Cyber Monday slows mobile web to a crawl

 

• This week's Cyber Monday online shopping bonanza set new records.

  • the growing number of consumers who shopped on their phones and tablets often encountered brick-and-mortar-like delays on sluggish sites.  

    • On average, mobile retail sites took more than 18 seconds to load on Monday.

The use of social media really helped these past few weeks involving sandy. Facebook and Twitter helped spread the word of those who needed help and it made it easier to contact family members. The down side to this is most of us had no power or a way to get on Facebook or twitter or any other social network because of power outages and no cell phone service. I experienced not being able to get in touch with one of my friends threw Facebook during Sandy so social media didn't help me as much as i would have liked it to.

My voki!

Google: 'Government surveillance is on the rise'

• how easily the U.S. government can access citizens' private e-mails.
• According to the latest Google Transparency report, Google fielded 20,938 requests for private account data from governments around the world between January and June of this year. That's up from 18,257 such requests during the last half of 2011, the company said.
• Google stores huge amounts of data and personal information about its users. In addition to the wealth of information in e-mail and Google Drive accounts, the company also has users' IP addresses, which can be used to determine locations.

Sandy knocks out 25% of cell service in its path 

• A quarter of cell towers, broadband Internet and television services in Superstorm Sandy's path were still dark Wednesday. 

  • Wireless carriers reported to the Federal Communications Commission that 25% of cell sites in the core area affected by the storm -- 158 counties across 10 states, from Virginia all the way up to Massachusetts -- remained non-operational. 

    • Cell towers have been running on backup battery power, fueled by generators.