Technology News

Net Neutrality Bill Calls On FCC to Babysit Isps

Source: PC Magazine
August 3, 2009

Net neutrality took center stage again Friday when several House members introduced a bill intended to preserve the open nature of the Web by asking the Federal Communications Commission to keep a watchful eye on Internet service providers. The Internet Freedom Preservation Act would ban ISPs from blocking, interfering with, or discriminating against lawful applications and devices on the Internet. Those ISPs would also be banned from offering prioritized Internet access or requiring customers to sign up for service other ...

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Ukuleles Have Gone Viral

Source: Michael Ricci
August 2, 2009

Mike DaSilva of Berkeley ended his software career to make ukuleles. Now the waiting list for his instruments is more than a year long.

YouTube videos, online how-tos and social networking fuel the musical instrument's renewed popularity.

Thanks to the Internet, the humble ukulele is pushing its recent popularity well beyond anything that old-time performers Don Ho, Arthur Godfrey or even Tiny Tim could imagine.

From YouTube to manufacturers' websites, from bulletin boards to iPhone and BlackBerry applications that mimic ...

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Pirate Bay Deal Surrounded by Hollywood-Style Headaches

Source: Michael Ricci
August 2, 2009

Global Gaming Factory says it has the money to buy the file-sharing website. But Grokster ex-President Wayne Rosso quit his consulting post abruptly, and legal issues keep developing.

The company that's hoping to turn Pirate Bay into a legal distributor of movies, TV and music says it now has the cash to purchase the online file-sharing hub next month, but it is already embroiled in some Hollywood-style infighting. Swedish Internet cafe operator Global Gaming Factory, which agreed last month to ...

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Robot Band Plays Music, Obsesses About Its Online Followers

Source: All About Jazz
August 1, 2009

Like an aspiring indie band, the Cybraphon has many instruments, plays them on an irregular schedule, likes to have an audience around it — and obsesses over comments on its blog, the number of friends it has on Facebook and how many fans follow it on MySpace. The difference is that it is a handcrafted musical robot and one whose emotion meter swings from delirium to desolation based on its online popularity at any given moment. “The Cybraphon has an ...

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ArtistData Opens Platform to Outside Developers

Source: HypeBot
August 1, 2009

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: For more than a year ArtistData has created tools that help artists from the smallest garage band to the roster of labels like Universal Republic and Rounder enter data once and spread it across multiple platforms from MySpace to concert databases. But understanding that they've solved only one piece of the artist puzzle, ArtistData is smartly opening its API to outside developers who can now create services that integrate with AritstData and its 10,000 ...

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Niche Social Sites Battle Facebook

Source: PC Magazine
July 30, 2009

What do you do when you're a small online social network trying to compete against a behemoth like Facebook? The answer may be to try to carve out a separate path by becoming a niche website for a specific audience base that advertisers, hopefully, want to target. While this is no easy challenge—given Facebook's intention to become everything to everyone—some small social media sites appear to be finding their footing and growing at rapid rates, albeit from a very low ...

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Twitter Unveils New Start Page

Source: PC Magazine
July 30, 2009

The micro-blogging site has once again moved away from its initial mission statement of utter simplicity, cramming a good deal of information onto the shiny new homepage. New additions include a search bar, a list of trending topics divided by the minute, day, and week, and the tagline, “share and discover what's happening right now, anywhere in the world." “Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it ...

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An Early Look at Firefox 4?

Source: PC Magazine
July 30, 2009

Firefox 3.5 just went gold, but that hasn't stopped Mozilla from showing vehemently non-final mockup screenshots of Firefox 4. Of the two design candidates, one bears a striking resemblance to new competitor Google's Chrome browser, with the tab controls way up above everything else. It's a design that Apple tried for Safari 4 beta and then ditched in that browser's final release. Notably, both designs remove the standard menu bar from from the top, following Internet Explorer's lead in this ...

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