Alice Truong

Google said it is investing in a faster undersea cable that will connect cities on the US West Coast to two locations in Japan, potentially offering 60 terabits per second of bandwidth.

"[T]hat's about ten million times faster than your cable modem," Urs Hölzle, Google's senior vice president of technical infrastructure, wrote.

The agreement, signed by a consortium of six companies that also includes China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel, will invest about $300 million in the so-called FASTER cable network. The FASTER network will connect Chikura and Shima in Japan to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

Teens haven't abandoned Facebook yet, and a new report finds Facebook continues to lead in social referrals by a wide margin. From June 2013 to June 2014, Facebook drove 23.4% of social referrals across the web.

Pinterest trailed at a distant second at 5.7%. Twitter, at 1%, came in third place, beating the combined referrals from StumbleUpon, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google Plus, according to content discovery company Shareaholic.

Facebook's traffic referral share increased 14 percentage points. Pinterest and StumbleUpon were the two other networks that saw a gain at 2.34 percentage points and 0.07 percentage points, respectively.

Accessing public Wi-Fi networks comes with its risks -- hackers snoop on network traffic -- but a new study finds 39% of US adults have sent sensitive information, including banking information and social security numbers, over such unsecured networks.

Polling 2,037 adults, a study conducted by Nielsen's Harris Poll for virtual private network company Private Wi-Fi found most people understood such risks, with 88% of respondents mentioning identity theft as a possible threat when using unprotected Wi-Fi networks.

That said, 26% of respondents said they have checked their bank accounts and 19% have paid bills while using public Wi-Fi. In addition, 8% admitted to sending emails containing sensitive information, such as social security numbers or account numbers, over these unprotected networks.

Samsung has developed a smartphone case that helps the visually impaired by enhancing their awareness of their surroundings. The Ultrasonic Cover for its Galaxy Core Advance smartphone helps owners sense the presence of people and objects up to two meters away.