While Web growth in North America can be said to have been largely driven by technologies that cater to personal needs (PCs, smartphones, smartphone apps), Internet usage in other regions such as Africa, has developed through more social channels, such as mobile banking. While internet penetration in Africa hovered around 16 percent last year, mobile telephony soared to one of the highest in the world. Currently, 90 percent of the continent has access to a mobile phone—a phenomenon that has helped topple dictatorships and connects rural communities to otherwise difficult to reach services such as healthcare, in addition to the now common money transfers via text.

Nevertheless, there is certainly no shortage of demand for technologies developed for personal use in this region. However their cost and the likelihood of limited access to Wi-Fi networks has meant a different kind of growth for Africa when it comes to Web usage.

Since its creation in 2010, Google has kept X largely hidden from view. Over the past month, Bloomberg Businessweek spoke to many of X’s managers and project leaders, who work with abundant resources and few of the constraints that smothered similar corporate research efforts in the past. “Anything which is a huge problem for humanity we’ll sign up for, if we can find a way to fix it,” Teller says.

Google X seeks to be an heir to the classic research labs, such as the ­Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb, and Bletchley Park, where code breakers cracked German ciphers and gave birth to modern cryptography. After the war, the spirit of these efforts was captured in pastoral corporate settings: AT&T’s (T) Bell Labs and Xerox (XRX) PARC, for example, became synony­mous with breakthroughs (the transistor and the personal computer among them) and the inability of each company to capitalize on them.

Stone’s full piece is definitely worth checking out.

Police arrested a Florida man on first-degree murder charges Tuesday after he reportedly pocket dialed 911 and revealed his murder plot on a recorded phone line.

In the May 5 recording, which the Broward County Sheriff’s Office says will not be released, Pompano Beach resident Scott Simon can be heard allegedly telling someone that he’s going to follow another man home and kill him.

Minutes later, Nicholas Walker, 33 of Lauderhill, was shot dead while driving on I-95 south. His car then hit a guardrail and exploded into flames.

Walmart is looking to mobile technology to redefine the shopping experience for its retail customers. Speaking at the CTIA Wireless 2013 conference today, Gibu Thomas, global head of mobile at Walmart, said that the company’s goal is to create mobile tools that are “indispensable for the customer when shopping in our stores.”

Specifically, Thomas said that the company will leverage big data to do such tasks as develop automatic shopping lists and other advanced capabilities that will improve the shopping experience.  “Our goal is to create shopping tools that are second nature,” Thomas said. “The true power of mobile is re-inventing capabilities with mass appeal.”

In her first speech as acting FCC chairwoman, Mignon Clyburn told a CTIA convention audience in Las Vegas Tuesday (May 21), that “maximizing the benefits of mobile communications will continue to be a top priority for the FCC” and that “mobile innovation is key to U.S. competitiveness.”

She said the FCC is on track to issue incentive auction rules by the end of the year.

Workers with skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are increasingly important to our business – and to nearly every business – because STEM drives innovation and innovation drives our economy.

During the next six years, 2.8 million STEM openings are predicted. But, today, many STEM jobs are going unfilled as candidates lack the necessary skills, training or degrees.

Through this new program, Georgia Tech will be able to offer employers like AT&T a larger and more diverse pool of highly qualified, STEM-trained workers and help the U.S. retain its global competitive edge.

Cool stuff. And on a related note, check out our recent infographic on the benefits of broadband access in eduction.

• 91% post a photo of themselves, up from 79% in 2006.
• 71% post their school name, up from 49%.
• 71% post the city or town where they live, up from 61%.
• 53% post their email address, up from 29%.
• 20% post their cell phone number, up from 2%.

Also in the report: 95% of teens use the Internet, and a whopping 81% of them use social media sites, the most popular of which is still Facebook (though Twitter and Instagram are making up ground).

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke touted innovation and information technology as drivers of economic change in a Saturday commencement speech at Bard College in Massachusetts.

“Humanity’s capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history,” he said.

Bernanke also touted advancements in biotech, health care, and clean energy as helping keep the tech boom from becoming a bubble.

Facebook loves to talk about its ridiculously high number of users. Yes, Facebook has a whole lot of accounts, but many of them aren’t humans. eMarketer released an analysis of Facebook’s audience, and it turns out more than 10 percent of Facebook’s reported monthly users are not human. Over 100 million active Facebook users are pets, objects or brands.

Weird.

Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials.

We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.

The original idea behind soap operas was that daily episodes would keep viewers hooked and advertisers happy. But few people have time to devote to mid-day TV any more, and as TV viewing shifts online, the model is changing.

It’s been just two and a half weeks weeks since popular soap operas One Life to Live and All My Children were reborn as online-only shows — but production company Prospect Park has already decided to cut back on the number of new episodes released online each week. The change in schedule, the company claims, is due to the fact that viewers are “binge-watching” instead of watching one episode a day, and this makes it too hard for them to keep up.

[W]e need to ensure is that we do not let an increasingly outdated regulatory regime for the Internet ecosystem slow innovation and investment. The 1996 Telecom Act succeeded in what it was designed to achieve, but almost two decades later it is leaving the FCC struggling to shoehorn Internet-era technologies into phone-era regulations. I am not suggesting that the answer is to abolish all regulation. But I am suggesting that we need a 21st century policy framework that is designed for 21st century technologies and marketplaces, not 19th century ones.

We need to start by asking the right questions. It has been suggested that a key question for the next FCC chairman will be how to keep the FCC relevant in the Internet era. I believe that is the wrong question. I recognize, of course, that tactical battles to secure budgets and resources are part of any organization or entity, including the federal government. But a strategic view of policymaking starts by asking what objective we are trying to achieve, and then asking whether regulation is needed, why it is needed, and who is best placed to administer it.

The full speech is worth checking out.

Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio, hit the app jackpot Tuesday afternoon when he pressed the download button on a word game app called Say the Same Thing and sent Apple over the 50 billion app download mark, winning the $10,000 prize.

50 billion apps and counting. In an ecosystem that didn’t exist just five years ago. Wow.

Eight members of Congress raised privacy fears about Google’s wearable computer, Google Glass, expressing concern the device could allow users to identify people on the street and look up personal information about them.

The lawmakers, members of the congressional Privacy Caucus, said they are concerned users could access individuals’ addresses, marital status, work history and hobbies.

“As members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we are curious whether this new technology could infringe on the privacy of the average American,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Google CEO Larry Page.

In response, Google has reassured the members of Congress that privacy concerns are very much on their radar:

“We are thinking very carefully about how we design Glass because new technology always raises new issues,” a Google spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “Our Glass Explorer program, which reaches people from all walks of life, will ensure that our users become active participants in shaping the future of this technology — and we’re excited to hear the feedback.”