Google Search Globe

I just found this on Google's blog and thought I would share it as not only does it look cool, it has strong ties to Web Science regarding the different languages used on the Web across the globe. The globe shows a day's worth of searches, with each language that a query is made in represented by a different colour. While it doesn't seem surprising to see far fewer queries in certain areas of the world, I still find it shocking to see how much of a difference there is between continents.

Free unlimited music streaming comes to an end on Spotify

After reading about it in the news a couple of weeks ago, sure enough when I started up Spotify yesterday, I was greeted by a message stating I could now only listen to each track a maximum of 5 times... Ever! Additionally, I am now limited to 10 hours of streaming per month, although both of these restrictions can be removed if I choose to upgrade to a paid subscription account (either £4.99pm or £9.99pm for offline and mobile access). I have reservations about this however – I was attracted to Spotify on the promise of unlimited, free streaming of music, with the odd advert thrown in - which was never much of a problem for me. That promise is now gone. Perhaps buried in the terms and conditions it stated that this wouldn’t last, and as I was never paying for anything I suppose they have no obligations to continue what they were offering me. I’m not saying what they’ve done is in anyway devious, it’s just frustrating to see such a good service pretty much give up on its free offering.