President-elect Barack Obama has named tech executives from Google.org and InterActiveCorp to his transition team, according to reports. Google.org's Sonal Shah, and Julius Genachowski, a former IAC executive who also served as chief counsel to former Democratic FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, have both been named to the team, according to news reports.
Craiglist Agrees to Limit "Erotic Services" Listings
The online classifieds company Craigslist said that it had reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general and agreed to tame its notoriously unruly “erotic services” listings. Prostitutes and sex-oriented businesses have long used that section of Craigslist to advertise their services.
Google Walks Away from Deal with Yahoo
Google offered its rival Yahoo a marriage of convenience this past summer: an advertising partnership that gave Yahoo an alternative to selling all or part of itself to Microsoft. That proposed marriage fell apart in the face of opposition from government antitrust regulators, leaving a jilted Yahoo under growing pressure to devise a new growth plan.
Speculation Arises Around Obama's Tech Agenda
When Barack Obama becomes president in January with a strongly Democratic Congress, he'll have the chance to push a technology policy that relies more on government subsidy and regulation than that of his immediate predecessor. In Washington and Silicon Valley circles, betting has already begun on who will be the nation's first "chief technology officer."
Spammers Increasingly Turn to Obama as a Ploy
Within hours of settling the U.S. presidential election, spam seen worldwide began incorporating the name and image of Barack Obama, according to various security vendors. The U.K.'s Sophos reported 60 percent of all spam seen by the lab on the day after the election was in some way Obama related.
Brand Owners Find Faults in Domain Name Expansion
Worried about having to shell out millions of dollars to protect their brands, several major companies are protesting the launch of a slew of new top-level domains -- the suffixes like ".com" that appear at the end of Web-site names. Verizon Communications, Marriott International and New York Life Insurance are among the companies arguing that the new domains could open the flood gates to Internet fraud and drastically increase their costs of doing business online.
Research Supports Link Between Video Games, Aggression
Children and teenagers who play violent video games show increased physical aggression months afterward, according to new research that adds another layer of evidence to the continuing debate over the video-game habits of the youngest generation. The research, published in the journal Pediatrics, brings together three longitudinal studies, one from the United States and two from Japan, examining the content of games, how often they are played and aggressive behaviors later in a school year.
Analyst Expects Rejection of Yahoo-Google Deal
The new search advertising deal between Yahoo and Google is unlikely to win U.S. antitrust approval, and therefore may open the door to a new bid for Yahoo from Microsoft, an analyst said. Under the revised deal the two companies have proposed to the Justice Department, Yahoo and Google significantly scaled back the scope of their agreement, including shortening the length of the partnership to two years from 10, a source said.
Warner Bros. to Release New Films Online in China
In an attempt to make headway against rampant film piracy, Warner Bros. will distribute newly released films online in China. The studio struck a deal with Union Voole Technology in China to offer new movies, as well as those that have never been seen in Chinese theaters, at rental prices ranging from 60 cents to $1.
Mozilla Testing Private Browsing Mode in Firefox
A small, yet big Firefox feature was released to testers of Minefield, Mozilla's testbed application for new browser innovations. The new feature is private browsing, which, When toggled, takes your Web history, user names, passwords, searches, and cookies and bins them the second you close out the window, effectively making it appear that the session never existed.
MPs Want Hacker to Service Time in British Jail
UK MPs are calling for hacker Gary McKinnon to serve any sentence he receives in a British jail. McKinnon faces extradition to the US for breaking into American military networks between February 2001 and March 2002.
Yahoo, Google Revise Ad Deal to Avoid Lawsuit
Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. have sent the Justice Department a revised version of their search-advertising agreement, shrinking its scope as regulators prepare to bring suit against the agreement if a deal isn't reached, according to people familiar with the matter. The new plan, which the online-ad giants submitted over the weekend, comes as the companies face mounting pressure to ditch or revise the pact.
MySpace Offers Legal System for Online Videos
Similar to YouTube's most recent proposition to copyright holders, News Corp-owned MySpace is offering to identify pirated content uploaded by users, insert advertising and share the subsequent fruits with the content's owner. The first benefactor of the new offering, which leverages 'finger printing' technology from Auditude, is Viacom-owned MTV Networks, a noteworthy partner since Viacom is currently involved in a one billion dollar copyright lawsuit with MySpace Video rival, YouTube.
U.S. Official Urges Work to Combat Cyberspace Woes
In two recent speeches that have attracted little notice, Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, has called for a radical new relationship between government and the private sector to counter what he called the "malicious activity in cyberspace [that] is a growing threat to everyone." Kerr said the most serious challenge to the nation's economy and security is protecting the intellectual property of government and the private sector that is the basis for advancements in science and technology.
State Department Warns of Passport Breaches
The State Department said it has warned nearly 400 passport applicants of a security breach in its records system that may have left them open to identity theft. The department has so far notified 383 people -- most of them in the Washington, D.C. area -- that their passport applications containing personal information, including Social Security numbers, may have been illegally accessed and used to open fraudulent credit card accounts, spokesman Sean McCormack said.
French Senate Approves Plan to Kick Pirates Offline
French plans to throw persistent pirates off the net have got closer to becoming law. The French Senate voted overwhelmingly in favour of the law, which aims to tackle ongoing piracy of music, movies, and games online.
Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman Fighting Cybersquatter
Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, hasn't said whether she will run for governor of California in 2010. But the woman who guided the growth of one of the Internet's biggest success stories has run into an early online stumbling block: a cybersquatter has snatched up a series of potentially valuable domains such as whitmanforgovernor.com, meg2010.com and whitman2010.com.
Google's Growth Fuels New Concerns About Privacy
Perhaps the biggest threat to Google Inc.'s increasing dominance of Internet search and advertising is the rising fear, justified or not, that Google's broadening reach is giving it unchecked power. Increasingly, as Google burrows deeper into everyday computing, its product announcements are prompting questions about its ability to gather more potentially sensitive personal information from users.
Illegal Copies of Microsoft Windows 7 Put Online
The pre-beta version of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system released to developers at the Professional Developers Conference has already made it onto prominent BitTorrent sites, where thousands of enthusiasts around the world are currently downloading it. Well-known BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova were at the time of publication Friday hosting multiple downloads of the newly aired operating system -- both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
Suit Claims RIM's BlackBerry Software Infringes
Mformation, a maker of mobile device management software, said that it has sued Research In Motion for patent infringement. According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California, RIM is infringing on two of Mformation's patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 6,970,917 and 7,343,408, by making, using, and selling RIM's BlackBerry devices and their management software.
