Internet

Now that Wikipedia is being rivalled by Knol , it seems fitting that Google is being challenged by a new search engine called Cuil. Created by Anna Patterson, a former employee of Google, the new engine, pronounced "cool", is attempting to edge ... Google out of the market by including more Web pages in its search index. The move is obviously the result of Patterson's knowledge of Google's search index, having been previously working on that particular aspect of Google. (Source: pcworld.com ) Cuil claims that it has indexed over 120 billion pages on the net and, unlike Google, can sort results ... (view more)

Reading, at least in the conventional way of leafing page by page through a book, is at risk and the blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of the Internet and (of course) television. The decline of reading has fueled a massive national ... debate not only about 'if' we read but 'how' we read. The debate began in 2002 when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that the number of non-reading adults had increased by 17 million to 89 million adults, roughly one out of three adults. According to the NEA, only 47% of American adults read 'literature', including poems, plays, ... (view more)

Have you ever anticipated an important email, but found yourself in a location where no WiFi service was available? How about having to be away from your inbox for a few days? Just the thought of having all of those messages build up, only to ... extract one or two relevant ones...what a time-waster! Yahoo has revealed plans to help users manage their email accounts by making their popular email service available on the desktop. The program is called Yahoo Zimbra Desktop and will work with Yahoo Mail, AOL and Google Gmail (in addition to other small business email services) in an effort to ... (view more)

Tivo has made a deal with Amazon that could genuinely revolutionize how TV advertising works. Viewers will now be able to order products mentioned in shows with a click of their remote. The system will initially involve chat shows such as Oprah, ... Ellen DeGeneres and the Colbert Report. Whenever a guest talks about a product, such as an author publicising a book, viewers will see a link in the corner of their screens. Clicking on it will either allow them to order it instantly by typing in a PIN code, or to put the item in their Amazon shopping basket to examine on a computer later on. At first ... (view more)

Those who make frequent online posts may not consider the small percentage of blind individuals who may be checking out their material. The fact is, modern technology has allowed blind people to "read" the same content as those with accurate vision ... through the use of on-screen reading software. The downside to these products is high cost, with many assistive software brands selling for $1,000 or more. That's the main reason why most libraries and Internet cafes refrain from offering these kinds of services; many blind individuals are also refusing to pay the inflated costs for the service, ... (view more)

Five years after the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, SPAM still runs rampant across the Internet. According to SpamCop.net for July 24, 2008, there are approximately 3 million SPAM messages milling through the Internet during any given 24 hour period. The ... average active email address will be sent between 300 and 500 spam messages each day. Many, of course, are blocked or filtered, but those numbers are still 5 to 10 times higher than in 2003 when the CAN-SPAM Act first went into effect. The odd thing? According to anti-SPAM activists Spamhaus.org there are 100 known SPAM operators that are responsible ... (view more)

Any Facebook user can tell you that within the past year the social networking site has become extremely cluttered. From ads to icons to applications, users' profile pages have become confusing eyesores for both the owner and visitors. In an effort ... to clean up the site, Facebook has reorganized and altered the design of the sites main pages. The new changes do offer some clear advantages, including offering personal information on a separate tab than the wall application, which lets friends post comments or notes on a user's profile. The clear advantage is a more attractive layout, and less ... (view more)

Facebook has initiated legal action against a German website for allegedly copying its site layout. It's ironic timing as Facebook revamps its own look, with some critics saying it may have itself imitated another website. The court case involves ... StudiVZ, billed as the most successful social networking site in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The name is an abbreviation of the German word for 'student directory'. The two sites do have a history together: at one stage the companies were in takeover talks and early versions of StudiVZ even included a CSS file named 'fbook'. That's pretty ... (view more)

eBay has escaped potentially huge compensation claims after a court ruled it isn't responsible for trademark infringement by sellers hawking counterfeit goods. The case followed complaints by jeweller Tiffany ... (view more)

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has decided to radically expand the choices of domain names that can be assigned. Two new proposals to the regulatory group were recently considered: a) allowing non-Latin characters (e.g. ... Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc.) and b) domains that consist of any letter or number combination up to 64 characters in length. (Source: cbc.ca ) The proposal to consider non-Latin characters will be tested before final approval. The proposal to open up domain names was approved. The change was initiated by concerns that all the meaningful domain names ... (view more)