and potentially most interesting is the notion that "integration with SYNC Traffic, Directions and Information (TDI) app -- enabling new features like the ability to download destinations sent from a home or work computer from Mapquest" -- will hit later on in the year. Full release is after the break.
TomTom promises lifetime (free) map and traffic updates for select 2010 PNDs
It's a funny thing. Ever since Google changed the game up with its Maps Navigation software, TomTom's really been in the giving mood. After bringing free lane guidance, text-to-speech and iPod control to the outfit's iPhone GPS app, its following in the footsteps of Navigon and Nextar by promising gratis traffic and map updates for select navigators starting in Q2 of this year. Unfortunately, exact details on which products will be included under the "no cash needed for updates" umbrella are nonexistent, but here's hoping more than a few are included (and that Garmin, et al. follows suit in short order).
