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Google Launches New Ad Marketplace; Display Ads Will Never Be the Same
You’re probably familiar with Google AdSense and AdWords, Google’s (Google) flagship advertising products. It’s how Google makes its billion of dollars. Highly targeted text ads appear on Google search and third party websites that are part of the AdSense program. Advertisers buy ads based on keywords, with more popular keywords costing more per click than less popular terms.This has only applied to text ads though, not banner or display ads. But speculation was rampant that Google would apply its unique and lucrative ad model to display ads after its $3.1 Billion DoubleClick acquisition.
Now that speculation has become reality. Google has just launched the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and it is just like AdWords and AdSense, except that it is a marketplace for display ads.
Firemint Honors Australia’s Royal Flying Doctor Service With Flight Control Update
I knew there was a reason I loved Firemint’s Flight Control game, but I had no idea it was this important. With this latest release, the game which had you flying around the globe, landing airplanes at the local airport, Hawaii, and even an aircraft carrier, takes you deep within the Australian Outback.While guiding airplanes deep in the Australian Outback, you had better keep an eye out for the flying doctors’ plane, with its wailing siren. That plane always has priority landing clearance, and you will have to move other planes out of the queue in order to get that one on the runway as quickly as possible.
ABC looks to expand iView with ISP deals – iTnews.com.au
The ABC is looking to partner with more Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer unmetered access to its free iView on-demand television portal and paid downloads from its ABC Shop Downloads online store.The iView service offers 35 hours of weekly ‘catch-up’ streaming of ABC television programs on-demand via a web browser, while ABC Shop Downloads uses a peer-to-peer technology to deliver users near-DVD copies of ABC programs to keep.
The national broadcaster is investigating options to extend both platforms onto a range of new devices – all of which would be aided by unmetered access on ISP networks.
Twitter expands rules to allow advertising – iTnews.com.au
Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging site now seeking ways to make money, expanded its terms for users on Thursday to allow advertisers to reach the Internet site’s more than 45 million monthly visitors.
Twitter, the two-year-old venture capital-backed company that lets people send an unlimited number of 140-character messages, is just now beginning to ramp up efforts to monetise, or gain revenue from, its popular site.
Industry weighs in on iiNet court case – Telco/ISP – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au
The Internet Industry Association plans to make an application on behalf of 140 organisations to intervene as an amicus curiae (‘friend of the court’) in the case being made by the film industry against ISP iiNet.The IIA, represented by Steven Finch of renowned legal firm Clayton Utz, sent a letter to both parties on Friday stating its intention to intervene in the case.
Being amicus curiae would allow the judge presiding over the case to call on the industry association for expert opinion.
The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), led by Roadshow Entertainment, began the case in the Federal Court against the Perth-based ISP late last year, claiming iiNet did not do enough to prevent its broadband subscribers from the illegal sharing of copyright-protected works. The ISP has argued that it does not have the legal right to intercept the communications of its subscribers.
Melbourne’s first OpenAustralia hackfest
OpenAustralia.org, Australia’s first eDemocracy website, would like to invite its friends, fans and volunteers to its first Melbourne hackfest.The first OpenAustralia hackfest, held in Sydney in June, was a big success, attracting 50 volunteers. They worked on solving existing problems as well as starting new OpenAustralia projects including a mobile version of OpenAustralia – read all about the day on the OpenAustralia blog to get a taste of what the Melbourne hackfest will be like.
The Telstra Split 101 | Lifehacker Australia
Yesterday’s announcement that Telstra will be forced to split its existing infrastructure business from the rest of the companyis going to be fodder for news journalists and communications junkies for months to come. But what difference will it make to the average Internet user?The really simple answer is: no-one knows for sure, and nothing will happen for a while, but it should ultimately result in cheaper prices and more competition for Internet services, most particularly the ADSL services used by the majority of Australians.
How Much Data Does Australia Download? | Gizmodo Australia
Yesterday the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its Internet Activity findings for June this year. And it looks like we Australians like our downloading.For the three months of the reference period up to June this year, Australians downloaded 99 993 TB of data. Terabytes. Which, according to Google, is equivalent to 102 391 808 gigabytes. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?
Google Maps Now Offers Live Traffic Info | Gizmodo Australia
Google today announced live traffic information for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and their surrounding areas on Google Maps. It even works with mobile devices!Powered by Intelematics – the guys behind the SUNA traffic channel for your satnav device – the Google traffic service appears on the maps as a coloured line over a major road or motorway. Green means, good, yellow means average congestion, red is heavy traffic and red/black means you’d be better off walking. The info is updated every few minutes, so it’s always ready to go.
In all honesty, this probably isn’t the most practical way of transmitting traffic information – exactly what is the difference between a yellow and red line, for example – but if it helps just one person avoid being late to a meeting because they went a different way to avoid traffic, then I guess it’s all worth it…
Time Shift Viewing Will Finally Get Included In Ratings | Lifehacker Australia
TV scheduling often seems designed to annoy viewers, and the situation of recording one show to catch later while watching another one live is hardly uncommon. So here’s a “better late than never” development: come December, TV ratings figures in Australia will finally be adjusted to incorporate delayed viewing (known as “time shift” in the trade).
Google Docs Batch Upload Eases Online Document Transfers | Lifehacker Australia
Got a bunch of files to send to Google Docs, and don’t have time for the webapp’s one-by-one uploads? Google Docs Batch Upload does just what you might think, loading any folder of files into Google Docs’ serversThe command-line, Java-based tool requires having at least the 1.6 Java Runtime Environment, which is really the biggest hardship of running the app if you don’t have it installed already. Once you’re up to date on Java, simply load the .jar package and point it to a folder full of documents you want to upload
IT contractors take a pay cut – iTnews.com.au
One in four IT contractors reported a cut in pay rates in the past year, according to a survey by Monash University, on behalf of Entity Solutions.The survey did not drill down into how much pay rates had been reduced but Entity chief Matthew Franceschini said he was “surprised” and thought the number of contractors that experienced pay cuts “could have been higher.”
Microsoft wins injunction to continue selling Word – iTnews.com.au
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has granted an injunction to Microsoft allowing the firm to continue to sell Word until the appeal against its case with i4i is resolved.Microsoft was due to stop selling Word by court order next Friday but the injunction will mean that Microsoft and original equipment makers will still be able to sell the software.
Dell and HP had filed briefs supporting the extension allowing Microsoft to sell the application, saying that a ban would severely disrupt their businesses.
NBN cost debate picks up steam – iTnews.com.au
The promise of a hyper-fast, state-sponsored national broadband network was mitigated by the high consumer cost to access it, a telecoms industry conference was told last night.
Speaking at the Telecoms World conference, senior analyst with stockbroking firm BBY Mark McDonnell said the oft-touted $43 billion cost of what he said was an “inherently inefficient” Federal Government-funded network “doesn’t appear to be based on any detailed study”.
Innovation: Go to hospital to see computing’s future – New Scientist
If you want to know how people will interact with machines in the future, head for a hospital.That’s the impression I got from a new report about the future of human-computer interaction from IT analysts Gartner, based in Stamford, Connecticut.
Gartner’s now-classic chart (click through above) shows the rollercoaster of expectations ridden by new technologies: rocketing from obscurity to a peak of overblown hype, then falling into a “trough of disillusionment” before finally becoming mainstream as a tech’s true worth is found.
42 Gaming Peripherals You’ll Never Play With | Gizmodo Australia
For this week’s Photoshop Contest, Gizmodo asked you to design some unlikely gaming peripherals. And a lot of these, as ludicrous as they are, aren’t that much crazier than some of the Wii crap currently for sale. [Click through for Byte-approved LOLs!]
TomTom Launches Voice Activated Satnavs | Gizmodo Australia
Apparently the new TomTom satnavs allow you to activate over 100 tasks by the power of your voice alone. I wonder if flipping off that dickhead who cut you off is one of them.Both the Go 750 and the Go 950 feature the voice control, which can be used for planning a route, making a handsfree call or changing preferences. They both feature TomTom’s iQ Route software and have a new menu system that includes a frequent destinations menu.
5 ways to listen to music on the iPhone without using iTunes – Ars Technica
One of the major functions of the iPhone and iPod touch is, of course, music playback. The iTunes app has been designed in such a way to take advantage of the iPhone’s touchscreen. But what if you want to listen to music that doesn’t reside in your iTunes library, or you want to discover new music while not sitting in front of a computer?Thanks to the incredible success of the App Store, there are plenty of ways now to access streaming music even when you don’t have the files.
VMware and Melbourne IT launch cloud service – iTnews.com.au
Melbourne IT will today launch a cloud computing service based on VMware software and EMC storage to compete on the global stage with the likes of Amazon.com.The Melbourne IT vCloud Express service, which will be made available in beta mode in the early hours of Wednesday morning, offers customers compute power and storage on demand with no minimum payments on a ‘pay-per-use’ model.
The Wheels On The Broadband Bus Offer Wi-Fi | Gizmodo Australia
I never, ever thought I’d say this, but I want to move to Adelaide. Not for any practical reason, but for the free Wi-Fi on the Broadband Bus.Launching today as part of a six month trial, the bus was developed and funded by a whole raft of tech companies, including MIMP Connecting Solutions (whose MD Allan Aitchison is pictured), transSpot, Cisco, Adam Internet, Podmo Mobile and Webshield Content Filtering.
Official Google Enterprise Blog: Waving hello to Google Apps
Google Wave has been generating lots of interest among Google Apps users since we unveiled it in May at Google I/O, our annual developer conference. Today we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be opening up access to Google Wave for some schools and businesses as part of the preview this fall. And while we won’t be able to open it up to all Google Apps users just yet, we hope to bring Google Wave to all Google Apps users next year. If you’re a Google Apps administrator and you’re interested in testing Google Wave, you can sign up here.
Sony Plans To Introduce 3D LCD Television By End Of 2010 | Gizmodo Australia
The Wall Street Journal reports that Sony is planning to introduce a 3D LCD TV by the end of 2010. Sony’s been in a bit of a slump lately, and a push to 3D would certainly provide some excitement.This leak is all according to an unnamed source, so don’t get too worked up, but supposedly Sony is set to announce the product at next week’s IFA in Berlin. Panasonic has already committed to work on 3D TVs, but Sony could still be the first to get a product out the door. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out if there’s any truth to the rumour.
5 Apps Tap the Internet’s Infinite Playlist
It used to be you needed a ginormous hard drive to build and store your digital music collection. But now that most songs exist somewhere in the cloud—on YouTube, one-stop streaming sites like imeem, or blog aggregators like Hype Machine—services have emerged that help you squeeze the Internet for any track you need. Wherever music lives, you can now play, collect, and share it without downloading any audio files. None of these sites is pitch-perfect, and their fidelity isn’t as high as your meticulously encoded lossless library. But in these lean times, free jams are sounding better by the minute.
Stress tests rain on Amazon’s cloud – Storage – iTnews.com.au
Stress tests conducted by Sydney-based researchers have revealed that the infrastructure-on-demand services offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft suffer from regular performance and availability issues.The team of researchers, led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and in collaboration with researchers at NICTA (National ICT Australia) and the Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), have spent seven months stress testing Amazon’s EC2, Google’s AppEngine and Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing services.
The analysis simulated 2000 concurrent users connecting to services from each of the three providers, with researchers measuring response times and other performance metrics.
Language Log » The first LOLcat?
From YouRememberThat.com, a 1905 postcard that may be the oldest extant LOLcat:The source suggests:
Perhaps soon, archeologists will discover an even older LOLcat on the walls of an Egyptian tomb… perhaps a cat with the caption, “I see what you did there!”
Tr.im to Go Open Source, Community Owned
After weeks of controversy concerning a possible closure of the service, URL shortener Tr.im just announced that it’s open sourcing its code, handing ownership of its domain name over to a community nonprofit organization and making clickthrough data freely available from now on, in real time. Founder Eric Woodward will spin the project out from his core company Nambu, will cover operational costs personally and will work with anyone who wants to help make Tr.im a community-owned alternative to what Woodward says is a data-hoarding monopoly in Bit.ly and Twitter.
Mozilla complains about IE ballot solution – iTnews.com.au
Senior executives at Mozilla have argued that recent proposals by Microsoft to appease European Commission (EC) anti-trust regulators over the unfair bundling of Internet Explorer (IE) in Windows products do not go far enough.After a series of back and forth moves, Microsoft agreed to present consumers with a ballot screen offering a choice of browsers. Users would then pick one to install as their default browser.
However, Mozilla general counsel Harvey Anderson wrote in a blog posting that modifications need to be made to the ballot screen solution, which the EC seems close to accepting.
Snow Leopard now available from Apple Store, ships Aug. 28 – Ars Technica
The Magic 8-Ball correctly predicted a ship date of August 28, 2009 for Mac OS X 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard. The online Apple Store briefly went down this morning and, when it came back up, Snow Leopard took a spot on the main page with a delivery date of August 28. Interested customers can preorder it now with free shipping to be delivered on Friday.The rumor scene has exploded over the last few weeks over the expected ship date of the OS. Despite the fact that Apple led us all to believe that it wouldn’t arrive until later this fall, August 28 was the date that kept coming back in all of the leaks.
Nokia’s new Wintel netbook: what happened to Maemo + ARM? – Ars Technica
With the netbook scene exploding, Nokia obviously believes that the time is right for it to get in on the action. And since its ARM+Linux homebrew needs some more fermentation before being uncorked, Nokia is counting on a combination of the latest Intel and Microsoft offerings as well as some solid industrial design to make an impact in the market. But don’t rule out a Nokia smartbook using Maemo or Ubuntu running on an OMAP4 CPU sometime next year or in early 2011.
Where’s the gang of 2,000 who controls tech hype hanging out today?
So, the other day when I signed onto FourSquare for the first time in a while I found 442 people waiting for me. As I looked through the names I saw the same names that had first added me onto Twitter. And Dopplr. And Google Reader. And Facebook. And FriendFeed. And others.You see, there’s a gang of about 2,000 people who really control tech industry hype and play a major role in deciding which services get mainstream hype (this gang was all on Twitter by early 2007 — long before Oprah and Ashton and all the other mainstream celebrities, brands, and journalists showed up). I have not seen any startup succeed without getting most of these folks involved.
Happy Birthday Debian – News – The H Open Source: News and Features
Sixteen years ago today, Ian Murdock announced the “imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release”. The release was to be called the Debian Linux Release and was the start of one of the most popular community based distributions of Linux. It also became the basis for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Debian GNU/Linux is renowned for its community’s commitment to a free software philosophy.
iTWire – Xbox 360 Elite bundle to take on PS3 Slim
The best move Sony made recently was not so much slimming down the size of the PlayStation 3, but slimming down the price. As a possible return shot it looks like Microsoft is readying a package that, at a nice price, includes the Xbox 360 Elite, the Wireless Network Adaptor and one of the most popular games of all time.
Are On-Screen Keyboards Really More Secure? | Lifehacker Australia
Using an on-screen keyboard to enter passwords and other personal data is a common technique for trying to reduce online fraud and crime. But does it really make any difference?…
The bottom line? An on-screen keyboard certainly isn’t going to hurt, but you shouldn’t have it as your principle method of defence against online intruders (or nosy housemates). Make sure you’ve got decent security software, hard-to-guess passwords which you change regularly and proper wireless network security for starters. For online banking, two-factor authentication using SMS or a password generator also helps. With credit cards, follow common-sense steps to avoid fraud.
The Reason Behind Digital Radio’s Five Second Delay | Gizmodo Australia
If you jumped on the DAB+ digital radio bandwagon when the service officially launched earlier this month, you may have noticed that there’s about a five second delay between it and the old analogue transmission. Jez Ford over at AVHub managed to find out exactly what causes the delay, and it’s quite interesting…
Vigilantes threaten rough justice on aerial NBN cables – iTnews.com.au
Senior members of a national lobby for underground cabling claim to have received threats from angry residents that they will tear down any NBN cables hung overhead in their streets.The group, Cables Underground, said it “does not advocate violence” and had attempted to counsel irate callers.
But it warned “these are only the ones with whom we come in contact” and said there were likely others that would escape its counseling and potentially vandalise an aerial rollout.
“It is highly predictable there will be a substantial electoral backlash,” the assistant secretary of Cables Downunder, Greg Bleazard, said in a submission [PDF] to the Senate Select Committee for the NBN.
Addicted to the Internet? $14,500, please, at first US rehab – Ars Technica
As the debate rages on about whether Internet addiction is a discrete affliction, the first US treatment center designed to treat it has opened its doors. The Heavensfield Retreat Center has launched a program called reSTART located in Fall City, WA, which offers a 45-day treatment program for Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD). The cost to go through with the program is $14,500, and enrollment has already begun.
Jay’s Favorite Firefox Addins
Autocopy – Put’s content on your clipboard by simply highlighting something from the webpage.
Delicious – Sidebar access to your delicious links.
IE Tab – Runs a single tab using IE for those sites that don’t render will in firefox.
Pencil – Website wireframe and mockups.
S3 Organiser – FTP style access to your Amazon S3 file store.
Shareaholic – Quickly share a link to dozens of different services like email, facebook, twitter, etc.
Toodledo – Sidebar access to your toodledo todo list.
Twitterbar – Quickly post the website you are looking at to twitter just by typing in the address bar.
Roboform – Remember and manage usernames and passwords for your websites.
Bandit.fm Subscription Music Service – $10 Per Month | Streaming Music
Sony Music will operate the $9.99-a-month subscription site on www.bandit.fm on behalf of the four major labels, which means customers will have access to potentially hundreds of thousands of tunes.Customers will choose from an array of artists, from current stars including Guy Sebastian and Delta Goodrem to Michael Jackson’s entire back catalogue.
“It’s important not to make it over-complicated,” said Sebastian, of the technological changes in the industry. “It would have to be fair to the artists, but obviously record companies are there to make money. They need to think of new models, because the internet ran away from them.”
The pay-off for record companies will be the number of people who sign up. “It’s all about getting volume,” Mr Parry said. “Music is slowly moving into the loungeroom, where people are plugging their iPods into their stereo systems and we’re getting wi-fi televisions soon.
“The idea is you should be able to pull this up and stream songs, eventually through TV.”
A subscription system already exists in the US. Nokia also offers a much smaller but similar service locally through mobile phones.
Kindle Rejected By Australian Newspapers | Fairfax Media, News Corporation
The race by newspaper publishers to explore platforms to deliver their content digitally is hotting up with news that Amazon Kindle is, in effect, out of the running in Australia.Fairfax Media, publisher of the Herald, has rebuffed Amazon’s portable e-reader as the way to deliver digitised versions of newspapers to readers on the run.
News Corporation has said that it too is looking beyond Amazon at other devices.
The decision by Fairfax paves the way for a two-way contest between Sony and possibly Apple as the dominant reader for the digital generation.
Apple has yet to announce any details about its reader but rumours in the industry suggest the company is to release a 25cm reader early next year.
The newspaper industry believes Apple’s entry will determine the shape of the market, given its track record in moving into portable music players, internet-enabled phones and allowing consumers to buy music via its iTunes site.
Activision Publishing, Inc. :: id Software’s Wolfenstein(TM) Now Available
Activision Publishing, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) and id Software announced today that the highly-anticipated Wolfenstein(TM) is now available nationwide for the Xbox 360(TM) video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PLAYSTATION(R)3 computer entertainment system and PC. Developed by Raven Software, Wolfenstein is rated “M” for Mature by the ESRB.
Culture of the Apps – Veronica Belmont
It’s no secret that iPhone applications are a breakout hit for Apple, even beyond their own expectations. Because of this, a culture of app fanatics is popping up online, which include a slew of new podcasts and video shows that cater to people looking for the best and brightest apps out there. Frankly, with all the crap that makes it onto the App Store, I’m glad there are people out there testing these things out for us first.
PS3 Slim hits September 1 for $300, PS3 price cut Wednesday – Ars Technica
Sony has made it official: the PS3 Slim launches the first week of September for $300, and existing hardware is also marked down to $300 tomorrow. The PSP will also enjoy comic book content, and “minis”—small, downloadable games.
PS3 SlimThumbnails
And Google Said, Let There Be Chrome Bookmark Sync
As promised, Google has just launched bookmark syncing for users on the dev channel of its Chrome web browser. This allows you to keep your browser bookmarks in sync no matter which of your computers you are using.Syncing has been a standard feature of Apple’s Safari browser for some months now, but you need to have MobileMe for it to work. And Firefox users could download add-ons like Xmarks (previously called Foxmarks) to get the functionality, but with Chrome it will be built-in, and most importantly, unlike MobileMe, free. Google notes that the bookmarks are stored on users’ Google account alongside Google Docs and sync via XMPP.
Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0
Here’s what you need to know about the coming USB 3.0.1. It’s fast: Dubbed Super-Speed USB, it will offer transfer speeds of 4.8 Gbps compared with High-Speed USB 480Mbps transfer speeds.
2. It’s backwards compatible: Your existing USB 2.0 stuff will also work on the 3.0 ports and vice versa, although you won’t get the “super speeds.”
3. It’s coming soon: Vendors will ship some boards at the end of this year, so mainstream consumers should see them on their computers and certain devices starting in 2010.
4. It’s powerful: Like USB 2.0, it will transmit electricity, which means you can still use it to charge your gadgets.
5. It’s energy efficient: It supports reduced power operation and an idle power mode, but it will still make your CPU work like crazy to help it reach those fast data transfer speeds.
6. It’s backed by all vendors: Early on, both AMD and Nvidia were kind of miffed at Intel for holding back on some of the specification details, but that’s all over, and everyone’s now on board.
7. It will end the longing for FireWire’s resurrection: The faster speeds will mean that sending data to an external hard drive isn’t as grindingly slow.
Blind Search Reveals Which Engine You Really Prefer – Search engines – Lifehacker
If you saw blind results for your search terms from Google, Bing, and pre-Bing-partnership Yahoo, would you always choose Google? The Blind Search site lets you taste test all three search engines and pick your winner.
Dell just unveiled its China-only smartphone “Mini 3i” (updated with better pictures)
TechCrunch first broke the news about Dell releasing a smartphone exclusively for the Chinese market eight days ago. Some pieces of information on the so-called Mini 3i leaked a few days after, and today the Android device finally saw the light of day during a China Mobile event in Beijing (China Mobile is the world’s biggest phone carrier and distributes the phone in that country).The Mini 3i features a 3.5-inch touchscreen with 360×640 resolution (iPhone: 3.5-inch screen with 320×480 resolution, Palm Pre: 3.1-inch screen with 320×480 resolution), a 3.2MP camera, Bluetooth, a 950mAh battery, a mini USB port and a microSD card slot. There is no physical keyboard and no Wifi.
Google Points At WebFinger. Your Gmail Address Could Soon Be Your ID.
There’s some excitement around the web today among a certain group of high profile techies. What are they so excited about? Something called WebFinger, and the fact that Google is apparently getting serious about supporting it. So what is it?It’s an extension of something called the “finger protocol” that was used in the earlier days of the web to identify people by their email addresses. As the web expanded, the finger protocol faded out, but the idea of needing a unified way to identify yourself has not. That’s why you keep hearing about OpenID and the like all the time.
But those standards, while open, have failed to latch on in a meaningful way with the public at large. One of the holdups is that you have to set up a website or service you use to be your OpenID. It’s relatively easy to do, and you may already have one ready to go, but just not realize it. But it’s still kind of tricky to explain to a regular web user — wait, you login with your website?
But something everyone on the web knows is their email address. And they’re conditioned by services like Google and Facebook to use it as their identifier. The problem with it has been that it’s just a string of text, nothing more. You cannot attach information to it to let others know a bit more about you — something vital for true identification. Then idea behind WebFinger is that you should be able to attach any information you choose to your email address.
The excitement today is that a group of Googlers have apparently finally not only gotten Google’s support to pursue the project, but that they have started working the technical details
30+ Impressive Social Media Stats Visualized [Video]
1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social mediaIf you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
Burning Man Responds to EFF over fair use and photo rights attack – Boing Boing
Writing on behalf of the The Burning Man Organization (BMO), Andie Grace has issued a response to the EFF blog post which criticized the annual fest’s photo policies as overly restrictive:
This week was hot when it came to news about the Mac. Antiglare displays are back for the 15-inch MacBook Pro, Outlook is coming to the Mac, and Snow Leopard could be arriving earlier than expected. Additionally, there were more rumors about the iTablet and a new trojan in the wild. All this and more in the weekly Apple roundup.
Backup And Search Your Friends’ Tweets With Google Reader | Lifehacker Australia
Thanks to a combination of RSS magic and Twitter API, it’s possible to search the tweets of everyone in your Twitter network with Google Reader. Here’s how to do it.
The mind-mapping.org Blog » Blog Archive » The Mind-Mapping Wiki
WikIT is a facinating resource. It takes the line that different uses of ‘information maps’ (I’m planning a post about that phrase!) are best served by different map types and different rules. And it goes right ahead and supports this line with examples and advice.This wiki covers the many types of maps – mind maps, concept maps, argument maps and others. It explains the variations and how you might choose one type if you’re learning something, another type if you’re planning a new project, and something else again if you’re doing some deep analysis. The main map types are introduced in a summary article here that branches out to many other pages.
Slashdot Technology Story | Google Wave Preview Opens Up On Sept 30th
“With the Google Wave Preview scheduled for public availability on September 30th, Wave API Tech Lead Douwe Osinga has posted on the Wave Google Group about what the team has been working on along with some future directions. Up until now, with the limited availability of testing accounts there have been complaints on the Google Group from users that wanted to get their hands on this new technology but didn’t have access to the sandbox.
How many Firefox users use add-ons? « Mozilla Add-ons Blog
This is a question we’re asked often and have been trying to answer for some time. We’re very excited to say that we now know that answer: at least a third of Firefox users have an add-on installed!We first tried to tackle this question last year, but the huge amount of data addons.mozilla.org processes led us to call for the help of the Mozilla Metrics Team. Thanks to the help of Simon Krueger, a metrics intern this summer, we now have some insight into the number of add-on users.
RockMelt To Enter the Browser War, But Why? – Business Center – PC World
Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, is reportedly backing a startup called RockMelt that is throwing its hat into the increasingly crowded ring of the browser wars. Little is known about RockMelt at this point aside from rumor and innuendo. The idea, supposedly, is to build a new browser from the ground up rather than just re-engineering the existing browser engine model. It sounds like a daunting undertaking which leads me to wonder- why? If RockMelt ends up being the greatest web browser ever built and is victorious in the browser market share war, what exactly does it win?
Apple’s Snow Leopard: A flurry of changes
Mac OS 10.6 is coming soon with some small changes that you’ll like a lot. Here’s what you need to know about the OS ‘refinements.’
Google Reader Unleashes A Gaggle Of Nice Social And Feed Management Updates
the Google Reader team has unveiled a bunch of new updates to the product, including, yes, the ability to easily tweet any item.But that’s hardly all this update contains. You can also now easily send feed items to a number of places including Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blogger, and others. To enable any of these, simply go to the “Settings” area of Google Reader and enable the ones you want to use. If the services you want aren’t listed, you can even customize the “Send To” feature to enable sending items just about anywhere.
Another new feature allows you to easily subscribe to feeds owned by people you are contacts with. This is an obvious, but nice addition, as it makes it easier to locate feeds you may be interested in — assuming, of course, that you’re actually interested in the people you follow on Google Reader. This feature also includes Twitter updates, so you can easily import all of those and see that person’s tweets through Google Reader if you don’t feel like scanning Twitter all day.
But the best feature of the bunch may be the ability to have more control over the “Mark all as read” functionality. We all use the “Mark all as read” button when we’re too far behind on our feeds to possibly catch up. But now you can just mark items that older than a day, a week, or two weeks as read, saving the newest ones for you to still be able to read. That’s a great idea.
Google Reader still has some social issues, but it’s hard to argue with any of these features.
12 Things Newspapers Should Do to Survive
Those who think there is one silver bullet to fix the newspaper business are mistaken. Newspapers have almost always had multiple streams of revenue to support themselves and the future will likely not be any different. That doesn’t mean, however, that the money-making models newspapers will use on the web will look the same as the ones they have used for print.
Video: Hitler Is Not Pleased About Facebook’s Acquisition Of FriendFeed
Seriously, these never get old.
Daring Fireball: Phil Schiller Responds Regarding Ninjawords and the App Store
The small story is that of a clever $2 iPhone dictionary app, the developers of which removed “objectionable” words from its dictionary so as to get it published in the App Store. The big story is about the App Store itself, and whether Apple’s management is attempting to correct its course.
Twitter and Facebook DDoS Attacks Targeted One Man
Did Twitter, FacebookFacebookFacebook, LiveJournal, YouTubeYouTubeYouTube, Google Sites and GoogleGoogleGoogle’s Bloggerbloggerblogger all get attacked yesterday to silence one man? According to the testimony of a Facebook executive, they did.
A blogger in the Republic of Georgia with the username Cyxymu was the victim, according to Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly. The claims cement earlier reports that social networking sites have been dragged into the Georgia-Russia crisis, leading to the first simultaneous attack on the largest social media sites. Kelly told CNet::
“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard. We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”
Google is quoted as saying:
“We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by a DOS attack this morning, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack. Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services.”
As part of the attack, spam was sent to LiveJournal users that appeared to come from cyxymu.
Pirate Bay’s IPREDator not a place to hide – Security – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au
Last month’s beta launch of the IPREDator anonymity service has raised questions about security of commercial Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
The service claims to allow subscribers to access the Internet anonymously via a VPN that is based in Sweden.
By accessing the Web through the VPN, subscribers are able to hide their traffic data from Internet Service Providers (ISP), and bypass ISP-level censorship.
But the network isn’t exactly bulletproof.
It is run by Swedish VPN company Trygghetsbolaget, which also built the once-popular Relakks service in 2006.
Unlike Relakks, IPREDator does not log its users’ traffic information.
However, the services are based on the same software, including the use of 128-bit encrypted point-to-point tunnelling protocol (PPTP).
PPTP is a user-friendly VPN protocol that was first implemented on Microsoft’s operating systems in 1996. Reports by security experts such as Bruce Schneier have since revealed a number of flaws in the technology, including password hashing and encryption issues.
IPREDator co-founder Peter Sunde, who also founded popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, told iTnews: “128-bit encrypted PPTP can probably be broken by someone that can eavesdrop on the traffic.”
“But in order to eavesdrop on the traffic, the government — at least in Sweden — must have a valid reason to do that.”
“We’re not here to protect criminals; we’re here to protect private citizens against undemocratic laws,” Sunde said.
However, according to Douglas Spink, who is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Canadian networking company Baneki Privacy Computing, IPREDator’s security systems may not be sufficient protection for persons such as an activist in Iran.
It’s SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites | Media | The Guardian
Although their love of being online shows no sign of abating, the percentage of 15- to 24-year-olds who have a profile on a social networking site has dropped for the first time – from 55% at the start of last year to 50% this year. In contrast, 46% of 25- to 34-year-olds are now regularly checking up on sites such as Facebook compared with 40% last year.
Overall, 30% of British adults have a social networking profile, against 21% in 2007 when Ofcom first did the research. Half the UK’s online population have a Facebook profile and spend an average of nearly six hours a month on the site compared with four hours in May 2008.
“There is nothing to suggest overall usage of the internet among 15-to 24-year-olds is going down,” said Peter Phillips, the regulator’s head of strategy. “Data suggests they are spending less time on social networking sites.”
James Thickett, director of market research at Ofcom, said that while older people seemed to be embracing social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace remained immensely popular with children under 16.
Howto: Install KDE 4.3 on Ubuntu Jaunty
Unfortunately if you are on Ubuntu Jaunty (or Kubuntu), you will not officially get KDE 4.3. It will be featured in the upcoming Koala version scheduled in October. However you can get your hands on the latest KDE offering now on your 9.04 desktop.
The Press Loves a Good Social Media Meltdown [VIDEO]
Twitter (Twitter) already gets plenty of press attention, but when it went down due to a DDoS attack, the news seemed to have unprecedented reach, serving as top story on a number of mainstream news sites for a good part of the day.
Why was this such huge news? The cynical onlooker might say that because old media wants to highlight when things go wrong in new media. However, the more realistic answer is that because of how massive sites like Facebook (facebook), Twitter, and even LiveJournal and other impacted services have become, when they go down, it’s a story that impacts tens of millions of people.
Amahi Turns Old Systems Into Full-Featured Media Centres | Lifehacker Australia
Wouldn’t it be neat if you could turn an old laptop or desktop into a media centre that served and streamed movies, music, and files, and even backed up your other systems? With an Amahi installation, it’s not too hard.
Amahi is really a repository you add into an installation of the Fedora Linux system, but when you do, it gives that system a whole new look and purpose. From a web interface you can access from anywhere on your network, Amahi can organise and offer up access to movies, music (with streaming to iTunes and other players), photos, calendars, Outlook systems, and any old files you’re in need of. Amahi can also set up a VPN for your household network, giving you remote access to your files without too much more geeky configuration than the standard setup.
Amahi can run on pretty much any system that Fedora 10 can install on—that’s about a 1.0 GHz processor and 256MB of RAM minimum.
What Works: The Web Way Vs. The Wave Way | Lifehacker Australia
Google Wave is an impressive set of technologies, the kind of stunningly slick application that literally makes developers stand up and cheer. I’ve played with the Google Wave test sandbox a bit, and while it’s definitely too complex to live up to the “this will replace email!” hype that greeted its launch, it certainly has some cool features. So the big question is whether Wave will succeed as overall in becoming a popular standard for communications on the web, because Google has made an admirable investment in documenting the underlying platform and making it open enough for others to build on and extend. I think the answer is no, and the reason is because the Wave way is not compatible with the Web way.
FORGET APPLE: Google Voice for iPhone to Reemerge as Web App
ast month, Google Voice’s iPhone application was rejected from the iPhone app store, a controversial move that the FCC is looking into. Now, it appears that Google (Google) may be working to circumvent Apple and AT&T, or at least seriously force their hand, by developing an iPhone optimized web application for Google Voice (Google Voice).
According to The New York Times, “Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen.”
This is precisely what Google did recently with Latitude for iPhone, when Apple “requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google (Google) to serve maps tiles.” Using the Web to make calls on iPhone is nothing new or overly complex either: Jajah launched an iPhone optimized interface for VoIP calling all the way back in 2007.
In other words, assuming Google goes ahead and launches a Web interface for Voice, the only option AT&T and Apple will have for keeping customers away from it would be to block access to the URL the app lives on. And if that were happen, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the feds don’t get extremely serious about the anti-competitive nature of what Apple and AT&T would be trying to do.
Upgrade Windows 7 RC To The Final RTM Release | Lifehacker Australia
Microsoft released the final version of Windows 7 to Technet and MSDN subscribers, but you can’t upgrade directly from the release candidate to the final release—at least, not without a hack.
Over at the How-To Geek site (my home away from Lifehacker), I’ve written up a guide to the simple process of successfully upgrading from the RC—the trick is a simple hack to the file that controls the version checking. To perform the hack for yourself, simply open up the cversion.ini file in the sources folder and change the MinClient value to 7000. Once you’ve done so, you can upgrade without any issues.
Hit the link for the full walk-through and screenshot tour of the upgrade process. Readers should note that you can only upgrade to the Ultimate edition of Windows 7 RTM—since the release candidate installed Ultimate by default, you can’t use a Home version to upgrade.
How to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) [How-To Geek]
Protect Your Privacy When Downloading – BitTorrent – Lifehacker
When you download a file using BitTorrent, you’re connecting to several peers who are distributing chunks of the file you’re downloading. In order to send data back and forth, you and your peers exchange IP addresses. (IP addresses are like mailing addresses for sending data over the vastness of the internet.) When you’re downloading copyrighted material, sometimes disingenuous organizations will join in the download and log your information, like your home IP address. Once they have your address, they can find out who your ISP is and contact them to complain about copyright-infringing activity.
There are a few methods you can employ to protect yourself from this sort of tracking when you’re sharing files with BitTorrent, thus setting up a layer of protection between you and those who might track you and report you. Below I’ll cover a couple: PeerGuardian2 and proxies—particularly a new proxy service called BTGuard.
Murdoch’s Pay-for-Online News Plan to Start With The Sunday Times
Rupert Murdoch indicated that his company – News Corp – soon plans to start charging for all of the news content that it publishes online.
It’s not a completely unprecedented move by News Corp – they have long charged for online access to The Wall Street Journal with some success – but most readers agreed with our conclusion that the plan probably won’t work for most news outlets.
As it turns out, we’ll soon find out who’s right – us or Murdoch – as The Guardian reports that Murdoch’s master plan will start with a test on The Sunday Times website as soon as November.
The plan is to launch The Sunday Times at its own URL (sundaytimes.co.uk) and charge a to-be-determined fee for access, with a to-be-determined business model (subscription or per-article charges). It should be a decent sized test bed; according to The Guardian, the printed edition of the newspaper sells more than 1 million copies each weekend in the UK.
In his prior comments, the media mogul indicated that he plans to be charging for all of his company’s news websites by the middle of next year. Of course, that plan could get derailed quickly if The Sunday Times test proves a massive flop.
Slashdot News Story | Murdoch Demands Kindle Users’ Info
In yet another move to display how antiquated and completely ignorant of digital culture he is, Rupert Murdoch has started demanding that Amazon hand over user info for all Kindle users. This demand comes right after Murdoch just finished negotiating a larger share of revenue from Amazon sales. At least Amazon hasn’t decided to comply with this request yet. “‘As I’ve said before, the traditional business model has to change rapidly to ensure that our journalistic businesses can return to their old margins of profitability,’ Murdoch said. ‘Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting.’”
Storing text docs in XML may run afoul of Microsoft patent – Ars Technica
In the middle part of this decade, Microsoft engaged in an extensive effort to create open standards derived from its own XML-based file formats, such as XPS and Office XML. This work was widely interpreted as an effort to forestall adoption of competing formats, such as the Open Document Format, and concerns were raised about whether the Office XML format was severely encumbered by the company’s patents. Despite these fears, Microsoft ultimately saw its efforts succeed. A recently granted patent, however, reveals that the entire effort took place while Microsoft had a patent pending that covers nearly any use of XML for storing word processing documents.
The patent was filed back in late 2004 and was apparently approved only this month. It’s entitled “Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML,” but it appears to cover the use of an entire class of XML documents by any word processing program.
Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec? • The Register
After acquiring On2’s video compression codecs in a deal valued at approximately $106.5 million in stock, will Google simply turn around and open source them?
It certainly looks that way.
In both the press release and the blog post announcing the acquisition of On2, Google makes a point of saying that it believes “high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform” – and that On2 is a means of achieving that goal.
As is typical of Googlespeak, this tells us close to nothing. But if you also consider the company’s so far fruitless efforts to push through a video tag for HTML 5 – the still gestating update to the web’s hypertext markup language – the On2 acquisition looks an awful lot like an effort to solve this browser-maker impasse.
When it comes to built-in video compression, Apple Safari uses H.264. Firefox and Opera use the open and license-free Ogg Theora. Google Chrome uses both. And Microsoft’s Internet Explorer uses, well, nothing, continuing to rely on plug-ins like Adobe Flash and its own Silverlight for video.
Microsoft Releases Windows 7 Upgrade Chart – Windows – Lifehacker
According to ZDNet, “the blue boxes are for custom (clean) installs; the green boxes mean you can do an in-place upgrade.” Granted, a chart’s better than nothing, but folks (like ZDNet’s Ed Boot) are also calling it out for being altogether confusing; in fact, Boot created a simplified version (click through to ZDNet to see it) that cuts out whole rows and gets straight to the point. Take a look at one or both for a closer look at what your upgrade path will entail.
Slashdot Your Rights Online Story | Ubuntu’s New Firefox Is Watching You
“Ubuntu recently released an unannounced and experimental ‘multisearch’ extension to Firefox alpha 3, apparently in an effort to improve the default behavior of new tabs and of search. In a response to one of the initial bug reports the maintainers mentioned that the extension’s other purposes were ‘collecting the usage data’ and ‘generating revenue.’ Since this extension installs by itself and offers no warning about potential privacy violations, quite a few people (myself included) feel pretty unhappy. The only way to opt out is to disable the extension manually via Tools > Add-ons.” Most posters to this Ubuntu forum thread are not happy about multisearch.
Stupid pitfalls of social media – Boing Boing
This American Society for Information Science and Technology paper by Yahoo’s Christian Crumlish has a tidy little cosmology of dumb things that social media does:
Briefly, the Cargo Cult means imitating superficial features of successful websites and applications without really understanding what makes them work…
Don’t Break Email warns against the practice of using email as a one-way notification or broadcast medium while disabling your users’ ability to hit reply as a normal response…
The Password Anti-Pattern is the pernicious practice of asking users to give you their passwords on other systems so that you can import their data for them, thus training them to be loose and insecure with their private information…
The Ex-Boyfriend Bug crops up when you try to leverage a user’s social graph without realizing that some of the gaps in a person’s network may be deliberate and not an up-sell opportunity…
Lastly, a Potemkin Village is an overly elaborated set of empty community discussion areas or other collaborative spaces, created in anticipation of a thriving population rather than grown organically in response to their needs (see also Pave the Cowpaths)….
IE6 MUST DIE: 70+ Sites Unite to Kill IE6
IE6 No More, the movement to accelerate the death of Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer) 6. The campaign asks sites to include code that detects IE6 visitors and encourages them to upgrade to Firefox (Firefox), IE8, Safari (Safari) or Google Chrome (Google Chrome). On Tuesday the movement composed of around a dozen sites, today that number exceeds 70 participants.
Spotify Is the Best Desktop Music Player We’ve Ever Used – spotify – Lifehacker
Imagine a music app with instant access to any song you wanted to hear. Imagine creating a playlist from those songs and quickly, easily sharing it with friends. Such an app does exist, it’s called Spotify, and it could change music forever.
Hyperbole alert! I admit it, I’m over-the-moon about Spotify—both over what it currently is and more importantly over the potential it has. If you get a chance to try it out, I think you may feel the same way.
What Is Spotify
In short, here’s how it works: Spotify is a peer-to-peer music streaming service; it’s a desktop application, but its content all comes via the cloud. Think of it as though the entire iTunes Music Store were actually just your library, and that instead of the poorly designed mess that it is, imagine that it was refreshingly streamlined, fast, and easy to search and use. That gives you a little bit of an idea what Spotify is like. It also works under Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (using Wine).
The best part: It’s completely legal. Spotify seeks out licensing deals with the music industry before going live, meaning it sits comfortably in the 100% legit territory.
The catch: Oh, you knew there’d be a catch, didn’t you. Spotify is currently only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, and Spain.
Will Apple Open Up the iPhone to iTunes Rival Spotify? – TIME
If Spotify has its way, though, iPhone owners will no longer be slaves to iTunes, song-by-song payments or finite disk capacity. Last week the Swedish company behind Spotify’s streaming music provider announced plans to release a free iPhone application that will let users listen to songs played directly off of its online service, with no need to download. That would give iPhone users instant access to any of Spotify’s 6 million songs, without taking up precious memory space — way more than the maximum 7,000 tracks that a 32 GB iPhone can hold. Songs can also be temporarily stored, or cached, ready to play during those moments when Web connection drops, like when you’re in a tunnel or underground. Spotify’s new application could change the way iPhone users listen to music. But first it has to get the O.K. from Apple.
Digg Ads Are Here: Will Users Bury Them Into Oblivion?
Two months ago, Digg (Digg) announced a lynchpin in its revenue strategy: Digg Ads. The program, an attempt to fix the company’s inability to turn a profit, allows users to vote on specific ads within the homepage feed. The more diggs, the less the ad costs to the advertisers. But if Digg users hate the ad, then their downvotes increase the ad price.
It’s a system to made ads relevant to the user while giving them prime placement. Until now, however, it’s been under construction. That changes soon though, as we we’ve learned that Digg Ads are rolling out this week.
Telstra admits to exchange access deception – Telco/ISP – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au
Telstra has admitted to the Federal Court that it rejected requests for third parties to install equipment in telephone exchanges across the country where space was found to have been available.
Court documents viewed by iTnews confirmed speculation raised Wednesday in the Australian Financial Review that Telstra would “plead guilty” to allegations levelled by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The competition watchdog had alleged Telstra failed in its obligation to give competitors access to main distribution frames within Telstra’s telephone exchanges.
Privacy at risk in location-based systems – Security – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging policy makers and engineers working with location-based systems to incorporate cryptography technology into their designs in order to protect individuals’ privacy.
The Locational Privacy report from the US-based organisation points to the increasing prevalence of digital systems that track people’s movements, ranging from travel cards to mobile phone GPS systems and electronic swipe cards for doors.
The EFF argues that “location privacy”, which it defines as an individual’s position not being tracked and covertly recorded for later use, has changed significantly in recent years without much legislation to protect the public.
While tracking an individual’s whereabouts used to mean physically following them around, location-based services now track individuals with little cost and time, and usually without the individual knowing.
The EFF acknowledges that location-based services are useful and should not be banned, but believes that they need monitoring.
3 Key Reasons Facebook Bought FriendFeed
As you probably now know, the world’s biggest social networking site, Facebook, just bought the real-time web aggregator, FriendFeed, for an undisclosed sum.
While there’s no immediate changes being made to either product today, we’re likely to see a number of changes at Facebook (Facebook) in the months ahead that could shape the future of real-time search and the flow of shared information on the web.
Although the deal appeared to come out of nowhere, we knew that Facebook was looking closely at the space when it was revealed that they had been in serious talks with Twitter about an acquisition. Of course, that deal never went through, but Facebook may have been gifted a better long-term mate in the FriendFeed (FriendFeed) deal. Below we’ll explore three key reasons why Facebook has been following FriendFeed since 2007, and why the buy was a smart move on their part.
1. The FriendFeed Team
2. Product Direction and Alignment
3. A Better Buy than Twitter?
Rear-Projection 1080 Pee Urinal Lets You Pee Over O’Reilly
A pub in Melbourne came up with what potentially could be the best and wrongest multimedia device ever invented: A urinal with a rear projector, so you don’ miss a single second of a game when you have to pee or when your favorite TV anchor appears …. you pee.
Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On
By Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle
Download the Web Squared White Paper (PDF, 1.3MB)
Watch the Web Squared Webcast
Two in three Australian companies leak data – Security – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au
Some 69 percent of respondents said they experienced at least one data breach in the last 12 months, up from 56 percent in 2008.
One in four of those companies that experienced a data breach suffered five or more breaches in the 12 months, up 22 percent on 2008.
Of those organisations that did admit to losing data, 65 percent chose not to inform the public – a figure the report’s authors said was “sure to add to the demand for Australia to adopt data breach notification laws similar to those in the United States.”
The Federal Government has spent the last few months reviewing privacy laws, the first draft of which was due to be released to the public within a week.
But no timeline has been set for the introduction of mandatory data disclosure laws, as recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
In the interim, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has produced a voluntary guide to managing data breaches.
Off the clock? Hyperconnected workers sue employers – Ars Technica
Ubiquitous Internet connections and a proliferation of smartphones have put more employees “on call” than ever before, and many aren’t being paid for the extra time. Some are pushing back in lawsuits against their employers, but it may simply be time for companies to draw a clearer line on out-of-office communications.
Blu-ray may be less of a bag of hurt with iTunes support – Ars Technica
A rumored update to iTunes may signal that across the board support for Blu-ray is coming to Apple’s product line, assuming it proves accurate. In addition to iPhone application organization and social media integration features, iTunes 9 is said to be gaining support for Blu-ray high definition video.
According to a “pretty reliable” source for Boy Genius Report, iTunes 9 will gain the capability to visually organize iPhone OS apps—a process that can quickly become unwieldy if you have loaded more than a couple dozen apps on your iPhone or iPod touch. Also, the new version of iTunes may have built-in capability to send information about the current playing track to popular social media platforms, such as Last.fm, Facebook, and Twitter. But most surprising of all is the revelation that iTunes 9 will have “Blu-ray support.”
Windows 7 the complete guide, part 1: good news for gamers? – News – PC Authority
PC gamers are among those most likely to benefit from any improvement in raw performance, so does Windows 7 bring any glad tidings for 3D action aficionados?
Technology Review: An Operating System for the Cloud
Google is developing a new computing platform equal to the Internet era. Should Microsoft be worried?
10 Must-Follow Usability Experts on Twitter
The popularity of the “#fail” meme on Twitter is proof positive that the tool is great for pointing out when things are wrong. “Usability” practitioners and those in the related fields of “user experience” or “user interface design” tend to be obsessed with fixing designs that aren’t intuitive to use and helping their clients avoid those mistakes.
You might be surprised by the range of things that are open to usability critiques: web site designs, ATM interfaces, beta software releases, confusing elevator buttons (all real examples from the Twitter (Twitter) feeds of usability pros). Experts in the field often tweet about their latest projects, conferences they are attending, or just point out their most recent usability outrage.
Google has released a new beta for Chrome, featuring changes to the new tab page including the ability to pin web site thumbnails, hide pages, and other improvements.
You can now use “the new New Tab page” to pin web site thumbnails to a designated spot to keep better track of them. Another addition is the ability to use the layout buttons to hide parts of the page. Additionally, the Omnibox now shows icons next to each site in the drop down menu. Google has also started to implement HTML5 capabilities like video tagging into this release. And yes, the new release promises even more speed in the form of JavaScript improvements and optimizations in how Chrome fetches pages.
Massacre Gmail Ads with These Two Sentences (and Some Tragic Words) – Gmail – Lifehacker
Those “Sponsored Ads” in e-mails are an annoyance to both sender and recipient and they seem to escape blocking. Until now. These two (so far) fail-proof sentences at the end of an email will let you enjoy e-mailed rants, ad-free.
(Click the images above and below for a closer look at the before and after effect.)
In his personal blog, Joe McKay writes about his experience in blocking Gmail’s sponsored ads using words referencing tragic or catastrophic events (which Google bans from their ads) as well as words from George Carlin’s infamous list of seven words you can’t say on TV.
That’s great news, but how on Earth do you send an email to your boss that’s littered with f-bombs and talk of murder? After finding a few victims and experimenting with various potential ad-blocking words, here’s the relatively kindly signature we came up with:
I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.
The Pushbutton Web Now in Google Reader – Google Reader – Lifehacker
Googler Mihai Parparita announces that Google Reader now sends realtime updates to FriendFeed when you share items using the PubSubHubbub protocol.
Huh-wha? you ask. Yeah, I know. It’s no Google Wave. But that’s what makes this exciting. This kind of small Pushbutton implementation is how real web pages will easily use existing technology to notify one another of new updates. The Google Reader/FriendFeed integration is just the first tiny step in what will be a broad deployment of realtime-enabled sites. These sites and services will let one another know when they have new data to share without the sucky inefficiencies of polling. Check out how fast FriendFeed updates when you share an item in Google Reader in the video.
In short, it’s almost zero latency.
Apple dumps app developer and his 900+ apps from App Store – Ars Technica
Apple has been criticized lately for some of its questionable app rejections, as well as the recent expunging of Google Voice apps from the App Store. Now, it seems as if Apple has seen fit to use its veto power to address one common criticism of the App Store—the flood of apps with questionable content or utility. Developer Khalid Shaikh had his iPhone developer license revoked, and his 900+ apps were summarily removed from the App Store.
Shaikh built a business model that took advantage of the worst aspects of the iPhone App Store. His team of 26 engineers—based in India and Pakistan and working 12 hours days, six days a week—churned out nearly 1,000 apps that merely agregated articles and other content from the Web in such cleverly titled apps as “US Army News,” “Skin Care Updates,” and “WWE Updates.” He sold these apps for $4.99 each, with the goal of “less product value” and “more monetization.” Shaikh told MobileCrunch that he was making thousands of dollars a day with this technique.
Hacked Windows 7 appears on file-share sites – iTnews.com.au
The Ultimate edition of Windows 7 has already been hacked, and is widely available on the internet, according to various reports.Windows 7 is not officially released until October, but a cracked version has appeared on file-sharing sites and other unofficial web destinations.
Microsoft has confirmed the breach in an email, and has warned customers to avoid downloading the software because of the security issues inherent in using such web sites.
“We are aware of reports of hacks that attempt to circumvent activation and validation in Windows 7, and we can assure customers that Microsoft is committed to protecting them from counterfeit and pirated software. Microsoft strongly advises customers not to download Windows 7 from unauthorised sources,” reads the mail.
Woolworths launches prepaid mobile services – iTnews.com.au
Woolworths has denied aspirations to become a telco after launching a ‘talk-and-text’ prepaid mobile service on the Optus 2G network.The retail giant said today it had inked a mobile virtual network operator agreement with Optus.
Financials or targets were not disclosed, but Woolworths said it would rely on Optus’ network and IT systems such as billing.
The retailer would look after the customer-facing experience, including a portal that enabled customers to manage their accounts online.
Woolworths general manager of customer engagement, Richard Umbers, said he believed the retail giant was the “first supermarket in Australia” to step into the telco space.
But Woolworths “were not trying to become a telecommunications company,” he said.
He said customer profiling across Woolworths’ retail banners – which include Safeway, Big W and Dick Smith – indicated a “heavy skew” to the 2G market.
Customers wanted an easy-to-understand mobile service that enabled them to call and text, he said.
IPhone 3.0.1 Update Fixes SMS Vulnerability | Lifehacker Australia
Apple today released the first update to the iPhone 3.0 software to address an SMS vulnerability that threatened the security of your iPhone. From Apple:We appreciate the information provided to us about SMS vulnerabilities which affect several mobile phone platforms. This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone. Contrary to what’s been reported, no one has been able to take control of the iPhone to gain access to personal information using this exploit.
So plug in your phone, fire up iTunes, and click Check for Update to get the latest and greatest. [via Gizmodo]
Use Wolfram Alpha As A Writing Tool | Lifehacker Australia
Wolfram Alpha, the “computational knowledge engine” that’s steadily updating, has a good but hidden use as a word and language tool for use while writing. In other words, it can be a smart and snappy thesaurus/dictionary/translator/anagram tool.Wolfram Alpha’s own blog toots its own language skills horn a bit, but for good reason. If you’ve ever been stuck trying to fill out a trio of words ending in “ation,” looking for the transliteration of a foreign script, finding proper pronunciation or hyphenation, or other nerdy word tasks, Wolfram Alpha can often pull off the job with a few key words. Enter word before your term to get an overview of what Wolfram knows about a phrase, or words starting with or words ending with to fit a certain phrase into your text.
eBay says it may have to shut down Skype due to a licensing dispute with the founders of the internet telephony service.The surprise admission puts a cloud over the 40 million active daily users around the world who use Skype for business or to keep in touch with friends and far-flung relatives.
A recent study by market researcher TeleGeography found Skype carried about 8 per cent of all international voice traffic, making it the world’s largest provider of cross-border voice communications.
The online auction powerhouse bought Skype from entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis for $US2.6 billion in 2005, but this did not include a core piece of peer-to-peer communications technology that powers the software.
eBay has since been licensing the technology from the founders’ new company, Joltid, but the pair recently decided to revoke the licensing agreement.
The matter is now the subject of a legal battle in the English High Court of Justice, with eBay trying to force Joltid to let it continue using the technology….2.6 Billion and this did not include a “core piece” of the technology…?!?!?!?
Google targets Outlook users in major campaign – News – PC Authority
Google has done everything it can in recent months to make it easy for businesses to switch to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes, launching specific tools such as Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes and Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.Now, a new campaign on the Google Apps homepage calls on businesses to “Join the movement. Spread the word. Go Google.”
The company claims that over 1.75 million businesses have “gone Google” so far, and the page lists a large number of case studies of customers using Google Apps, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Talk.
“Want your company to go Google as well? Contact your IT administrator, share this page with your co-workers and the world, and get others to go Google,” reads the web page.
A link on the Apps homepage takes interested parties to an email template they can fill in and send to their IT team to encourage them to switch the business to Google Apps, as well as ideas on how to market Google internally.
“Proud to use Apps? Let others know by posting a Gone Google poster at your desk or around the office,” it says.
The Go Google campaign closely follows the Micro soft and Yahoo partnership announced at the end of last week, which will see Yahoo search powered by Microsoft’s Bing, while Yahoo will use its solid relationship with advertisers to become the salesforce for both companies’ search advertisers.
Did AT&T Play a Part in Apple’s Google Voice Drama? – PC World
Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications? If the latter, please describe the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection with the decision to reject Google Voice. Are there any contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T that affected Apple’s decision in this matter?Does AT&T have any role in the approval of iPhone applications generally (or in certain cases)? If so, under what circumstances, and what
1 See, e.g., Jenna Wortham, “Even Google is Blocked With Apps for iPhone,” New York Times, July 28, 2009.
role does it play? What roles are specified in the contractual provisions between Apple and AT&T (or any non-contractual understandings) regarding the consideration of particular iPhone applications?It is interesting that AT&T would try to distance itself from the decision to cut Google Apps because they haven’t tried to hide their meddeling in the App store decision-making process in the past.
For instance, they took full credit for making Sling a Wifi-only app:
“Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network. The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service. We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.
That said, we don’t restrict users from going to a Web site that lets them view videos. But what our terms and conditions prohibit is the transferring, or slinging, of a TV signal to their personal computer or smartphone.
The Slingbox application for the iPhone runs on WiFi. That’s good news for AT&T’s iPhone 3G customers, who get free WiFi access at our 20,000 owned and operated hot spots in the U.S., including Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, hotels, and airports. AT&T is the industry leader in WiFi.”
Steve Jobs also noted in a post show Q&A that making VoIP applications like Skype Wifi-only was at the behest of the carriers. This is another example of AT&T telling Apple what it can and cannot do in the App Store — this time in the voice communications space.
The VoIP issue is exactly what the FCC intends to investigate as it relates to competition in the market. AT&T brushing off their role isn’t fooling anyone.
intitle:”all site content” password – Google Search
Quoth Gina Trapani: ” Holy Cow! http://is.gd/21a3u – a little google hacking shows how superior box.net is to sharepoint”
DPI vendor says 90% of ISP customers engage in traffic discrimination – Ars Technica
In our globalized, post-industrial world, a single Canadian company can shape the Internet experience for 20 percent of the world’s wireline broadband users. Sandvine makes deep packet inspection hardware that can identify and then block, shape, degrade, fold, spindle, or mutilate user traffic coming from particular applications such as Skype or BitTorrent clients. The 160 worldwide ISPs who use the company’s products love this particular capability so much that a full 90 percent of them employ it to “manage” their networks in a discriminatory way.According to the company, these 160 ISPs serve 20 percent of the world’s wireline broadband connections. If 90 percent of the ISPs shape traffic by application, Sandvine equipment alone may be responsible for the application-specific discrimination that 18 percent of world wireline broadband users face—and that figure says nothing about all the other ISPs who use similar products from other vendors. If you thought that network neutrality was some kind of default position for the worldwide Internet, think again.
SocialSafe: Get Your Facebook Data Out of Facebook
Quick Pitch: SocialSafe is an effective, fun new application enabling Facebook users to manage their Facebook data offline on their home computer.Genius Idea: Who owns your Facebook data? It’s a question that seems to make its way around the blogosphere every time Facebook changes their Terms of Service or someone’s account is deleted (with or without cause).
Regardless of who owns it (Facebook says you do), from a user experience, it’s almost impossible to get everything you put in to Facebook back out. SocialSafe, however, is a utility that helps you back up your Facebook account on your computer, keeping your data in your hands at all times.
FTC still probing Google and Apple after Schmidt resignation – Ars Technica
Google CEO Eric Schmidt may have left Apple’s Board of Directors, but the Federal Trade Commission ain’t letting up on its investigation into the two companies. The FTC told Reuters today that the investigation into possible anticompetitive behavior was still on, though the Commission praised the companies for recognizing that there could have been a conflict of interest.The FTC first launched its probe into Google and Apple in May because the two companies shared two board members: Schmidt and Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson. The Clayton Antitrust Act bars individuals from sitting on the boards of two competing companies if it might reduce competition between them, and the FTC recognized that Apple and Google are increasingly offering products in the same space: iPhone OS versus Android, Safari versus Chrome, etc. There have also been questions about how involved (or not) Google has been in Apple’s acceptance or rejection of its offerings in the App Store. In July, Schmidt admitted that he would “talk to Apple” about the issue, which resulted in his resignation from Apple’s board announced earlier today.
“We will continue to investigate remaining interlocking directorates between the companies,” FTC bureau of competition head Richard Feinstein told Reuters. That remaining interlocking directorate is, of course, Levinson, who remained conspicuously absent from Apple’s announcement this morning.
Tenenbaum ordered to pay $675,000 – News – PC Authority
A Boston jury has ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay a total of US$675,000 for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading and distributing them over the KaZaA peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing network.The figure of US$22,500 per song is closer to the US$222,000 award in the first Jammie Thomas-Rasset trial than the US$1.92 million figure from her second trial, but of course they’re all ridiculously high penalities.
The defendant’s case was hamstrung from the start by the judge having ruled out the Fair Use defence to the RIAA firms’ claims of copyright infringement and later having directed the jury that it could only return a guilty verdict because the defendant admitted liablity on the witness stand.
After three hours of deliberations the jury came up with the stonking fine, which was actually smaller than many had predicted might have been assessed.
Tenenbaum’s attorney and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson told Ars Technica, “it’s a bankrupting award.” He also said things might have gone differently at trial had the defence been allowed to argue Fair Use.
Apple’s Snow Leopard top of the software charts – V3.co.uk – formerly vnunet.com
mazon has started accepting pre-orders for Apple’s forthcoming OSX 10.6, code-named Snow Leopard, and demand is so high the operating system has claimed the top two spots in its software sales charts.The single user version of Snow Leopard, priced at $29, is top of the charts with the second place taken by the family version, for five users, costing $49. The price is considerably lower than previous versions, which are traditionally priced at around $129.
iTWire – OpenAustralia volunteers drive Gov2.0 access
The Australian Parliament’s register of interests, where senators and House members declare gifts and shareholdings, is now published online. But don’t try to find the documents on the parliamentary website.iweb analytics
It took the volunteer efforts of an open source development team with an interest in making the public record more accessible to the public to get the hardcopy documents out of a registrar’s office and onto the internet.Before OpenAustralia.org began publishing the register of interests for every senator and every member of the House of Representatives earlier this year, the only way to access the information was to present your self in person at the registrar’s office in Parliament House and make the request.
And even then, the register was not allowed to be removed from the office.
OpenAustralia.org is to the Australian democratic process what open source software is to the tech sector. It takes publicly available information – Hansard transcripts primarily – and publishes it in a searchable, easily accessible form.
Google Quietly Quadruples Its Newspaper Archives
A short post on the Google News blog today revealed a big number: Google recently quadrupled the number of newspaper articles in its News Archive Search. You may recall that at TechCrunch50 last year, Google’s Marissa Mayer demoed this powerful news tool that can search the text of publications far back in time — some over 200 years old.The recent update saw Google add a bunch of new publications, including some from different parts of the world. And it even has a newspaper in the archives from 1753 now. The fact that it’s searchable is fairly insane.
Exploit allows Apple keyboard ownage through firmware – Ars Technica
One of the Apple-related talks given at this year’s Black Hat security conference dealt with keyboard firmware. Given by “KChen,” the talk discussed “Reversing and Exploiting an Apple Firmware Update.” While it may not seem like much on the surface, the truth quickly becomes apparent: if someone gains access to your keyboard’s firmware, there are a multitude of ways in which they can further compromise your machine.There are two ways in which this exploit can be perpetrated. The first is if someone has physical access to your computer and your administrative password, and the second is if someone has already gained access to a machine remotely through a rootkit hack. Why would an attacker want anything to do with a keyboard when he already has free reign on a system? The answer, as KChen pointed out, is that an affected user can patch the rootkit exploit and even reformat the drive, but the attacker could still have access to the keyboard.
Chen showed during his session (downloadable in .pdf format) how he reverse engineered Apple’s firmware packages and created his own. He even demonstrated how to alter a system so that it thinks its keyboard firmware isn’t up to date. His presentation slides are quite technical, but the majority of the information is phrased in a way that most people can understand, minus the code examples.
Further, if the attacker wishes, he can do things like disable certain keys and even destroy a keyboard with no possibility of reflashing. This applies to Apple’s desktop keyboards as well as its laptop keyboards. Chen also pointed out that, in combination with an unpatched machine, an attacker could use a Safari zero-day exploit to destroy Apple keyboards.
As is the case with most Black Hat speakers, Chen’s intentions aren’t malicious. Many speakers at the conference do IT security research or work in the field and are genuinely concerned about the security of the things we all use and love.
Melbourne film festival site crashed by Chinese protesters | Film | guardian.co.uk
Hackers based in China crashed the website of Australia’s biggest film festival at the weekend in protest at organisers’ decision to feature a documentary about the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.Filmgoers trying to buy tickets for the Melbourne film festival on Saturday were informed that the event was sold out after protestors exploited a loophole to make phony ticket purchases. A Chinese website titled A Call to Action to All Chinese People had explained how to set up a fake profile to buy tickets, with the aim of crashing the festival’s site.
Some people in China are angry that the festival is screening Ten Conditions of Love, a documentary about Kadeer, who is accused by Chinese authorities of stirring up the ethnic violence in Xinjiang province which left at least 197 people dead and 1,600 injured. Last month, organisers were phoned by an official from the Chinese consulate demanding that Ten Conditions of Love be removed from the festival programme, and since then three Chinese films have been withdrawn by their directors. A week ago, hackers based in China succeeded in replacing programme information on the festival site with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans.
Festival spokesman Asha Holmes told AFP: “It’s a very pointed attempt to shut down the system, which has been quite effective. We have had to shut down our online site and ask everyone to book at the physical box office or on the phone.
“Really, we imagine that until we withdraw the film [about Kadeer], which we are not going to do, this kind of activity will continue.”
What the F**k Is Social Media? Here’s an Answer
what do you say to someone who doesn’t get it? Maybe you have a boss who thinks social branding a waste of time or chatted with a friend who doesn’t believe that Twitter can help land her a great job. Maybe they have no clue what social media even is.Last year, marketing director Marta Kagan helped solve this problem with her presentation What the F**k is Social Media?. It was quickly a social media hit for its wit and its very convincing case for the raw power of social media.
With the tremendous growth of Twitter (Twitter), Facebook (Facebook), and blogging in the last year though, Ms. Kagan thought it was time for a sequel. We couldn’t agree more. The stats she cites and the savvy she employs in What the F**k is Social Media: One Year Later makes it a worthy successor.
The next time you need to explain the benefits of social media to someone, just send them this post and make sure they flip through the entire presentation.
Microsoft offers choice of Web browsers to avoid new EU antitrust fines
The EU executive has charged the company with monopoly abuse for tying the Internet Explorer browser to the Windows operating system installed on most of the world’s desktop computers.It said it welcomed Microsoft’s suggestions but would have to check how they would work and whether they would ensure “genuine consumer choice.” It will seek comment from other browser makers and computer manufacturers before deciding on the proposal, which could become legally binding for five years.
Regulators will also examine a new offer by Microsoft to share information with software developers who want to make products compatible with Windows and Windows servers. That aims to settle a lengthy antitrust row that has racked up nearly euro1.7 million ($2.42 million) in EU fines for Microsoft.
On the browser case, Microsoft is suggesting that users of Windows XP, Vista or its latest release Windows 7 could pick a browser from a ballot screen listing five of the most popular browsers in Europe. Existing Windows users would get the ballot screen from a software update.
It said the choice of these five browsers would be reviewed twice a year based on usage data for the previous six months. Microsoft’s browser is the most widely used worldwide, but Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox is gaining in popularity.
Mozilla and Google Inc. — which recently released a browser, Chrome — are supporting the case against Microsoft.
Windows 7 Will Scream With New SSD Drives – Business Center – PC World
Intel is introducing two new X25-M SSD drives that are faster and much cheaper. It might be time to take the leap. Since you’re going to put together a new computer to run Windows 7 anyway, why not include a solid-state disk?Windows 7 disables disk defragmentation, which is unnecessary with a SSD and shortens the device’s life expectancy. It also disables Superfetch and ReadyBoost, which were designed to improve performance on traditional drives where random read performance is a serious bottleneck. Perhaps most importantly, it supports Trim, which significantly improves write performance. This article gives a great explanation on why Trim is so important. The drives use Intel’s newest 34nm technology, improve the previous generation’s write performance and reduce read latency by an additional 25 percent. Basically, they smoke the traditional spinning disk hard disk that’s in your current computer.
It’s true that the rotating platter based technology is still miles head of SSDs in terms of GB per dollar, and that’s likely to be true for years to come. Intel’s newest 2.5inch drives will cost $225 for the 80GB version and $450 for the 160GB (previous generation drives currently run close to $375 and $770, respectively). That comes to more than $3 per gigabyte, which is still expensive compared to traditional drives which give you nearly 3GB per dollar for a laptop drive and over 11GB per dollar for a desktop drive.
iPhone Security: Not Beefy Enough for Businesses? – PC World
The iPhone has evolved from a casual smart phone into one with the potential to serve businesses across the globe. Its latest iteration, the iPhone 3GS, comes packaged with an encryption feature supposedly perfect for sensitive information stored on the device.But information has surfaced that the iPhone 3GS can be hacked in two minutes with readily available freeware. Is the business world ready to ditch the tried-and-true Blackberry in favor of Apple’s offering?
Jonathan Zdziarski — iPhone developer and hacker extraordinaire — showed Wired how easy it is to tear the 3GS apart and expose data. “Apple may be technically correct that [the iPhone 3GS] has an encryption piece in it, but it’s entirely useless toward security,” Zdziarski said. He added that the iPhone 3GS is about as secure as the iPhone 3G and the first-generation iPhone, the latter two having no encryption features whatsoever.
Zdziarski’s demonstration bypassed the encryption process in two minutes. As he extracted data from the phone, the iPhone itself began to decrypt everything being pulled, almost as if it wanted to be stripped bare. Hacking is done easily with available jailbreaking tools such as Red Sn0w and Purple Ra1n. Once that process is completed, hackers can then install the Secure Shell client to yank data and plop it onto a computer’s hard drive.
Defamation 2.0 | newmatilda.com
While the majority of bloggers and social media addicts take a responsible approach to the material they post, social media sites are also hosting an ever-expanding population of users publishing defamatory material under the honest belief that they are having a private conversation.In the eyes of the law, they are certainly not.
In legal terms, defamatory material is either libellous — when it is in writing — or slanderous, when it is spoken. To qualify as defamatory, two criteria must be satisfied. Firstly, the material in question must identify the person or persons defamed in a way recognisable to someone other than the defamed party.
Secondly, the material must be published — which means that it is communicated to someone other than the person or persons defamed. Courts rely on what is known as the “natural and ordinary meaning” as the test for whether the publication conveys a defamatory meaning or imputation. Lawyers need only plead that the publication is defamatory because, while harm to a person’s reputation might be important to them personally, once the other tests have been satisfied, damage to reputation is simply presumed by the court.
While the laws of defamation haven’t changed recently, the ways in which individuals can publish material certainly have. Several recent examples demonstrate the vulnerability of users of social media to the suit of defamation.
In the US, as the UK’s Independent has reported, Courtney Love is currently being sued for remarks made on Twitter about a clothing designer. According to the New York Post, a woman’s reputation was allegedly damaged when a Facebook group implied she had AIDS, used drugs, and engaged in bestiality. And according to the New Zealand Herald, a Facebook group there maintained a page called “David Bain is guilty”, which, given Bain has been acquitted by a jury in the High Court of killing his parents and three siblings, might be something they should reconsider.
Closer to home, the ABC reported that yet another Facebook group published photographs of a man charged with lighting one of the deadly Victorian bushfires and called for him to be burnt at the stake. Also in Victoria, women were harassed and bullied following publication of their names and phone numbers on a site dedicated to, among other things, the disparagement of ex-girlfriends. There is also a site warning women not to date particular men, publishing defamatory allegations about them along with photographs and other identifying remarks.What is clear is that none of these people know anything about what the law means when it decides whether something is defamatory. Also indicative of an ignorance of the legal issues involved in defamation — was a statement by the representative of one bullying site that his being the host of the site did not make him responsible for the material published on it. Others believe that by setting up a site anonymously or hosting it in a country like the US, where the laws related to freedom of expression are more liberal, they will be able to get away with posting defamatory material. These people might be perturbed to read of the case of one Joseph Gutnik, who successfully sued Dow Jones for material uploaded in New Jersey, but viewed on a computer screen in Melbourne. What all users need to understand is that the internet changes nothing. If material can be downloaded anywhere in the world, it can be defamatory according to whatever that legally means in the jurisdiction in which it was downloaded.
The world’s most toxic video game consoles – News – PC Authority
The Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 all failed under the Greenpeace environmental report card, in a global effort that aims to publicly name and shame the electronics companies who continue to use hazardous materials in their products.Two years ago, the three gaming giants were added to the ‘Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics’, in an well-meaning attempt to show which corporations were doing the green thing and which definitely weren’t.
In 2007, Greenpeace warned the video gaming cartel that they either remove BFRs (Brominated Flame Retardants) and PVC from their products or continue to damage the environment. That was then. Almost two years later, it appears very little ‘green action’ has happened in the gaming scene.
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 release dates – Ars Technica
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 had hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone at build 7600.16385 on July 22nd. Microsoft this week also disclosed the dates for when different groups will be able to get their hands on the final builds of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It seems, however, that there is some confusion for getting access to the RTM build: the dates aren’t the same for both operating systems.
Paypal announces flexible, ubiquitous developer platform – Ars Technica
Paypal announces flexible, ubiquitous developer platformPaypal has announced a brand new developer API called the Adaptive Payment Platform that will allow for monetary transactions of almost any size to take place nearly everywhere there’s an Internet connection. In addition to allowing for payments outside of the web, the new platform allows for nearly unlimited flexibility in how payments are handled.
CNET, reporting from a PayPal press conference this afternoon noted that the new API will allow developers to place themselves between buyers and sellers (and take a cut of the transaction if they like), split payments into multiple transactions, and choose which side of the transactions—buyer or seller—pays the Paypal transaction fees.
As a part of the announcement, Paypal disclosed that nearly 300 developer partners have been working with the API on a beta basis. A selection of these include Microsoft who have worked to integrate the new APIs into their cloud computing service Azure and Twitpay—a payment network that operates over the microblogging service Twitter. Others include LiveOps, MedPayOline, and Rainfall of Envelopes.
Ask Google to guarantee privacy for the future of reading – Boing Boing
As Google expands its Google Book Search service, adding millions of titles, it will dramatically increase the public’s access to books. More and more people will soon be browsing, reading and purchasing books online. But Google may be leaving out the privacy we have come to expect, with systems that monitor the digital books you search, the pages you read, how long you spend on various pages, and even what you write down in the margins.To ensure that our privacy remains at least as strong online as it is in the physical world, Google needs to do more. With the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Clinic at UC Berkeley, EFF has written a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, demanding that Google take specific steps to protect your freedom to read privately. We’ve asked that Google only respond to legitimate warrants when the government comes calling, for example, and we’ve asked that they not share your private reading data with third parties without your permission, among other things.
BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft profits down by a third
Microsoft has reported disappointing results for the April to June quarter, with profits down by almost a third.Net profit for the period was $3.1bn (£1.9bn), down by 29% from the same period a year earlier. Revenue came in at $13.1bn, down 17% from a year ago.
The results were worse than analysts had been expecting.
The world’s largest software maker said it had been affected by weakness in the global personal computer (PC) and server markets.
Palm plays cat-and-mouse with Apple, reenables iTunes sync – Ars Technica
Palm passive-aggressively fired back at Apple in its 1.1.0 update to the Pre’s webOS Thursday night. Among the handful of changes that came with the point update, the software restores syncing functionality with iTunes after Apple unceremoniously “fixed” the “problem” last week. The move is the latest in this high-profile cat-and-mouse game between Apple and Palm, and Palm seems to be willing to keep poking the fate bear—but to what end?webOS 1.1.0 isn’t all about iTunes compatibility. Among other things, it contains a number of useful updates to the Pre, including better timezone support in the Clock application, improved syncing with Google when you edit a Google contact, and the addition of emoticons in text, multimedia, and instant messages. The software also gained some enterprise features in the form of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) support that allows for remote wipe, PIN/passwords, inactivity timeouts, and improved certificate handling.
Apple nabs 91% of “premium” computer revenue in June – Ars Technica
If you need any more reasons why Apple isn’t jumping into the cheap netbook fray, a look at some analysis form NPD on recent computer sales should make Apple’s point of view crystal clear. For the month of June, slightly more than 9 out of every 10 dollars spent on a computer over $1,000 went to Apple. That’s a significant increase from the share of revenue Apple had of the higher-end PC market last year, which was already an impressive 66 percent.While netbooks get a lot of attention and have rocketed Acer up the ranks of top PC manufactures by units, the inexpensive mini laptops have lowered the Average Selling Prices of Windows-based PCs. Based on NPD’s data, the ASP of a Windows laptop was $520—$569 if netbooks are excluded. The ASP of a Mac laptop is $1,400. Similar trends hold for desktops as well—the ASP of a Windows-based desktop PC in June was $489, while the ASP for a Mac was $1,398.
Though Apple only holds about 8 to 9 percent of the US market share by units, its strategy of focusing on quality over quantity is paying off. The company reported increased sales of Macs in the past quarter, and is enjoying healthy profits on sales of over $8 billion for the quarter. COO Tim Cook summed up Apple’s attitude during this week’s earning call, saying, “Our goal is not to build the most computers; it’s to build the best. And we will—whatever price point that we can build the best at, we will play there.”
Microsoft, Apple, others sued over touchpad patent – Ars Technica
Apple, Microsoft, and 18 other companies are being sued for patent infringement by Texas-based Tsera which claims to have invented the touchpad. The lawsuit, filed last week in the US District Court Eastern Texas Division, claims the company owns “all right, title, and interest in” patent 6,639,584, which was filed in 1999 and granted in 2003.In the suit, Tsera singles out Apple by claiming that the company knew of the existence of the patent back in 2004 but ignored it. The fact that Tsera is aiming its guns primarily at Apple, which has undoubtedly made the most money off of portable touchpad devices, and that this suit was filed in Texas, where courts are unusually friendly to plaintiffs in patent infringement cases, suggests that this is a classic patent lawsuit. Now add that Tsera isn’t even mentioned in the patent because it was granted to inventor Chuang Li of Saratoga, California, and that it is seeking triple damages from Apple, as well as royalties from all further use of touchpad technology by the defendants. It would surprise us if Tsera wasn’t a patent troll.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Wireless power system shown off
A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.
Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.
He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.
“There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.
Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires “to get power from where it is created to where it is used.”
Electric car charger (AFP/Getty)
Witricity claims to be able to charge gadgets large and small“We love this stuff [electricity] so much,” he said.
Mr Giler showed off a Google G1 phone and an Apple iPhone that could be charged using the system.
Forrester: Vista and Mac OS gaining in the enterprise – Ars Technica
Windows Vista is now installed on almost one out of eight corporate desktops. Mac OS X has also made recent gains, though Windows’ share of corporate desktops remained dominant. Windows had 96.2 percent of the enterprise market, with much of that still accounted for by Windows XP. Nevertheless, the numbers are starting to move.Forrester had the following summary of the good news for Microsoft and Apple:
With Windows 7 generally available on October 22, 2009, most IT operations professionals are in a holding pattern. They successfully standardized on Windows XP, couldn’t justify an upgrade to Windows Vista in tough economic times — or simply didn’t even attempt to given the political hot button that Windows Vista has become — and plan to start their enterprise-wide Windows 7 deployments in the late 2010/early 2011 time frame in line with the start of the next anticipated major corporate PC refresh cycle. Forrester’s analysis of more than 85,000 enterprise clients [at 2,600 companies] found that Windows XP, while still king, is finally beginning its long-anticipated decline in the corporate PC market. Picking up ground are both Windows Vista, which now powers approximately 12 percent of Windows PCs, and Mac OS X, which has ramped up to an impressive 3.6 percent.
In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero
One vision for the school of the future comes from the United Nations. Founded this year by the UN’s Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID), the University of the People is a not-for-profit institution that aims to offer higher education opportunities to people who generally couldn’t afford it by leveraging social media technologies and ideas.The school is a one hundred percent online institution, and utilizes open source courseware and peer-to-peer learning to deliver information to students without charging tuition. There are some costs, however. Students must pay an application fee (though the idea is to accept everyone who applies that has a high school diploma and speaks English), and when they’re ready, students must pay to take tests, which they are required to pass in order to continue their education. All fees are set on a sliding scale based on the student’s country of origin, and never exceed $100.
HOW TO: Use the Web for Socially Responsible Shopping
The idea of “ethical consumerism” or “conscious consuming” is a social movement based around the idea that people should be cognizant of the impact their purchases have on the environment and the health and well-being of the people involved in making those products. It’s very hard to be an ethical consumer if you aren’t armed with information about the products you buy, however. Who makes those products? Where did they come from? What sort of social or environmental impact does the company have?These are questions that can be answered by utilizing the nine resources listed in this post. The sites below offer information for the conscious consumer about the companies and products we buy every day. If you know of any other places to turn for ethically savvy shopping information, please leave links in the comments.
Rudd announces Tasmania NBN links – Telco/ISP – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced the first three regional towns that will be connected as part of the Federal Government’s $43 billion National Broadband Network (NBN).Smithton, in Tasmania’s northwest, Midway Point, a coastal haven northeast of Hobart, and Scottsdale, an inland town northeast of Launceston, will be the first towns connected under the Tasmanian NBN plan.
All three towns in Tasmania lie outside of the state’s major cities, but with a combined population of 5000 fall within the intended coverage area for the fibre component of the NBN, which – when completed – will cover 90 percent of Australia’s population.
Both Smithton and Scottsdale are based in marginal Federal seats (Braddon and Bass).
Pirate Party’s copyright reform cannon could sink copyleft – Ars Technica
Free Software Foundation (FSF) founder Richard Stallman published a statement last week expressing concern about the Swedish Pirate Party’s copyright reform platform. The party’s ambitious goals for copyright term reduction would blast holes in copyleft licensing, a serious blow to Stallman’s Free Software movement.The GNU General Public License (GPL), a widely-used open source software license that was originally written by Stallman, exploits fundamental characteristics of copyright law in order to guarantee that the freedoms granted by the license are extended to derivative works. The underlying legal principles that facilitate copyleft cannot function without conventional copyright.
Open source software licenses grant recipients the freedom to study, modify, run, and redistribute software. Copyleft licenses are a category of open source software licenses that require linked code to be distributed under the same terms, meaning that copyleft code generally can’t be used in proprietary software. This distinguishes copyleft licenses from more permissive open source software licenses such as the BSD license.
Copyleft is an important part of Stallman’s vision because it compels companies that use copyleft code to open their own source code when they might not have otherwise been willing to do so voluntarily. As a license that governs the distribution of code, the GPL is enforced through copyright law. When a company fails to comply with the obligations stipulated by the license, they can be taken to court for copyright infringement.
Pirate Bay’s anonymity service enters beta testing – Telco/ISP – Technology – News – iTnews.com.au
Virtual Private Network (VPN) service IPREDator has opened its doors to beta testers this week.Operated by the developers of popular file sharing site The Pirate Bay, the service allows subscribers to access the Internet anonymously.
Web surfers typically connect to the Internet via an Internet Service Provider (ISP), which assigns each user a unique, identifying IP address.
The IP address is appended onto any network traffic to and from a user’s computer. Online transactions including banking, e-mail and search engine queries may thus be traceable.
With the principle that “the network is under our control, not theirs”, IPREDator grants online anonymity by substituting a user’s IP address with a new address.
Besides providing anonymity, the new address also allows users to bypass ISP-defined limitations, which could include Senator Conroy’s proposed ISP-level Internet filter.
Other services such as Torrent Freedom, Perfect Privacy and Witopia also offer personal VPNs for users who require privacy, want to access overseas content, or who need access to information within censored areas such as China’s “Great Firewall”.
Aussie net filtering trial deemed a success despite problems – Ars Technica
Although not without controversy, the initial testing of the Australian government’s Internet filtering system has gone off with few problems according to reports from some of the participating ISPs. Five of the nine ISPs testing the government’s filtering system reported few problems during testing, even though only 15 customers participated at one and a couple of customers at another were unable to access a completely legal porn site. The other four IPs have either yet to comment on the filter’s performance or have refused to talk publicly about the results.
AT&T’s 4chan Block Raises Issue of Net Neutrality – PC World
It appears some of AT&T’s broadband customers across the United States were intentionally blocked from accessing the infamous forum 4chan over the weekend. The message board’s founder Christopher “Moot” Poole posted a notice on the 4chan Status blog yesterday claiming AT&T was “filtering/blocking img.4chan.org (/b/ & /r9k/) for many of [its] customers.” Poole encouraged 4chan users to contact AT&T to complain. The 4chan black out lasted for about 12 hours and was reportedly over by 11 p.m. Pacific Time.
Censorship or Network Management?It’s unclear why AT&T would block 4chan, or even if it was a deliberate action, but assuming the Internet service provider was blocking the site, it’s not hard to understand why. In addition to being credited with many Internet memes including the RickRoll and LOLcats, other more dubious actions have been associated with the Website including the recent Operation Sh**ter that manipulated Twitter’s trending topics; the YouTube porn prank; the Time 100 poll “hack” and the harassment of the Church of Scientology by the group called Anonymous.
AT&T and 4chan Fuss Gets Ugly, Then Despicable – PC World
On Sunday AT&T blocked access to portions of 4chan.org, an image-board Web site that allows users to post uncensored images and content anonymously. Soon after the blockade was detected by 4chan.org its founder Christopher “Moot” Poole posted a statement to the 4chan site complaining about AT&T’s actions and urged 4chan users to “call or write (AT&T) customer support and (AT&T) corporate immediately” to complain about the blocking.Interestingly enough, and raising serious Net neutrality issues, is the fact that Poole claimed on his site’s status blog AT&T never contacted him regarding the blockade. To some 4chan users and Net neutrality advocates the blockade had the appearance that AT&T may be blocking 4chan because of content posted on the site, and not for security issues. That is claim AT&T loudly disputes.Late on Sunday, sometime midway through the ban, a report surfaced on both CNN iReport and Digg claiming that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was dead, this turned out to be a prank. Poole has posted an update to the saga on his 4chan site’s blog. He is toning down his rhetoric explaining the AT&T and 4chan blockade was all a big mix up. He explains that in 4chan’s effort to thwart a DDoS attack against 4chan (not AT&T) it unintentionally created the appearance to to AT&T network administrators that it was the source of a DDoS attack. Now Poole says he doesn’t blame AT&T for blocking access to 4chan stating in the blog entry: “In the end, this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part.
Twitter Not Outlawed In The White House. And More Tweets Are Coming.
The Internet got in a bit of a tizzy this weekend when it was reported that Twitter was banned from being accessed from inside the White House. What is this, Iran, some wondered? But have no fear, despite what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told C-SPAN, Twitter is apparently not entirely blocked and they’re working to open it up more, Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told Mediaite today.Here’s where the confusion apparently comes from. Access to Twitter’s website is blocked on most White House computers, but that’s only for security and recordkeeping reasons for the time-being. Apparently, the White House is working with the White House counsel and the Office of Administration CIO “to review and relax these restrictions,” Burton says. And, more importantly, it is apparently not official policy of the White House that staffers are not allowed to tweet, and some do so from their own web-connected devices.
And there are computers that can post to Twitter in the White House right now via HootSuite, which you see from time to time as the source of official White House tweets. But most of the official White House account tweets are done by the new media team (consisting of Director of New Media Macon Phillips and Online Programs Director Jesse Lee), from the new media offices are in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (which is next door to the White House). President Obama’s account is apparently handled by the DNC.
Apple’s Digital Album Plan Sounds Familiar – PC World
Apple is working on a new plan to save the album, according to a report taking the Web by storm this week. The story, published Monday by the Financial Times, describes a deal involving Apple and four major record labels. It cites “people familiar with the situation” as having provided the information.Apple and Digital Album Sales
Apple’s motivation for such a program would be obvious: Record companies stand to make far more money from full album sales than from single track purchases. Right now, in the era of 99-cent song purchases, people tend to snatch up individual tracks instead of complete collections.
Still, despite the excitement the rumor’s stirring up in the tech world, the idea — said to be codenamed “Cocktail” — may not be as innovative as it sounds. Early last year, for example, Sony BMG debuted a program called Platinum MusicPass. The program offers “complete album and bonus materials” with a full album purchase, packaging in digital booklets, videos, remixes, live tracks, and documentaries.
Compare that to the new “Cocktail” system, which is said to include interactive booklets, liner notes, photos, lyric sheets, and video clips. Aside from the fact that Apple’s edition would presumably focus on Internet-based sales — the MusicPass cards themselves are sold through physical retail stores — the concepts sound eerily similar.
Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core: Official Google Voice App Blocked From App Store
Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”. Now comes even worse news: we’ve learned that Apple has blocked Google’s official Google Voice application itself from the App Store. In other words, Google Voice — one of the best things to happen to telephony services in a very long time — will have no presence at all on the App Store. If there’s ever been a time to be furious with Apple, now is it.A Google Spokesperson has told us the following:
We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users — for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.
Of course, it’s not hard to guess who’s behind the restriction: our old friend AT&T. Google Voice scares the carriers. It allows users to send free SMS messages and get cheap long-distance over Google Voice’s lines. It also makes it trivial to switch to a new phone service, because everyone calls the Google Voice number anyway.
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