The search advertising company sent one of its public policy mavens to Washington DC to talk about energy technology, and call for better federal support for new initiatives in that field.
Google holds a vested interest in efficient, cost effective energy sources. Electricity fuels the company’s numerous banks of servers and data centers. Higher energy costs mean less profit.
It’s an issue that pushed the company into places like The Dalles, Oregon, east of Portland. Hydroelectricity served as the draw for Google, as well as other big names in tech like Microsoft.
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A group called the P2P-Next Consortium is testing what they’re calling “a next generation Peer-to-Peer (P2P) content delivery platform.” They’re hoping to develop software capable of offering P2P-based streaming, and they’re inviting the public to help them gather data.
If you’re interested in helping you need to use a BitTorrent client, called SwarmPlayer. Once you have it installed you can watch either a 5 minute Video On Demand (VOD) test stream provided by the BBC or a webcam feed from Amsterdam. SwarmPlayer sends performance data back to a P2P-Next server which they’ll use in future development.
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The iPhone Dev Team released version 2.0 of the Pwnage Tool, which allows you to jailbreak iPhones and iPods running the new iPhone 2.0 software. It also unlocks first generation iPhones, allowing them to be used on any mobile phone network, but won’t unlock the new 3G model (yet).
If you happen to have owned either a first generation iPhone or an iPod touch prior to the opening of the iTunes App Store you probably at least considered the possibility of jailbreaking it to take advantage of the third party software being developed for it. With the ability to jailbreak the units while running the current Apple software you can now get the best of both worlds.
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After three months of silence following the release of the Mac clone by Psystar in April, the Cupertino company sued the company over copyright infringement.
The suit was filed July 3 in the US District Court for the district of Northern California, San Francisco. Initial filings for the case are due in October, while a case management conference is scheduled for October 22, court documents indicate. Judge James Larson has been assigned to the case.
Psystar offers a Mac clone for $399, along with a higher-end version for $999. Originally called the OpenMac, the name was later changed to “Open Computer” — likely to avoid trademark infringement.
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One might suppose it’s due diligence to listen to the arguments of companies enormously invested in the outcome of regulatory decisions, so the onus of coming to a reasonable conclusion rests solely on Congress whether to believe Microsoft or Google in two hearings today in the Senate and the House.
And to be sure, legislative judgment will be closely scrutinized. At issue is whether Google’s search advertising deal with Yahoo violates antitrust laws and/or poses significant privacy concerns. It seems only fitting the government—with books on tube systems, dump trucks, and pervasive economic indicator denial—would be dragged out to referee the urination streams of three tech giants, all of them praying the wind doesn’t shift.
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AOL has launched a new personal finance site called WalletPop, a spin-off of AOL Money & Finance.
The new site will be focused on helping people manage their personal finances, while AOL Money & Finance will continue to focus on business and investing news.
The site will offer users information on deals from sites across the Web, Q&A with financial experts, tips on saving money, blogs with financial advice and breaking news and video.
The launch of WalletPop is part of AOL’s strategy to develop new online businesses and attract younger users who are unaware of the AOL brand.
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Google’s impressive market share makes for convincing evidence of its skill at search. Few things are perfect, though, and the search giant is now allowing select users to alter their own results.
An experimental feature “may” or “will” be available “for only a few weeks” depending on which part of a FAQ you believe. The key points in the meantime: “This feature allows you [to] influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again while you are logged in to your Google account, you’ll continue to see those changes.”
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Litigants trying to get data on what the video site’s users were watching have backed off somewhat, although YouTube will still have to share some data with Viacom.
Plaintiffs Viacom and a class-action group led by the Football Association of England agreed to accept a watered-down version of YouTube’s viewer logs. That version will not include the IP addresses nor the YouTube usernames of the viewers.
Earlier this month, a judge ordered Google to turn over this information to Viacom. The media conglomerate had specifically requested information that would have also tied the viewer data to a specific YouTube user.
Posted in YouTube, eLaw |
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Yesterday, eBay secured an important legal victory after New York District Judge Richard Sullivan ruled the online auction service actually did do enough to thwart the sale of counterfeit jewelry.
The battle between Tiffany and eBay started four years ago in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and has ended with a decision stating it’s the responsibility of manufacturers to police counterfeit goods sold through eBay.
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Frustrated by lack of action among Europe’s cellular carriers, the European Commission said Tuesday it would move to mandate lower prices for intra-European texting.
An average of €0.29 ($0.46 USD) is charged for messages, virtually unchanged since February when the EC first asked for a voluntary price drop at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Officials argued there that the higher pricing goes against the “borderless market” concept that European countries first started working towards a half-century ago. While fees are roughly equivalent to what the rest of the world pays while in the consumer’s home country, it skyrockets when traveling through the rest of Europe.
Posted in Cell Phones |
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