p2pnet World Headlines: Oct 21, 2009
Guess Who Else Is Coming to Dinner? Twitter-Microsoft Bing Deal Confirmed, But So Is Facebook-Bing All Things Digital
In a stunning one-two punch, Microsoft will announce separate nonexclusive deals today with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate their real-time feeds of status updates into the Bing search service. According to sources, Microsoft (MSFT) digital head Qi Lu will announce the deal onstage in a few hours at the Web 2.0 Summit. BoomTown reported earlier today that the Microsoft data-mining deal with Twitter was poised to be announced. But the addition of Facebook raises the stakes considerably, because it has the largest pool of status updates, despite all the hype around Twitter. Facebook has previously stated that it has 40 million updates a day on average from its 300 million-plus audience. Twitter has been talking to Google (GOOG) about a similar arrangement, and, according to sources, so has Facebook.
Verizon CEO slams Net neutrality CNet news
The day before the FCC is expected to start the ball rolling on new regulations to keep the Internet open, Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg painted a doomsday picture of what could happen in the industry if stricter rules are imposed. During his keynote address Wednesday at the Supercomm 2009 trade show here, Seidenberg said that Verizon is very troubled by the regulations being proposed by the Federal Communications Commission. He argued that imposing stricter regulations would pit network providers against application providers in a way that would ruin the Internet’s potential for economic growth and societal change. “Proponents (of Net neutrality) have a worldview that network providers and application providers, like Google, occupy different parts of the Internet: dumb pipes versus smart apps,” he said. “This is a mistake pure and simple. It’s an analog idea for a digital world. It completely understates the need for sound practices and ignores the benefits of smart networks.”
‘Googling juries’ found net guilty Scottish Sun
Court bosses last night snubbed warnings by top lawyer Donald Findlay that Scotland’s justice system is under threat from “Googling jurors”. The outspoken QC insists jury members are jeopardising fair trials by illegally combing the internet for background info on cases. And he urged Government chiefs to ditch their “ostrich approach” to the problem – because it’s getting worse. Mr Findlay, writing in Scottish Legal News, said: “The law works on a fiction that jurors always do what they are told.”But the Scottish Court Service last night rejected his claims. An SCS spokesman said: “Sufficient arrangements are in place to ensure that a judge can direct jurors to have regard only to the evidence heard in court.”
Consumers speak out over spam Australian IT
Consumers are fighting back against bank scams, dodgy lottery wins, cheap erectile dysfunction sprays and other unwanted offers, lodging a record 3947 complaints about spam last financial year with regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority. That was a 31 per cent jump on the number of complaints made the previous year, according to ACMA’s 2008-09 annual report, which was tabled yesterday. Complaints about email spam dominated, rising 21 per cent to 2955. However, people are also becoming increasingly irritated by unsolicited messages on their mobile phones, with the number of complaints about SMS spam leaping 71 per cent on the previous year to 992. ACMA said it had received a total of 11,060 complaints since the Spam Act 2003 was introduced.
Chinese group says Google violating copyrights Associated Press
Search engine powerhouse Google is facing new complaints over its book-scanning digital library project â from Chinese authors who say their copyrights are being violated. The objections raised by a government-affiliated group called the China Written Works Copyright Society are the latest in the conflict between Google and copyright holders in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere over its ambitious effort to make more printed works available to a wider audience online. They are the first public criticism of the project from China â a country usually under fire for its own problems with rampant piracy of copyright-protected material and other intellectual property. Google has made digital copies of 10 million books in the past five years, generally through deals with large libraries to scan and index their collections. Google says the project is an invaluable chance for books to get more exposure.
More Swedish women surfing the web for sex: study The Local
Surfing the web in search of sexual content is one of the ten fastest growing internet activities in Sweden especially among women, a new study shows. According to a survey by the Sweden-based World Internet Institute, nearly one in five Swedish web surfers 17 percent has gone online to visit sites with sexual content. “It’s actually not that surprising that surfing the web for sex is increasing. Attitudes toward sex in society play a role in how honest people are, as does internet use overall more and more services are carried out online these days,” World Internet Institute CEO Janne Elvelid told the TT news agency.
Will Your Phone Work with Windows 7? PC Magazine
Windows 7 is shaping up to be a huge leap over Vista, but it doesn’t do much for smartphone owners yet. In theory, Windows 7’s Device Stage is supposed to look nicer than Windows Mobile Device Center, sync more data types, and support many different phone platforms. That would be great, if it worked. But for now, almost no mobile vendors are supporting Device Stage. Not even Microsoft! To test Device Stage, I hooked up 13 different cell phones to a Lenovo ThinkPad T400s running the retail version of Windows 7. I tested representative devices from all major smartphone OSes and included several Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5 smartphones for good measure. Exactly zero worked with Device Stage.
Sales of ‘The Beatles: Rock Band’ aren’t so fab USA TODAY
Even a little help from The Beatles couldn’t completely rock game sales out of their doldrums. The Beatles: Rock Band, released Sept. 9, sold about 595,000 copies last month, according to figures released Monday by market tracking firm The NPD Group. The game took two spots among September’s top 10: The Xbox 360 version was No. 5, with 254,000 sold; the Wii game was No. 10 (208,600). An additional 132,400 sold for PS3. Analysts expected the game to sell at least 1 million copies. Instead of a bona fide hit, “The Beatles performed at a respectable level,” says analyst Jesse Divnich of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. But with downloadable albums on the way, such as Abbey Road (out this week, $17), “I have no doubts we will see a resurgence in sales during the holiday months.”
Fedora 12 beta released Heise Online
One week later than planned (standard procedure at Fedora), the Fedora Project has released the first and only beta version of its Fedora 12 Linux distribution, codename Constantine, for download. As a result of this delay plus the extra week for the Alpha, Fedora 12 is now scheduled for a November 17th release. Since the Fedora development team had already integrated almost all the major changes into the alpha version, released in late August, there are no major surprises in the beta version. The developers have, however, added Yum plug-in ‘yum-presto’ to the list of packages installed by default. In future, therefore, Yum will automatically use Delta RPMs (available from package repositories since Fedora 11) for updates, significantly reducing the amount of data downloaded.
HP, Amazon to sell paperback versions of e-books Associated Press
Some of the technology industry’s best-known companies are betting there’s pent-up demand for on-demand books. Hewlett-Packard is teaming up with Amazon.com to challenge Google in the quirky new market of re-creating digital books as paperbacks. HP and Amazon announced their alliance Wednesday, a few weeks after Google formed a similar partnership with a company called On Demand Books.
Japan dolphin hunting town threatens to sue over ‘The Cove’ Agence France-Presse
A town at the centre of a controversial dolphin slaughtering documentary could sue the film makers, local fisheries officials said Wednesday, as it premiered at a Tokyo film festival. “The Cove”, an award-winning film depicting the annual slaughter of dolphins in the Japanese coastal town of Taiji, has caused uproar in the town, with film makers accused of covertly shooting footage using divers and hidden cameras. The Taiji fisheries cooperative, which strongly supports the dolphin hunt, has written a letter of protest to the organiser of the film festival, an official told AFP.
Internet advertising appears to begin its comeback Associated Press
After bogging down in the recession, Internet advertising is regaining the momentum that has made it the decade’s most disruptive marketing machine. The signs of an online revival are emerging even while advertising in print and broadcasts remain in a slump that has triggered mass layoffs, pay cuts and other upheaval. Internet advertising was just about the only bright spot in the third-quarter reports of two major newspaper publishers, Gannett and McClatchy. Meanwhile the companies still are dealing with steep declines in print ads â an imbalance most analysts predict will take years to address. The harsh reality is that much of the advertising in long-established media, particularly in the classified sections of newspapers, will never rebound to pre-recession levels, said Lauren Rich Fine, a longtime media analyst who is now a professor at Kent State University.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
October, 2009
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October 21st, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Re: HP, Amazon to sell paperback versions of e-books
Saying that you can make paper versions of electronic books is like saying that the internet is available on computers now.
October 21st, 2009 at 5:21 pm
@RW LOL