The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) didn’t exactly point fingers and do any name calling, but the results of its broadband penetration study shined like red badge on the US’s broadband shortcomings. When compared to the rest of the world, Uncle Sam comes up short.
By the end of 2007, the US had slipped from 12th place in the world in terms of broadband penetration to 15th place, due mainly to consumers paying higher prices for slower speeds and poor rural access.
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Google Earth has always been educational, letting people learn about the landscapes of places and countries they’ve never seen in person. Thanks to the addition of a Google News layer, Google Earth will now also let its users keep up with current events.
Last month, a collaboration with The New York Times was unveiled, but this new development should go well beyond it. Never mind quarter-hour updates from a single source; on the LatLong Blog, Brandon Badger writes, “By spatially locating the Google News’ constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide.
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YouTomb, a site focused on tracking all the videos that have been removed from YouTube for copyright violation, is a research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The people who created the site are the MIT Free Culture student group. YouTomb says it,”Continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown.” “The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.” YouTomb records the title of each video that is removed from YouTube along with a description of the video, who uploaded it, when it was taken down and a few screen shots. There are no actual videos that visitors to the site can watch. The site is currently monitoring 223,246 videos and has flagged 4,396 videos that have been taken down for alleged copyright violation. The companies that have removed the most videos include, TV Tokyo Corporation, Viacom International Inc, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and World Wrestling Entertainment. YouTomb says its initial focus is on videos hosted by YouTube, but it is also interested in other video collections. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Web sites are protected from legal action if they remove infringing content after receiving a takedown notice from the copyright holder.
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Sony has confirmed that it is planning to “integrate YouTube functionality in upcoming or existing PlayStation 3 games” and that developers are currently working on such integration.
The new integration will enable gamers to stream capture and upload footage they have recorded while playing games.
“This YouTube upload functionality can be incorporated not only into new PS3 game titles, but also existing PS3 titles that have the ability to receive network updates,” explained a YouTube statement.
“Gamers will now be able to upload their in-game video captures to YouTube. We’re excited at the opportunity this presents and look forward to more and more games to be enhanced with YouTube,” the statement added.
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The Fedora project today released a new version of its completely free and redistributable Linux distribution. Showcasing lots of next-generation Red Hat features, Fedora 9 also boasts new features of its own aimed at making the distribution appeal more to newer Linux users.
Fedora 9’s more salient new features include:
- USB drive booting with user data persisting across reboots
- A nifty graphical Windows utility for creating USB boot drives
- Installer now supports partition resizing, to better support dual-booting, and LUKS encryption
- First distribution with KDE 4.0 (though Gnome still default UI)
- FreeIPA, a new user rights administration tool
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A Bank of Ireland laptop with thousands of customers’ details was stolen seven years ago in Co Kildare and clients were not informed.
Bank of Ireland says it is investigating an allegation that a laptop was stolen.
The development comes as the bank faces two separate investigations following the disclosure that laptops containing the details of 31,000 customers were stolen last year.
The theft happened in Bank of Ireland’s Newbridge branch in 2001.
The laptop was used by an official from Bank of Ireland’s life assurance division.
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A Chilean hacker posted sensitive information about six million of his compatriots on the Internet, apparently in an act of protest against the government’s lax data security.
According to Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, details including people’s address’, phone numbers, ID numbers, email addresses and even academic records were all laid bare for the world to see on a popular technology blog called FayerWayer. Links to additional information was also posted on a website called “ElAntro”.
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Opera Software has released Opera Mini 4.1, the latest version of itsfree, Java-based web browser that works on nearly every mobile phone.
According to Opera, the new version is up to 50% faster than the current one.
New features include:
- Will automatically suggest URL completions, making address input easier
- Web pages can be saved for later off-line viewing
Can search for a word or phrase in Web pages
- Images, ringtones and other content can be downloaded without leaving the application
“We have actively talked to our community members in order to build the best Web browser for mobile phones,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera.
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Here’s a little story for you: An Apple Store employee had a party in her apartment. A couple weeks later her place was cleared out to the tune of about $5,000 worth of electronics, including her new Mac. Days later, a friend sees that she’s online and alerts the Mac’s rightful owner. Since she was running Leopard with Back to My Mac, owner-girl logged in remotely and activated Photo Booth via the screen-share function. And what do you know, it turned out that the thieves were some “friends” who were at the party a few weeks back. She took the photos to the cops and — voila — busted! The thieves, Edmon Shahikian, 23, and Ian Frias, 20, both of the Bronx, have been charged with second-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Go go crafty nerdy girl!
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A New York Times article purporting that Microsoft is working with NBC Universal to create a “copyright cop” — or anti-piracy filter — for the Zune that will prevent playback of unauthorized videos, was refuted by Microsoft today.
In the article which appeared on a Times blog, Saul Hansell, a Times reporter, quotes J.B. Perrette, president of digital distribution for the movie studio, as saying there are two reasons why NBC chose Microsoft’s Zune over Apple’s iTunes for content distribution.
One reason given by Perrette is that Apple insists on paying the same wholesale price for all videos, so that Apple can charge $1.99 for each film. The other is that Apple presented NBC with a flat out refusal on a request to include filters in the iPod.”Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright ‘cop’ to be installed on its devices,” according to Hansell’s story.
Posted in Copyright, Microsoft |
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