Internet

Less than a month after Facebook announced its Beacon advertising program, the social-networking company has made a serious retreat from its initial plans. In a statement on Facebook's blog last Wednesday CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a public apology ... for the way Beacon was introduced. "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it," Zuckerberg said. Beacon was Facebook's most recent attempt at finding a way to monetize the increasingly popular web site. The initial launch was announced on November 6, with 44 high-profile companies signed on for the kick-off. Beacon began as ... (view more)

You can make the case that bullying never really ends. You just move from elementary to high school and onto that job where a boss demands this of you while blaming you for that. Bitter as that outlook may be, not even technology seems to be ... stopping bullies from carrying out their abusive behavior. In a recent report, Reuters took a close look at technology, a sphere it deems to be the new frontier in bullying. According to U.S. researchers, nasty tykes are now leaving angry text messages, hateful emails, and conducting cyber gossip about all of their peers. What's the big deal? Most of us ... (view more)

Adobe announced last Thursday that it was partnering with Yahoo! to bring ads to PDF (Portable Document Format). Through an opt-in service, publishers of PDF files can now have relevant text ads appear alongside their instruction manuals, stock ... reports, and press releases. After registering online with Adobe, businesses upload their documents for keyword analysis which matches advertisements with the file. "By partnering with Yahoo! on this innovative advertising service we are creating opportunities for publishers to build new businesses around unique content that previously was just given ... (view more)

Talk about 'An Inconvenient Spoof'; the website for Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth has been breached by hackers. The blog page of climatecrisis.net has been altered to include links to more than eighty pages, each named after a ... different product from an online pharmacy. The products include Viagra, Vicadin and Prozac. (Source: theregister.co.uk ) The links only appear in the page's source code (which tells the computer what to display). They aren't ordinarily visible on-screen to site visitors, so it seems likely the hackers are not intending to lure people directly to their site ... (view more)

The New Jersey Assembly has taken another step closer to passing a law to govern Internet dating. The Internet Dating Safety Act has passed its committee stage (where proposed laws are debated in detail) and will now go to the full assembly for a ... final vote. The law would affect all dating sites with customers in New Jersey. The key requirement of the bill is for sites to inform customers whether or not they run background checks, and whether or not people who fail such checks are still allowed to sign up. This information would appear on every email sent to or from a customer in the state on ... (view more)

In a strange reversal from two summers ago, last week young Syrians sought 'refuge' in neighboring Lebanon. The alleged reason for this exodus? Facebook. In a move to further restrict free speech and political activism in the country Bashar Assad's ... government shut down access to the fast-growing social network. (Source: globeandmail.com ) Advocate Dania al-sharif told Reuters last week that, "Facebook helped further civil society in Syria and form civic groups outside government control. This is why it has been banned." (Source: reuters.com ) Officials were apparently concerned that Israel ... (view more)

Zoho has updated their online word processor Zoho Writer, allowing multiple users to work on the same document whether online or off. For example, a person in New York can now edit a document that was originally created in Paris without having to ... constantly exchange email attachments. All changes that were made offline can later be synched automatically when an Internet connection is found. (Source: tailrank.com ) Although it may seem like a relatively simple upgrade, the new offline feature is ideal for those who constantly find themselves on airplanes, trains, or other areas without ... (view more)

The group behind the regulation of website addresses is planning the first step to a multi-lingual Internet. The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is working to allow top level domains to be registered in languages ... which do not use the Latin alphabet. This is the set of 26 letters, also known as the Roman alphabet, used in languages such as English, French of German. The top level domain is the part of the website address which identifies the type of site (such as .COM or .NET) or the country of origin (such as .CA for Canada). ICANN have launched the project by ... (view more)

Marvel Publishing unveiled Digital Comics Unlimited on Tuesday, a subscriber-based program intended to put its vast collection of superhero stories online. The company dipped its toe into the digital waters by releasing 2,500 past issues featuring ... some of its most famous characters, including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, and the Hulk. As an incentive, Marvel is currently offering 250 free samples on its website, with subscriptions to the entire catalog available for $9.99 a month, or $59.88 a year. (Source: nytimes.com ) The digitization is meant to attract a target ... (view more)

American broadcast heavy NBC recently launched the beta of a new direct-download initiative, NBC Direct , which offers many of the channel's new hits for free download. While functional and attractive, it doesn't hold up to the competition: NBC. The ... catch, in addition to the randomly-placed ads, is that it doesn't make sense when compared to the near-identical NBC Universal web app, Hulu , not to mention other "options". Unlike Hulu, which offers streaming episodes at any time, NBC Direct offers the ability to download episodes directly to your machine (which you can stream during download), ... (view more)