We’ve all heard of bytes, kilobytes, and megabytes for decades. The last couple of decades has put “gigabytes” into our vocabulary, while “terabytes” are become more commonly used lately. What about a petabyte? Zettabyte? It seems that as our understanding of data and our ability to quantify it grows, so too do the weird names that refer to them. If you ever need to remember a Yottabyte, just think “lots of bytes.” This Infographic by our friends at Focus puts all of the (currently) useless knowledge of super-data-measurements into perspective. We say “currently” because while we may not be able…

It was never quite certain when Verizon would get its hands on the iPhone, but we recently learned that it would on February 10. The only question remaining was how much the plans were going to be to have the iPhone. Now we have that answer too: $30 per month. But the news here is that this pricing will be for unlimited data, which could prove that — while two iPhones are better than one — two iPhones are somewhat different from each other. AT&T’s data pricing per month for DataPlus and DataPro is currently 200MB for $15 and 2GB for $25, respectively. The plans are more aggressively priced, but…

We already know that Facebook is huge, but now we have true visual feedback to how impressive the Facebook empire really stands. It is massive. And it is clear that all of Europe and the Eastern United States have too much time on their hands. But what is even more impressive is that the above picture isn’t actually wasn’t supposed to look like our world, but it does anyways. Paul Butler, a Facebook intern who should clearly earn a job at the company, took a data set of over ten million friendship connections and plotted those connections to city points on essentially a black digital image canvas, and…

For years now, what web sites do with our data has become a serious problem in the online world. From confusing settings on Facebook – like their recent decision to again set strange defaults in Facebook Places – to online banking, how information about our lives is protected, distributed and use online has become a real issue. The big sticking point? Every individual site has its own rules about how it uses data. That means that not only do users have to carefully parse the user agreements for each site, they have to keep track of any ongoing changes. Think about that: that’s like you having to read…

Greedy providers. The mobile industry is all about squeezing as much money from the consumer as it can. But with AT&T’s move to a tiered pricing for data — and with others sure to follow — we could bear witness to long-lasting impacts that could not only punish consumers, but could destroy potential innovation for the entire industry. We know how it works: as Verizon Wireless and AT&T continue raking in the profits, consumers are being forced to pay more for less, as usual. So now there is a new spin: pay less for less, which is exactly what AT&T is doing. But would this short-term…

(Image Credit: “Evolution of Storage” by Curtiss Spontelli | CC) We consume an amazing amount of data, but we also store an equally impressive amount of data as well, and if you think back to not too long ago, we were having to deal with floppy disks and zip drives and who knows what else. Oh how the times have changed. We should appreciate how far we have come with regards to data storage, and this article is dedicated to displaying a bit of a graphical homage to storage mediums of the past, present, and future: Punchcard Magnetic Tape Floppy Disk Hard Drive Laser Disc CD/DVD Blu-ray Solid State Drive…

MySpace? What’s MySpace? Oh just a website that we can social network with each other. Instead of calling me, you can now send me a message or post on my comments. Hmmm.. that sounds like something I need to do. Oh great, a new friend request. Let me just update my profile and tell everyone where I live, how old I am and a list of my fears and class schedule. We all have been there and we all scrolled down through the user agreement, not even caring what it said, and clicked accept. Nobody really realized that when clicking accept, we waived the right to privacy in exchange for free web hosting. …