Internet

Facebook's Terms of Service vote wrapped up yesterday, and although participation fell far short of what the social networking company had hoped, by a vote of three-to-one users supported its new TOS. Earlier in the week, Facebook attempted to right ... earlier wrongs over its Terms of Service by throwing the issue open to a massive vote. Controversy erupted earlier this year when the site tried to introduce a new policy that could have left accounts in Facebook's possession, even if a user terminated his or her association with the database. Some even feared Facebook would take users' personal ... (view more)

It's estimated that publicity on the Oprah Winfrey show may have brought more than a million new users to Twitter. The site's sometimes-shaky servers survived the invasion, though some feel its 'trendy' and 'cool' status took a hit from a show ... associated with middle-aged ladies. Winfrey joined the micro-blogging site last Friday and posted her first message (known as a tweet) during the show. It capped a week of celebrity-led publicity about the site as Ashton Kutcher beat CNN in the race to be the first users on Twitter with more than one million followers. There's no way of telling exactly ... (view more)

Not so long ago, Facebook took some serious slack for its decision to alter its privacy policy. The new scheme, many worried, could have allowed third parties to tinker with user accounts even after they had been terminated. Thankfully, Facebook ... backed off and now it's turning to users for an alternative. The original debate surrounded Facebook's terms of service policy. Early in February the social networking giant quietly unveiled a rather cold-hearted plan giving the site ownership of its users' accounts forever -- even if they decided to cut ties with the page. Understandably, users raged ... (view more)

What's the best way to make sure those who use the most bandwidth get charged the most money? How about a tiered, "consumption-based" billing system? That was Time Warner's plan for its services -- that is, until huge protests at the national level ... down forced them to scrap the idea. Rising Network Costs Rising network costs are becoming a problem for providers like Time Warner, who struggle with the increasing popularity of downloadable songs, TV shows, and movies -- along with a deepening economic depression. As Torrents and peer-to-peer (p2p) protocols continue to climb in popularity, the ... (view more)

A trio of undergraduate students at the University of Richmond have developed a custom search engine that will be used to help feed those in the developing world . The three students have created Hoongle.org, a custom Google search engine that ... promises to donate 20 grains of rice per search to schools located in impoverished countries. The search engine has already generated more than 8.5 million grains of rice (about 4,000 meals) since it was introduced this past September. (Source: nytimes.com ) Of course, online clicks alone cannot put food in the mouths of people overseas. The Hoongle ... (view more)

How much of your time does Facebook consume? According to a recent study, most college students that use Facebook also admitted to lower grade point averages than those who said they did not have an account on the popular social networking site. ... It's pretty obvious that most 9-to-5 employers feel Facebook wastes time, decreases productivity, and generally hurts the work ethic of employees. Thus, it's not particularly surprising that this recent Ohio State University study found that of those student participants who used Facebook, grade-point averages (GPA) hovered around 3.0 to 3.5 -- ... (view more)

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an entity that oversees the online address system, recently approved a motion that would allow the standard eighteen suffixes to be joined with any other ending from .a to .z. For ... example, those wanting to research the history of Mickey Mouse might visit a website ending in '.disney.' The possibilities are seemingly endless, which is concerning a number of people. If you are anything like me, you sometimes find it difficult to remember if a particular website ends with a '.com,' '.net,' or '.org.' Now the trouble with accurate ... (view more)

Well, you made it through another April Fool's without being convinced your mother-in-law was moving in, your wife left with the mailman, or the Pittsburgh Pirates were Vegas' pick for the 2009 World Series. However, there were some pretty nifty ... jokes played this year, and we'll go over a few of them here. Some are simply ridiculous. For instance, it's unlikely Toshiba will fool anyone with its Petbook K9, which it calls the world's very first notebook for canines (and I don't doubt it). The tech giant's tag line for its goofy new device? "Playing fetch is so last year." It sure sounds like a ... (view more)

Disney has taken one step closer to posting many of its popular ABC and ESPN shows on YouTube. For now the deal includes only "short-form video content," but hopes are that the media giant will eventually begin shifting popular TV series to Google's ... iconic video site. It also appears that YouTube mainstream media concerns over copyright conflicts are beginning to dissipate. Despite a recent expedition by Warner to censor any videos using its music, previous deals with studios like MGM demonstrate that YouTube is now being taken very seriously by Hollywood and silver screen heavyweights. ... (view more)

If you asked people what the most time-saving mode of communication is, many would choose email. But when you consider all of the wasted hours spent ridding your inbox of spam , the choice is not so clear. Sure hundreds of spam filters exist, but ... these programs leave many people wondering if an important message has been flagged and removed from their inbox unbeknownst to them. While spam does complicate the entire emailing process, a number of products also exist to help manage junk mail without losing a single piece of important information. Spam-Free Emails Spam Arrest does a great job ... (view more)