Every day, The New York Times’s staff scours the Web for interesting and peculiar items.
Many people awoke to news from Facebook that it was leading a coalition of technology companies, called Internet.org, aimed at lowering the barriers to Internet access around the world, especially in developing nations.
“The Internet is such an important thing for driving humanity forward, but it’s not going to build itself,†Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, told The Times’s Vindu Goel.
The announcement spread quickly around the tech community, leading many to wonder what the implications of the initiative would be. It also led at least one person to wonder where the coalition landed such a seemingly coveted domain like Internet.org.
It turns out the previous owner, who registered the domain 15 years ago, had no idea who he was selling it to.
Here’s what else we noticed today:
Finding the Unjustly Homeless, and Teaching Them to Code.
Medium | Teach a man to fish and … the embrace of technology solves every problem, right? - Damon Darlin
Yahoo Sites Are the Most Visited in July
Marketing Land | Yahoo received more traffic in July than Facebook or Google, and those numbers don’t count a boost from Tumblr now being a part of Yahoo’s family. - Ashwin Seshagiri
Some Lessons From Vine
AVC | Some thoughts from a venture capitalist on Vine’s growth and why Instagram hasn’t killed it - at least, not yet. - Jenna Wortham
Instagram Bragging Leads to Gun Bust
The Verge | An aspiring rapper’s Instagram photos lead to the largest gun bust in New York City history. - Ashwin Seshagiri
When the Thing People Like Isn’t What You Set Out to Do
Forbes | When an accidental feature becomes your entire business. - Ashwin Seshagiri
‘Causal Recipes’ Return to Twitter
TechCrunch | IFTTT, a service that lets users personalize actions if something occurs on a predetermined site, gets a fresh set of Twitter triggers that allow users to build commands that react to tweets. - Ashwin Seshagiri
Cheaper rivals eat into Apple’s China tablet share
The Financial Times | Apple is losing market share to rivals in China. That was inevitable. But how many of them are making money? - Damon Darlin (Subscription required)
