Technology

Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:

Steve Jobs: iTunes 10 Icon Does Not ‘Suck’  —  While winding down from Wednesday's iPod announcements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs appears to have taken some time to respond to an e-mail criticizing the new look of the iTunes icon.  —  Joshua Kopac, who oversees design work for advertising firm ValuLeads …

Adam Dachis / Lifehacker:

iPhone 3G Speed Test: iOS 4.0 versus iOS 4.1  —  iOS 4.0 was so slow on our 3G, we promptly downgraded after updating.  Earlier this week, Apple announced, among other things, that iOS 4.1 fixed performance on the iPhone 3G.  We put their claim to the test.

coondoggie writes "NASA today said it had picked five experiments that will ride aboard one of its most ambitious space missions to explore the Sun. The Solar Probe, a car-sized spacecraft, is scheduled to launch no later than 2018 and will fly closer to the Sun's surface than any other probe, NASA stated. Ultimately the spacecraft's goals are to help scientists understand why the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system, NASA said." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Agence France Presse:

Google to pay 8.5 million dollars to settle Buzz case  —  SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Google has agreed to pay 8.5 million dollars (US) to settle a privacy lawsuit over a Buzz social networking tool added to free email service Gmail in February, according to court documents.

Tom Neumayr / Apple:

Ping Users Top One Million in First 48 Hours  —  Apple® today announced that in less than 48 hours since its launch on Wednesday, more than one million users have joined Ping, its new social network for music which lets users follow their favorite artists and friends to discover …

An anonymous reader writes "I have an 18-month-old who loves bright screens (TV and computer), loves loud noises, and loves to mash buttons. He targets my laptop with the button-mashing, and I sort of hate having to tell him 'no' when he wants to explore a computer. I was wondering if anyone knows of some fun (and maybe educational) age-specific PC software that also comes with an age-appropriate input device. I've seen those big-button devices in retail stores that seem to just hook up to the TV, and I've also seen some PC software that requires keyboard/mouse input, which does not seem like the right input device for a toddler." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

Google Announces Can't Be Missed Press Event On Search - What's Up?  —  Google's announced a special press event for next Wednesday on search that “you won't want to miss.” What big news could there be?  Let's speculate — but I wouldn't get too excited.  —  Here's what the invite says:

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Brazil may be the country to watch if you're interested in much more consumer-friendly copyright laws (assuming US diplomatic pressure doesn't interfere). As that country goes through a copyright reform process, among the proposals is one that would create fines not just for infringing, but also for hindering fair use and the public domain. Also, there is a big push underway, with widespread support — even from some artists groups — to legalize file sharing in exchange for a small levy (~$1.74/month) on your broadband connection. Of course, one reason why Brazil may be doing it this way is because of the massive success the Brazilian musical genre technobrega has had by embracing file sharing as a way to promote new works, and making money (often lots of it) through other avenues, like live shows." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Public Policy Blog:

Texas inquires on our approach to competition  —  We've always worked hard to ensure that our success is earned the right way — by building great products, not locking in our users or advertisers.  That said, we recognize that as Google grows, we're going to face more questions about how our business works.

An anonymous reader writes "TorrentFreak has shed some light on the dark practice of installing stealth-mode P2P clients during game downloads and using unsuspecting gamers' PCs as 'bandwidth slaves.' The clients operate in the background and largely go unnoticed until problems arise that are caused by overactive uploading/seeding. While the Akamai NetSession Interface and Pando Media Booster are specifically called out, there appear to be other offenders as indicated in the comments left by TorrentFreak readers. A publisher called Solid State Networks is putting out a call for an industry-wide 'best practices' effort to promote transparency, control and privacy on behalf of gamers who are otherwise being abused for their bandwidth without their consent." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

pickens writes "Erik Hayden writes in the Atlantic that children will see endearing portraits of Chewbacca rendered in the style of "Winnie-the-Pooh" in the book of drawings "Wookie the Chew," a tribute to the combined genius of George Lucas, A.A.Milne and E.H.Sheppard, by artist James Hance released on September 1st. Samples from the book are available at Hance's web site. Hance bases his right to parody Winnie-the-Pooh on Fair Use as parody under which certain uses of copyrighted works, which would otherwise be considered infringing, are permissible. Interestingly enough, the rights to the original Winnie-the-Pooh were the subject of an 18-year feud in which Walt Disney corporation fought off a challenge to its ownership of the rights ending in 2009 when a judge in Los Angeles struck out a claim against Disney lodged by the family of Stephen Slesinger, a comic book pioneer who bought the copyright to Pooh in 1930 from the bear's British creator, A.A. Milne. Stories of Pooh's adventures were originally created by Milne in the 1920s, based on a toy bear owned by the author's son, Christopher Robin." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "Analysts are saying that this year will be the first year YouTube turns a profit. From the New York Times article: 'In the last year, the video site has become a significant contributor to the family business at a time when Google, which makes more than 90 percent of its revenue from text search ads, is seeking a second act. Though Google does not report YouTube's earnings, it has hinted that it is hovering near profitability. Analysts say YouTube will bring in around $450 million in revenue this year and earn a profit. Revenue at YouTube has more than doubled each year for the last three years, according to the company.' Of course a little over a year ago we were being told that YouTube was losing around $1.65 million each day. Regardless, when you pay $1.65 billion for a business, you probably don't expect it to take three to four years before you start making your money back." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:

See, YouTube ads can be awesome: A hunter shoots a bear  —  Nice timing.  Just a few hours after The New York Times reported that YouTube's ad revenues have grown to the point that the Google-owned video site will be profitable this year, I spotted a video that demonstrates some of YouTube's potential as an advertising platform.

Dan Levine / Reuters:

Google settles Buzz privacy lawsuit  —  (Reuters) - Google Inc has settled a lawsuit alleging privacy violations in connection with its Buzz social networking service, according to a court document filed on Friday.  —  The settlement filing comes on the same day Google announced changes …

tsu doh nimh writes "Credit card giant VISA International has suspended its business with ePassporte, an Internet payment system widely used to pay adult Webmasters and a raft of other affiliate programs. A number of adult Webmaster forums are up in arms over the move because many of their funds are now stranded. Visa has been silent on the issue so far, but KrebsOnSecurity.com points to an e-mail from ePassporte founder Christopher Mallick saying the unexpected move by Visa wouldn't strand customers indefinitely. Mallick co-directed Middle Men, a Paramount film released in August that tells the story of his experience building one of the world's first porn site payment processing firms, as well as the Russian mobsters, porn stars and FBI agents he ran into along the way. Interestingly, the speculation so far is that Visa cut ties with ePassporte due to new anti-money laundering restrictions in the Credit Card Act of 2009, which affects prepaid cards and other payment card instruments that can be reloaded with funds at places other than financial institutions." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

Texas Attorney General Investigating Google & Antitrust Issues  —  Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an investigation into Google's business practices as they relate to search listings, in particular whether Google is manipulating its paid and editorial results in a way that violates antitrust laws.

jamie sends in a story about an unexpected finding by the Phoenix Mars Lander which has shed new light on experiments done by the Viking landers back in 1976. The Viking experiments found traces of chlorine compounds that were interpreted to be the result of contamination from cleaning fluids on Earth. In 2008, an experiment done by Phoenix found percholates in the soil, which came as a surprise to researchers. After doing tests on similar soil from Chile, a new study has found that those percholates, paired with organic molecules, could very well be the source of the chlorine compounds detected by Viking. While this is not direct evidence for life on Mars, the fact that complex organic compounds can apparently persist in the Martian soil gives researchers a new avenue to pursue while looking for that evidence. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MojoKid writes "NVIDIA has announced an entire line-up of Fermi-based GeForce GT and GTX 400M mobile GPUs, seven in total, and revealed a number of notebook design wins from major OEMs. Like their desktop-targeted counterparts, the mobile GeForce GT and GTX 400M series GPUs make use of technology from NVIDIA's desktop architecture, which debuted in the GF100 GPU at the heart of the company's flagship GeForce GTX 480. GeForce GT and GTX 400M series GPUs are DirectX 11 compatible and support all of NVIDIA's 'Graphics Plus' features, including PhysX, 3D Vision, CUDA, Verde drivers, 3DTV Play and Optimus dynamic switching technology. The GeForce GTX 470M and GTX 460M are the most powerful of the group and target enthusiasts and gamers, while the GeForce GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M target performance-conscious, but more mainstream consumers." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nick O'Neill / All Facebook:

BREAKING: Facebook Now Displaying All Liked News Articles In Search Results  —  Another big upgrade from Facebook: the company is currently testing search results which display articles ranked by likes.  Additionally, the results for searches now shows the results from all around the web based on two things …

Owen Thomas / VentureBeat:

Twitter: 300,000 apps, but none of them matter  —  Twitter CEO Ev Williams posted a blog entry Thursday with an update on the microblogging service's usage, which continues to grow sharply.  More interesting than the numbers, though, was the message written between the lines …

Matthew Moskovciak / CNET News:

Apple TV isn't 1080p and you shouldn't care  —  The refreshed Apple TV sports a new design, Netflix streaming, and low price, but like the old model, Apple's streaming video box is still limited to 720p content.  While that means the Apple TV loses the spec war to competitors like the Xbox 360 and Vudu …

Kamau High / Speakeasy:

Controversial ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ Will Finally Be Released … “Duke Nukem Forever,” a video game synonymous with never being released, is finally being released.  —  The first person shooter about a space marine with a penchant for off-color humor who battles aliens with increasingly destructive weapons …

crimeandpunishment writes "It was the big deal Dell wanted in a big way. But now that it has lost out to Hewlett-Packard in the bidding war it started for 3Par, where does Dell go in its effort to diversify its business and move into the higher-profit area of selling technology to other companies? The company faces significant challenges, largely due to its lower-end focus, and because many of its competitors beat Dell into branching out. One analyst says, 'People see [Dell] as box-pushers'." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jonny Evans / 9 to 5 Mac:

iOS browsing is bigger than Android (6x) and Linux says NetApps  —  Apple's iOS has become the third most popular platform on the Internet with marketshare that's nealry six times larger than Android.  Indeed, iOS is bigger than Linux, says Net Applications.

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Consumer Watchdog is running a 540-square-foot video billboard advertisement in Times Square, New York that shows Google CEO Eric Schmidt as an ingratiating ice cream truck driver who knows everything about everyone and happily offers free ice cream in exchange for full body scans. The group says its goal is to push Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track Me list, similar to the Do Not Call list developed to prevent telemarketers from aggressively calling consumers. 'Do you want Google or any other online company looking over your shoulder and tracking your every move online just so it can increase its profits?' writes the group's president, Jamie Curtis, at the group's web site. 'Consumers have a right to privacy. They should control how their information is gathered and what it is used for.' The FTC's consumer affairs group had no comment on whether the agency is considering creating a Do Not Track Me list." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jamie writes "A grassroots campaign has begun to get Stephen Colbert to hold a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to counter Glenn Beck's recent 'Restoring Honor' event. The would-be rally has been dubbed 'Restoring Truthiness' and was inspired by a recent post on Reddit, where a young woman wondered if the only way to point out the absurdity of the Tea Party's rally would be if Colbert mirrored it with his own Colbert Nation.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "'Always bet on Duke.' It seems he was right about himself, at least. The longest, most storied in-development game in history seems like it's finally going to be released by Gearbox Software sometime within the next year. 'According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing Duke Nukem Forever in late 2009. "Clearly the game hadn't been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created," he says. "The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn't quite make it, and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It's the game it was meant to be." The game is currently expected to ship in 2010 although given its history Pitchford is understandably reluctant to be more specific.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AppleInsider:

Apple now offers HTML5-based movie showtimes, locations  —  Apple has revamped its Movie Trailers page with movie showtimes and the ability to automatically find the nearest theater, all within HTML5, and compatible with iOS devices.  —  The new Showtimes page no the iTunes Movie Trailers …

Nick Saint / Silicon Alley Insider:

BUSTED: Anti-Google Privacy Group Consumer Watchdog Is Tracking Your Clicks With Google Analytics  —  How's this for a little hypocrisy?  —  Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit advocacy group and vocal Google critic, has been a promoting a video that lampoons Google's privacy practices by depicting …

Agence France Presse:

YouTube to turn profit this year: NY Times  —  WASHINGTON — Google-owned videosharing website YouTube is expected to turn a profit this year on revenue of 450 million dollars, The New York Times reported Friday.  —  The newspaper, in an article about the rise of advertising on YouTube …