Articles by David Vranicar

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg met Monday with Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow According to The New York Times, Russia is something of a "test case" for Zuckerberg and Facebook: a country that is commercially significant but nonetheless tightly regulates -- and censors -- its media....

The Iranian government is reopening access to Gmail agter taking flak for its decision to block Google's email service, according to the Telegraph Even members of parliament have complained about the Gmail block, according to the AP. A member of parliament was quoted in Iranian media saying that the minister of telecommunications would be summoned ...

Despite government-imposed bans, Facebook and Twitter have tens of millions of users in China, according to London-based GlobalWebIndex Facebook use in China has reportedly swelled to 63.5 million people, a roughly eightfold increase over the 7.9 million who used the site two years ago. Twitter, meanwhile, has nearly 36 million users in China....

A number of European languages could eventually vanish from the Internet, suggests a new study conducted by European nonprofit META-NET As Mashable reports, languages such as Icelandic, Latvian and Lithuanian don't have enough speakers to gain traction as popular languages on the Web. The report goes so far as to say that German, Italian, Spanish a...

Having already mapped Antarctica and the North Pole, Google has added panoramic images of coral reefs on Google Street View As the BBC reports, Google gathered the materials through the Catlin Seaview Survey, a project designed to study the health of coral reefs. Scientists with the Catlin Group, based in Bermuda, used a trio of wide-angle lenses s...

Foxconn Technology, the Taiwanese electronics maker typically linked with Apple products and workers' rights violations, said it closed a Chinese plant Monday following a fight between factory employees, according to The New York Times Foxconn said that several people from the Taiyuan plant, which employs nearly 80,000 people, were hospitalized an...

Microsoft has asked China to crack down on pirated Office software used by four major state-run companies, according to Bloomberg Speaking to a government panel last month, Microsoft named China National Petroleum Corp., China Post Group, China Railway Construction Corp. and Travelsky Technology as serial users of pirated software. Microsoft allege...

Two Romanian men, ages 27 and 28, have pleaded guilty to a multimillion-dollar hacking scheme targeted at Subway restaurants, according to Sophos' Naked Security The two men, arrested last December, were part of what is believed to be a four-person group that stole information from an estimated 146,000 payment cards belonging to Subway customers. T...

In an apparent effort to thwart TV show piracy, Hulu Japan, a subscription streaming site, will show episodes of Saturday Night Live mere hours after the show airs on U.S. television, according to GigaOm Hulu, which is based in the U.S. but also operates in Japan, struck a deal not with NBC, the network that broadcasts SNL, but with Broadway Video,...

Online payment service PayPal will prevent users in Argentina from making domestic transfers,according to the BBC According to this PayPal statement, PayPal users in Argentina will only be able to send and receive "international payments" starting on Oct. 9.

Japanese electronics company Panasonic halted some of its operations in China after protesters -- apparently upset about Japan's claim to disputed islands -- attacked a pair of Panasonic factories, according to the BBC Protests also forced Japanese electronics company Canon to close three of its four Chinese plants,according to Reuters....

Even though it has been signed by 22 of the European Union's 27 members, ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is unlikely to be ratified by the EU, according to The Guardian ACTA had gained favor among lawmakers looking to harmonize copyright enforcement around the globe, but a series of protests -- as well as what critics have called vag...

The British government will discuss new measures to restrict children's access to Internet pornography Under consideration is a plan that would require parents to explicitly enable pornography....

The Next Web, a network of online technology outlets, continued its annual conference Friday in Amsterdam Heeding to Amsterdam's night life, The Next Web waited until 10 a.m. to get things started, which was probably just about as early as the sleep-deprived attendees could have hacked it....

The Next Web, a network of online technology outlets, kicked off its annual conference Thursday morning in Amsterdam One of the morning's headline speakers was Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of the social news site Reddit, whose 25-minute talk discussed the ongoing -- and increasingly litigious -- battle over Internet rights....

Content Intent, Part 2 The dissemination of content throughout the Web has forced companies and marketing firms to rethink how they advertise. The swell of venues that are housing content has dueling effects: It increases the potential reach of an advertisement but also dilutes the customer pool for the original publisher....

Content Intent, Part 1 It can be a little tricky talking about how and why media outlets allow, and indeed encourage, the diffusion of their content throughout the Web.

As far as exclusive interviews go, you could do a lot worse than getting Herman Cain, and a lot worse than getting him on Nov. 28 That was, after all, the day that a woman unleashed accusations of a 13-year affair with Cain, the third racy allegation levied against Cain in a matter of weeks. And those charges were but part of the Cain saga....

Quantum Computers, Part 2: Zeros and Ones, Both and Neither At universities and companies around the globe, there are people plugging away trying to solve the myriad technological challenges of quantum computers. But that doesn't mean practical applications of quantum computing are some futuristic fantasy. Already, quantum technology is trickling i...

Quantum Computers, Part 1: A Simple Understanding Comparing an atom to a coin is like comparing a human heart to a repeatedly clinching fist. The analogy is woefully simplistic in relation to what is actually going on.