Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
The Internet Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
March 15th, 2010 | 
Author: The Internet is in the running for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has confirmed. Championed by Wired magazine in Italy, the nomination has been backed by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte.
Italian Wired suggests that the Internet should receive the highly regarded prize for helping to advance “dialogue, debate and consensus.”
The nomination from Wired has been dismissed by some as a publicity stunt — and the support of long-time Wired columnist and investor Nicholas Negroponte is hardly surprising. Although currently seeing some success with the One Laptop Per Child program, Negroponte’s past projects have included such dubious endeavors as as Swatch Internet Time.
The award is to be given to the person (or organization) who has “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” The creators of the World Wide Web — Tim Berners-Lee, Larry Roberts and Vint Cerf — have been nominated, too.
The final nominations will be now be considered by the Committee with the winner due to be announced on October 8, while the awards ceremony will take place in December.
Do you think the Internet should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? Or should it go to a person or organization? Is Wired’s campaign just a PR stunt? Have your say in the comments below.
http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/internet-nobel-peace-prize/
TiVo Introduces New Internet-Connected DVRs
TiVo has updated its offerings, introing two new set-top boxes, the TiVo Premiere and the TiVo Premiere XL, which will finally bring high-definition to the DVR range.
In a nutshell, the web-connected TiVo Premiere boxes offer cable TV, movies on demand (from Netflix, Amazon and Blockbuster) and web videos from YouTube (
). In the coming months, they will also offer music from Pandora (), along with existing services from the likes of Rhapsody () (which will also be available to Series 2 and 3 box owners).
In addition, TiVo is not letting the demand for apps pass it by; the boxes will offer access to more than 1,000 apps from FrameChannel with widgets for news, weather, sports, social networking sites and more.
As far as the difference between the two boxes goes, the Premiere has a 320GB harddrive — said to be good for 45 hours of HD storage or 400 standard, while the Premiere XL has 1TB of storage space and boasts 150 hours for HD and more than 1,000 for SD, as well as some THX tech for all kinds of optimal audio and video reproduction claims.
The boxes cost $300 and $500, respectively, and will be on sale in April. Also due soon from TiVo is a Wireless-N Wi-Fi adapter, and an unusual, slide-out QWERTY TiVo remote that will be offered as optional extras.
The idea of bringing the Internet into the living room is becoming more common as of late. Hardware products such as the soon-to-be-released Popbox and Boxee Box are all about getting Internet content on your television, and Yahoo’s Connected TV offering for web-enabled televisions will bring web widgets to the living room. Heck, Samsung has even introduced an app store for televisions.
These products and innovations, along with TiVo’s newest venture, just serve to demonstrate how attached we are to the Internet (Case in point: 13% of viewers were surfing the web during the Olympics’ opening ceremonies).
http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/tivo-apps-premiere-dvrs/
Posted in DVR, Entertainment, Internet, Tech, TiVo, TV | 
Tags: DVR, Internet-Connected, TiVo | 
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Google acquiring Web-based photo editor Picnik
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.)
Neither Picnik nor Google provided financial terms of the deal in their blog posts.
Flickr uses Picnik by default. It will be interesting to see how Yahoo, which owns Flickr, deals with the new owner of its preferred photo editor.
Picnik is a Webware 100 winner. It competes with Pixlr, Fotoflexer, and Aviary.
Picnik brings photo editing to the browser.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10461627-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Entertainment, Google, Internet, media |
Tags: Google, Picnik, Web-based photo editor |
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Google revamps DoubleClick ad management tech
This is what Google had in mind when it acquired DoubleClick.
Google unveiled its rebranded display ad serving technology Monday, bringing together the DoubleClick DART for Publishers and Google Ad Manager products under a new name: DoubleClick for Publishers. The new ad-management software has a redesigned user interface, links to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and APIs for company developers to build applications on top of the technology.
The idea is to give Web publishers that run “Ads By Google” a better way to control where their clients’ ads appear. Similar work on search ads has made many a millionaire at Google, and the company believes it can give display advertisers the same amount of precision and analytical tools that are available for text advertisers.
Hence the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008. Last year Google unveiled the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which matches ad buyers looking for a discount with ad sellers hoping to fill excess inventory.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10457609-265.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Google Voice finally on iPhone–in the browser
Google’s end run around Apple’s App Store is complete: Google Voice is ready as a Web application.
iPhone owners can now get in on Google Voice with the release of a Web application.
(Credit: Google)
Owners of the iPhone and Palm’s WebOS devices can now get in on the mobile Google Voice experience with the Web app, which will run in the browsers of iPhones with the 3.0 software installed and all Palm WebOS devices, said Vincent Paquet, senior product manager at Google. The application should be available for current users of Google Voice–which is still an invitation-only service–as of Tuesday at m.google.com/voice.
Google Voice allows incoming calls to ring mobile phones, office phones, or desk phones depending on how the user sets their Google Voice profile. It also treats voice mail like e-mail, transcribing voice messages into an in-box where they can be read and deleted.
Last year Google submitted a native version of Google Voice to Apple in hopes of getting the software onto the iPhone. As most will recall, Apple and Google then entered into a semantic war of words over whether Apple rejected the application (Google’s version) or merely continues to study it (Apple’s version). Either way, the FCC got involved and Google Voice remains in App Store limbo, Paquet said.
“We haven’t had any updates regarding our native app for the iPhone, unfortunately,” Paquet said. However, now that the Web app is ready iPhone users will be able to get essentially the same experience that the native app would have delivered, although the user interface will be slightly different because the application will be running in the browser. Paquet declined to comment on whether Google plans to continue the App Store approval process with the native version.
The Web application is another sign of Google’s strong desire to encourage people to think of Web-based applications as a ready alternative to native applications. The company has spoken about its plans for Web development at length, and even plans to develop a lightweight operating system based on its Chrome browser as a sort of proof-of-concept for the Web development mindset.
My colleague Rafe Needleman did a test-drive of the new application, which you can read here.
Posted in cell phone, Google, Google Voice, Internet, iPhone |
Tags: Google, Google Voice, iPhone |
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