Ian Paul

Microsoft has struck another blow in its advertising war with rivals Yahoo and Google. On Tuesday, the Redmond-based company announced it was becoming the exclusive third-party provider of contextual and paid search advertising for The Wall Street ... Journal's network of sites. (Source: microsoft.com ) The Wall Street Journal Online, Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, AllThingsD.com and others will now become part of Microsoft's ever-expanding network; the agreement is expected to bring 20 million unique visitors per month in traffic to the ad platform. "The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is one ... (view more)

A group of hackers has been carrying out threats against the Church of Scientology. The attacks are in response to the religion's efforts to remove a video originally posted on YouTube and Gawker, which featured Tom Cruise praising the attributes of ... Scientology. (Source: canada.com ) Working under the name Anonymous, the group has posted several videos on YouTube in which it threatens to drive the Church off the Internet and out of existence. In the first video, released last week, ominous storm clouds churn over a building (presumably a Scientology office) while a computerized voice delivers ... (view more)

Internet Protocol addresses (IP) are used to identify computers and the actions they take on the Internet. IPs are routinely stored by search companies and other online businesses to help improve search results and provide advertisers with complete ... billing data. While this practice has been questioned before, with Google's pending bid to purchase advertiser DoubleClick, European leaders are taking a hard look at these business practices. Peter Scharr, Germany's data-protection commissioner, believes that IPs are not just a tool for companies to use, but a form of personal identification that ... (view more)

Last month the US Federal Trade Commission approved Google's $3.1 billion takeover bid of Internet advertising giant DoubleClick. In releasing its decision, the FTC stated that the merger was "unlikely to substantially lessen competition" for online ... advertising. (Source: nytimes.com ) With that hurdle behind them, Google has now finds itself engaged in battles before the European Union over privacy concerns. Sophie In 't Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament (MEP), has been fighting to have the European Commission consider the impact that a Google takeover of DoubleClick could have ... (view more)

On Tuesday, January 8 Adam Dabrowski, 14, managed to turn the tram system in the town of Lodz, Poland into his own plaything. Dabrowski was able to rig a TV remote control to change track points causing trams to veer in unintended directions. The ... problems became apparent when one of the operators tried steering his train to the right only to find it veering out of control in the opposite direction, jumping the track and crashing into an oncoming tram. Four vehicles were derailed during Dabrowski's stint at the helm, with twelve people injured. (Source: metro.co.uk ) It didn't take police long ... (view more)

Another year, another black mock turtleneck and jeans! That's right, Apple CEO Steve Jobs again thrilled crowds at Macworld 2008 with his style, and most of all his hardware. Although this year -- by comparison -- was a bit tame, Apple still managed ... to deliver some revolutionary ideas. MacBook Air: An Ultrathin laptop, MacBook Air is 0.76 inches at its thickest point, comes with an 80 GB hard drive, 2 GB of ram, an 802.11n wireless card, and only weighs 3 pounds. The computer also has the smallest Intel chips ever made! The trade-off? It will lighten your wallet by about $1,799. (Source: news ... (view more)

Last week, Apple announced that it will be lowering prices on its UK iTunes store to reflect standardized pricing in Europe. The company currently pays more in Britain than to European record companies in order to sell music. (Source: apple.com ) ... "This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in a statement. "We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing." And what happens if the music labels refuse the price reduction? In the same statement, Apple said it will, "reconsider its continuing relationship in the ... (view more)

Although it's getting a little late for top 5 lists, Darkreading recently released their five coolest hacks for 2007. The stories were chosen for their ingenuity and ability to surprise an unsuspecting public. I've agreed with them on a few of these ... hacks, but we also found some other stuff that was just a little bit quirkier or a little more appealing to the average user. 5. Navigation systems: A vulnerability was discovered that let hackers insert fake messages or shut a nav device down. The weakness was found in the primary satellite system for all traffic information. An attack on the ... (view more)

Sony has dealt a major, and possibly decisive blow to Toshiba in the current HD format wars. On Friday, Warner Brothers announced that it would cease production of the HD-DVD format backed by Toshiba in favor of Sony's Blu-ray. (Source: nytimes.com ... ) The format war is similar to that of the 1980s when Sony was locked in combat with JVC and others as Beta and VHS home video players battled it out for consumer support. Sony's Beta ultimately lost that battle. The current war started shaping into a serious conflict in 2006 when both sides released their first home video players. Despite a lot of ... (view more)

Although it has held on for a long time, the Netscape browser will pass into the great digital afterlife early this year. Tom Drapeau, Netscape's Director, announced in a blog post that AOL will discontinue product support for Netscape Navigator on ... February 1, 2008. After that Drapeau recommends Navigator users switch over to Mozilla Firefox, the popular open-source web browser on which Netscape is based. (Source: netscape.com ) Netscape was a popular browser until Microsoft released Internet Explorer, setting off the so-called 'browser war'. IE eventually won that battle, and Netscape was ... (view more)