social-networking

Cisco on Tuesday announced a new router that pushes the envelope of networking technology in the "zettabyte era."

The Cisco Aggregation Services Router 9000 Series, or ASR 9000, is designed to deliver a massive-scale, nonstop video experience and a reduced carbon footprint. With its latest router, Cisco is promising to increase the speed, longevity, services, richness and efficiency of the network edge. The product seeks to answer the demand spurred by the massive spike in video and data traffic across wired, cable and mobile networks.

National Public Radio, already strong online with free downloads from many of its shows, is boosting its digital ambitions with Monday's introduction of social-networking features akin to Facebook.

NPR also plans to overhaul its Web site and expand the tools for sharing its programs elsewhere over the next few months. And it is working to increase the flexibility of its popular "podcasts," audio downloads that have tripled in usage over the past two years.

Research in Motion announced Thursday a raft of mobile multimedia partnerships and applications. The introduction of RIM's Blackberry Pearl 8220 Flip on Wednesday was a departure from its business-focused product line, and deals with TiVo, MySpace and others confirm its attempts to appeal to the consumer marketplace.

Consumer RIM

Mobile Web traffic is where it's at, according to Yahoo. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet company announced this week significant enhancements to its mobile-development platform, Blueprint, along with a new iPhone app.

Partnering with several wireless-application developers, Yahoo is promoting easy mobile-optimized Web site development and debuted its oneConnect social-networking software application for the iPhone at the CTIA trade show.

iPhone oneConnect Social-Networking App

Facebook remains the number-one social-networking site in the world, according to a new study released Tuesday by comScore -- and it has undergone 153 percent growth in the past year.

The Reston, Va.-based research firm said most of the growth for social-networking sites is outside North America. On this continent, the social-networking audience grew nine percent, but the growth was much higher elsewhere -- 66 percent in the Middle East-Africa region, 35 percent in Europe, and 33 percent in Latin America. Social-networking sites for the world at large grew about 25 percent.

For all the hype about social networking Web sites, the most popular and successful way to network over the Internet is still the oldest: e-mail. If it's organized properly, boring old e-mail can reveal as much or more information about the people you know and their relationships with you as hipper services such as MySpace or Facebook.

You're visiting Barcelona and looking for a good place to have dinner. What if you could find a restaurant nearby, and then instantly check with your friends around the world to see if any of them have eaten there? That's one of the services that could soon be available to customers of Garmin, one of the world's largest makers of personal navigation devices.

It is the burning question in tech circles, and Mike Murphy answers it before it is completed.

"I hear it every time I'm on a (tech) panel," Murphy, Facebook's vice president of media sales, says with a wry smile.

He's referring to the inevitable question on when Facebook and other social-networking sites will turn their steep market valuations into mounds of currency. (Invariably, Murphy answers that Facebook has a long list of major advertisers.)

Facebook announced Thursday an agreement with 49 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia to implement new steps against sexual predators. Only the Texas attorney general refused to sign the agreement.

As huge communities of primarily young people and details about millions of kids, social-networking Web sites have also attracted pedophiles and bullies.

'Keeping Kids Safe Online'