Internet

Comedian Stephen Colbert's claim to be the Greatest Living American has earned him the honour of Internet "Person Of The Year". The award is all part of the 'Webbys', an annual celebration run by the International Academy of Digital Arts and ... Sciences. Now in their 12th year, the awards cover dozens of categories from best home page to best real estate site. Colbert took the lead prize for running a successful 'Googlebombing' campaign. This involved asking viewers to create pages or post blogs describing him as the 'greatest living American'. Eventually, so many people did this that his ... (view more)

The movie download market got a big boost this week with two major players signalling an end to the gap between DVD and download release dates. Apple has completed deals with most of the large film groups, meaning they can now sell movies through ... the iTunes store on the same day DVDs hit shelves. New releases on iTunes will cost $14.99 while older titles will cost $9.99. Meanwhile, Warner Brothers is to axe its rental-only period for movie downloads. Internet users will now be able to buy a downloaded movie on the same day as it becomes available for online rental. Apple will likely use its ... (view more)

Google now has a secret weapon in the ongoing fight against irrelevant image results: VisualRank. VisualRank is basically an algorithm that blends image-recognition software methods with techniques for weighing and ranking images that look similar. ... You are sitting in front of a computer screen, relieved to have finished a lengthy term paper on wild animals. You decide that adding a picture of a jaguar would be a nifty way to give your title page some flare. You connect to an image search engine and type "jaguar" in the designated box. Suddenly, your screen fills with images of automobiles, ... (view more)

If you want a quick peek into the future of Internet marketing, go to an Ad:Tech show. I went to the 'Ad:Tech Spring' held in San Francisco last week and the future of the Internet appears very bright. First, let me explain Ad:Tech. For 10 years, ... Ad:Tech has been the place to go for brand advertisers, agencies, online publishers, and, well, nerds, if they wanted to find out about who's doing what in the digital marketing arena. This year approximately 10,000 Internet marketers (or would-be Internet marketers) congregated at SFO's Moscone Center to hear papers like "Marketing with Downloadable ... (view more)

Still not sure that China has become a rising technological giant? Perhaps recent news that the Asian country has officially passed the United States in the number of online users will convince you otherwise. Granted, we've been aware of China's ... massive population for a very long time. The country boasts some 1.3 billion citizens, and although it struggled to establish an economy on par with the United States or Britain during the twentieth century, by the turn of the 21st it had clearly arrived amongst the world's economic (and military) super powers. For a good look at China's export ... (view more)

It's usually Linux users who get most passionate about their operating system, followed by Mac advocates. However, Microsoft's plans to axe the Windows XP seem to have uncovered some serious devotees. A petition started by tech journalist Galen ... Gruman now has more than 100,000 signatures from people urging Microsoft to keep the system available beyond the planned withdrawal. As things stand, XP will continue to be available to buy separately (both in physical and download version) until the end of June. Hardware manufacturers can sell machines with XP until the end of the year. While XP has ... (view more)

The man who hoped to mastermind the transfer of the World Wide Web onto mobile telephones has abandoned his project and revealed that 80% of traffic on his system was pornography. Russell Beattie, who launched 'Mowser' (as in mobile-browser) last ... year, says he now realises there simply isn't any serious demand for a 'mobile-specific web' outside of the Far East. The idea of Mowser was to provide versions of ordinary web pages specifically designed for cell phone displays. Users could simply type in the address of the site they wanted to see and Mowser would automatically 'translate' it into a ... (view more)

The image-hosting site Flickr has launched an online video page that appears to be a natural rival to YouTube. However, most analysts think the move has come too late. It's an extension of the search engine wars: Flickr is owned by Yahoo, while ... Google owns YouTube. Though Yahoo already has a video hosting service, it's only available to media outlets and professionals. The new Flickr service will allow anyone to view videos, but only 'pro' members can upload footage. This will cost $24.95 a year, and even then clips will be limited to 90 seconds. That's in sharp contrast to YouTube, which ... (view more)

After weeks of speculation, MySpace announced on Thursday that it would launch a retail music store. In partnership with the three biggest record labels -- Universal, Warner and Sony BMG -- the social networking site will form a new company called ... MySpace Music. EMI, the smallest of the four music companies, has yet to sign on, but is expected to in the coming months. (Source: informationweek.com ) The new company, while a separate entity, will be fully integrated into the existing online platform providing users with ad-supported audio and video streams, DRM-free downloads, and ringtones. ... (view more)

Amazon has launched a new service allowing customers to buy products via their cell phones. Those who've tested it say the service works smoothly...but is a complete waste of time. The scheme works by allowing customers to text the name of a ... product, the ISBN (for books) or the Universal Product Code (the barcode number for other products) to 262966, which spells out Amazon on keypads. They then receive a text message back with the first two products that match the search and text either 1 or 2 to make their selection, or M for more options. First time users will then need to text the email ... (view more)