We’re all about clocking speed here at Speedplexer, at least internet speed. But if you’re some who really, really feels the need for speed, you’ll want to speed up your computer’s processing as well.

BJay explains in her article, “Some people overclock their computers or make them run at a higher clock rate or GHz than it was designed to (it goes faster). However their efforts are limited by the temperature of the processor or some other internal components.  Cooler temps allow more speed.  Computers come with a heatsink to keep temperatures down.  However for hardcore, extreme enthusiasts, it’s not enough and they modify it.”

She included photos of a water cooled computer CPU, a CPU cooled by liquid nitrogen, an Nvidia video card with putty applied to reduce the temperature and a CPU cooled by a modified A/C unit and tubing. PCwormhole.com also has photos available, if you’re interested.

“These computers were using i7 processors and got to temperatures as low as -90 degrees and speeds were increased from a clock speed of 2.6 GHz to 5 GHz – making it about twice as fast.”

• hashtag – a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets

• intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle

• netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory

• paywall – a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers

• sexting – the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone

But the winner was…UNFRIEND.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.
As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year… “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

But if you read the comments section under the Oxford University Press blog posting, you’ll see plenty of debating, not only about unfriend versus defriend, but also about another controversial term. Check it out and join the discussion to help change the English language with internet speed!

Street View is a feature that lets users pick a point on a map and see a panoramic street-level image of the surroundings. By adjusting the location of the point, a user can take a virtual walk down the street. Google constructs the images from panoramic photos taken by cars it has equipped with cameras…and that travel with internet speed, apparently.

Faces had not been sufficiently blurred, and people were concerned about being shown near “sensitive locations, for example outside hospitals, prisons or schools,” Swiss government official Hanspeter Thuer said.

Google argues that it provides measures to protect privacy by making it possible for people to contact Google and ask to have pictures of their property removed from Street View. The company also said it spoke with privacy regulators and gave them an opportunity to raise questions.

“We’re proud of the blurring technology we’ve developed for Street View, and are confident the product is completely legal, but we wanted to go the extra mile to address Herr Thuer’s concerns,” the company said in a blog post.

Google ran into a similar problem in the U.S. this year when a Pennsylvania couple took the company to court, saying the feature was an invasion of privacy. A judge threw out the case, saying “complete privacy does not exist” and arguing that photos and building plans of people’s home were already available to the public.

In the blog post, Google indicated it planned to fight the Swiss case as well: “We will vigorously defend Street View in court and we’re committed to continue bringing the benefits to Swiss users.”

However, the Facebook posting could have been made by someone else, and there would be no way to truly verify who was sitting in front of the computer at the time. Bradford’s attorney brushes this technicality off as a “level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this.”

Actually, as Ars Tecnhica’s Jacqui Cheng points out, “it doesn’t take much of a genius to leave yourself logged in on someone else’s machine (in fact, quite the opposite). A report circulated in September about a robber who decided to log into his own Facebook account at the victim’s house during the robbing and forgot to log out—given that level of stupidity, it’s not hard to imagine leaving yourself logged in at your own father’s apartment.”

Criminal Justice law instructor Joseph Pollini says, “Some of the brightest people on the Internet are teenagers. They know the Internet better than a lot of people. Why? Because they use it all the time.”

Law enforcement is facing this issue much more frequently these days. It’s not just about blaming your cat for downloading child porn anymore—anyone who wants to do so can easily create alibis online with the help of friends or family, and it doesn’t take an experienced hacker to figure out how to use internet speed to their advantage.

When she gives birth in the next few days, more than a thousand women who already follow her online — plus anyone else with a high-speed Internet connection — will be able to watch a live broadcast of her child’s birth from their computers.

When she gives birth, a cameraman will be in the hospital room, along with her husband, her mother and her midwife. A second camera will be mounted in the corner, with care taken that no graphic shots will be taken. In addition to the live broadcast, anyone registered with her group on MomsLikeMe will be able to *chat* with Lynsee while she’s in the delivery room. (But won’t she be busy?)

Julie Taylor, senior editorial producer for Los Angeles-based MomLogic.com and mother of two, said that when she first heard about Lynsee’s project she thought “Wow! I would never do that.” But she acknowledged that younger mothers have grown up in a very different technological landscape.

“They’ve lived more of their lives online,” she said. “For them, they’ve video-taped most of their lives anyway and they’ve grown up on reality TV. So maybe it’s an old-fashioned notion to think twice.”

Gwynn Cassidy, online director for the Internet resource HealthyWomen.org said that while not many women may choose to broadcast their child’s birth live, many more are turning to new media to share milestones and first-person stories.

BetterFonts is an online font database where you can quickly preview and download thousands of fonts. You can instantly download most previewed fonts for free, but for certain quality ones you’ll need to pay. They do have a deal of a 500-font package for $2.77, but without previews.

FFonts has a huge font library and it allows you to navigate easily, and download any font for free. All the fonts on the site are listed on the left side menu for easy access, and clicking on a font gives you information plus a satisfying preview of the font. Overall, the site hosts more than 10,000 fonts!

Fawnt, one of the largest free font archives on the web today, has a pleasant design and an easy-to-use navigator. All the fonts have large and customizable previews, and character maps. Though all of the fonts in Fawnt are free, they might have some restrictions, so be sure to check.

Myfonts, with 62,000 fonts, has the world’s largest font database. Not only can you search and download the fonts to your computer, you can also find fonts based on a picture with their service WhatTheFont! Simply upload a file, or specify a URL, and myFonts will find the font used in the picture you uploaded (or at least, give you some close alternatives to this font).

Abstract Fonts has a very convenient interface, lets you type in text to view font examples, opens a summary of information you need to know about that font. Abstract also gives you the ability to see similar fonts–an absolutely brilliant addition.

The study also found that mobile-phone use and active Web participation yields “larger and more diverse core discussion networks.” Social media is also helping people expand their social interaction, too. According to Pew, those who use the Internet frequently are more likely to discuss political topics with someone of a different party.

Frequent Web users are more likely to speak with neighbors in person than those who don’t use the Web as often. The study also found that bloggers are 72 percent “more likely to belong to a local voluntary association” than those who don’t blog.

Perhaps most important, Pew found that just because someone is a heavy Web user, that doesn’t mean they remove themselves from traditional social activities like visiting a restaurant or hanging out at a bar on a Friday night. According to the study, Web users are “45 percent more likely to visit a cafe, 52 percent more likely to visit a library, 34 percent more likely to visit a fast-food restaurant, 69 percent more likely to visit other restaurants, and 42 percent more likely to visit a public park.”

So there!

During the show, YouTube also featured a Twitter widget below the video player that displayed tweets from people who used the #U2webcast hashtag.

“U2 and technology have long gone hand in hand,” writes MG Siegler of TechCruch. “Their ZooTV tour famously featured a massive amount of television monitors and live streaming video from all around the world.” Later, U2 got chummy with Apple, releasing their own branded iPod. Then after U2 lead singer Bono became a partner in a firm that purchased a huge stake in Palm, U2’s recent tour has been sponsored by Palm and BlackBerry.

10 million people viewed the live stream on YouTube that night, according to Variety—and it went impressively smoothly. Though 10 million is nothing compared to some of the most popular television shows, but we’re starting to see audience of comparable sizes from all over the world.

And, as our title declares, the recorded version of the full 2-1/2 hour concert is now officially being shown on YouTube, and it had over a million views in the first 3 days. A little over a week later, it has had 1,932,240 views.

It’s a brave, new, rockin’ world, made possible with internet speed.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that rural residents are much less likely to subscribe to broadband than their urban counterparts. Another study by Connected Nation found that 19% of rural residents say they don’t subscribe to broadband because it’s not available in their area.

Many residents aren’t aware of the enormous benefits of high speed Internet, which is why nearly half of rural residents without a home broadband connection say they don’t need it. 22 percent of rural residents say they don’t subscribe to broadband because it’s too expensive. Infrastructure investment in sparsely populated rural areas is often seen as unsustainable by telecommunications companies.

Here are some more benefits:
• Broadband brings the opportunity for direct access to education and health care for rural residents who are otherwise forced to travel long distances for college courses and medical treatment.
• Rural libraries with high speed Internet often experience a resurgence of community interest and participation.
• High speed Internet provides rural residents access to global information and cultural resources.
• Farmers gain real-time access to vital information such as crop prices or weather forecasts, and marketing opportunities through high-speed networks.

So support rural broadband initiatives and help build a better America with Internet speed!

Although the need for libraries to provide broadband access is increasing, many libraries are ill-equipped to meet this need. In 2006, 98% of public libraries indicated that they provided public access to the Internet, but in the same survey, 45% reported that they did not have sufficient bandwidth to satisfy their community’s needs. Libraries without enough bandwidth to quickly transfer data, images, and video put their communities at a serious disadvantage.

• Students use connected libraries to download educational videos, view course lectures, and access scholarly journals.
• Librarians use the Internet for business functions, such as running online catalogs, managing digitized content, and serving patrons through e-mail and online reference.
• Residents in underserved communities such as rural or low income areas where most homes lack access to high speed Internet rely on Internet connectivity from their local public library.
• As central public meeting spaces within communities, libraries connected to high speed Internet can serve as disaster response centers, such as during a flood, fire, or hurricane.
• Senior citizens, many of whom do not own home computers, find public libraries helpful for finding information on health issues or government programs, and maintaining connections with family and friends who live far away.
• Many libraries provide information literacy training that allows less tech-savvy individuals to engage the Internet in ways that otherwise wouldn’t.

So support your local library and national broadband initiatives!