AMCP Tech Blog

Microsoft and the New York Times announced a deal on Friday that would allow NY Times stories to be read within Windows Vista, Microsoft's new operating system set to hit shelves in January 2007. The new software, called Times Reader, will allow users to read and download electronic versions of the newspaper, as well as view them on a portable device. Times Reader will make use of one of Windows Vista's new features, the Windows Presentation Foundation engine, to display the fonts and links to other websites within Vista. The new software will allow the NY Times to replicate its looks, including their fonts and layouts. The prototype was unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors by Bill Gates. Gates showed the software downloading content on a tablet computer. Microsoft's new Times Reader should be ready to begin public testing in several weeks.

It's official. The Del.icio.us team just rolled out a new feature in their bookmarking service that will allow users to share their bookmarks. Dubbed, "Your Network", it will allow you to add someone to your network by either visiting their Del.icio.us page, or by your network page itself. Once you add someone to your network, the service will allow you to keep track of their latest bookmarks.

Now Del.icio.us can now truly be known as social bookmarking. It's great that they now offer such a feature, because I'm sure it'll attract even more users. Many people shy away from MySpace because of all the reported killings and misfortunes associated with the social networking website. Not only is this a very intelligent move by Yahoo! (Since they now own Del.icio.us), but it shows that they can appeal to different markets by offering different services aims at those markets. For example, Yahoo! already offers a bookmarking service, known as MyWeb 2.0, and they already offer a social networking service, called Yahoo! 360. This move is sure to put Del.icio.us on the map against competing social bookmarking services.

And, as John Battelle says, it's Firefox! The spot under the search box on the sparse Google homepage is probably the most popular bit of web real estate in existence. Yesterday IE users living in the United States began to see a medium-sized advertisement for "Firefox with Google Toolbar" under their searchbox. If even 1% of the people who see the ad actually download Firefox and use it, Firefox will recieve millions of users simply because of that one ad. Why is Google going out of its way for Firefox? Google is the default search engine in Firefox, and every user that downloads Firefox probably clicks on an AdWords ad at least once -- which makes Google's homepage space investment worth it. Of course, it also strikes a blow for Open Source software -- and against it's greatest rival, Microsoft. This is not the first time Google has helped Firefox out -- a few months ago they announced a program that would allow AdSense users to make a dollar (directly from Google's pocket) every time a visitor to their site downloaded Firefox with the Google Toolbar via their referral link. However, this is probably a much bigger deal. Space on the Google homepage, even for only a single day, is probably worth millions of dollars. Google is driven by money, but what sets them apart from other companies is the fact they've chosen a good destination.

Nintendo just released the name behind their next generation gaming system, their answer to the Xbox 360 and PS3; Nintendo Wii. Previously, Wii's codename was the "Revolution", which many thought would be the finally name. The Nintendo Wii homepage has been updated with the following announcement:

Introducing...Wii. As in "we." While the code-name "Revolution" expressed our direction, Wii represents the answer. Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everybody else. Wii will put people more in touch with their games ... and each other. But you're probably asking: What does the name mean? Wii sounds like 'we,' which emphasizes this console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. ust Wii. Wii has a distinctive "ii" spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play. And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd. So that's Wii. But now Nintendo needs you. Because, it's really not about you or me. It's about Wii. And together, Wii will change everything.

Many people on Digg and other forums have expressed their distaste in the name choice, however, Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo America's Vice President, defending the name choice explaining that people will get used to it. He used the launch of Google and the iPod as examples of strange names that ultamitly grew into industry standards. I personally thought the Revolution would have been a great name. Why? It clearly explained Nintendo's aim to transform their industry and their goals. How about you guys out there? How do you feel Nintendo is doing with their new system's name?

When Google Inc. IPOed (I highly doubt that you could find that one in a dictionary) in September 1998, they did so with a very simple strategy. They would put advertisements on their already-popular search engine, and make money off of them. But, despite its young age, the company was Google, and therefore the company was iconoclastic. The ads would not be the normal regimen of pop-ups and banners. Text ads were better, but they were not eye-catching, and very few advertisers were willing to pay per impression for an ad that users might not even look at. Google looked at its options and came up with a brand new type of advertisement: the now-famous AdWords advert. The new ads were text-only, no graphics. To make up for this, Google used its brilliant search algorithms to ensure that the ads were only displayed beside relevant searches, and made the program into a pay-per-click program: the advertisers were only charged if the user actually clicked on the ads. The ads were very popular, and have made Google a great deal of money. However, there's one big problem, and it's called click fraud.

Click fraud is a very simple type of fraud, but the damage it can cause is very great. The most basic definition of click fraud would probably be a click by a user that has no intention at all to patronize the site whose ad he is clicking on. But there are several different varieties of this type of fraud, and there are several different reasons for committing click fraud. The reasons are simple and obvious: helping yourself or hurting a competitor. In order to help yourself via click fraud, you would use Google's AdSense program to put ads on your website, then click on them yourself and encourage other people to do so in order to make money for yourself. Inorder to hurt a competitor, you would click on their AdSense ads in order to cost them money. These two methods of profiting off of click fraud present a great problem for Google.

The vast majority (and I really mean that when I say it: the figure is something like 90%) of Google's revenue comes from AdSense and AdWords, and any threat to their success is a big threat to Google's success. So Google has put in place several methods to prevent click fraud from hurting them and their advertisers. Since they have not published precisely what their methods are (so as to not provide any information to people who would use it to play the system) some of the following could be inaccurate, but I think that it is pretty close to the mark for the most part. If a certain IP address clicks on AdSense or regular search ads a certain amount of times, the IP address is registered as fraudulent, and the clicks are voided. An AdSense site can draw suspicion if it receives clicks from a known fraudulent IP address.

If an AdSense site gets, say, twenty five clicks from the same IP address within the same period of time, it could be banned from the program. Depending on the size of the site in question (I mean in relation to AdSense: how many valid clicks and impressions it receives), the amount of fraudulent clicks it needs to get in order to be banned goes up: for instance, a site that receives five clicks a day might need to receive 25 fraudulent clicks to be banned, while a site that receives twenty clicks a day might need to receive 100 fraudulent clicks to receive the same punishment.

These methods of preventing click fraud are sensible -- but there is yet another form of click fraud that cannot be prevented by them, because they are the reason for its existence. It is yet another way to harm a competitor. It's not well known, but it works: say you're the owner of a weblog, and there's another weblog that competes with you and takes away your readers. You could log on to a library computer and click on the competing blog's ads hundreds of times, and get them banned from AdSense. Or if it didn't work the first time, you could try it again and again from different computers and different IP addresses, until Google banned them. And there is no appeal to an AdSense ban. You're banned for life.

I think that those who say that Google will die because of click fraud are wrong, but I think Google needs to revise the way it handles click fraud, use human beings more and insensitive, unintelligent algorithims less, and create a way for banned AdSense users to appeal the ban. AdSense is undoubtedly the best way to make money via advertising, and many small blogs rely upon it to make money. By creating the anti-fraud methods that it has, and refusing to create an appeal process (it's nice to actually speak to a real human being once in a while), Google has handed the lawbreaking segment of their users a powerful weapon that could be used against these small weblogs.

Please note that a lot of this article is my opinion, and management takes no responsibility for the views expressed in this article. For more information, see our Legal Code.

Earlier this week, Symantec warned of new vulnerabilities in their Scan Engine, a programming interface that allows third-party companies to use Symantec scanning technology in their software. Symantec has marked the flaws as a "medium risk".

In an advisory issued by Symantec, the company explained that one of the flaws lay in the authenticating Web-based logins. According to the advisory, anyone with knowledge of the underlying communication mechanism could control the Scan Engine server. The other flaw allows the program to perform a "man-in-the-middle" attack, when the hacker is allowed to access information without letting the user know that the link between them has been compromised. However, a third flaw was found. This final flaw allowed hackers to easily access information in the installation directory of the program.

According to BetaNews, the vulnerabilities only affect the Scan Engine and none of their desktop software. Symantec is urging users to upgrade to the new 5.1 version. Although no exploits have been found, there are proof-of-concept code that has been published.

Hello, everyone. I've returned from my long absence to review a gadget which is, if not one of the newest, at least one of the coolest of it's type in existence. It's called the Razr V3, and it's a cellphone made by Motorola Corp. The Razr V3 was released in November 2004, and it was an instant success. It rejuvenated Motorola's sales and it's public image. The Razr became to cellphones what the iPod is to Mp3 players and what the Hummer H3 is to sport utility vehicles (though I have not yet had reason to complain about my slim new phone's fuel ineffiency). The public response to the Razr was enough to cause Motorola to create a sister model, the Slvr (which, despite the fact that it is slightly thinner than the Razr and runs Apple Computer's very popular music software, iTunes, is not a flip-phone and arguably lacks the Razr's "cool factor"). I'm probably overemphasizing the Razr's popularity: everything I've just said can be summed up in three words: It was a hit.

The Razr weighs in at a svelte 95 grams, and its dimensions are 13.9 x— 53 x— 98 mm. It is very compact, with only one opening (the mini-USB port at the bottom-left of the phone that can connect it to a computer and also serves as a charge port) and no external antenna (the antenna is concealed at the bottom of the phone, in a box near the mouthpiece). It has a small digital camera that can also be used to take videos, but its small capacity (under 10 megabytes, depending on the features in use) makes storing substantial amounts of pictures or videos in the phone impractical. The camera only has a resolution of 0.3 megabytes anyway, producing pictures that are grainy at best.

One interesting feature of the camera is its ability to take self-portraits. You can close the flip and press a button on the outside of the phone, and the tiny color screen on the front will act as a digital viewfinder. You can then press the button on the outside of the phone and it will take a passable self-portrait. If you open the flip you are presented with the Razr's amazing keyboard. The keys do not protrude, they are flat-faced and quite sensitive. When the backlighting is on, the keys light up in distinctive Motorola blue, much augmenting the coolness of the phone. The practical aspects of the phone are not quite as cool as the stylish aspects, but maybe more exciting to certain people . . . the Razr can connect to external devices via two modes, USB and Bluetooth. The Bluetooth mode was one of the first things I tried out upon turning on the phone, as I had never used it out before. It was very simple. I put the Bluetooth-enabled device (in this case a Jabra FreeSpeak headset) into "pairing mode", and then told the Razr to "find" it. It did immediately, and asked me if I wanted it to pair with the headset. I said yes, a blue light blinked to life on the front of the phone, and the headset started working. Cool. The Razr has basic cellphone features: text messaging, mobile browsing, email, picture email . . . it also has a few less-common but far from unique features like voice recording and polyphonic/mp3 ringtone capabilities. Thanks to its built-in USB port, it can accept quite a few very interesting modifications . . . but I'll save that for another post :-). Here's what I'm sure you've been waiting for:



If you click on the pictures to zoom in, remember that they are extremely high-res, and some of the scratches and stuff that you see are not even visible to the human eye. The wallpaper you see is a picture of my four-year-old sister. Hi, sis! If you've had the patience to read this far, you deserve a reward. The two Razrs that you see above both belong to my family: we got both of them for free (we are going to get $200 dollars back after rebates!!) after the purchase of a Cingular Family Plan off of Intelenetwireless.

Despite my shameless hawking of the product I just reviewed, I am not affiliated with Motorola or Intelenet Wireless, nor am I affiliated with anyone who is affiliated with Motorola or Intelenet Wireless, nor is anyone with whom I am affiliated is affiliated with anyone who is affiliated . . . you get the point.

In an e-mail message sent out to all users, BlogExplosion confirmed the sale of their weblog traffic exchange network. BlogExplosion was sold to Stephen Sartain and a group of investors over the weekend. Although the price of the deal has yet to be released, the e-mail message said that the sale was six figures beyond the minimum bid, $100,000 USD. Jeremy Wright, President of b5media, brokered the sale.

Although BlogExplosion has finally been sold, which was announced in March, the developers have scheduled many new features that will be launching in the next few weeks. For example, BE Experts will allow experienced members to help new members with any problems they may come across. BlogExplosion's free blogging service, BlogCharm, now has confirmed sponsors and advertising deals, which will be shared by all members. BlogExplosion will also be offering podcast hosting.

According to a proposal by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Bush administration, websites containing sexually explicit material will have to offer a warning label to make sure users do not inadvertently see it. This would require websites to place labels or notices by the Federal Trade Commission on each sexually explicit page, first reported by CNET News.com. However, some people are still trying to understand what exactly is sexually explicit. According to the proposal, pages ranging from sexual intercourse to sadist behavior would feature the label. If sexually explicit websites were caught without a label, this would result in up to five years behind bars.

Another proposed law would imprison any website operator who mislead users about sex with deceptive "words or digital images" in their source code; in other words, you search for a Barbie doll and you get something different. Gonzales is also trying to make another law take effect; If any website cannot post sexually explicit material on their homepage if it can be seen "absent any further actions by the viewer." However, some saw this as an imposition on American's freedoms and right to expression. Marv Johnson, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was, "antithetical to the First Amendment."

Apple Computer is rumored to release new 8GB and 10GB iPod Nanos in the summer, according to T3. Piper Jaffray analyst, Gene Munster, who was the first to purpose the idea, reasoned that Apple would not release a touchscreen iPod until next year, so Apple will need something eye-catching for this years' Holiday season. Munster also said that Apple maybe waiting for video content on iTunes to increase before releasing a possible touchscreen iPod. The article also notes that iPod prices should be dropping by June, which means that Apple could be predicting the increased sales of iPod Shuffles and iPod Nanos.

Munster didn't just predict releases for the Nano; He also predicted that Apple will not release a new Intel-based iBook until July, because Apple has stronger sales in educational buying months, which fall between July and September. The analyst doesn't expect a new PowerMac until November because many professionals are waiting to upgrade to Apple's new Intel-based Macs until Intel-native Adobe software arrives.

Update: An AppleInsider article writes that Munster expects Apple to release Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, their next-generation operating system, at Macworld in January 2007, with Boot Camp as "the most significant new feature" in the planned software upgrade.

Five students were arrested today after planning to perform a school shooting at their local high school in Riverton, Kansas. The planned shooting was foiled after one of the students posted the idea in a message on MySpace. Police arrested the five students after they were tipped off by a woman in North Carolina who was told of the idea by one of the students. Inside one of the student's rooms, police discovered guns, knives, and ammunition, as well as a coded message. The message on MySpace discussed Adolf Hitler's birthdate and the Columbine shooting; which both happen to be on April 20. The police did not disclose the student's names, however, they noted that all of the would-be shooters had a love for video games.

Many people don't know who Spanish artist, Joan Miro was, but if you were searching with Google yesterday, you would have noticed a new Google doodle. The doodle commemorated the artist's birthday. However, this didn't sit well with the family, as they demanded that the logo be taken down. The family claimed that the doodle distorted Joan's work. The doodle, which is pictured to the right, didn't actually use any of Joan's artwork; it just paid homage to his style. Although the family didn't claim any shape or form of copyright, Google complied and took the doodle down, however, they said that they felt that the doodle didn't violate any copyright claims.

Today, Opera Software released the first beta of their new version 9.0 software, which has been in testing since last October. The new releases comes with many new features that Opera has been testing, such as widgets, support for BitTorrent downloads, and the ability to block advertisements.

The 'widgets' included are small web applications that typically run inside another program. Konfabulator, which is now known as the Yahoo! Widget Engine, popularized the technology. Apple Computer even included widgets in their Mac OS X 10.4 update. Activating the widget feature is as simple as clicking on the "Opera Widgets" button or pressing F6. Widgets can now be used for multimedia, news feeds, games, and more.

However, one of the more impressive features is the BitTorrent support. When browsing a website with torrent files, Opera can download them instead of relying on a separate BitTorrent program. Opera 9 also supports the RSS icon that is used in Mozilla Firefox, and now Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2. It's great that Opera is now supporting a new standard that many websites are now using.

Apple Computer is rumored to be developing a Tablet PC or UMPC - much like Microsoft's Origami device that was released March. Today, Apple filed a patent for an on-screen keyboard, similar to Microsoft Touchpack software. The patent calls it an "activation of virtual keys of a touch screen keyboard", which is similar to the DialKeys application that various UMPCs use.

On February 16, Apple filed another patent for a virtual click-wheel, that described "Virtual input device placement on a touch screen user interface". This patent describes where the virtual keyboard appears on the screen based on the application running. If we piece these patents together, we can see that Apple must be working on some form of an UMCP or Tablet PC, however, this is just rumor and a whole 'lot of speculation.

Yahoo is said to be considering to offer wireless access for customers to use Yahoo's instant messaging software through a downloadable add-on, called Yahoo Messenger On-the-Road. Yahoo is randomly polling users about their interest in the new feature. If this service is ever launched, users will be given unrestricted access to the network for $7.95 a month, or two hours for $2.95. However, access would be free to users wishing only to use Yahoo Messenger. Google is also testing a service - codenamed Google Wi-Fi. In November, Google announced that they would be offering free Wi-Fi in Mountain View, California.

Today, Yahoo acquired Meedio for an undisclosed amount, which turns your PC into media center by allowing users to organize or access your media using a remote. A notice was left on the homepage of Meedio explaining that Yahoo had acquired the rights to the company's technology as well as their intellectual property, but not their products. According to the note left, most of the Meedio team will transfer into Yahoo's Digital Home team. Greg Sandoval of News.com thinks that someday Meedio's technology could be used to deliver photos stored on Flickr, one of Yahoo's photo-sharing services. Everyday, Yahoo seems to be slowly transforming into less of a search company, and more into a media company. Take a look at the kind of services they offer and you'll see that many of them affect media - whether it be personal media (such as Yahoo! 360 or Flickr), or social media (Messenger or Groups). This acquisition is just one step for Yahoo onto the road of personal media.

Burst.com filed a patent counterclaim lawsuit today in the Federal District Court in San Francisco accusing Apple Computer of infringing on four of their patents, according to Macworld. Burst's claims include the iTunes Music Store, the iPod, QuickTime, and even the iTunes software, which are affected by the patents. Burst said that the technology behind the software has "been essential to Apple’s success". According to the Macworld article:

Burst filed the suit in response to an Apple filing earlier this year asking the
courts to rule that Burst’s patents were invalid and as such Apple did not
infringe on them. In its counterclaim Burst is asking that Apple pay a
reasonable royalty for its infringing products and services — Burst is also
seeks an injunction against further infringement.

Ironically, Burst brought a similar lawsuit against Microsoft in March 2005 filing that Microsoft was using their streaming media technology. Burst also claimed that Microsoft deleted e-mails that were relevant to the case, however, Microsoft denied the accusations. The suit was settled for $60 million.

Update: Burst has released a press release which goes into further detail about the lawsuit and explaining who the attorneys are. Interestingly enough, they are going with the same attorney who won the case against Microsoft in March 2005, Hosie McArthur.

Our very own Andrew Cantino is a star - or an Internet star, at least. Yesterday, as reported, Andrew released a new service that allows you to find legitimate free stuff without the worry of getting scammed, called Freebie Finder. Last week, Andew was on the front-page of Digg, got a TechCrunch mention, and was on LifeHacker, as well as numerous other websites. The press he is getting is great; and I'm glad that his new project is taking off.

Freebie Finder pulls up free offers from other websites using an algorithm, which is written in Perl, that sorts out spam websites and referral pyramids by verifying links across multiple sources to help indicate validity. While you can clearly understand why the service is still in beta, it works pretty well. For now, Freebie Finder runs Google Adsense ads and ads in their new RSS feed. Andrew is also planning to redesign Freeibe Finder and add some AJAX-powered rating systems, and user ratings; possibly a Digg-like service. So far, Freebie Finder has been serving thousands of requests by Digg fans, as well as many people interested in free stuff. While I'm not a fan for anything free (especially on the Internet), I am sure that many people will enjoy using this service.

Andrew is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science. When not researching machine learning (numerical and statistical techniques to make computers learn and adapt), he spends time reading blogs, thinking about technology, and working on web toys and schemes.

Wordpress.com is reported to be offline by both the Bloggers Blog and the Search Engine Journal. For hours, both the Wordpress.com homepage, as well as all blogs hosted there have been offline, with the message reading:

Hello folks. We’re doing a little unplanned emergency maintainance to some systems that were causing problems over the past few weeks. Your blog will be unavailable for a few more minutes while we get everything situated. Relax and enjoy this Easter Sunday morning, and know that everybunny at WordPress.com is working their butts off to get your blog back online. — Matt and the team.

Some people think that Wordpress was possibly hacked and recovering from an attack. The Search Engine Journal notes that there may be reliability issues with services that offer free blog-hosting such as Wordpress.com. You can see the error messages on popular blogs such as Scobleizer and Chartreuse.

Update: All over the Wordpress.com hosted weblogs are online, along with the Wordpress homepage. While some people thought that all posts would be lost, they all appear to be online; glad that's over!

A little bit of self promotion: My site, AbsurdlyCool Freebie Finder, is an automated free stuff aggregator. I've designed it to collect free stuff offers from top freebie sites, while filtering out scams and referral pyramids. This site is in beta, and so your suggestions are always welcome. In fact, I'd really love feedback on where I should take this project, and what other domains I could apply my link validation technique in. Coupons, contests, deals?

BusinessWeek reports that Microsoft is currently in talks about partnering or buying a two-year old startup called Eurekster, the creators of the social search tool, Swicki. Rumor has it that Microsoft will use Eurekster's technology to integrate into their MSN Windows Live search service. The article also points out that Microsoft will soon unveil a Question and Answer service; much like Yahoo! Answers, which was launched in December of last year. Not only does Yahoo! offer a great Q&A service, but they also offer other social networking services such as Yahoo! 360, MyWeb 2.0, and Flickr. However, as Danny Sullivan points out, The BusinessWeek article confuses the Q&A service with Microsoft's plans to buy or partner with Eurekster. Eurekster specializes in social search. They combine generic search, through a partnership with Yahoo!, with searches from other social networks such as MySpace and Friendster.

Mozilla has released an update for their browser, Firefox, that fixes at least 22 flaws, including at least five security flaws that could allow hackers to install malware if you visited a website which housed the malicious code. The new version, Firefox 1.5.0.2, was released on Thursday, and affects their Thunderbird e-mail program as well as the Mozilla Suite. If you're running Firefox 1.5, your browser should automatically update. If it doesn't go to "Help", then "Check for Updates". Users running older version of Firefox will need to manually download and install updates. You can find these updates at Mozilla's FTP website.

Not only were security updates on the Firefox menu this week; Mozilla also released a Mac version of the new update that adds native support for Apple Computer's Mac OS X running on Intel processors. Firefox will now be able to take full advantage of all of the performance enhancements when running Intel processors. Since Firefox doesn't need to be translated using Rosetta, Mac users should expect faster surfing speeds.

Late last night, Google released their much speculated Google Calendar. Since then, the blogosphere has been abuzz about the release. When you visit the calendar homepage, you'll notice that anyone with a Google Account can use the service, not just people with Gmail accounts. Google Calendar has the great ease of use that we've come to expect from a Google product, and the AJAX-powered features remind me of Google Reader and Gmail. Google Calendar is very visually appealing. While some people were reporting that getting access to the site was slow during the first few hours after the launch, the AJAX used in Calendar makes the service quick and snappy.

One of more important features is the heavy Gmail integration. Gmail will recognize when messages include event information, allowing users to easily add it to their Google Calendar. There is a link to the Google Calendar within Gmail, on the left-hand side. It's important that Google integrates their products together because without it will allow users to easily switch between services, getting more people to use the different services that Google offers. To answer that, Google Calendar allows you to share your calendar; that's right, social calendars! Other Calendar users can subscribe and share with others, as well as set permissions on a user-per-user basis. You can also publish your calendar in RSS, allowing non-Calendar users to enjoy the sharing benefits. What really makes this service stand out is the fact that Google can send you an SMS to your mobile phone. All you have to do is enter your phone number and Google will send you an SMS and email notification.

Some Democratic politicians such as New Jersey Gov., Jon Corzine, are suggesting that downloaded music and videos should be taxed. If supported, the tax would become effective starting October 1. The state tax agency expects legislation to be introduced in June. Up to this date, many states have been over looking taxing music downloads, and many politicians see it as an untapped area that could be easily taxed, according to CNET News.com. However, many think that items should only be taxed if you recieve them in the 'physical' form, so music downloads would be omitted.

For one thing, politicians should be encouraging legal music downloads as a way to stop people from pirating music, not taxing it. Putting a tax on music is just another reason for people to download music illegally. Pete Sepp, the Vice President for Communications at the Nation Taxpayers Union, points out that consumers already pay taxes for telecommunications to access the Internet. Sepp also noted that anyone with an iPod has already paid taxes for the device.

Think Partnership is planning to acquire IceRocket.com, a blog search engine owned by Mark Cuban and Blake Rhodes, according to the Bloggers Blog. Following the acquisition, Blake Rhodes will become CEO of IceRocket.com. While the price has yet to be revealed, some seem to think that the price will be very low. Think Partnership is known for their cost-per-action advertising network, PrimaryAds, and other web services such as online dating.

I think that one of the reasons Cuban decided to leave IceRocket was because he saw that the market was just too crowded. Not that competition is bad for the market, but he was competing with the likes of Technorati, Google, Yahoo, and countless others. IceRocket doesn't offer services that stand out from their competitors, so maybe selling was a good idea. I'm interested in seeing if IceRocket can turn around and make themselves stand out from the rest of the market.

Recently, Veoh has come under criticism for taking video content from bloggers and transcoding them into a proprietary format; in other words, they're basically stealing content and rebranding it as their own. Today, Veoh removed all videos used without permission. They will be asking permission from now on before they use other's content. Veoh is also attempting to get more VC funding, and is looking to raise large sums of investments from key VC players.

This is yet another example of how badly the blogosphere can hurt a company's image. However, it can go both ways. For example, the launch of coComment, a comment tracking service, attracted many posts and chatter throughout the 'sphere. As I said, this can go both ways. I don't blame Veoh for backing off, however, they made the mistake of simply not asking for proper permission before republishing someone's content. The blogosphere erupted into a dazzle of anti-Veoh posts, with bloggers claiming that republishing their content is wrong.

However, if you publish your work publicly, or in this case, videos, anyone can use it without permission. People and companies are always making money from others hard work. For example, companies that offer RSS readers such as BlogLines, Google Reader, NewsGator, and MyMSN all make money off of your content. Are you going to get upset at them? Of course not; they bring you tons of exposure. In fact, people should be happy that their content is being republished because they're getting more exposure.

The BBC reports that hundreds of thousands of Europeans have rushed to claim their new .eu domain, since it became public on Friday. It is expected that the .eu domain will be second to the .com domain in both importance and volume of traffic. According to the .eu administrator, EURid, German and British users account for many of the signups; with the Germans coming in at 237,928 signups, with British trailing with 236,573. The new domain is supported by the European Commission and is intended for the 25 nations within the union. As of today, more than 1,500 companies have signed up to retail the .eu domain, with prices ranging from 12 to 100 euros.

The new .eu domain has run into some problems, according to the BBC article. For example, the domain polo.eu was fought over by car maker Volkswagen, Ralph Lauren, Nestle. In the end, Volkswagen was awarded the rights to the domain, who was the first to apply for the domain. Over 95,000 applications involve conflicting domain issues. Domains are given out on a first-come, first serve-basis. In December 2005 trademark holders public organizations could apply early for domains, and companies with other rights could apply on February 7.

Mozilla Firefox, the free, open source web browser, continues to increase their market share, with their browser just reaching over 10% in March, according to a study conducted by Net Applications. According to the study, the open source browser was used by 10.05% of Internet users, a notable increase from the 9.75% in February. Microsoft's Internet Explorer still holds the majority share of 84.7%.

According to some, the release of Firefox 1.5 helped the browser climb an extra 3.34%. At the same time, Microsoft saw their browse drop nearly 4%. Apple Computer's, Mac-only, Safari browser came in with 3.19%, followed by Netscape (the newest release it based on both Firefox and IE rendering engines) at 1.05%, and finally, Opera, with 0.54%. Keep in mind that different countries have different browser market shares. Firefox and other browsers may be the underdog in the United States, but in some European countries, IE is the underdog. The market shares above reflect use in the United States only.

Zoozio, which was formally just another one of those AJAX-powered start pages, has rebranded themselves as Zimbio; launching their new creation into private beta. I was lucky enough to be asked to test Zimbio out. Zimbio plans to become a network of public portals powered by everyday people. What makes Zimbio a real kicker is the fact that it's all user-controlled data; anyone can come along and edit your page by adding photos, links, comments, and anything else they thing would benefit that particular portal. Of course, spam is always a concern, so I'm interested in how Zimbio plans to combat spam once they launch publicly. Members can start any topics that they are interested in, however, Zimbio currently has 23, which then branch off.

Zimbio's best feature; the fact that anyone can contribute to a portal (much like WikiPedia), is shown at its best when many passionate users come along and form a great portal. For example, this Aviation portal (requires login) is filled with interesting links that I find useful: great photos, and interesting blog posts. When you actually decide to create your own portal, you'll get: a group blog, a useful links section, a popular feeds section, a chat room, a forum, a blog search tracker, an image search tracker, and a news search tracker. All of these features allow portals to grow and nurture themselves.

I think that this service can easily become the next Digg. Of course, user participation is a big piece of the puzzle, however, I suspect that users will find the interaction with real people welcoming. Dates for the public launch dates are currently in the air. As of yet, users aren't given the choice to give out invites.

The Stuff Magazine reports that the PlayStation 3 might be able offer video blogging. Apparently, users will be able to create custom webpage for your friends to read and see the latest clips from your PS3. A device called the Eyetoy will allow users to create video blog entries, and allow users to mix their video with recorded video content from their Sony PlayStation Portable (The PSP is getting video chat sometime in the summer) and load it onto the Playstation Network Platform. Not only will you get those cool features, but you'll also be able record in-game highlights, as well as your ranking. Confirmation of these features is expected to be released at the Sony pre-E3 Conference on May 8, along with more information about the launch of PS3, expected to be November 6, 2006.

Very recently, Google sent out a wave of invites for their invite-only "Google Analytics" service, formerly known as Urchin, to those people who have signed up for the product's waiting list. It has become Google's custom, apparently, to release new products for a short period of time, allow them to create a buzz of interest, and then stop new signups because of capacity issues. On the one hand I feel for them: every Google product generates so much interest that they must get millions of hits every time they release a new one, and if they allow people to sign up until their servers can barely stand it, the product will be slow (and they will certainly be criticized for that until the cows come home). On the other hand, however, I get an outbreak of mad jealousy when Google releases a product and I don't get into it before they shut down new signups. When this happens, I begin to think that Google's pecular behavior is nothing but a badly executed attempt at viral marketing.

Just when you thought we already had enough weblog publishing tools in the 'Web; a new service called Eponym launches. Eponym will be free to all of its users and will offer 10MB of storage and 100MB per month of bandwidth, however, Eponym will be launching a paid version. The paid version starts at $4.95 per month; a great deal for beginners. Eponym stacks up pretty well against competitors such as TypePad and Blogger. You can see some sample blogs such as Blogonomicon, Slowly Going Bald, and their Official Blog.

Eponym also rolled out a blog search engine in the mist of the product release. The search feature works well, but as Stevel Rubel notes, competition is good for the market. The Bloggers Blog notes that there are already 9,000 blogs hosted on Eponym, and the number is growing. The Eponym Blog also reports the same, saying, "Well, here we are two months later, and we're adding almost 500 blogs a day and are just over 9,000 total blogs. The growth has been well beyond our expectations." The Official Eponym Blog can be found here, as well as the Help Blog.

Today, The New York Times released a new redesign of their website, announced by Leonard M. Apcar, editor in chief of the NYTimes online edition. Many people have been commenting that the design is based on weblogs, and others are saying that bloggers have something to learn from the new Times redesign. One of the noticeable changes in the design is the fact that it makes use of large monitors by being able to expand indefinitely. The space provided by the new design allows them to better place advertisements as well as more content.

Many blogs have been experimenting with this new design layout - having the columns expand as large as the screen resolution can go to make reader easier on the eyes. However, according to Anil Dash at Six Apart, other popular newspapers have had their websites redesigned based on blogs, such as the recent redesign of the New York Magazine. It's exciting to see that weblogs influence popular websites, because it shows that popular web services pay attention to blogs.

I for one enjoy the new look at the New York Times website, unlike some people. I think that it presents information in a simple and easy to read manner that many will enjoy. I'm just hoping the NYTimes will come out with some great weblogs that we can all read!

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone! While many companies have been making pranks and jokes, I've been at it too. I've been calling up my friends explaining to them that I've moved to a different state or got some cool new tech gadget. How I love April Fool's. Interesting enough, many well-known bloggers have been making some jokes about switching over to different companies, creating their own, or just being plain old silly.

Google Jokes around the 'Web: Ah, Google. Last year, Google released "Google Gulp", a joke that fooled many into thinking that Google was getting into the food industry. The drinks were said to make the drinker more intelligent, and less thirsty. Each bottle had an embedded DNA scanner that could read 3 gigabytes of the drinker's genetic data. While Google didn't pull a joke of such impressiveness this year, they did release 'Google Rooms'. The domain should be active in a matter of hours. Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped was given a sneak peek at the new service joke and even included screenshots of Larry Page’s room, which contained a PlayBoy magazine.

Robert Scoble, one of Microsoft's well-known technical evangelist is reported to have gone off and started to work for Google; leaving Microsoft. He'll be running Google's PR department and has finally sensed that Microsoft Office is dead. He'll be moving to Google's Shanghai headquarters in China, and his first job of operation will be to ban all uncredible journalists from writing about Google. Also, one of Google's more well-known employees, Matt Cutts, got Scoble drunk at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Strategies conference.

AOL's Jason Calacanis will also be heading over to Google. He announced that the recently hired Robert Scoble and Jeremy Zawodny, will be working as the Commander of Misinformation and Director of Busting Chops respectively. Their first job will be to buy Nick Denton's Gawker Media and then shut down Valleywag, a tech news gossip weblog.

Google has also released "Google Romance", 'where love is just another search problem'. You can upload a photo of yourselve and search for love.

Yahoo Jokes around the 'Web: Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny will be heading over to Google also. Matt Cutts will be heading over to Yahoo. Matt and Jeremy have been cross-posting between each others blogs in an interesting April Fool's Joke fasion.

The Yahoo! Search Blog writes in to inform us that they now have bought 'Dogg', a cross between Digg and Dogster, "Where Every Dog Has A Webpage". Interesting enough, Yahoo was rumored to have bought Digg in January. The Yahoo! Search Blog goes on to joke around saying that buying all of the Web 2.0 companies out there (they recently bought Upcoming.org, Whereonearth, SearchFox, and Del.icio.us) and go onto say that the term 'Yahoo' is now synonymous with "Web 2.0."

Other Jokes around the 'Web: Mozilla's very own, Asa Dotzler will be working at Opera Software from now on. His reasoning is the release of the Opera Widget interface, as well as Opera finally passing the Acid2 test.

Popular tech nerd news portal, Slashdot, has a new theme; the OMG Ponies! theme. The theme sports that lovely pink we all love, as well as hearts, content related to ponies, and the like. The new theme has been up since late last week, and they don't show any signs of taking it down.

MSN has joined the fun and released a spoofed version of their MSN Search. You fill out the person's name and their problem, and they'll spoof the results for you. This is a great way to really freak your friends out. You can see mine here. The results are very amusing (example: "Alex Morganis admitted to mental ward after DSL line goes out").

For those of you that are looking for other jokes, I suggest you check out Wikipedia's entry on today (April 1 2006), to see all of the jokes occuring around the world.