YouTube adds automatic subtitles for the deaf
March 5, 2010
YouTube is putting automatic video captions on YouTube videos, using speech recognition software, to help the deaf and hard of hearing. Google-owned YouTube said the latest use of its speech recognition tech is the biggest experiment of its kind online. YouTube said opening its content to those who could not access it in the past should democratise information to "help foster greater collaboration and understanding".
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Apple's HTC attack is a very dangerous game
March 4, 2010
The intellectual property in mobile phones is a mess. Most of it is locked up in a set of cross-licensing agreements between the major players, making it very hard for outsiders to play — except on their terms. If you've ever wondered why there are so few new names in handset manufacturing, one of the biggest markets on the planet, then that is why.
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Picnik Acquired by Google
March 3, 2010
Picnik, which makes an online photo editor, announced on its blog Monday that the company is being acquired by Google. The editor works directly with online photo libraries like Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa Web Albums. Users can also upload files to the service and download them again when they are done. The editing capabilities it offers are a natural complement to a Picasa, even though the technology appears to be a mismatch: Picnik works in Flash, while most advanced Google apps use the slower JavaScript. (Google, however, is working to improve JavaScript performance with its Native Client technology.)
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Success of Microsoft's Botnet Battle Questioned
February 26, 2010
A prominent security researcher today said he doubts Microsoft's take-down of the Waledac botnet would have any impact on spam levels, as the company claimed. "Waledac just is not a hugely prolific spammer," said Joe Stewart, director of malware analysis at SecureWorks and a noted botnet researcher. "So I don't think it's going to affect spam [volume]. What it does do lately..., what it's used for, is to install rogue antivirus software."
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Microsoft shut down Waledac botnet
February 26, 2010
Microsoft has taken legal action this week to shut down the command-and-control network of the Waledac botnet, a notorious spambot that produces an estimated 1.5 billion spam messages daily, pushed out by hundreds of thousands of infected PCs worldwide. A federal judge in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia granted Microsoft's request to cut off 273 domain names believed to be controlling the Waledac botnet. The software giant issued its complaint against 27 unnamed "JohnDoe" defendants believed to be the bot herders. It requested domain name registry VeriSign Inc. to get the .com registered domains shut down.
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YouTube will kill IE 6 support
February 25, 2010
In January, Neowin reported that Google would begin dropping support for IE 6. More evidence of that move has been made apparent as YouTube will no longer support IE 6 after March 13th. Ars Technica, whose readers must still use IE 6, has taken a screen shot showing the warning as posted on YouTube that clearly shows that they will be dropping support for IE 6. The move is a big step forward towards the removal of support for IE 6 as the outdated browser has been a thorn in the side of many developers.
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Yahoo! announces integration with Twitter
February 25, 2010
Yahoo! and Twitter have announced a partnership that will bring real time Twitter updates into Yahoo!'s search results. Yahoo! will be given full access to Twitter's "Firehose", a full feed of public tweets sent to Twitter. In a company blog posting, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced the partnership. "From our perspective, this partnership represents a big opportunity. Tweets may be short, but they have proven over and over again to contain valuable information. Our open approach helps us get closer to providing universal connectivity to a global network of immediate information."
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Google under investigation
February 24, 2010
The European Commission has launched an anti-trust investigation against Google after three online companies alleged that the internet giant’s search functions were penalising their businesses. The investigation comes under the Lisbon Treaty’s “abuse of dominant position” powers and is the first time that Google has been targeted by the European Union.
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Microsoft and Amazon Sign Patent Agreement
February 24, 2010
Microsoft Corp. announced that it has signed a patent cross-license agreement with Amazon.com Inc. The agreement provides each company with access to the other’s patent portfolio and covers a broad range of products and technology, including coverage for Amazon’s popular e-reading device, Kindle™, which employs both open source and Amazon’s proprietary software components, and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers. Although specific terms of the agreement are confidential, Microsoft indicated that Amazon.com will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money under the agreement.
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Operators unite to challenge Apple's apps
February 22, 2010
Twenty-four telecom operators have formed an alliance to build an open platform that will deliver applications to all mobile phone users in an effort to compete with Apple's successful apps store. The move is supported by three of the world's largest device makers -- LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, the telecoms industry body GSM Association said on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. But analysts were skeptical whether so many operators could work together efficiently and noted that it was difficult to compete with the strength of Apple's brand.
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Microsoft's campaign against Google and OpenOffice
February 22, 2010
Microsoft this week launched a campaign to promote among its business customers to use their office applications and management such as the Microsoft Office suite and Exchange professional mailer criticizing known to Google and OpenOffice and trying make clear the many reasons why which their solution is supposedly superior to its competitors. Thus, the software giant, which until recently was the target of comparative-advertising campaigns such as those used by Apple comparing with the Mac-PC decided to do the same with other companies offering office products, including Sun Microsystems and Google.
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reMail Acquired by Google
February 19, 2010
reMail, a clever iPhone app that brought full text, offline search capabilities to IMAP email accounts that iPhones otherwise lacked, has been acquired by Google. More notably, reMail's founder, Gabor Cselle, will soon work for Google, where he started out as a Gmail engineering intern. Does this mean a dedicated Gmail iPhone app is in the works? Is that something you'd like, or does the phone's basic email and Gmail's web app fill your needs?
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Google patches serious Buzz exploit
February 18, 2010
Only a week after the release of Google Buzz, hackers have already found an exploit that allows someone to compromise a user's Google Buzz account, according to ha.ckers.org. The exploit actually lay inside the Google Buzz code, on the mobile (m.google.com) server. Google acted quickly to patch the flaw, with a fix already deployed in a matter of a few hours on Tuesday night. Google later issued an email on Wednesday morning, explaining the situation. The cross-site scripting error, common in web applications, such as Google Buzz, involved an exploit in which an attacker can inject client-side scripts into webpages viewed by others.
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Server Clipboard in Google Docs
February 18, 2010
Bogdan, a reader of googlesystem.blogspot.com, spotted a new Google Docs feature: server clipboard. It seems to be an implementation of Google Cloudboard, an online clipboard that should help you copy content between Google services like Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Docs. Cloudboard should make it easy to copy a spreadsheet in a Google Docs document or copy a Google Calendar event in a Gmail message.
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Facebook Chat now supports Jabber/XMPP
February 12, 2010
Every day people send more than two billion chat messages to each other on Facebook. Today we're making it easier for people to extend those conversations with their Facebook friends to instant messaging clients beyond Facebook.com. Facebook Chat now supports Jabber/XMPP, the open standard for instant messaging. Now developers can integrate Facebook Chat with their Web-based, desktop, or mobile instant messaging products.
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Flickr Is Now 6 Years Old
February 12, 2010
Popular photo-sharing social network Flickr was launched back in February 2004 by a Vancouver-based company Ludicorp. It took one year for Yahoo to acquire Flickr, and among the company’s many acquisitions, Flickr definitely stands as one of the most successful. Being six years old (nearly the same age as Facebook) makes Flickr (Flickr) almost an old guy on the Internet, as many other social networks (Bebo, hi5) have risen and fallen within that timespan. Although its traffic lately isn’t growing as it used to, it’s still doing well, with users sharing billions of photos there.
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Facebook Mobile Now Has 100 Million Monthly Users
February 12, 2010
Facebook has just revealed that more than 100 million of the site’s 400+ million users use Facebook Mobile via their mobile devices every month. The 100 million milestone was hit today, and is almost double the usage the mobile service was seeing just six months ago. The rapid acceleration of mobile usage can be attributed to the fact that smart phones — like the iPhone (iPhone) and Android (Android) devices — are ubiquitous and that mobile browsing has become a phenomenon of its own.
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Opera Mini for iPhone sneak peek
February 11, 2010
Opera Software, maker of the world’s most popular mobile Web browser, plans to reveal Opera Mini for iPhone in an exclusive press and partner preview during the 2010 Mobile World Congress (MWC). Visit Opera’s exhibit in Hall 1, C44, to witness a new way to surf the Web on the iPhone — an experience that Opera promises will be fast, easy to use, and packed with favorite Opera features.
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Chrome browser as PC battle looms
February 9, 2010
Google has taken the unusual step of using real-world advertising to promote its Chrome web browser in Europe ahead of a regulatory change that will make it easier for consumers to switch Web browsers. In a departure from its usual dependence on viral and word-of-mouth marketing, Google is running a billboard and newspaper ad campaign for its Chrome browser in the streets and underground train stations of London, Paris and Amsterdam.
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Google leaps language barrier with realtime translator
February 9, 2010
Googlr is developing software for the first phone capable of translating foreign languages almost instantly — like the Babel Fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. By building on existing technologies in voice recognition and automatic translation, Google hopes to have a basic system ready within a couple of years. If it works, it could eventually transform communication among speakers of the world’s 6,000-plus languages.
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