Internet

If you’re not familiar with youtube.com, you’re missing a real treat. Thousands of videos are uploaded by people and shared for your viewing pleasure. Some aren’t so great, and some are plain stupid, but there are some real gems. I’ve gotten to see some music videos that I haven’t seen in years.
But now the [...]

There comes a point in any discussion where it suffers from photon death, for lack of a better term. The discussion, of course, continues long after this point, but it is going to remain limited to something that generates nothing but heat.
We have cliches for this, of course. “Generates more heat than light.” “Beating a [...]

Laurie J. Flynn of The New York Times writes:
A California appeals court ruled Friday that online reporters are protected by the same confidentiality laws that protect traditional journalists, striking a blow to efforts by Apple Computer to identify people who leaked confidential company data.
The three-judge panel in San Jose overturned a trial court’s ruling last [...]

Looking through Google News this morning a couple of articles about Google jumped out at me. When you’re the top dog, everyone wants to take a bite - and it seems there are some hungry people out there. The first one was about a Belgian company filing a lawsuit over search terms offered by Google [...]

An update on my previous post about network neutrality. Yesterday, May 2nd, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced the Network Neutrality Act of 2006. To read the full text of his proposal click here (PDF File). To learn more about net neutrality and what you can do, visit savetheinternet.com and let your Representative in Congress know [...]

It’s no secret that the browser wars are on again in earnest. Look in any forum like Lockergnome’s and I’ll bet you’ll find a thread on the evils of Internet Explorer and how Firefox is a gift from Heaven.
Fanatical followers of a particular piece of software aren’t new. Nearly every anti-virus application has [...]

As we all know, www equals World Wide Web. So it’s not surprising that conflicts come up where the laws of one nation conflict with the laws of another for Internet users. This article at Ars Technica illustrates just such a legal case.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the news lately you might be missing the growing controversy over network (or Net) neutrality. You can read more about it here and here. So what is Net neutrality, you might ask? Well this Wikipedia article gives a good explanation of the term.

Romance blossoms on the Internet, but there is still public concern about the safety of online dating. There is now broad public awareness of the online dating world, and the Internet users who are actively seeking dates have found a variety of ways to pursue their romantic interests online. The Pew Internet Project just [...]

As the pace of modernization accelerates around the globe, so too has computer usage and access to the internet. The latest Pew Global Attitudes poll found substantially more people using a computer and going online now than in 2002. And it is not just the young who are increasing their use of technology; in many [...]

As I’ve stated here before, I love music. I could live without TV, but without music? Never! But the music industry itself is in a sad state of affairs right now. The RIAA just a few days ago issued another 754 subpoenas against file sharers. Sony has found itself in hot water with the public [...]

When was the last time you went to the library? I go every once in a while but if I need to do some research I tend to go online. But if I want to sit down and check out one of the classics the library is my best bet. In most cases it’s free [...]

One of the first things I usually do in the morning is to sit down and read the newspaper. The dog likes to curl up in my lap as I catch up on the comics and the news. It’s a nice way to start off the day but for the most part though I tend [...]

Updated!! See the lower half of the page below:
Matt,
I am in Gonzales, La which is between New Orleans and
Baton Rouge. I have been working at a local shelter
here which is housing 2000 displaced victims of
Katrina. Thankfully, we have turned the corner on this
disaster and the basic human needs of these people are
being met. The American [...]

I don’t understand the problem with allowing an xxx TLD. Doesn’t it only seem logical that having a special place for porn will help protect children, contrary to the Bush belief? I realize that the argument is that they wouldn’t be able to force all the porn sites to us the .xxx but I believe [...]

Ever since I can remember I loved to look at maps. I could imagine standing in the places that I saw on the paper. Before I go anywhere on a trip I’ll pull out the map to get my bearings on the locale. So when I discovered Google Maps a while back I always have [...]

Updating the Google Library entry of last week, the Google Watch.org has obtained a copy of Google’s agreement with the University of Michigan and posted it on the Internet. Start reading the saga here, and for the actual agreement, follow links here. The mystery is, of course, if the entire agreement is so confidential, why [...]

Wired News: Pharming Out-Scams Phishing
It’s hard to tell which end of the security spectrum is advancing faster, the good guys who provide protection from cyber-criminals or the criminals themselves.
The big prize in the Internet scamming world is personal information. Spam and phising have been around for a while, and vendors like Mozilla have even [...]

Yesterday at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Matt Webb, one of the authors of Mind Hacks, which I wrote about in my writing/writers’ blog Writer’s Edge last month, told me that whenever his book is mentioned on the blog Boing Boing, there’s a measurable spike in sales at Amazon. That’s “buzz” in action, electronic [...]

If you wander about the Internet long enough, connections appear, sometimes answers to questions. Last fall I wondered about what Google is going to do with all the databases and information it collects on all the users of its various businesses. Also noted was addition of a sort of ‘zine to Google’s social [...]