Samsung Gear VR gets even better internet with WebVR support

With all the coverage lavished on "proper" VR devices like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, it might be too easy to forget the VR headset that was already in the market way ahead of those two. Made by Samsung in partnership with Oculus, the Gear VR is almost like a poor man's VR (though the real poor man's VR would be the original Google Cardboard), lettings users experience VR more easily.

Provided they have the latest Samsung smartphone, of course. Now Samsung is expanding its headset's coverage by adopting what is to be the VR standard for the Web called, what else, WebVR.

With Mozilla as one of its biggest proponents, WebVR is an attempt to more or less standardize web browser access to virtual reality before it becomes too wild and wide to corral. Technically, it's a set of Javascript API for doing as such. It's still a work in progress and, until recently, was available only for experimental versions of Firefox and Chromium. Now add Internet for Gear VR that list and remove the "experimental" label.

The Gear VR has long had an Internet browser of its own, but that was a rather plain one that really simply let you, well, browse web pages. On the other hand, real virtual reality content could only be enjoyed on the headset using content curated by Samsung or Oculus, which isn't really a lot. WebVR has the potential to expand that scope to any VR content that can run inside browsers using the Javascript API.

That said, Samsung admits that the browser so far only supports the deprecated API, which means the parts that will soon be obsolete. This first release, however, will hopefully serve as the launchpad for updating to more recent WebVR APIs in the near future. However, WebVR itself is still in its infancy, so not everything might work as desired.

In addition to supporting WebVR, Samsung Internet for Gear VR also gets some other features in the latest update. One nifty feature is that any web page you are browsing on the Samsung Internet browser for Android will automatically show up on the Gear VR browser when you attach your smartphone to the headset.

Unlike the Samsung Internet for Android app, which is available from the Galaxy App store, Samsung Internet for Gear VR has to be installed or updated via the Oculus Store Android app.


Source: Samsung
Via: Slashgear

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WordPress.com turns on HTTPS encryption for all websites

WordPress.com is adding HTTPS support for all of its blogs. If you have a custom domain or a blog under the wordpress.com domain name (like bestcrabrestaurantsinportland.wordpress.com), you’re good to go.

While many social services like Facebook and Twitter have supported HTTPS for a while now, WordPress.com was still lagging behind for custom domain names.

Since 2014, WordPress.com subdomains have supported HTTPS, but not the others. But this isn’t as easy as flipping a switch for custom domain names as you need certificates for all domain names.

Thanks to the Let’s Encrypt project, it has become much cheaper and easier to implement HTTPS across the web. WordPress.com is taking advantage of this initiative for its websites. Each website now has an SSL certificate and will display a green lock in your address back.

As a nice side effect, Google tends to favor websites that support HTTPS over HTTP-only website. So your WordPress.com website should rank higher in Google search results.





Source: Techcrunch

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There's now an official HTTP status code for legal takedowns: 451

HTTP status codes are a core part of helping your browser understand what to do with a page. You're probably familiar with 404 — page not found — but there are a plethora of others, like 302, which help tell your browser a page has moved.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has finally created a standard for when a page has been taken down due to legal reasons. The new status code, 451, indicates that a host has received a legal demand to deny access to a resource.

This status code was added to help add “transparent operation” to the internet, and responses using error 451 should also include a explanation in the body including details of the legal demand, who made it and what legislation it related to, for example:

HTTP/1.1 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

Link: ; rel=”blocked-by”

Content-Type: text/html

Unavailable For Legal Reasons

Unavailable For Legal Reasons

This request may not be serviced in the Roman Province

of Judea due to the Lex Julia Majestatis, which disallows

access to resources hosted on servers deemed to be

operated by the People's Front of Judea.

The response code is also intended to be used in cases where a provider in the access chain is blocking access, such as an ISP or DNS provider, to identify which entity blocked the page.

IETF Chair Jari Arkko said during the vote that he was in “FULL support of this specification” and the ballot passed unanimously.

Error 451 is approved for publication, but needs work from the RFC Editor, but Mark Nottingham, IETF HTTP Working Group Chair, said that “effectively, you can start using it now.”



Source :The Next Web

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India Set To Overtake U.S. To Become World’s Second Largest Internet Market

The number of Internet users in India is tipped to surpass 400 million by the end of this year, making it the second largest online population in the world behind only China, according to a new report from the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and market research IMRB.

The report claims that the total number of Internet users in the country will reach 402 million by December, of which 351 million will go online daily. That first figure would see India surpass U.S on total web users, but leave it some way behind China which claims over 600 million.

Mobile has long been seen as the key driver of Internet access in emerging markets, and that’s very much the case in India.

The report found that, as of October 2015, India had 317 million Internet users, with 276 million — a majority 87 percent — accessing from a mobile devices. The report didn’t reveal how many are mobile-only Internet users, however. The number of mobile-based Internet users is expected to surge to 371 million by June next year, taking India’s online population to 462 million in total.

That’s a huge number, but it is still just scratching the surface of India’s colossal 1.2 billion population.

IAMAI and IMRB claimed that the top eight urban areas in India account for 31 percent of the country’s Internet users. That figure increased an impressive 50 percent over the past year but the number of web users from rural areas, which was at 108 million in October, grew by 77 percent over the same period. That figure is tipped to reach 147 million by June next year.

“With smartphones in India now available for under 5,000 INR,” IAMAI’s Nilotpal Chakravarti told TechCrunch in an interview. “We expect that the upsurge in overall Internet penetration will be driven by mobile.”

Internet access is surging in India, there’s no doubt about that. It took more than ten years for the total number of people with web access in India to move from 10 million to 100 million. It then took three years for that figure to reach 300 million. But, the jump to 400 million was less than a year.

The growth in access in rural parts of the country is perhaps the most fascinating — and the most affected by mobile, too.

The report states that people aged between 18 and 30 represent 76 percent of rural Internet users, with smartphone-based users growing from 38 percent of rural users to a majority 60 percent.

Finally, one last tidbit to consider is the gender gap. Overall, males account for 71 percent of India’s Internet users, according to the report. Web usage among males is increasing at a rate of 50 percent, versus 46 percent for women. In rural areas, the growth in Internet access is higher among men (79 percent) than women (61 percent), but in urban areas, a higher ratio of women are coming online than men, 43 percent and 34 percent respectively.

There are precious few reputable statistics on Internet usage in India and other parts of Asia, despite the fact that things are changing fast, so this report is notable for that alone. The full version of the research is not available for free, but you can find an executive summary here.

Source :TechCrunch 

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