Toluu

now!

we ♥ the next web!

The Internet’s Undersea WorldYesterday

You would think that the Internet would be mobile now. That all connections travel from east to west, and back, via satellites and radio waves. That isn’t how it works. The Internet is visible, tangible, breakable, and wet.

As you can see in this beautiful illustration (click it for a larger image!) the main continents are connected by less than 10cm thick Fiber Optic cables.

Those  cables are generally 69 mm in diameter and weigh over 10.000 kilograms a kilometer. In deeper waters, lighter and less insulated cables are used. The capacity for these combined cables is more than 7 million bits per second.

That capacity is rarely used though. In general only 29% is in use. Of that 29% more than 70% is for Internet Tr

How to Snap Up that Twitter Username You’ve Always WantedYesterday

Yesterday, I was directed me to a Get Satisfaction discussion highlighting exactly how to acquire twitter usernames which had already been snapped up but lay unused.

Follow this process:

1. Email username@twitter.com with the following information:
   

   • The username you want
   • Your existing username, if you have one
   • Whether you want to change your username, or start a new account with the username you’re requesting

2. I received confirmation the email had been received a few minutes later, then another email asking me to reply with the above information (if I hadn’t already provided it).
3. If you’re lucky, you should receive a confirmation of the change from within an hour to 5 days.

Criteria for Reclaiming a Username on Twitter

While the process appears to have been improved, the same criteria allowing someone to gain access to a name seems to remain.

We generally have a 9 month rule; if a profile has been inactive for more than 9 months, we r

Posterous Keeps Getting Better. Launches Post by Moderation.January 7

Now on first glance, you may wonder what exactly is so exciting about “post by moderation”?? Surely this is something which should have been integrated from the beginning. Well, this is why it’s exciting - the feature is for “group blogs”. Still confused? Let me explain…

Posterous is a blogging platform just like wordpress, typepad and others. How it distinguishes itself is that it focuses primarily on blogging via email and therefore making the process much simpler to use and open to anyone who knows how to send an email, Grandma.

Last month, the startup launched “group blogs” which allow for numerous editors to edit/post to the same blog. With this new update, a blog such as Posterous Recipes for example can hand out an email address, people can send in their recipes and simply moderate the various recipe posts they receive. It really couldn’t be much simpler and with the right idea, you could potentially have a great site with contributions from tens, hundreds or even thousands worldwide. I am curious as to how they’re protecting users from floods of spammers but it is curiosity rather than a possible flaw, these guys know what they’re doing.

If you haven�

5 add-ons to boost your productivity on FirefoxJanuary 7

We love Firefox - the innovative browser which aims to maintain choice and innovation on the Internet and here are a few add-ons to boost your browser productivity.

1. URL Fixer

URL Fixer corrects typos in URLs that you enter in the address bar. For instance, if you type thenextweb.con, it will correct it to thenextweb.com.

It will correct common typos of .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil as well as the protocol (http:, https:).

You can set it to auto-correct your errors by right-clicking on the address bar or you can have it ask you before making any corrections.

// Download URL Fixer

2. Video Download Helper

This is a must have add-on for video, audio and picture gallery downloads from popular services like Youtube, MySpace and Google Video etc. When an embedded audio or video file is detected on a website the downloadhelper icon gets animated and you can download the required media.

DownloadHelper also allows you to downloa

Whois for Twitter! Who knew?January 7

Although many of you probably use mobile or desktop clients such as Twibble or Tweetdeck to access Twitter, if you are using Twitter in your browser, and want to find out a little more about a Twitter user, there’s a faster way than visiting their profile.

Just type ‘whois username‘ into the twitter status field when logged in, and hit the [Update] button. (You don’t need the @ character preceeding username.)

Voila! You’ll be presented with the Name, Date of joining, Biography and URL for that user.

All that’s missing perhaps is the ability to immediately follow that user, or go to their profile page with a simple link - but it’s a quick way to check who’s who. Try it for yourself - [Open Twitter WHOIS in new Window] Simple. Nice. Who knew?

(Thanks to @andrewburnett for the tip, retweeted from an original by @robousbey)