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When people go online searching for health information, they're often also looking for someone who's grappling with the same problem. That's especially true if they're dealing with a rare disease.

The Internet provides a gateway to all kinds of medical facts and also to people who have come by that information the hard way.

SuperPower: Visualising the internet

Explore this interactive graphic to find out which are the biggest sites on the internet, as measured by the Nielsen company. This feature is part of SuperPower, a season of programmes exploring the power of the internet.

LAS VEGAS — Samsung made a strong push for its Internet-connected televisions on Thursday, announcing new deals with several companies to provide content on its televisions, smartphones and tablet computers.

Executives from Time Warner Cable and Comcast joined Boo-Keun Yoon, Samsung’s president and general manager of visual displays, on stage during his keynote presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show here, and discussed plans to bring live programming to Samsung’s Internet-connected televisions and tablets without the need for a set-top box.

Time Warner Cable said it would allow customers to access its full lineup of live channels on Samsung Internet-connected televisions in 2011. It said it would eventually bring the same access to tablets, though it did not give any specifics on timing. Comcast expanded on plans it announced earlier this week to bring live television viewing to tablets, by allowing it on televisions as well.

“We’re radically changing the way our customers interact with their televisions,” said Brian Roberts, the chief executive of Comcast.

Samsung also announced a partnership with Hulu, the Internet television company, that will bring Hulu’s paid service to Samsung’s Android smartphones. And Mr. Yoon said Samsung’s connected televisions would support video that uses Adobe Flash.

Television manufacturers are increasingly focused on Internet-connected televisions, but media companies have been hesitant at times to allow their content to be viewed in ways other than on traditional cable or broadcast television. Analysts have said that the lack of standard TV content on the Internet would remain a barrier to mainstream adoption until media companies became more comfortable with the idea.

Mr. Yoon also said there was still work to do on the ease of use of Internet televisions. He described Samsung’s overall strategy for Internet-connected television as one that extended to the company’s smartphones, tablets and even cameras. Through a cloud-based system, he said, consumers will be able to move content from device to device.

But the main focus of this platform, Mr. Yoon said, would remain in the living room.

“TV will once again become the dominant and central piece of technology in human life,” he said. “Smart TV is where everything is converging.”

Pew Internet has released a report finding that income is the strongest predictor of whether, how often, and in what ways Americans use the web. The report adds nuance--and a few surprises--to existing research on America's digital divide. It even suggests the existence of a tipping point, where Internet use takes off at a certain income level.

A lot of this makes intuitive sense. After all, laptops and broadband cost money. But the Pew report finds that even among groups that own the necessary technology, less wealth equates to less (and less varied) Internet usage.

The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990. It consisted of one Web site and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer. The simple setup demonstrated a profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere. In this spirit, the Web spread quickly from the grassroots up. Today, at its 20th anniversary, the Web is thoroughly integrated into our daily lives. We take it for granted, expecting it to “be there” at any instant, like electricity.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

The State of the Internet