A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that 61 percent of Americans now get their news online, although local TV remains the most popular method of getting the news.
Overall, 50 percent of Americans read local print newspapers, and 17 percent read national papers. 59 percent of Americans get their news from online and offline sources, with only 2 percent getting their news exclusively from online sources.
Figuring out where users get their news is not as easy, however. 65 percent do not have a favorite site, and 80 percent use 2-5 sites for their daily news. 56 percent use portals such as Google News, Yahoo News or AOL, and younger users follow specific news organizations or journalists via Twitter and Facebook.
18 percent listen to daily podcasts from the news organizations.
What are people searching for when they go online? 81 percent looks for the weather, 73 looks for national events, 66 percent look for health events, 64 percent look up finance or other business. Rounding up the top 5 is international events, at 62 percent.
Pics via RWW:
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Speaking with Ars Technica in an extensive internet, Google’s Matthew Papakipos, the engineering director for the Chrome OS project, revealed that the operating system and the Chrome browser would include a media player. He said it would be the “equivalent of Windows Media Player.” The player will support HTML5 audio and video, as well as Flash, and will be integrated with services on the web.
For example, a GMail user can view an attached video file directly in the Chrome browser because the media player framework is built-in. Google’s Chrome operating system allows users to perform every day tasks such as checking e-mail, using social networking or just browsing the web. It is meant to provide long battery life for netbook users in particular.
The inclusion of a Chrome Media Player is then a necessity for users to be able to perform simple multimedia tasks offline. The operating system is still a work in progress by far, as Papakipos reveals that the team is still experimenting with many issues, such as ways to make use of dead space on widescreen monitors (the areas to the right and left of a web page that are blank, and may be quite large amounts of space depending on screen size).
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According to Mobile Crunch, a release candidate of Mobile Firefox is coming next week, finally giving users an in-depth look into the browser.
Says Mozilla’s VP of Mobile Jay Sullivan, as indexed by the source:
* Release candidate next week, final release within a few weeks
* Adblock Plus and around 30 other extensions are already playing friendly with Mobile Firefox, though they need some tweaking for the smaller screen
* Firefox won’t be the default browser on Maemo 5, though Nokia is considering the switch for Maemo 6 (which is coming in late 2010. We scooped the details and screenshots of Maemo 6 back in May.
* While they need pretty beefy hardware to make Mobile Firefox tick, the N900 isn’t the bottom line. “Everything now on the mid- to high-end is fine.”
* The Windows Mobile build is 3-4 months behind the Maemo build
* They’re focusing on webapp features. In its current state, web apps in Mobile Firefox can pull data from the accelerometer and GPS, and store data in memory for offline use
* In 2010, they plan to add multitouch support, haptic feedback, camera usage, WebGL, and improved Javascript support.
