Google Announces The Top Apps, Movies, Music Of 2014

Google has just released its ‘best stuff of the year’ on Google Play for 2014, and in terms of most downloaded content, it’s not all that different from Apple’s list.

Frozen, The Walking Dead, and Fancy by Iggy Azalea all placed at the top of the list in their respective categories, though the app situation varied a bit from that of Apple’s list, which is an editorial decision while Google focuses on downloads.

In the Google Play store, top apps included Duolingo (which made Apple’s list last year), Netflix, Facebook, and MyFitness Pal to name a few.

Google also said that Health and Fitness was the fastest growing app category.

Check out: Here’s the full list from Google. Congrats to the folks who are on it.

Norway cuts rates in surprise move as economy ails

Norway's central bank cut interest rates in a surprise move on Thursday to prop up an economy ailing from falling offshore investments, lower oil prices and weak growth in Europe.

The Norwegian krone fell to a 5-year low against the euro following the news.

The central bank cuts its benchmark rate to 1.25 percent from 1.5 percent, defying analysts expectations for a steady rate and a promise of lower rates next year.

"Growth prospects for the Norwegian economy have weakened," the bank said in a statement. Activity in the petroleum industry is softening and the sharp fall in oil prices is likely to amplify this tendency."

Facebook assembles An AdTech Voltron

Facebook’s plot for ad domination is coming to fruition.
Facebook Combines Atlas, Audience Network, And LiveRail Into An AdTech Voltron

Today at Facebook headquarters, its ad execs explained how two years of seemingly isolated launches and acquisitions are melding into a powerful way to show ads across the Internet and track the purchases they inspire both online and offline.

Here’s how the pieces come together: Facebook brings its 1.35 billion users and massive engagement with the News Feed where it shows its ads.

Because its huge user base stays logged in across web and mobile, it has a unified understanding of people’s identities in a way most platforms don’t.

Facebook’s wealth of personal data means it can target ads more accurately.

Read more: For instance, it says it can target gender with 90 percent accuracy compared to the online ad industry average of 50 percent.

Google+ Will Now Let Users Identify Their Gender Using Their Own Words

Today’s been a busy one for Google (with updates to Hangouts, Android Wear, Cardboard VR, the Cultural Institute, and more) but the company is also making an important change to Google+ that provides more gender identity options for LGBT users.

The company said it will begin supporting “an infinite number of ways to express gender identity” on the social network with a new ‘custom’ option that will roll out to users in the coming few days, as 9to5Google first reported.

Unlike the recently introduced gender identification options on Facebook, which offer more than 50 set options for users, those on Google+ will be able to choose whatever pronouns they like.

That also includes ‘decline to state’, while users can already chose to not publicly disclose their gender if they so wish.

Read more: Google revealed it had worked with “people and groups who gave us advice”

Google To Close Its Google News Service In Spain On December 16 In Response To New Law

Google is saying adios to Google News in Spain, after announcing it will close the service down in the country on December 16 in response to the impact of a new law.

The company said that incoming legislation in the European country will force publishers to charge Google if and when it carries snippets of their stories in the news service.

That’s not unlike the situation in Germany, where publishers have long argued that Google should compensate them for using excerpts of their stories in the service.

However, while German publishers have grudgingly accepted that Google News is valuable enough to their business to excuse compensation, Spain has gone ahead and inshrined the requirement to pay in its legal system.

Read more: “This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not,”

La SNCF lance Idvroom, son offre de covoiturage

La compagnie ferroviaire donne le coup d'envoi officiel, ce mardi 9 décembre, de son offre de covoiturage francilienne appelée Idvroom.

Avec ce projet, la SNCF entend cibler avant tout les trajets courts et réguliers en Ile-de-France. Jour J pour Idvroom. La SNCF donne officiellement, ce mardi 9 décembre, le coup d'envoi de cette offre de covoiturage en Île-de-France, après avoir déjà lancé le site.

Cette initiative marque un peu plus la volonté de Guillaume Pepy de développer le "porte à porte", segment qui figure en bonne place dans le plan "Excellence 2020", présenté il y a plus d'un an par le patron de la compagnie ferroviaire.

"La SNCF fait du gare à gare, or figurez-vous que les gens n'habitent pas dans les gares", expliquait-il alors. D'où la volonté pour la SNCF de se lancer dans le covoiturage.

La compagnie ferroviaire avait déjà racheté en 2013 deux sites: 123envoiture.com et easycovoiturage.com....

Fortes de 900.000 membres, ces deux plateformes ont désormais fusionné pour donner naissance à Idvroom.

Self-employed? Good luck getting a mortgage

It's never been easy to get a mortgage if you're self-employed. But a recent analysis of mortgage data shows just how much harder it is.

Getting lenders to quote you a rate is tougher if you don't work for someone else, according to a report Thursday from real estate researcher Zillow.

Though they typically have higher incomes, put more money down and buy bigger homes, self-employed online mortgage shoppers got just six loan quotes from lenders for every 10 offered to borrowers who aren't self-employed, Zillow found.

"That's the first battle," said Erin Lantz, vice president of mortgages at Zillow."The second battle is actually getting through all the paperwork."

Read more: Regardless of their employment status, mortgage applicants today need to be prepared for a time-consuming paper chase. For a salaried worker, a batch of W-2 forms, pay stubs and bank statements will get the ball rolling.