Geek News

If you're an Xfinity internet customer in the northeast, it might be worth running a speed test. Comcast just announced that it's bumping download speeds for internet users in a total of 14 northeastern states, from Maine down through Virginia. Each of the four internet tiers Xfinity offers will increase, though by how much will vary. The two higher-speed "Blast" and "Performance Pro" options increase from 200 and 150 Mbps to 250 and 150 Mbps, respectively. The basic "Performance" tier, meanwhile, jumps from 25 to 60 Mbps, and the modest "Starter" tier moves from 10 to 15 Mbps. Comcast says that customers' bills won't change after these increases go into effect, and with this increase, 80 percent of Xfinity internet customers have speeds of 150 Mbps or more. We may not have affordable gigabit internet in the US yet, but that's not bad, and it's hard to complain about getting more download bandwidth for free. Unfortunate...

Anchor started off as a social network for audio -- the app let users make quick, impromptu broadcasts to their followers straight from their phone. But the company started seeing more and more people using it to make full-on podcasts, so it added features to push Anchor recordings to Apple Podcasts and Google Play last summer. That turned the app into a one-stop shop for amateur podcasting. The success of that feature has led Anchor to fully re-do its app and mission. Its goal now is to remove all the pain points and costs of making a podcast, from start to finish. To that end, Anchor 3.0 for iOS and Android is an app for recording first and foremost; consuming short broadcasts from your friends is definitely taking a backseat now. For starters, users can record multiple bits of audio and create a library to build out a finished product. Those can be stand-alone recordings, call-ins from your listeners, group recordings, songs from Spotify or Apple Music, transitional audio effect...

It's been almost a year since Google first announced YouTube TV , its $35-per-month service for cord cutters. Since then, Google has been iterating to improve on a product that was solid at launch -- but today marks the biggest expansion of YouTube TV thus far. The service now has access to a host of new channels from the Turner network, including TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, CNN, Turner Classic Movies and a few others. For sports fans, YouTube is also adding NBA TV and the MLB Network as well. But there's a bit of bad news that comes along with this: New YouTube TV subscriptions will now cost $40, up from the $35 price that the service has cost since launch. The price increase will hit on March 13th, so new potential customers still have a month to get in the door and lock in the $35 rate; existing subscribers won't see a change to their bill at all. YouTube's Heather Moosnick said that the decision to add channels and raise the price is a result of a balance betwee...