Of course, the domains could be a mix between possible move titles and video game titles, but they give subtle clues as to what the title will be about. Some of the more notable domain names that were registered include Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars Wolf Pack, Star Wars Alliance, and our personal favorite: Wookiee Hunters.

Other domain names include Wolf Pack Adventures, Order 67, Bothan Spies, Gungan Frontier 2, Gungan Frontier 3, and Gungan Frontier 4. Of course, further details on these titles is far from unknown, but it at least tells us that Disney and EA are set to kick it into high gear with new Star Wars installments over these next few years.

Disney acquired Lucasfilm and LucasArts back in October, essentially getting full control over everything Star Wars. However, it came at a cost for the Mickey Mouse company, who paid just north of $4 billion for it all. It looks like that investment will come to good use, though, as Disney looks to milk the franchise for everything its worth.

[via Fusible]

The company says that its faster fiber-optics internet service should begin rolling out to a select number of markets in Omaha next week, with availability to almost 50,000 of its customers to arrive by October of this year. This makes Omaha the fifth city in the US to receive gigabit internet, with Kansas City being the first.

The latest city to receive Google Fiber will be Provo, Utah, which was just announced last month, as was the announcement that Google’s gigabit internet would be coming to Austin, Texas. Even certain locations in Vermont will be getting fiber-based internet (not provided by Google Fiber, though). Based on this trend, we should see more cities crop up to challenge other cities for the fastest internet.

However, ISPs in these areas aren’t too happy about the deal that Google is getting with its Fiber service, and they’re fighting back with comparable services of their own. For example, AT&T announced that it would offer gigabit internet in Austin alongside Google Fiber. The war is officially on, and for once it’s not taking place in a court room.

That number is up from the 1,811 takedown requests made regarding 18,070 pieces of content during the previous half of 2012, and it’s the highest number of takedown requests that Google has seen during a six-month period since the search giant began to offer transparency reports three years ago.

Google’s legal director, Susan Infantino, says that “it’s become increasingly clear that the scope of government attempts to censor content on Google services has grown,” and she notes that “in more places than ever, we’ve been asked by governments to remove political content that people post on” various Google services.

The most notable spike came from Brazil, which saw a sharp increase from the last transparency report. Google received 697 requests in Brazil, most of which were court orders. This is up from 191 during the first half of 2012. Google says that the reason for the steep increase was due to the municipal elections, which took place during the fall.

The bill is backed by Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA), and it’s being called the Broadband Adoption Act of 2013, which would instruct the FCC to modify the Lifeline program in order to include broadband internet. Matsui says that the Lifeline program is fantastic, but it needs to be updated and modernized to fit within the 21st century.

Lifeline is funded by the “Universal Service” system, which helps low-income Americans pay for their landline phone, but this new bill would see Universal Services also helping pay for broadband internet access. In addition to subsidizing services, the Universal Service also helps pay for telephone service in rural areas around the country.

However, the discussion of whether or not to provide low-income households with cheaper broadband internet has been up and down in Washington for several years now, with a 2010 government report showing up that recommended the addition of broadband internet to the existing Lifeline program. Plus, Matsui introduced similar legislation in 2011, but it quickly faded away.

[via Ars Technica]

Inactive Account Manager comes with several options to choose from as far as what happens to your Google account data and information. You can choose to have an alert sent to a mobile phone after a certain amount of time of inactivity has passed, and you can also add up to 10 “trusted contacts,” who will be given your account credentials should your account become inactive for a long period of time.

Or if you’d rather not give your Google account information to anyone, you can simply have your entire Google account deleted after a specified amount of time of inactivity has passed. Deleting your account will result in all Google data being wiped, including Blogger, Contacts and Circles, Drive, Gmail, Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams, Picasa Web Albums, Google Voice, and YouTube.

This makes for an easy way for your loved ones to handle your digital life after you’ve passed away. Of course, they could easily log on to your accounts by looking up your saved passwords in the web browser settings, but not everyone saves their passwords, and many users put passwords on the computers themselves.

Google says that Austin is “a mecca for creativity and entrepreneurialism, with thriving artistic and tech communities.” The University of Texas is also located in Austin, which is the location of a new medical research hospital where Google is particularly excited for the folks there to utilize the gigabit internet.

Google expects to start rolling out its Fiber internet service in Austin by mid-2014, and customers in that area will have similar choices of product tiers as the users in Kansas City. However, pricing details are still being worked out by the search giant, but they’ll be “roughly similar” to the prices in Kansas City.

Google will be offering the same free fiber internet deal as those in Kansas City. Customers can a free internet connection at 5Mbps for 7 years, as long as they pay the one-time construction fee, which is around $300. Google plans to not only roll out its internet to residents, but also universities, hospitals, community centers, and other public places.

Qualcomm announced that it’ll be working with the MLB over the next two years to implement WiFi improvements to each of the 30 MLB stadiums to assess the level of WiFi coverage. The company said that select stadium reviews are underway as we speak, with the rest of fleet getting improvements over the next two years.

Qualcomm noted that WiFi traffic has been on the rise at MLB ballparks, and the company will not only figure out ways to improve WiFi coverage in stadiums, but also figure out new ways to deliver helpful and interesting content to spectators during the game. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed, and it’s not said how much upgrades will cost.

Qualcomm will also be working with carriers to improve 3G and 4G coverage in and around MLB stadiums. Frankly, improved wireless coverage is becoming more of a must at high-traffic areas like sports stadiums. With the growing amount of connected smartphones making their way into the hands of sports fans, stadiums will need to compensate by offering better WiFi coverage during the games.

You can embed Vine clips through two different avenues. You can either embed a clip directly from the webpage of the clip, or you can embed it using the iOS app, which can be found by tapping the ellipses in the bottom-right corner, tapping “Share this post,” and the hitting “Embed.” One thing to be aware of, though, is that Vine uses “iframe” to embed clips, which some websites and blogging platforms don’t support.

Embedding a Vine using the web link allows you to choose different sizes and styles. You can choose between 600 pixels wide, 480 pixels wide, or 320 pixels wide. There’s also two different styles, one of which is called “Simple,” which only displays the Vine and nothing else, and then there’s the “Postcard” view, which shows other details, such as the username, date, and any captions written.

We can’t embed Vines here on SlashGear, but here’s a still screenshot of what the “Postcard” style looks like:

However, even though Vine is still constantly updating its Vine service, they still have yet to release the app to Android. However, we’d be surprised if an Android version didn’t arrive at some point. Back in February, Vine was looking for an Android developer, according to their job listings, so it’s possible they’re working on an Android version right now.

A couple of security experts have stated that cyber attacks, like the one on Spamhaus, are a sign of many similar attacks that will show up in the future. Kaspersky has stated that the attack is the largest DDoS attack to date. It stated that the scale of the attack was speculated to be operating at speeds of 300Gbps. It also states that attacks like these will be occurring more in the future due to the “development of the Internet itself” as well as two major motives. The first motive being “monterary profit”, where cyber criminals use DDoS attacks to disrupt a corporation’s services in order to extort money from them. The second motive revolves around cyber criminals launching DDoS attacks against companies to satisfy their own personal agendas.

Joakim Sundberg, part of F5 Networks, stated that he expected to see an attack like the one on Spamhaus for some time now. He called the attack “domain name service reflection”. He states that DNS Reflection attacks will start becoming more mainstream in DDoS attacks in the future, especially as more cyber criminals and hacktivists need to come up with more new, and better ways to launch their attacks.

Sundberg also states that while the Spamhaus attack may be the largest DDoS attack right now, it’s “just one among many that we will see throughout 2013.” He says that a DDoS attack is “just a smoke screen for a more sophisticated attack that can potentially cost the company even more money.” Whatever the attack may be, Spamhaus is confident that they will be able to withstand it. The group says, “We can’t be brought down. Spamhaus has more than 80 servers around the world. We’ve built the biggest DNS server around.” Whatever is going on between the two companies, it’ll just end up hurting innocent consumers in the end.

[via The Telegraph]

What we’ve got going on here is a battle on several tiers. The first is the blocking of Cyberbunker by the powers that be – with Spamhaus, that is. The second is the retaliation that a variety of hacker groups are taking on Cyberbunker as well as a collection of other sites for having blocked Cyberbunker in the first place. Cyberbunker is being accused of hosting SPAM websites and sources that Spamhaus has dedicated themselves to kicking out of the web.

Spamhaus is a non-profit group that helps email providers filter unwanted content from users across the web. They do this with a collection of block lists of known Spammers and malicious organizations. Spamhaus recently blocked servers maintained by Cyberbunker and said that the business was working in cooperation with “criminal gangs” of the Eastern Europe and Russian variety in their retaliation for the blocks.

Cyberbunker is known for being a server of all manner of web content, with only a couple of choice exceptions. Spam is not one of them. Speaking with the BBC this week, Steve Linford, chief executive for Spamhaus, noted that the retaliatory attacks happening now have been unheard of in scale.

“We’ve been under this cyber-attack for well over a week. But we’re up – they haven’t been able to knock us down. Our engineers are doing an immense job in keeping it up – this sort of attack would take down pretty much anything else. If you aimed this at Downing Street they would be down instantly. They would be completely off the internet.” – Linford

Speaking about the effect this attack has been having on the rest of the web, Prof Alan Woodward also let the BBC know that the internet was, indeed, slowing down as a result. Woodward is a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey.

“If you imagine it as a motorway, attacks try and put enough traffic on there to clog up the on and off ramps. With this attack, there’s so much traffic it’s clogging up the motorway itself.” – Woodward

According to Spamhaus’ Linford, Google and a variety of other helpful companies with the capacity to assist have been making their resources available in an effort to “absorb” the traffic this event is generating. Linford has also added that they’re quite confident that they’ll prevail eventually.

“They are targeting every part of the internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down. We can’t be brought down. Spamhaus has more than 80 servers around the world. We’ve built the biggest DNS server around.” – Linford

Sound like a fun battle to you? We’ll be following this story with a close eye as it continues to affect us all. Let us know if you’ve felt the impact yourself – or if you think it’s all bullocks, instead insisting that your internet is just slower than everyone else!

During an analyst event, JetBlue announced that they will be calling their in-flight WiFi service “Fly-Fi,” a clever play on words with “Fly” and “WiFi.” The service will be powered by Exede Internet, which is owned by ViaSat. JetBlue hasn’t given a launch date yet, but they hope to have their first WiFi-enabled flight take off sometime later this year.

JetBlue also teased the new service, by releasing a video that demonstrates the speed of their new WiFi service compared to other top WiFi providers like Gogo, Row 44, and Panasonic’s own service. Of course, JetBlue boasts that their Fly-Fi option surfs the web at a much quicker rate than the other three providers.

The airline says that there’s still a lot of testing to be done, and the FAA still needs to come in and do a series of certification tests before the service can be put to public use. Currently, a large number of airlines have WiFi available, but you usually have to pay a small fee in order to get it. JetBlue will be one of the few airlines to offer free WiFi on board.

As a part of “#MobileMonday,” Google launched the redesign to the mobile web app and Gmail Offline to make it look similar to the Gmail iOS app. By navigating to Gmail.com in your favorite mobile web browser, you should see the new look, along with some added features that dedicated app users have been enjoying for a while. Google says the new web app version works on Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Kindle Fire devices.

While the dedicated Gmail app has a more streamlined UI, many users may actually prefer the web app over the dedicated app, especially since you can tap between other Google services, like Calendar, Google+, and of course the search engine itself. It also doesn’t take up space on your device, and you can easily create a shortcut that won’t take away precious storage space.

As for Gmail Offline, it’s still in beta mode, but it’s available for free in the Chrome Web Store. Essentially, it lets you manage your email while offline, including the ability to read, respond to, search, and archive email messages. The app will save all of your actions and will complete them once you gain access to the internet again.

Sadly, though, FreedomPop only uses WiMAX and the service is limited to just a handful of regions in the US. While the company plans to switch to LTE at some point in the future, availability still may be scarce, but we wouldn’t be surprised if FreedomPop eventually spread the service to most users in the country.

While $10 per month for 10GB of data seems like a steal, some users may just not want to pony up any money at all, but the 1GB of data per month is a rather low amount, especially if you’re using it in a house full of kids. However, as always, FreedomPop offers the opportunity to earn more data by completing different tasks, like adding friends and completing partner promotions.

FreedomPop claims that their $10/month plan is 80% cheaper than your typical DSL or cable offering, but at this point, nothing can really beat the reliability of a solid home wired network can’t quite beat wireless service at this point. However, once LTE rolls around in more areas, FreedomPop may actually become a viable option, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Essentially, the Copyright Alert System is just the latest implementation in a line of anti-piracy initiatives, and it works in the same fashion as past systems have worked. Movie studios and music labels will join public P2P networks to see if their content is being pirated, and if it is, they’ll contact the ISP. From there the ISP will contact the offender and issue a strike.

These strikes will come in three different steps or phases. Your first two strikes will be all about education, where the ISP will point you to information on how you can obtain content legally. The next level is acknowledgement, where ISPs will force users to complete something, such as watching an anti-piracy video, and the last phase is throttling your internet connection, since the ISP can’t legally cut you off.

However, it doesn’t seem like a huge deal at this point yet. From the looks of it, it seems that users will have to be caught four times before they’re actually legitimately punished. Of course, no one can really say how well this new system will work, but if it’s like any other system that ISPs have tried in the past, it probably won’t make a huge splash at this point.

Image via Flickr

Intel‘s Erik Huggers spoke up at the D: Dive Into Media conference this Tuesday. As the Corporate Vice President of the new sector, Huggers was able to confirm the news that’s been “tipped” for quite a few weeks on end. Interestingly enough, Huggers assured the public that this new sector was made up of hires from Apple, Netflix, and Google. Quite the triple-snipe, that is.

It was also revealed that Intel would be bringing on a set-top box to compete with the already ripe market. This box and its abilities will be the embodiment of what Huggers said would be Intel’s new mandate: “Build the best Internet television service ever.” Sounds like a mighty big hill to climb – but with their claim to also be “working with the entire industry” to get it all done, we’ll likely see a service and a device by the end of this year.

This is also the timeline delivered by Huggers this week – inside this year, 2013. That’s the expectation, at least, while services are being confirmed between here and there. It’s been promised by Huggers that this system will work with a collection of apps as well as on-demand content and live TV. Nothing like another operating system to get into for developers – but perhaps this is a come-as-you-are type situation. We can only dream!

Of course, revenue from subscribers is down 10% from the same time last year, in which AOL was raking in almost $200 million from dial-up customers, but their revenue saw a 4% growth from last year as well, proving that the company is slowly starting to see its dial-up business cut back a bit, and is earning more revenue elsewhere.

Then again, we shouldn’t be too surprised. While broadband internet is now the norm, there are sadly still some people who don’t have access to it, namely those who live rural areas. Of course, they could get satellite internet, but it’s really expensive for the speeds you get, and most people just end up going with dial-up for the time being.

AOL ended the year with a total revenue of $2.2 billion, and an operating income of $1.2 billion ($68.2 million for the quarter). As far as net income, the company scored $35.7 million for the quarter, and $1.05 billion for the fiscal year. It’s a little scary to hear that AOL’s revenue depended on subscriptions for 29% of it, but advertising made up a whopping 68% of their revenue, so they probably don’t have anything to worry about.

The error would occur when users tried to access certain websites and were automatically redirected to Facebook with an error page. This made it so that users couldn’t get access to a website unless they were logged out of Facebook. Some of the websites that were affected include CNN, Washington Post, Gawker Media sites, Yelp, and ESPN.

The bug seemed to only last a few minutes, but that didn’t stop the shortage of reports of users trying to access a certain website. Facebook didn’t say what caused the bug, nor did they provide any vague answers, but they simply announced that they were aware of the problem and made sure that the issue was “quickly resolved.”

This isn’t the only time that one service has taken down an entire network of websites. Amazon’s web services are used by a number of popular websites, including Reddit and Netflix. When Amazon experienced an outage back in October, all of the website that ran off the the company’s web servers were taken down. It just goes to show that there are a lot of websites that rely on one single service, and if something minor happens, it can cause major results.

[via The Washington Post]

The stats come to us from networking equipment company Sandvine, and they say that overall internet traffic took a 15% dip once the Super Bowl started. They even provided a fairly detailed chart pointing out the notable moments during the big game (pictured above). As you can see, internet usage kept rising a bit after opening kickoff, but slowly started to see a decline further into the game.

However, once the Superdome blackout hit, traffic slowly started to rise, and then once the San Francisco 49ers began their late-game comeback, traffic went down the drain, which isn’t too surprising considering that the 49ers can back from a huge deficit to get within a score from the Baltimore Ravens.

While Sandvine says that traffic statistics have shown continued growth in live streaming adoption of sporting events, the company still believes that streaming “is no threat to replace viewing via traditional broadcast methods.” However, if live streaming gets to the point where it becomes really popular, Sandvine thinks that networks and broadcasters will give in and stream almost everything. That sounds hard to believe now, but as viewing habits change, so will our perception of what will become the norm.

[via The Next Web]

According to the Washington Post, the FCC is thinking about buying back spectrum from TV stations that would allow for “super WiFi,” that would blanket the country with wide-ranging, highly-penetrative networks. While ISPs are furious about the proposition, the large tech companies like Google and Microsoft are all for the idea.

This free WiFi network would work similarly to how cellular networks work now. You would have constant connection to the internet no matter where you were, and while you can easily achieve this through LTE, that obviously costs quite a bit per month, while this new WiFi network would be absolutely free, and potentially faster than LTE.

Pretty much all wireless providers, including handset manufacturers, and those invested in the mobile phone industry are not liking the idea one bit, and they don’t want their lucrative business interrupted. However, Google and Microsoft both said that increased internet access means more potential users, and it would open up to a massive boom in innovation if more people could access the internet anywhere.

It’s not said exactly when the free nationwide WiFi could be set up. It would have to get approval first, and even after that’s done, it would take several years for the network to be completely built. So, while it may come in the future, don’t expect it anytime soon.

[via The Washington Post]

Previously, the feature was only available for Kindle Fire tablets and other Android devices, and it allowed customers to use their Amazon accounts to purchase virtual goods and currencies right from within the app. And just like Apple and Google, Amazon takes a 30% cut of revenue from each purchase, which is the same cut it takes from app sales.

Amazon says this expansion will “help developers with game discovery and marketing,” and in-app purchasing will automatically be available on Amazon.com. In-app purchases also show up on best-seller lists, recommendation lists, and merchandising campaigns, which helps customers “discover new games and items, while adding another point of engagement for existing players.”

Mike Frazzini, Director Amazon Games, says that since developers make their apps and games available across multiple platforms, the inclusion of Mac, PC, and web games makes in-app purchasing easier for both the developer and the user. “In-App Purchasing for Mac, PC and Web-based games is our latest service that helps game developers grow their business and increase their customer-base,” says Frazzini.

Genachowski is calling it the “Gigabit City Challenge,” and he wants all 50 states to have at least one city with gigabit internet availability by the time 2015 rolls around. He’s relying upon ISPs and state governments to help make it all a reality. Of course, other areas in the US have already implemented the faster internet protocol, mostly thanks to private funding, but Genachowski wants ISPs to step up.

Overall, the FCC said that there are currently 42 communities in 14 states with access to fiber-based internet, so we’re already seeing some progress, but Genachowksi notes that as long as “we build it, innovation will come.” He also says that the US ultimately needs this in order to “drive economic growth” and compete globally.

Of course, this is only a goal of the FCC’s and not necessarily a mandate, so they’re really only encouraging ISPs and state governments to step up, rather than force them to introduce gigabit internet, so we’re going to have to see a lot of cooperation between certain parties if we want to see high-speed, fiber internet in all 50 states anytime soon.

Image via Flickr

This service will be working with your wireless device galore, including but not limited to your laptop, smartphone, and tablet. You’ll be able to get internet on the flight starting at $3.99 ranging all the way up to $19.99 depending on the service you’d like to work with. Standard prices range from $3.99 to $14.99 depending on how far you’ll be flying – that including basic speeds (the exact internet speed not being shared at the moment by United).

If you’re working with Accelerated internet, you’ll be paying between $5.99 and $19.99 USD – these prices also based on the length of flight you’ll be taking. The hardware being installed to make this all a reality is none other than Panasonic Avionics Corporation’s Ku-band satellite technology – this is different from air-to-ground technology being used by many national companies today.

The roll-out of this tech for you and I will be starting with two Airbus 319 aircraft right here at the start of 2013 with connectivity hitting 300 mainline aircraft by the end of this year – that’s a whole lot of connectivity! You’ll be able to work with this tech on Airbus 319 and 320 aircraft for starters as well as Boeing 737, 747, 757, 767, 777 and 787 sooner than later!

Despite continued efforts to monitor users and restrict access to certain types of content, these substantial gains were apparently driven by mobile internet access, with the number of Chinese users logging in from phones and tablets rising by 18.1% to a total of 420 million users, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC).

To give you an idea of how substantial 51 million people is, that’s roughly equal to the entire population of Spain, or nearly half the population of Japan. The rise in Chinese internet users has boosted the country’s penetration rate by 3.8% since the end of 2011, reaching a total of 42.1%

The report also states that while internet cafes have begun to dip in popularity, desktop computer use also fell by nearly 3% in 2012, and laptop use dropped to 45.9%. Mobile use, however, has increased from 69.3% to 74.5%. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology estimates that China’s internet population will reach roughly 800 million users by 2015.

Image via Flickr

The most popular post on Reddit this year was no doubt President Obama’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread. It received almost 5.6 million views alone, which is more than double that of any other post on the site. In fact, that one day saw 4.4 million page views and 1.6 million unique visitors, an unfathomable number if there ever was one.

Reddit’s massive popularity and growth is no surprise, really. The site averaged over three billion pageviews each month in 2012, which is a 50% increase from the two billion the site reported for the month of December in 2011. Chances are, the site’s popularity will only continue to grow in 2013, as more and more celebrities use the site to connect with their audiences.

Some of the other popular posts of 2012 on Reddit include What’s your “picture you can’t see without laughing”?, which garnered almost 2.5 million pageviews, What’s your favorite picture on the whole Internet?, which received 2.15 million pageviews, and what do you look like before and after makeup? Is there a real difference?, which saw 2.14 million pageviews.

Of course, the actual internet was said to be born several years earlier in the early 1960s, but the transition from Network Control Protocol to Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol happened on January 1, 1983, and while it may not have been the biggest moment in internet history, it was a key transition that paved the way for today’s internet.

The Network Control Protocol had some limitations, including how many computers it could connect together. Back then, the ARPANET only had about 1,000 computers interlinked, but as the years progressed and more computers were being added, admins realized they would need a new protocol to accommodate the much larger and more complicated network.

Vint Cerf is credited with co-designing the TCP/IP protocol with along with Robert Kahn, and the two began working on the new technology ten years before its grand debut. British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee later used the new protocol to host a system of interlinked hypertext documents in 1989, known as the World Wide Web.

Image via Flickr

Unsurprisingly, the decision has been met with approval from social conservatives, concern from liberals and free-speech advocates, and confusion by internet experts. The latter are unclear on how the Egyptian authorities will actually clamp down on pornography, with censorship being notoriously difficult to enact with any degree of broad effectiveness.

One possibility, the EFF suggests, is maintaining a list of banned sites, much as is operated in Pakistan. There, government watchdogs periodically add sites in their thousands to a roster of “unsuitable” content, though pornography still proliferates as the censors attempt to corral it.

Alternatively, a full block could be put into place, filtering all internet traffic within Egypt. That, however, would be expensive, technically very demanding, and could well have a negative impact on overall connectivity speeds, leaving other use of the internet at a disadvantage.

As Egyptian web users have previously demonstrated, there’ll always be ways to circumnavigate bans and limits; the government was forced to cut off the internet altogether in order to curtail protests and social unrest back in January 2011. VPNs and other private browsing tools are likely to become the order of the day.

The Office Web Apps include Word Web App, Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App, and OneNote Web App. Documents render 30% faster than before, and Microsoft promises that Office Web Apps and standard Microsoft Office applications play well together and are fully compatible. Sadly, Office Web Apps includes mostly basic features, lacking a lot of the more advanced features you find in its desktop software counterpart.

The Word Web App includes new support for adding and viewing comments, and has new page layout and picture tools. PowerPoint Web Apps has gained video playback support, allowing users to view videos from tablets and smartphones, as well as new comment and co-authoring support. In OneNote, you’ll find the added ability to search either an entire page or just a section, as well as new ink viewing support. In Excel Web App, you can “now print right from your browser and rename or add sheets as you need.”

Office Web Apps were first launched in 2010, allowing users to utilize Office from their Web browsers. Updates include expanded support for touch-friendly editing, additional formatting controls, and “consistent co-authoring/collaboration support across web apps.” You can get the new Office Web Apps from Outlook.com and via SkyDrive.

[via Office]

Starting today, when Yelp detects questionable activity, it will display an alert to Yelp users for 90 days, and it will also alert the business that the review was posted for. So far, nine alerts have already been issued on this first day, which seems like a low number, but Yelp says it’s still working on getting through more reviews and will always be scanning for odd activity.

The company mentioned in their blog post that they “want to make sure consumers are making informed decisions,” and “as efforts to game the system continuously evolve, so do [its] methods for combating it.” We’re glad Yelp is finally taking the initiative to further help out its users, and we hope other review sites step up to the plate as well.

However, Yelp’s plans don’t stop there. They also plan on implementing an IP address detection system where it will inform users when a business has received multiple reviews from the same IP address, which is easily a big red flag when it comes to online reviews. However, Yelp has had an automated filter system that’s used to detect fake reviews, but the company says that its Consumer Alerts are simply a secondary defense, and will help out even more with detecting paid reviews.

At the Pubcon keynote today, Google’s Matt Cutts announced that the Google Disavow Links tool is now available while stressing that webmasters need to be careful when using it. Said Cutts, “Most sites shouldn’t use this tool. Use Caution. Don’t just start disavowing links. Please start slow.” The tool has been in beta for the last few weeks.

The Disavow tool is most beneficial for webmasters who have received notice of a manual spam action caused by unnatural links to their website. Using the disavow tool, Google can be instructed to ignore these links when evaluating your website. According to the Google announcement, if you haven’t received a notice of spam action caused by unnatural links, you’ve little use for the tool.

In order to use the tool, you’ll need to visit the Disavow Tool link and select your website. If your website isn’t verified, you’ll need to verify it before continuing. Once verified, you’ll then be prompted to upload a plain text file containing the links you want to disavow, with one link per line. Once the file is submitted, the links will be disavowed, for better or for worse.

[via Google Webmaster Central Blog]