[Software News] Financial Web sites get busy amid turmoil
[Software News] Online pharmacies may face stricter regulation
Online pharmacies will face stricter regulations under new legislation Congress is considering. The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act would ban the sale or distribution of prescription drugs over the Internet without a valid prescription. In order for a prescription to be valid, it must be issued by a practitioner who has examined the patient in person at least once. The...
[Software News] Google ramps up defense of Yahoo ad search deal
Google came out swinging this week in defense of its controversial search advertising agreement with Yahoo. The Internet search giant posted an FAQ on its proposed partnership and its affect on advertising prices on its public policy blog Thursday and followed it up with another posting Friday on it's potential affect on competition. In both cases, Google makes the argument that the de...
[Software News] Comcast: No complaints on new Internet management
NEW YORK - Comcast Corp. on Friday said its new method of managing Internet traffic may sometimes result in slower Web surfing for subscribers who use their cable modem the most, yet the company has not received a single customer complaint in trial runs in five areas. The new system is set to replace the current one, which drew a sanction from the Federal Communications Commission, for all Comcast s...
[Software News] Google co-founder Serge Brin begins blogging
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Google co-founder Serge Brin has started a blog, candidly telling of being at risk for Parkinson's Disease and plugging his wife's genetic testing start-up firm. While Brin is no stranger to news-making webcasts and online press announcements, he made a blogging debut Thursday by sharing personal musings in a post at the Blogger weblogging website Googl...
[Software News] Comcast details changes for managing Web traffic
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comcast Corp has provided U.S. regulators details of how it plans to change the way it manages Web traffic over its high speed Internet network without blocking any applications or content. The move comes after the Federal Communications Commission voted last month to uphold a complaint that Comcast had violated the regulator's open-Internet principles by hindering ...
[Software News] Australian company launches 3D Internet tool
MELBOURNE (AFP) - An Australian company on Thursday launched a free tool it says offers web browsers a world-first opportunity to view the Internet in three dimensions. Melbourne-based ExitReality said its application allows users to turn any regular website into a 3D virtual environment, where an avatar representing them can walk around and meet other browsers viewing the same webs...
[Software News] Yahoo begins radical home page overhaul
SUNNYVALE, California (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc is moving ahead on Thursday with a radical redesign of its home page -- the most heavily trafficked site on the Web -- making changes that give users a personalized view of the wider Web. The Internet media giant is under the gun to deliver on year-old promises to transform Yahoo from a network of more or less insular properties into "starting...
[Software News] Google CEO says ready to move on Yahoo deal
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) - Google Inc plans to move ahead with Yahoo Inc in implementing its advertising search deal and believes that rival Microsoft is behind plans to derail the deal, top executives of the Internet search leader said on Wednesday. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters at a news conference at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters that it an...
[Software News] Amazon tees up content delivery service
Clarification at 8 a.m. PDT: The Amazon.com Web services blog posting was not written by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. He wrote a related blog on the subject. Amazon.com is in the midst of creating a new content delivery service aimed at developers and businesses that it expects to launch by year's end. According to an Amazon Web services blog posted Thursday: This new (and as yet unnamed) ...
[Software News] Morocco scraps blogger's two-year jail sentence
RABAT (Reuters) - A Moroccan appeals court on Thursday cancelled a two-year jail sentence given to a local blogger for disparaging King Mohammed and the royal family, court officials and lawyers said. Last week, Mohamed Erraji was jailed and fined 5,000 dirhams ($626). He was later released on bail pending the appeals court ruling. "The case is not acceptable and the case was aban...
[Software News] Stanford Places Engineering Courses Online
Adding to an ever growing list of free online courseware is Stanford University's "Stanford Engineering Everywhere." Stanford is offering some of its most popular engineering classes free of charge to students and educators around the world, according to the university. "Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) expands the Stanford experience to students and educators online,&quo...
[Software News] Video game industry bullish on Asia despite financial turmoil
SINGAPORE (AFP) - A regional video game expo opened Thursday here on a positive note despite global financial turmoil, with industry players predicting online titles will generate robust growth in coming years. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for 15 billion US dollars of the gaming industry's global turnover of 50 billion dollars, said Seto Lok Yin, assistant chief executive of...
[Software News] Malaysian blogger detained for displaying upside down flag: report
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysian authorities have arrested a second blogger, this time for displaying an upside down national flag on his website, according to a report Thursday. Syed Azidi Syed Aziz, better known as Sheih Kickdefella, was arrested by police late Wednesday under the Sedition Act at his home in opposition-held northern Kelantan state, The Star daily reported. ...
[Software News] Sentence scrapped against blogger critical of Moroccan monarch
RABAT (AFP) - An appeals court in southern Morocco annulled Thursday a two-year jail sentence against blogger Mohamed Erraji, accused of lacking respect for King Mohammed VI in his Internet writings. The appeals ruling in Agadir overturned the sentence by a lower court, finding that certain procedural measures in the country's press code had not been respected. &q...
[Software News] US blogger sentenced to three months in Singapore jail
SINGAPORE (AFP) - An American blogger has been sentenced to three months' jail for accusing a Singapore judge of "prostituting herself," he told AFP on Thursday. "I think I will appeal," Gopalan Nair, 58, said in a brief telephone interview with AFP. An official with the Supreme Court did not provide details but confirmed the sentence, which wa...
[Software News] Finland to offer high-speed broadband for all by 2016
HELSINKI (AFP) - The Finnish government said Thursday it would offer high-speed broadband connections to nearly all Finns by the end of 2015 in a bid to boost productivity, paying up to a third of the cost. "I have estimated that building fibreoptic cable networks in areas where they would not be built commercially will cost around 200 million euros, of which the government cou...
[Software News] Microsoft Visual Studio upgrade eyed
San Francisco - Extensibility is a key focus for Microsoft in the planned "Visual Studio 10" upgrade to the company's software development environment, a blog post revealed this week. The software development platform focuses on four main "pushes," according to a blog post this week by Jeffrey Schlimmer, a program manager at Microsoft. The blog reflects on a presentation deli...
[Software News] Sarah Palin's E-Mail Hacked, Personal Mail Posted
Web-based e-mail users take note: Use strong passwords. The private e-mail account of Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was apparently hacked earlier this week, and screen captures of e-mail messages, family photos, and the e-mail inbox were posted on a Web site. Tracing the Hacker The alleged screenshots were published on the Wikileaks Web site, which publi...
[Software News] Hacker: impersonated Palin, stole e-mail password
WASHINGTON - Details emerged Thursday behind the break-in of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account, including a first-hand account suggesting it was vulnerable because a hacker was able to impersonate her online to obtain her password. The hacker guessed that Alaska's governor had met her husband in high school, and knew Palin's date of birth and home Zip code. Using th...