Google Leads August Search Rankings
ComScore's monthly rankings for America's leading Internet search providers were announced this afternoon, and it may not be much surprise that Google continues to top that list by a substantial margin. For the month of August, Google handled 6.8 billion US queries, up by about 200 million from July.
While Yahoo handles about a third of Google's volume to US Web users, its traffic loss for the month was not dramatic - only 50 million queries. Between July and August, MSN sites lost about 110 million queries.
Ex-Ramone Wants to Sedate Digital Sales
Richard "Richie Ramone" Reinhardt filed a lawsuit on Friday, demanding $900,000 in royalties for songs purchased on the Internet by fans.
The Ramones, considered by many to be the founding fathers of the punk rock movement, helped define the harder side of late 1970s and early 1980s rock and roll. The group formed in New York in 1974 and despite several lineup changes, played strongly and toured the world for the next 22 years.
Aussie Parliament Wants To Tighten Net Censorship
Australians may soon find some websites inaccessible thanks to a new piece of legislation making its way through the country's Parliament.
CENSORING THE 'NET- The bill would further censorship provisions already in place by the federal government. Currently, the Australian Communications and Media Authority have a 'blacklist' of sites that could be blocked from view inside the country.
First Test of GPL in US as BusyBox Developers Sue Monsoon
In what their lawyers are characterizing as the first test of the legal mettle of the General Public License in the US, the developers of a multipurpose UNIX-style utilities package have sued Monsoon Multimedia - which makes a competitive product to SlingBox called Hava. Their claim is that Monsoon redistributes their BusyBox utilities as part of Hava's software, without also distributing the source code along with it as the GPL mandates.
It is an extremely simple case, at least as laid out by the Software Freedom Law Center, which is pursuing the case on the BusyBox team's behalf.
Thailand Looking to Block More YouTube Videos
Thailand's on-again off-again relationship with YouTube has taken another bad turn, as the government said it will go to court to have two videos blocked that it says were a threat to national security. The videos are actually a two-part series, and run about 17 minutes in total. It accuses former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda of leading a government coup that occurred in September 2006, not the generals who claim to have headed it.
Supporter's of Tinsulanonda's rivals have often accused the former chief of such an act. However, the Thai government sees the talk as confusing to citizens and that it could cause public unrest. Thus it it moving to ban the videos, and is asking ISP's to voluntarily block links while it seeks a court order. YouTube could not be reached for comment on the latest dustup.
EarthLink Takes a Step Back From Helio
EarthLink confirmed Friday that its partner in Helio, SK Telecom, had agreed to invest up to $270 million in the wireless venture.
The new funds will help bail out Helio, and relieve EarthLink of its responsibility to fund the company. The move is likely a part of the ISP's overall strategy to cut or eliminate spending in areas where return is not substantial.
Profile: HP's Blackbird 002 and the Ideal of the PC
It seems an eon has passed since the PC could be considered a thing of beauty. Even two decades ago, during the rise of Macintosh and the highly animated duel between the artful Commodore Amiga and the 8 MHz Atari ST, the computer itself, sitting there on the desk turned off, wasn't expected to be something of awe. Its beauty was in its function. Back then, "PC" was a brand whose very meaning was practicality, frugality, conservativeness. The personal computer may or may not be an art medium, but it has rarely in its history been an art form.
Still today, the computer is not universally recognized as something that elicits emotion, like a sports car or a tailored suit or even a simple sculpture. Even Apple restricts an iMac's beauty to its "interface," and hides its central components behind its widescreen monitor. When we emote about computing, more often than not, it's about how it aggravates us - or rather, how its manufacturers and software publishers aggravate us. Our feelings remind us constantly not of what the computer has evolved into but what we wish it could be.
Nokia Announces New UMA Phone
Nokia's Newest unlicensed mobile access phone, the 6301 was unveiled in Helsinki today.
The world's number one maker of cellular handsets said that this model will be shipping in Europe in the fourth quarter of 2007. As their fourth UMA-enabled device, the estimated retail price is €230 ($322USD) before subsidies and taxes.
Firefox Update Addresses QuickTime-triggered Vulnerability
Users of Firefox yesterday began receiving notices of the availability of version 2.0.0.7, which the Mozilla organization said addresses a vulnerability involving Apple's QuickTime plug-in. In BetaNews tests of the new version this afternoon, the vulnerability in question appears to have been fully patched.
In a recent permutation of what might have been a very old, very open hole, a malicious Web page was capable of spawning a new running copy of the default Web browser, and then - if that browser was Firefox - trigger it to try to load QuickTime by pointing it to a file whose type QuickTime is known to handle (typically .MOV files). Whether or not that file actually existed, the trigger could be crafted to contain JavaScript code that ran unchecked, possibly enabling the execution of any kind of binary code.
Steve Jobs Subpoenaed in Apple Options Case
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission to testify in a options case against his former general counsel Nancy Heinen, sources say.
The subpoena was issued last month, and does not target him, according to Wall Street Journal sources. Instead, it focuses around Heinen's own actions in falsifying company documents, as well as tampering with Jobs' and her own options.
Orange Selected as iPhone Supplier in France
Although no official announcement has come from Apple itself, Orange on Thursday said that it had won the contract to bring the device to its customers in France. Like the German deal, no pricing details were given, however the company also declined to specify any launch date. In all likelihood, the phone would ship there on November 9, as that is the date that has been selected for both the UK and German launches.
Apple has shipped one million of the phones here in the United States, and has activated anywhere from 750,000 to 900,000 of them according to BetaNews estimates. Whereas it was originally planning to ship about 1.5 million Phones next quarter, it plans to attempt to ship nearly double that. This moves the target number of shipped phones from 3.6 to 4.8 million for the entire year.
NBCU to Test Its Own 'Direct' Download Service
NBC Universal announced today it's scheduling the testing of its own "NBC Direct" online download service this October. You might be thinking, didn't NBCU already plan something like that? Indeed it did, in a joint venture with News Corp. So this new service may need a different premise.
The Direct service won't be offering downloads to own, but just to watch - temporary downloads, but with a shelf life of one week. And each program is embedded with advertisements that cannot be skipped.
The Tech Industry Gears Up for the Holidays
BetaNews was on hand in New York City Wednesday night for the annual Holiday Spectacular product press preview. While there was certainly a dearth of new and compelling products to make their debut at the show, there were a few bright points.
Among those were a new line of techno-centric products from the same company that brings you the Swiss Army Knife, 3-D HDTV, and a device that uses the sun to power your cell phone. Check out the photo gallery to see what could be hot this holiday season.
HDi Logo to Appear on Toshiba HD DVD Players
Staking its claim to a chunk of HD DVD technology, Microsoft announced today its HDi logo - representing its version of the interactivity layer of the HD DVD format - will appear on all Toshiba brand HD DVD players made from this point on, as well as on selected Universal and Paramount high-definition discs.
"Given some confusion over what qualifies as true interactivity," a Microsoft spokesperson stated today, "Microsoft wanted to officially logo the technology as a quality assurance."
PS3 'Home' Calls in Late: Sony Delays Virtual World Until Spring
Sony had been actively demonstrating its 3D online user community Home recently, ramping up excitement around a release initially planned for later this year. But Thursday at the Tokyo Game Show, in his first public appearance as CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, Kazuo Hirai announced that "Home" would be delayed until next spring.
Hirai said Sony is waiting until it can offer what would be a "totally satisfying" experience for its customers, and that he'd prefer to see it spend more time in development.
© 1998-2026 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.