[Software News] EU and U.S. strike compensation deal in gambling row
[Software News] Clients Clamoring for Upfront Web Sales
NEW YORK Two years ago, MSN's sales team started talking with retailers in the spring about locking up key ad avails for the holiday shopping season. Last year, those conversations were pushed up to February. Now, according to Mike Hard, MSN's vp, U.S. online ad sales, his team is spending the current holiday season talking about the next one, and in some cases is selling inventory a year or more in advance. ...
[Software News] Dad's sale of pot-smoking son's game sparks Web debate
TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian man who said he sold his 15-year-old son's prized video game, a Christmas gift, on eBay after catching him smoking marijuana has sparked an online debate on who is wrong -- father or son. The unidentified man decided to punish his son by selling the popular and hard-to-find Guitar Hero III videogame he had bought him for Christmas for $90 on the auction...
[Software News] Ticketmaster, NFL ink online ticket deal
LOS ANGELES - Ticketmaster plans to launch a Web site next year where people can resell tickets to pro football games, the latest push by the event ticketing company into the lucrative secondary ticket market. The company signed a multiyear deal with the National Football League that includes branding and promotion for the site, Ticketmaster said in a statement being released Tuesday. Financial term...
[Software News] Virtual rallies and singing wives beckon South Korea votes
SEOUL (Reuters) - It's election time in super-wired South Korea and the young democracy's once giant, and raucous, rallies have gone quiet. Rivals in the December 19 vote to become president of one of Asia's wealthiest societies, now hunt voters by satellite, blogs and mobile phones in a population where almost all adults carry a phone and have easy access to high-speed Internet....
[Software News] Spanish police arrest 63 in child pornography swoop
MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police said on Sunday they had arrested 63 people across the country in five investigations into child pornography being posted, viewed and paid for on the Internet. It is the second huge swoop this year after police arrested 66 people on charges of child pornography in July. Last year, the state attorney said the number of under-age pornography investigations had...
[Software News] Iran shuts down 24 cafes in Internet crackdown
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian police have closed down 24 Internet cafes and other coffee shops in as many hours, detaining 23 people, as part of a broad crackdown on immoral behavior in the Islamic state, official media said on Sunday. The action in Tehran province was the latest move in a campaign against fashion and other practices deemed incompatible with Islamic values, including women flou...
[Software News] Study: Googling oneself is more popular
NEW YORK - More Americans are Googling themselves — and many are checking out their friends, co-workers and romantic interests, too. In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine. That is more than twice the 22 percent of users who did in 2002, but P...
[Software News] Economic woes dampen Web holiday sales
NEW YORK - Economic woes have dumped a lump of coal on the nation's online retailers, which, like their brick-and-mortar rivals, have struggled with an uneven holiday business following a strong official start to the season. ComScore Inc., an Internet research company, reported Sunday that online sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 14 rose 18 percent from the same period a year ago to $22.67 billion, but...
[Software News] Microsoft Gives Scientists Data-Mashing Tips
Microsoft Research's eScience group is helping scientific researchers use database and online sharing tools in ways they might not have imagined, and sharing those experiences with Microsoft product groups that can tweak their software for easier use by the scientific community. Microsoft researchers showed off some of their projects at the American Geophysical Union annual conference in San Fr...
[Software News] Internet Proves a Tool for Greener, Cleaner Commerce
During this holiday shopping season, a heck of a lot of people are using the Internet to indulge their consumer tendencies. Some others, including my wife and I, are trying to use technology in a different way-- to turn against consumerism.Meet The Compact Lisa and I first heard about the Compact, a group of people who swore off buying nearly any new products for a year, on public radio. But the gro...
[Software News] Ron Paul White House bid raises $4.5 million
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, an anti-war libertarian who has clashed with his rivals over Iraq, raised a record $4.5 million in a one-day Internet fund-raising event on Sunday, his campaign said in a statement. Paul's campaign said the Texas congressman had received more than 41,000 donations by early evening, shattering a $4.2 million record in a 2...
[Software News] Nortel files lawsuit against Vonage
NEW YORK - Nortel Networks Corp., the Canadian maker of telecom equipment, filed a lawsuit on Friday against Vonage — claiming that it violated nine patents related to Internet phone services and related features such as 911 and 411 calling and click to call. Nortel spokesman Mohammed Nakhooda said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, countered claims made by Vonage that Norte...
[Software News] Amazon Launches New Database Service
Amazon on Thursday plans to announce Amazon SimpleDB, a new Web service for querying structured data. Adam Selipsky, VP of Product Management and Developer Relations, said that Amazon plans post details on the about SimpleDB on its Web site in advance of a limited beta release. The database service will be made available to a limited number of beta testers in the next few weeks. Those wishing to...
[Software News] Ask better password questions
San Francisco - I just love how many Web sites take my complex, hard-to-guess password and make it as easy to crack as guessing my favorite color or the city of my birth. It seems nearly every Web site comes with user-accessible, self-service, password reset questions, and nearly all of those same sites make resetting or obtaining my password magnitudes easier than actually knowing my correct password. Thanks. ...
[Software News] Amazon.com buys J.K. Rowling tales for $4 million
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc, the Web retailer known for selling books, said it had paid about $4 million to buy a handwritten, illustrated book of wizardry by "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling. Sotheby's on Thursday held an auction for the book called "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," which was mentioned in the last Potter book as having been left to Harry's f...
[Software News] Majoras Refuses to Recuse Herself in Google-DoubleClick Review
Federal Trade Commission Chair Deborah Platt Majoras refused Dec. 14 to recuse herself in the agency's review of the proposed $3.1 billion merger of online advertising giants Google and DoubleClick. Her refusal received the full support of her four fellow FTC commissioners. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy questioned Majoras' impartiality in...
[Software News] Google Develops Wikipedia Rival
Google is developing an online publishing platform where people can write entries on subjects they know, an idea that's close to Wikipedia's user-contributed encyclopedia but with key differences. The project, which is in an invitation-only beta stage, lets users create clean-looking Web pages with their photo and write entries on, for example, insomnia. Those entries are called "knols&...
[Software News] What the Creative in 'Creative Commons' Really Means
At the turn of the millennium, Stanford law professor and cyber-law expert Lawrence Lessig had an idea. In the midst of a Supreme Court case arguing that the latest lengthening of American copyright laws was unconstitutional, Lessig decided that if he couldn't stop the strengthening of copyright law, which was extended by an additional twenty years in 1998, he would help create an alternative...
[Software News] Rap CEO J Prince Sues Apple, BET, And Viacom For Defamation
The CEO of a popular rap record label and an employee have filed a defamation lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the computer maker made available over its iTunes download service an episode of American Gangster that falsely portrays them as murderers. The suit also names as defendants Viacom and BET, which produced and aired the television show. James Prince, who also goes by the name J Prin...