p2pnet headline roundup: Nov 13, 2008
Sweeping Changes At Live.com: It’s A Social Network! – TechCrunch
Microsoft’s Live.com portal will change significantly this evening. No longer will it be a simple search engine with a few other services bolted on. It’s now a social network, too, pulling in activity information and content from around the web. They’re also launching Windows Live Photos and Windows Live People, and other services. Check it out at Home.Live.com. A lot of what they’ve done is exactly what Yahoo has been talking about for over a year now – leveraging social connections that already exist (Yahoo is using email, Microsoft is using Messenger) and doing a lot more with it. Users are automatically connected with any friends they have on Windows Live Messenger, which is by far the most popular instant messaging service worldwide (Comscore: Microsoft Messenger has 268 million worldwide users, compared to 116 million for Yahoo and 6 million for Google Talk). Users are asked to build out their profile, and can also bring in content they create on blogs (or any RSS feeds, Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, iLike, Twitter, Wordpress and Yelp. When you do something new on those sites, the information flows into Live.com for your friends to see (in a very similar way as FriendFeed, Plaxo and others do today). Eventually, says Microsoft, more than 50 partners will be supported. When users add photos, write reviews, and update their profiles directly on Live.com, that content will be put into the activity stream as well.
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Firefox 3.0.4 closes nine security holes – Heise Online
The Mozilla Foundation has released Firefox version 3.0.4 to close nine security holes. The developers rated four of the holes as critical because they allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on the victim’s system. One of the critical holes is a classical buffer overflow that can be triggered via specially crafted server responses. Advertisement., A flaw in the way the browser restores a session after a program crash can cause Firefox to violate the same-origin policy when executing JavaScript code, which could be exploited to execute the code in the context of a different website. Attackers could remotely trigger a crash and subsequent restart to steal a user’s access data to other web pages, for example. Two of the critical holes have so far only been observed to cause crashes, but the developers suspect that the flaw can also be exploited to inject and execute code, as it involves memory corruptions. A flaw in the same-origin check in the nsXMLHttpRequest::NotifyEventListeners function also allows attackers to execute JavaScript in the context of another page. The developers only rated this security risk as high. Two additional critical holes were closed in Firefox 2.0.0.18 and SeaMonkey 1.1.13.
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YouTube to Sell Advertising on Pages of Search Results – New York Times
Google announced on Wednesday that it would begin selling space on YouTube search-results pages to advertisers, part of its effort to turn its expensive acquisition into a major revenue producer. The feature allows anyone who has a video on YouTube to promote it on a search-results page. An advertiser — or a video maker who wants to promote a work — can bid on keywords like “silly cats,” “financial crisis,” “James Bond,” or anything that strikes one’s fancy. The promoted videos are featured on the right-hand side of the YouTube search-results page with a small image and some text.
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Is Apple Building A Search Engine? – TechCrunch
We’ve received multiple (if thin) reports that Apple is working on a search engine of some sort. At first glance, the rumors make sense. Apple’s Safari browser has 6-7% market share, and currently uses Google as the search engine for both the standard and iPhone/iPod versions (unlike other browsers, you don’t have a choice). They also have a suite of personal productivity tools through Mobile Me that bring some hard core users to their servers daily. All of that traffic and usage equates to a lot of searches, which can be monetized heavily. Also, Apple can’t be super pleased with Google’s competition to the iPhone with Android. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s also on Apple’s board of directors, sits out of discussions involving Apple’s mobile strategy, and rumor is he may leave the board.
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End of dial-up for all Islanders – CBC News
High-speed internet service will soon be available to all Prince Edward Islanders.
Rural Development Minister Allan Campbell called the Aliant deal a great one for Islanders.Rural Development Minister Allan Campbell called the Aliant deal a great one for Islanders. (CBC) Large rural areas of the province currently rely on dial-up service, but on Wednesday the province announced it will be entering into an $8.2-million deal with Aliant to provide rural customers with high-speed internet by 2009. “This was their initiative that they came forward with, and we’re very pleased to be doing business,” said Rural Development Minister Allan Campbell. “It’s great service, but it’s also a great deal for the taxpayers in this province.” The province has not invested any up-front money in the deal, but it has given Aliant a five-year contract.
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[OT] Supreme Court Sides With U.S. Navy in Dispute Over Sonar Use, Whale Safety – ABC News
The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the U.S. Navy’s need to conduct realistic training with active sonar outweighs the concerns of environmentalists that the sonar could damage marine life. The decision means the Navy can go forward with exercises off the coast of Southern California and does not have to sharply limit sonar use.
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Microsoft to spend $1 bln on R&D in China – Reuters
Microsoft Corp will spend more than $1 billion in China over the next three years on research and development, an executive said on Thursday. The research spending does not include the $300 million the company has already committed to build a new research and development facility in Beijing, said Zhang Yaqin, chairman of China Research and Development for Microsoft.
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November 13th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
“The US Supreme Court has ruled that national security trumps environmental law, at least in the case of whales and sonar”.
So, here we are.