• Firms Form Anti-Spyware Consortium
    A consortium of academics, consumer advocates and technology firms have banded together to fight spyware, adware and any other software that could be deemed malicious, launching an informative Web site that highlights the questionable acts of certain software makers. Called The Stop Badware Coalition, the group aims to keep users from unwittingly downloading programs that serve pop-ups, spread viruses, or steal personal information. Harvard University's Berkman Center, the Oxford Internet Institute, and Consumer Reports are the principal partners of the initiative, which has also received funding from Google, Lenovo and Sun Microsystems. The Web site, www.stopbadware.org, will be the focus …
  • Big Loss For BlackBerry Maker RIM
    The Supreme Court has decided not to hear the patent infringement case involving Research in Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail device, and NTP, the patent holding firm. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer set Feb. 24 as the date when he would make a ruling about a possible injunction on BlackBerry's wireless e-mail service. This could block e-mail use among BlackBerry's estimated U.S . user base of 3 million device owners. Analysts think there's little chance U.S. BlackBerry service will be shut down, according to the Associated Press; they expect RIM will either settle the …
  • Yahoo! Search: "We're In It To Win"
    Earlier this week, Yahoo! disappointed investors and consumers when CFO Susan Decker told Bloomberg News, "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share." Her wayward comments caused the company to come out and say it hasn't in fact thrown in the towel by conceding the search race to Google. "We're in it to win" was the message from two Yahoo! Search executives on the company's search blog yesterday. They said their commitment to search is reflected in its hiring of talented engineers and its research, innovation and …
  • The King of All Digital Media
    Following the $7.4 billion merger between Disney and Pixar, Steve Jobs is the new King of All Media, according to Smart Money columnist Monica Rivituso. She says the move places Jobs in pole position to control the digital convergence between entertainment and technology. On the tech side, the Apple Computer CEO has the iPod, which has now morphed beyond being a mere digital music device to accepting video, too, and the "cool factor" in its PCs and laptops. On the content side, Pixar Studios, Jobs' other daytime job, is "arguably the envy of every studio head in Hollywood," she says, …
  • Google Censors Google China
    Google is the latest big media company to censor its content in China, holding to Beijing's free speech restrictions in exchange for greater penetration in the Chinese market. By adding the Chinese Web suffix ".cn" to Google's Chinese language search engine, Google hopes to gain greater penetration. Until now, Chinese users have encountered long delays or forbidden access messages on Google's site when entering certain terms, due to free speech barriers set up by the Chinese government. These delays have hampered Google's efforts to expand in China, the Internet's fastest growing market. In fact, Beijing-based Baidu.com actually runs China's most …
  • Consumers Think Twice Before They Search
    People are starting to think twice about what they type into the search box. The New York Times talks to a woman who found a story on the BBC's Web site about a British politician who was caught with a "rent boy"--a young male prostitute. The woman, not understanding what a rent boy was, looked it up on Google and became immediately afraid upon finding the answer that she could be held accountable for child pornography by the government. She'll be fine, of course, but her story underscores the effect the government's aggressive efforts at obtaining user data have …
  • On Media Convergence and the Rise of Broadband Video
    I love this line in today's Times article about media convergence: "Yet for all the time that media executives had to prepare for convergence, they are now scrambling to figure out what to do about it." Amen. All this talk about interconnectivity, home media centers, wireless this and that, and I can't even buy the specific cell phone charger or the specific USB cable I need for my camera at a local electronics store. Convergence is finally possible in a technological sense, but now, instead of expanding our media horizons and making our lives better, it's become time-stuck again, …
  • The Real Reason Google Won't Hand the Data Over
    Google's refusal to cooperate with the U.S. government's request for user search data is probably motivated more by the desire to cover its own ass than to protect user privacy, according to a Forbes.com report. The government is seeking a week's worth of Internet search queries from a list of 1 million random Web address in an attempt to build a case that says Internet porn is easily available to minors, which in theory creates the need for the Child Online Protection Act. America Online, Yahoo! and Microsoft have all agreed to hand over the data, which they have assured …
  • U.S. Tops Other Nations in Spam
    The U.S. is responsible for a quarter of the world's spam, according to an antivirus company. That figure is far lower than it's been in the past, by the way, but we still lead all other countries in total spam delivered. According to Sophos' data, the U.S. accounted for 24.5 percent of spam delivered in the last three months of 2005. This was followed by China, with a high 22.3 percent, and South Korea, with 9.7 percent. The numbers are based on a scan of the mail caught by Sophos' spam traps. The U.S. figure is a significant drop from …
  • Are New Media Revenue Models Pushing Ad Sales To The Margins?
    The Hollywood Reporter's Diane Mermigas, reporting from the National Association of Television Program Executives conference, says reorganization and the mining of new media revenue streams were the topics at the forefront of this year's meeting. She says that the next big story will be the financial impact the changing media landscape has on companies' balance sheets--particularly for content providers. Ultimately a positive thing, this change will define the value of content in the digital age in terms of what distributors and consumers are willing to pay, what it costs to produce, how much and what kinds of advertising are acceptable …
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