Amar Toor

Google is rolling out a new search feature on July 18 that aims to help users register to vote ahead of the November presidential election in the US. The company said that queries for the term "register to vote" will now return detailed descriptions on how to register in each US state, including requirements and deadlines. "No matter which state you’re in or how you plan to cast your ballot, you can find the step-by-step information you need to register correctly and on time — right at the top of your Search page and in the Google app," wrote Jacob Schonberg.

Google has also introduced a search tool that delivers information on the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. When users search for either convention in the Google app, the app will display a summary of the event, information about the nominee, and a list of speakers, alongside related social media posts and a YouTube live stream video.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the world wide web, is calling on regulators in Europe to protect network neutrality and "save the open internet." Berners-Lee, Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, and Harvard law professor Larry Lessig urged European regulators to implement guidelines that would close loopholes in net neutrality legislation that the European Parliament approved in October 2015. They also called on internet users to voice their opposition online, before the public consultation period on the guidelines ends on July 18th.

"Network neutrality for hundreds of millions of Europeans is within our grasp," their letter reads. "Securing this is essential to preserve the open Internet as a driver for economic growth and social progress. But the public needs to tell regulators now to strengthen safeguards, and not cave in to telecommunications carriers’ manipulative tactics." The rules approved by European lawmakers last year contained several loopholes that activists say could be exploited to undermine net neutrality. Among the most troubling, according to Berners-Lee, Lessig, and van Schewick, is a provision that would allow ISPs to create "fast lanes" for "specialized services," and a guideline that would allow for "zero-rating" — a practice whereby select apps and services are exempt from monthly data limits.

Illiteracy isn't a major issue for much of the Western world, but it remains endemic in many developing countries, where incomes are low and books are scarce.

That may be changing, though, thanks to the spread of mobile technologies that have made books more accessible than ever before -- something that UNESCO, in a new report, describes as a veritable "reading revolution." The report examines the reading habits of nearly 5,000 mobile-phone users in seven countries -- Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe -- where the average illiteracy rate among children is 20 percent, and 34 percent among adults. (The US, by comparison, has an adult illiteracy rate of around three percent.)

UNESCO describes the survey as the largest ever undertaken on mobile reading in the developing world, and its results are encouraging: people are reading more, they're reading to their children, and they're hungry for more content.

The study was based on questionnaires and telephone interviews with people who use an app from Worldreader -- a San Francisco-based nonprofit that distributes e-books in low-income countries. The organization delivers Kindles to under-equipped classrooms, while its app allows users to choose from over 6,000 (mostly free) e-books on low-end feature phones. Today, the app has more than 300,000 monthly active users in developing countries, and Worldreader says it's delivered nearly 1.7 million e-books since its launch in 2010.

There is evidence to suggest that mobile technology can improve literacy test scores, though UNESCO's study focuses on the behaviors and demographics of users in developing countries, in the hopes of better understanding how and why they read. More than 62 percent of those surveyed said they enjoy reading more after they started reading on mobile devices, and one-third said they use their phones to read to their children (an additional third said they would do so if more child-friendly books were available).

The survey also shed light on important gender-based differences. Although the vast majority of mobile readers are male (77 percent), women actually devote far more time to reading: 277 minutes per month, on average, compared to just 33 minutes for men.