There was a shock last week when Google Drive lowered its prices for online storage. This has led experts to concede that large online storage users will always have a way of avoiding high tariffs.

Thursday saw this unprecedented price slashing taking place alongside the announcement of a free 15 gigabyte plan. According to Avram Piltch of Tom's Guide there is more to it than what meets the eye, like Google's plans to increase membership.

Google are doing what Amazon did to booksellers, says Arun Taneja. They are attempting to change the reality of online storage. Today the average person may need only 10 GB. However, this could increase owing to Google Drive's new drive.

The Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp may seem excessive, and some insiders echo this sentiment. Reviewing the acquisition may present a different perspective, and the $19 billion price may not seem excessive after all.

WhatsApp users fit the demographic mix of customers that Facebook may be searching for. Facebook enthusiasts display a preference for mobile messaging that works as a social network as well.

You can send messages to a single recipient or to many recipients with WhatsApp. 600 million photos are sent daily with WhatsApp, and this is greater than the number of photos that are uploaded to Facebook each day. 62 percent of Facebook users are active each day, but WhatsApp reports daily activity of 70 percent.
Facebook wants to grow its base, and the WhatsApp purchase mirrors the Instagram acquisition of 2012. Facebook has lost some of its younger customers, but WhatsApp may help them recapture the teen and tween mobile messaging market.

Siri and Google Now have attempted to answer questions that users have with artificial intelligence but have fallen short of answering the more difficult and complex questions. Now a demo has surfaced of a product called Hound from SoundHound that is better than others at breaking apart complex questions and giving answers to sections of a question, providing a more thorough answer.

Tim Schofield has posted a review of this brand new voice assistant app on Youtube, and you should see the video. The application is quick and more accurate than other applications that have tried to provide this service. From the demonstration, Hound is far ahead of the competition answering difficult and multi-part questions. Currently in Beta, the application has a few bugs and you need to be invited to try it out.

This weeks OpenStack Summit in Vancouver showcased some of the ways large corporations and newer startups have used the OpenStack framework to build some cool applications. Companies like HP, IBM, and Redhat along with SwiftStack and Bluebox were on-hand at the conference to show developers what is new in cloud computing. We all know that OpenStack has been one of the most popular open source development projects ever. And companies like Rackspace use the framework to host applications at their data centers.

Google announced that it would be rolling out a Mobile Friendly Update this week based on the mobile qualities of a website. Early Wednesday morning, there was not much change in the search results of many sites leading some to wonder if a change had been made at all. Google has stated that the roll-out will be a one week process, so changes might still be coming. Companies such as Search Metrics and SEOClarity were not able to pick any winners or losers as they did not see any significant change in the search results from Google.

Sites such as WikiPedia.org might see better results within mobile searches as their site is fairly friendly to mobile devices. Websites should not see any change in ranking when searching from a desktop as this update only affects mobile searching. Google started informing webmasters in their webmaster tools dashboard if their site had mobile issues. But no action was taken against those sites until this week and the announcement from Google.

Microsoft is looking to increase the number of autistic workers employed at the large technology company. Hiring managers at Microsoft recently voiced their opinion that autistic employees offer many skills that are need in the technology field including the ability to recall data, think at deep levels and perform well writing code. There are many different levels of autism on the spectrum with some appearing normal in all situations.

American Commitment has put together a petition of over 500,000 Americans who want the FCC to overturn the recent Net Neutrality decision. The group American Commitment does get some funding from the Koch Brothers. The petitions went to two representatives and one Senator, based open the location of the person who signed the petition. The group feels the recent mid-term elections was a clear sign that the country wants smaller government, and the FCC action goes in the complete wrong direction, expanding the role of the federal government.

The Xbox Live network went down over Christmas when a DDos (distributed denial of service) attack was launched against it. Now before the end of the year, hackers from the group H4LT have put the Xbox SDK (software development kit) on the internet for anyone to download. With a tweet @notHALT, the group linked to the DSK which will allow anyone to develop games for the platform. The company does not openly give the development kit away. And developers will not be able to put their creations with the kit in Microsoft owned store fronts but the release of the kit opens up for an open source store front to emerge.

WordPress is easily a very popular blogging online platform. Knowing how to operate the software properly makes running a blog easier and more effective. Follow these simple suggestions on while using the platform to take full advantage of your blogging experience.

There was an exploit discovered just this month that allows remote code to execute on the popular content management system (CMS). A popular file download plugin could be used by a hacker to execute code on your site. If you are running WP Download Manager 2.7.4 or lower, you should upgrade right away. Sucuri discovered the issue and the plugin developers but a new version out to protect against hackers gaining access to your admin accounts.

CodeEd is a Boston company that teaches computer programming to girls in middle school to create interest and help them become more proficient. The idea behind the project is to bring in volunteers that work in technology to work on creative projects with middle school and high school students so that they will pursue careers in technology and decrease the gender gap that currently exists. The Godaddy involvement includes recruiting volunteers and providing resources so the classes can continue.