Web Traffic

Web traffic in Syria has returned after an approximately 20-hour period during which the entire country appeared to be cut off from the Internet, according to Web analysis firms. Firms that track Web traffic, including Renesys and Akamai , showed a major spike Wednesday morning after essentially no activity from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning. According to a report from the BBC , Syrian state-run media said the outage was due to a "fault" in optical fiber cables that connect the country to the World Wide...

LONDON — There's a new kid on the block when it comes to breaking big time stories about possible U.S. government abuses — and this time it's a British-based paper that's come up with the goods. The Guardian newspaper, which started publishing in the English city of Manchester in 1821 and is now based in London, has in the last two days established a major presence in Washington by uncovering the vast scope of secret surveillance operations carried out by U.S. officials. The...

Historically, the UK has led the U.S. when it comes to trends on the phone. But according to data released by Bango (AIM: BGO) today, the U.S. as of February now claims the top spot when it comes to mobile browsing, and accounts for 29 percent of traffic worldwide. The results are not unexpected. Anil Malhotra, SVP of Marketing at Bango: "With 245 million subscribers, it was only a matter of time before the U.S. became the number 1 country in the world for mobile web browsing. " The more interesting...

Internet access has been restored in Syria after an outage across the country that lasted about 20 hours, writes Hayley Tsukayama : Firms that track Web traffic, including Renesys and Akamai, showed a major spike Wednesday morning after essentially no activity from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning. At WorldViews, Max Fisher writes that the outage resembled a similar outage in November, and that both probably occurred on the orders of the Syrian government : When the November...

Though the new iPad continues to break tablet sales records for Apple, some new data from Chitika Insights shows that here in the U.S., last year's iPad model remains incredibly popular. In a report shared with GigaOM on Friday, Chitika says that based on data gathered from its extensive ad network in the U.S., web traffic coming from the new iPad accounts for about 18 percent of all iPad traffic, while 60 percent still comes from the iPad 2. Chitika think that's a sign that people are holding back...

When the Fix was just a nerdy middle-schooler getting bullied by the usual local degenerates, we always comforted ourselves with the sure knowledge that one day the geeks would inherit the Earth. Little did we know that all these years later, Nate Silver — the decidedly dorky baseball nut turned political prognosticator — would become the electoral word made flesh. Every election cycle turns out its stars — likely and unlikely — and there's no question that Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog for the...

In an effort to preserve the Web's history, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) republished the world's first Web site — two decades after physicists made the technology behind the Web open to everyone. The site's reappearance is part of a project to preserve the history of the Web, and to celebrate 20 years of a "free, open Web" that changed the way we do just about everything. The first reaction to the Web was less than enthusiastic. Mike Sendall, the supervisor who reviewed a 1989 proposal to create...

A fight between two European companies has significantly slowed the Internet, making it difficult for millions to access Web services such as Netflix, the BBC reported . According to the report, a Dutch hosting site called Cyberbunker is perpetuating an enormous denial-of-service attack against the anti-spam group Spamhaus. The attack — which is disrupting Spamhaus's services by flooding the company with traffic — has apparently begun to affect the performance of unrelated services.

It's often hard to tell which is the Web's priority: helping you learn about the world or helping the world — and especially advertisers — learn about you. But that balance is beginning to shift, to the delight of consumer advocates and the horror of industry groups. Browser makers increasingly are embracing privacy controls that could limit the ability of advertisers to track ­users, threatening to undermine business models that now support many popular online services. The development is...

Meg Biram moved from Kansas City to Fairfax last March, but she didn't have a plan. Her husband had accepted a job at the Department of Homeland Security, so she left her position as a senior marketing designer at Hallmark to accompany him. "I job-hunted, but it was very halfhearted," she said. "Then it dawned on me that perhaps I'd already found my calling. " Biram had created a lifestyle blog called Mimi+Meg in 2007, named after her great-grandmother and her mother, both...

Web traffic in Syria has returned after an approximately 20-hour period during which the entire country appeared to be cut off from the Internet, according to Web analysis firms. Firms that track Web traffic, including Renesys and Akamai , showed a major spike Wednesday morning after essentially no activity from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning. According to a report from the BBC , Syrian state-run media said the outage was due to a "fault" in optical fiber cables that connect the country to the World Wide...

In an effort to preserve the Web's history, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) republished the world's first Web site — two decades after physicists made the technology behind the Web open to everyone. The site's reappearance is part of a project to preserve the history of the Web, and to celebrate 20 years of a "free, open Web" that changed the way we do just about everything. The first reaction to the Web was less than enthusiastic. Mike Sendall, the supervisor who reviewed a 1989...

2013 is a make-or-break year for mobile startups and advertisers alike. We're at a crossroads as brands move away from the "test phase" in the mobile space and toward real adoption into the marketing mix. Consumer smartphone adoption is approaching saturation, and the media consumption shift to mobile as the "new first screen" is hitting full stride. For mobile startups, big brand interest is what makes 2013 critical. Our products must be ready for prime time as brands pour larger and larger budgets...

A fight between two European companies has significantly slowed the Internet, making it difficult for millions to access Web services such as Netflix, the BBC reported . According to the report, a Dutch hosting site called Cyberbunker is perpetuating an enormous denial-of-service attack against the anti-spam group Spamhaus. The attack — which is disrupting Spamhaus's services by flooding the company with traffic — has apparently begun to affect the performance of unrelated services.

It's often hard to tell which is the Web's priority: helping you learn about the world or helping the world — and especially advertisers — learn about you. But that balance is beginning to shift, to the delight of consumer advocates and the horror of industry groups. Browser makers increasingly are embracing privacy controls that could limit the ability of advertisers to track ­users, threatening to undermine business models that now support many popular online services. The development is...

Monday Twitter 101. Learn how to tweet. 4 to 6 p.m. at Coffy Café, 3310 14th St. NW. Cost: $49. Web site: http://dctwitterclass.eventbrite.com . Career Gateway. This program is for job seekers age 50 and over who want to tweak their résumés, hone their interviewing skills, network more effectively, discover the hidden job market and develop personal job search plans. Ann L. Bronfman Center, 12320 Parklawn Dr., Rockville. Sponsor: Jewish Council for the Aging.

Monday marks the day that the Federal Bureau of Investigation rips off the bandage it put in place to redirect computers infected with the DNS Changer virus — meaning that thousands of computer users in the United States could now be struggling to get on the Internet. Nicknamed the "Internet doomsday" virus, DNS Changer is essentially a piece of malware that mucks with the way that computers ensure they're accessing the Web sites correctly. To be clear: this shouldn't affect the actual architecture of the Internet or its...

NEW YORK When reporters from the New Yorker, "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams," "Good Morning America," the Associated Press and, yes, The Washington Post have all convened upon one event, it must be important. An appearance by the president. A press conference about dignified matters, with plenty of throat-clearing and questions taken at the end. Something worthy of those camera crews schlepping pounds of gear. Nope! It's puppies, 63 of them to be precise — the stars of Animal Planet's ninth annual...

When the Fix was just a nerdy middle-schooler getting bullied by the usual local degenerates, we always comforted ourselves with the sure knowledge that one day the geeks would inherit the Earth. Little did we know that all these years later, Nate Silver — the decidedly dorky baseball nut turned political prognosticator — would become the electoral word made flesh. Every election cycle turns out its stars — likely and unlikely — and there's no question that Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog for the New York...