This week in social media, Facebook introduced two new products in its continued quest for dominance in everything. Pinterest added "Guided Search" (a very Pinteresty search engine), Instagram's Explore page is now more personalized, and Facebook's $19 billion buddy, WhatsApp, reached half a billion users. It's time for Social Media Saturday!
This week the Associated Press dropped a bombshell report detailing how the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) secretly created ZunZuneo, a "Cuban Twitter" network, in what appears to have been an attempt to damage the Cuban government's standing. Now Congress has decided to look into the matter.
The U.S. government reportedly tried to create unrest in Cuba to undermine its communist government by secretly creating a "Cuban Twitter." The project, seemingly a throwback to the U.S.'s Cold War anti-Castro tactics, had ties to the State Department's U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Telefónica, one of the largest Spanish telecommunications companies with a big presence in Latin America, announced this week that it had acquired eyeOS, a cloud computing startup behind a suite of open source web applications. With this acquisition, Telefónica further enters the realm of enterprise internet solutions, as well as open-source software.
As the protests in Venezuela over rising inflation, violence, and government censorship of the internet continue, the Venezuelan government has responded by blocking social media like Twitter, and censoring other parts of its state-owned internet network to lessen the damage to its own regime.
Oppo Electronics, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer that is showing it can innovate as well as the top Android smartphone makers, recently announced it was entering the mobile market in Mexico with a few of its top smartphones.
The internet is about to get a lot bigger, come mid-March, when another batch of gTLDs (generic top level domains: various alternatives for the ".com" or ".org" that follows a web address) hit the public. On March 19, one of those gTLDs up for grabs is .UNO, the first dedicated domain for Spanish-speakers.
South by Southwest Interactive has always been seen as the hip place to go to learn about the next big Silicon Valley startup, but the tone and focus has changed a little this year. The festival is toning down the "trendy" and enlarging its international focus, along with taking on some serious issues in technology.
Last year marked the first time smartphones outsold cheaper feature phones globally, but according to a new report, the smartphone frenzy is expected to slow down this year and into the near future. For PC makers, the computer market looks even worse.
In total, Gravity tied for the most nominations with David O Russell's American Hustle, both arriving at the Oscars with 10 nominations each. Only Gravity would end up with the largest count of Oscar wins, though.
The largest mobile showcase in the world, the Mobile World Congress, wrapped up in Barcelona, Spain this week. There were a lot of new gadgets and gizmos introduced during the expo, so here's a rundown of the most buzz-worthy new devices.
Joaquin Guzmán, Mexico's most powerful drug lord also known as "El Chapo," used high-tech methods to evade international authorities for more than a decade, according to a new report. Those high-tech tools, however, also led to his downfall.
Spain's National Institute of Aerospace Technology agreed to transfer drone technology to Brazil on Thursday, giving Brazil the opportunity to market the drones to South American countries interested in using the unmanned systems.
The Panama Canal, the 100-year-old waterway that changed commerce in the Western hemisphere, has been undergoing an expansion to allow bigger, modern shipping boats through the Central American country. But that expansion is reportedly now on the "brink of failure" after cost overruns have caused infighting between the contractors and Panama's government.
Firefox Operating System and Telefónica just made a deal to bolster its entry into the burgeoning Latin American wireless market. Telefónica and FireFox just announced a partnership with Line, a calling and messaging app, that will give Telefónica subscribers with Firefox OS phones exclusive access.
A new report on the state of the interent is out, showing a large increase in the average broadband bandwidth across the world. So how does the U.S. and Latin America fare in the global rankings?
