Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Windows Live Essentials 11 beta updated, gets Facebook chat

By Peter Bright 
The second beta of Windows Live Essentials 11, the application bundle containing Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Sync, and more besides, was released today.
The update includes a load of stability and performance enhancements, along with several new or improved features: publishing videos to flickr from Movie Maker, better support of Gmail's special spam and trash folders, and larger video uploads to SkyDrive, to name a few.
Arguably the biggest new feature is in Windows Live Messenger.
Posted by rorybaust at 11:57 PM

Optus seeks court ruling on meaning of "unlimited" internet

By Ry Crozier

Consumers understand it doesn't mean speed, telco claims.

Optus has amended advertisements for its "unlimited" internet and phone bundles but will pursue a Federal Court declaration that "unlimited" in the context of the internet wasn't understood by consumers to refer to the "speed" of connection.

The telco had previously marketed an "unlimited home phone and broadband bundle" that included 50 GB of "superfast" broadband that was then throttled to a speed of 256 Kbps.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/228986,optus-seeks-court-ruling-on-meaning-of-unlimited-internet.aspx

Posted by rorybaust at 6:48 PM
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Does Science Fiction Predict the Future of Journalism



What's the future of journalism? Amidst countless conferences, anxious op-eds and much hand-wringing, longtime journalist Loren Ghiglione believes he might have found some answers in an unlikely place - science fiction. Despite his initial disdain for the genre, Ghiglione argues that sci-fi is full of predictions that we'd be wise to consider.

Posted by rorybaust at 6:28 PM
The Times Of London Website Loses 1.2 Million Readers Following Paywall
from the HUFFPOST

The Times of London has been hemorrhaging online readers since erecting a paywall three months ago, according to data released today.
Internet marketing research firm ComScore reported that the websites for the News Corp-owned Times and its sister newspaper, The Sunday Times, have lost 1.2 million viewers in the three months since the formerly free site was reorganized and split into two separate sites —thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk, each of which was placed behind a paywall.
That's down from the 2.79 million that the free site attracted in May, the last month before readers were charged to access the papers' content. Pageviews dropped from 29 million in May to 9 million in July.

Posted by rorybaust at 6:07 PM
Army Spy Planes Not Used to Track New York Bomb Suspect

    The U.S. did not use military surveillance planes to siphon the cell phone calls of the Times Square car bomb suspect earlier this year, according to responses to FOIA requests by Threat Level.
    In May, Faisal Shahzad was arrested for allegedly attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square. The local CBS affiliate in New York reported that U.S. Army intelligence planes had been used to spy on Shahzad and help authorities capture him.

    Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/army-spy-plane/#ixzz0wufMZRik
Posted by rorybaust at 5:31 PM

Resistance 3! Killzone 3! New PS3s! Sony delivers the goods

Sony is blowing the roof off Gamescom, which is taking place in Cologne Germany as we speak. The announcements are coming in fast and furious: Resistance 3! New PS3 hardware! New Ratchet and Clank! We're going to run down the news and give you a look at the games talked about during Sony's press event.
First, what's up with these new PlayStation 3 configurations? A 160GB PS3 will be sold for $299.99 and is now shipping to your local retailers. This is the same price as the previous model, but with more storage. Not bad. There will also be a 320GB PS3 that launches on September 19 for $399.99 that will include one PlayStation Move motion controller, the PlayStation Eye camera, a copy of Sports Champions on Blu-ray disc, and a bonus Blu-ray game demo disc.
Posted by rorybaust at 5:27 PM

Truth-o-Meter, 2G: Andrew Lih wants to wikify fact-checking

Epic fact: We are living at the dawn of the Information Age. Less-epic fact: Our historical moment is engendering doubt. The more bits of information we have out there, and the more sources we have providing them, the more wary we need to be of their accuracy. So we’ve created a host of media platforms dedicated to fact-checking: We havePolitiFact over here, FactCheck over there, Meet the Facts over there, @TBDFactsMachine over there, Voice of San Diego’s Fact Check blog over there, NewsTrust’s crowdsourced Truthsquad over there (and, even farther afield, source verifiers like Sunlight’s new Poligraft platform)…each with a different scope of interest, and each with different methods and metrics of verification. (Compare, for example, PolitiFact’s Truth-o-Meter to FactCheck.org’snarrative assessments of veracity.) The efforts are admirable; they’re also, however, atomized.
Posted by rorybaust at 5:11 PM

Facebook May Make Location Announcement Wednesday

by Jolie O'Dell
We've just received an invitation to visit Facebook's Palo Alto campus on Wednesday to get "an update on the service̢۪s features and products," and rumor has it the powers that be want to talk about location-based products.
Kara Swisher at BoomTown says her sources "indicate that Facebook will finally be rolling out its own geo-location offering" on Wednesday.
If this is true, it would fulfill a promise made to developers months ago at Facebook's f8 conference, when wefirst thought the feature would launch. Such an announcement would moreover substantiate the subsequent months of "coming soon" rumors and verified quotes we heard from Facebook execs and others.

Posted by rorybaust at 3:45 PM

a new way to deal with piracy, make the ones that pay, pay again and again

by rorybaust
What’s next in the music industries play box of failing to adapt to the not so new digital landscape? Well maybe they could propose or should I say mandate a pay before you play levy. It must be mighty frustrating for these conglomerates to stomach the fact that people can play their legally purchased tunes whenever and wherever they like with non additional compensation for the sweat of the brow going  to the struggling performer who first created the musical work (seldom does anyway).  If I did not know any better I would call it intellectual property theft, of course I do but the greed of the music industry know no bounds and I am sure in time they will come cape in hand to government worldwide demanding this minor change to copyright.

Posted by rorybaust at 3:37 PM
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Xbox Live Comes to Windows Phone 7: Here’s the Games Lineup

An e-mail from Microsoft tonight tells us that Windows Phone 7 will be launching with a whole roster of Xbox Live games to push the envelope of mobile gaming.
A grand total of 63 games have been announced today, and more will be available by the device’s holiday season launch. The games include well-known titles such as Castlevania and Guitar Hero, classically inspired numbers such as FroggerFrogger, casual games that includeBejeweled and many more.
We’re told that Windows Phone 7 will integrate all the aspects of Xbox Live that hardcore gamers love: Multiplayer, messaging, leaderboards, full-game library access and more.
Posted by rorybaust at 3:33 PM


iPhone 4: the camera

by Adam Turner
While an improvement on its predecessors, the iPhone 4’s camera probably still won’t see you ditch your compact digital camera.

The new iPhone boasts a 5 megapixel camera, a boost from the 3 megapixels in the 3G S and the 2 megapixels in the 3G and 2G. The iPhone 4 also shoots video in 720p, as opposed to VGA video capture on the iPhone 3G S.



Posted by rorybaust at 3:14 PM

uTorrent Backs Artist, Bundles Album With New Downloads

by Ernesto
paz
Following in the footsteps of The Pirate Bay and the successful BitTorrent distribution platform Vodo, uTorrent has now embraced an artist of their own. Starting today, all new uTorrent downloads will be bundled with the latest album from PAZ, an up and coming musician who hopes to achieve stardom through BitTorrent.
In the last year alone, thousands of artists have given away their music for free, distributing their work via various BitTorrent sites and specialized music portals such as Jamendo.

Posted by rorybaust at 3:09 PM

DMCA used to remove search engine results

by Juha Saarinen

Here's something at least I haven't come across before, namely Google removing results due to DMCA complaints. This seems to be a fairly new method to go after alleged intellectual property and copyright infringers.

Click on the links in the quoted text below to get the full details, but it's basically a certain fashion brand that has filed the DMCA complaint, saying the specified sites are "marketing and selling counterfeit" products. Based on that, the brand is asking Google to remove them from its index.


Posted by rorybaust at 2:57 PM

Apple Won’t Change iPhone’s Antenna for Verizon Release, Expert Claims

By Evan Selleck
There’s still a debate about an iPhone launching on Verizon’s network some time next year. Some believe that it will launch as early as January, while analysts believe that it will be some time later in the first quarter of 2011. And, while rumors of Verizon obtaining the legendary Apple manufactured have popped up and died down over the years, there’s something about next year that definitely feels . . . Different. But, with the recent plague of “antennagate” issues swarming Apple since the launch of the iPhone 4, there’s been one question on people’s minds. If Verizon does get the iPhone, will Apple fix the antenna? In one expert’s eyes, that’s not going to happen
http://www.slashgear.com/apple-wont-change-iphones-antenna-for-verizon-release-expert-claims-1798030/
Posted by rorybaust at 2:44 PM

Archos 7 Android tablet

The poor man's iPad? By Alun Taylor
Archos 7 Android Home Tablet
A touch of PC and PMP: Archos' 7 Home Tablet
Despite the iPad being upon us and plenty of Windows 7 and Android tablets on the horizon – not to mention whatever HP's tablet plans are for webOS – the question: "What's a tablet for?" remains a question without a definitive answer.
Archos presumably thinks basic home web connectivity and media playback is the answer, as these are the main pitches of its new 7 and 8 Home Tablets – the French PMP maker's latest attempt at desktop-cum-handheld connected gadgets, after the disappointing Archos 9 tablet.


Posted by rorybaust at 2:24 PM
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App classification targets little guys: Pirates

The Australian Pirate Party has today taken aim at the Labor Party for intentions to close a classification loophole that would require mobile app developers — big and small — to submit their work for classification.
Australian Pirate Party logo
The Australian Pirate Party has condemned Labor's app classification plan in the lead-up to the Federal Election.(Credit: Australian Pirate Party)
The Australian IT reported yesterday that a spokesperson for the Minister of Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor said that they were "concerned about the classification of [mobile] games and had put the wheels in motion to address it with state and territory counterparts".
The Pirate Party has said that any mandatory classification scheme would be a "direct assault" on the software industry, saying that many app developers are hobbyists and as such cannot afford to put their application through the classification process.
Posted by rorybaust at 2:15 PM

Adobe moves further into Google's orbit

SAN FRANCISCO--If Adobe Systems had its druthers, Google Android would turn into the Microsoft Windows of the 21st century.
If there was any doubt that Adobe's mobile strategy is now tied to the long-term success of Android, it was removed by a day-long presentation by Adobe executives and managers about how Adobe is adapting its technologies to Android. Dubbed the "Android Summit," the series of presentations to the press emphasized how core Adobe technologies such as Flash and AIR are being optimized for Android on phones, tablets, and eventually televisions when Google TV is released.
Posted by rorybaust at 2:12 PM
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Pirate Party Strikes Hosting Deal With Wikileaks

by Ernesto 
During his visit to the the Swedish capital Stockholm, Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange struck a deal with the local Pirate Party. The Party, which participates in the national elections next month, will host several new Wikileaks servers to protect the freedom of the press and help the whistleblower site to carry out its operation.
After releasing more than 90,000 government documents last month related to the war in Afghanistan, Wikileaks was labeled a serious threat by the U.S. 
Posted by rorybaust at 2:01 PM

Video Copyright Owners Must Police the Internet

Ruling in 'Viacom v. YouTube' is the latest in a trend involving the 'storage' of videos under DMCA

By James Chadwick

It's the video millennium. Every modern mobile phone is a video camera and a video player. Video displays are everywhere, from taxicabs to endcaps. Webcams perch like pigeons on every major tourist destination in the world. So it's no surprise that video sharing has become an industry, and that legal controversy has followed. The Southern District of New York recently announced its much-anticipated decision inViacom International Inc. v. YouTube Inc., 2010 WL 2532404 (S.D.N.Y. June 23, 2010), granting summary judgment in favor of YouTube. The decision breaks no new ground, but it continues a trend: Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, owners of copyrights to videos will have the burden of policing the internet.

http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202466695461
Posted by rorybaust at 2:31 AM

Turnbull blasts NBN as Gillard spruiks broadband healthcare

By Spandas Lui (ARN)
Former Opposition leader and Federal member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, has launched a caustic online attack on Labor’s NBN as the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, spoke at Labor’s campaign launch.
Malcolm Turnbull released a press statement blasting the NBN while the Prime Minister took the stage at her party’s campaign launch which included a comprehensive online healthcare element.
Turnbull claimed the NBN was a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Posted by rorybaust at 1:03 AM
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Hiding files in Flickr pics will fool web censors

 by Jim Giles
Life is about to become more difficult for countries trying to censor access to foreign websites. A system dubbed Collage will allow users in these countries to download stories from blocked sites while visiting seemingly uncontroversial sites such as Flickr.
Collage relies on a well-established technique known as digital steganography, in which an image file is changed to encode the hidden message without obviously affecting the appearance of the image. A prototype version is due to be unveiled on Friday, 13 August.
Steganography normally requires specialist software, but Collage is designed so that anti-censorship activists and readers can publish and download the hidden stories without any specialist skills. A publisher or activist can, for example, use Collage to copy news stories from a website and embed the articles into Flickr images in a process that is almost entirely automated.
Posted by rorybaust at 12:32 AM