Twitter Launches Election Site.
Microblogging site Twitter launched election twitter page which displays all of the tweets discussing about the presidential candidates, in real time. Users can also filter the main time line of posts by candidate name. The feed can be paused by scrolling the mouse over the tweets.
“We’re filtering hundreds of Twitter updates per minute to create a new source for gathering public opinion about the presidential election and a new way for you to share your thoughts.”, Twitter said about their new service.
Update : According to one of our reader Simon Owens , C-SPAN has launched a Debate Hub that provides this function as well. It also allows users to mashup and edit videos from each debate, even while the debate is still going on. You can find the hub over here: http://debatehub.c-span.org/
Listen Music on Yahoo Search.
Yahoo launches a new feature on its search pages which allows users who search for an artist with available content on Yahoo! will be able to listen to songs by the artist right on that page. The Yahoo Search music playback is powered by Rhapsody and offers full-song playback for more than 5 million tracks. Each user can listen to 25 free full-length tracks every 30 days. Once 25 songs have been played, users can subscribe to the Rhapsody Unlimited streaming service or continue to listen to an unlimited number of 30-second samples until the next month begins. Yahoo!’s FoxyTunes Player enables the on-demand, web-based playback of music within Yahoo! Search and throughout Yahoo! Music.
Internet to Africa, Google Takes Initiative
O3b Project, named after the “other 3bn” people, is an ambitious project which provide internet access to 3 billion people in Africa and other emerging market. The project will be backed by some global giants. John Malone, the cable television magnate, HSBC and Google join hands to to set up O3b Networks. The estimated cost of the project is $750 million and when its completed cost of bandwidth will be reduced by 95% in those areas. As the first stage of the project, 16 low-earth orbit satellites will be ordered from Thales Alenia Space, the French aerospace group.
MySpace Beats Yahoo in Ad Views
Until recently Yahoo leads the US market for online advertising, with 53 billion views on average. But according to data gathered by comScore, MySpace beats Yahoo in June drawing 56.8 billion advertising views. Even though MySpace leads in terms of advertising viewership, Yahoo draw top-dollar ad rates relative to MySpace. ComScore data also shows that Yahoo’s share of the display market has been trending down since July of 2007.
Microsoft to buy Ciao.com for $486 Million.
Microsoft Corp. is buying Germany-based Web comparison shopping site Ciao and its parent company Greenfield for about $486 million in cash. Microsoft says the acquisition of Ciao, a collection of European price-comparison, shopping and consumer reviews sites in seven countries and languages, will boost its search presence in Europe. Google dominates the search industry with 62 percent of the global search market and 79 percent in Europe. Ciao.com gets more than 26 million unique visitors a month.
Google Plans to Launch Web Browser.
Google is set to launch a new Web browser called Chrome on Tuesday. The beta version of Google Chrome will be launched tomorrow in more than 100 countries. Google said they have used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox to build the new browser. Google promises simplicity, speed and security in its new browser. Here is the link for the cartoon created for Chrome by Google. The release of the new browser by Google is a long-anticipated move aimed at countering the dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Update : Chrome can be download here.
Intel and Yahoo To Bring the Internet to TV.
Intel Corporation and Yahoo! previewed plans for the Widget Channel, a television (TV) application framework optimized for TV and related consumer electronics (CE) devices that use the Intel Architecture. The Widget Channel will allow consumers to enjoy rich Internet applications designed for the TV while watching their favorite TV programs. It will also give developers access to write TV applications for the platform using JAVASCRIPT, XML, HTML and Adobe Flash technology. In addition to supporting the Yahoo! Widget Engine, Yahoo! will also provide consumers Yahoo!-branded TV Widgets that are customized based on its category-leading Internet services. Intel is the world’s largest CPU maker.
Yahoo Buzz Opens for All
Yahoo’s Buzz opened up for every one. Until now only a hundred or so invited publishers could post news to Buzz. The main advantage of Buzz over other social bookmarking services like Digg,Delicious is that Yahoo pushes a few Yahoo Buzz stories to their home page every day, resulting in huge traffic to the sites. Starting yesterday, the invitation requirement is gone, and anyone can submit their stories to Buzz.
Internet Fraud doesn’t Get the Attention
Phishing, Malware and Viruses costs consumers $7.1 billion in 2007. But its a concern of many that most internet fraud is not prosecuted by US government. Even though loss by internet fraud is increased by $2 billion from the previous year,U.S. federal and state law enforcement authorities are doing little to resolve what has become a multi-billion-dollar problem. Phishing is an attempt to steal your personal data in the form of fraudulent e-mail or website claiming to be legitimate seeking identifiable information.
Cuil.com New Search Engine
Cuil is a brand new search engine, its only one day old. Cuil (pronounced COOL) provides organized and relevant results based on Web page content analysis. Cuil claims that it goes beyond today’s search techniques of link analysis and traffic ranking to analyze the context of each page. The team behind Cuil has an extensive history in search. The company is led by husband-and-wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson. Mr. Costello researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM. Ms. Patterson was the architect of Google’s large search index. Cuil says it has indexed 120 billion Web pages, 3 times more than any other search engine. Will Cuil be a threat to Google?
Reason For Teenage Obesity
Dr. Catherine Berkey and colleagues from Harvard Medical School, Growing Up Today Study (GUTS), surveyed more than 5000 girls, 14 - 21 years from all 50 states, and their weekly habits were recorded. The researchers found that more Internet time, more alcohol consumption, and less sleep resulted in extra weight gain. Girls who consumed 2 or more alcoholic beverages a week or slept less than 6 hours at night gained more weight. Girls who use Internet in addition to alcohol and sleep gain 4 extra pounds a year. Researchers are encouraging adolescent girls to replace recreational Internet time with more sleep, and avoid alcoholic beverage consumption to lose their weight.
Identity Crisis Faced By The Facebook Generation
According to a warning given to the Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, this generation who use internet for everything and who have never known a world unless they surf on-line are growing up with a dangerous view of the world and their own identity. They are going through major identity crisis. People who born after 1990 have grown up in a world dominated by online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Many of these youngsters use Internet as the main medium to communicate. Their relationships are quickly disposed at the click of a mouse. Because of the online social networking, people find the real world boring and unstimulating. Because of this online mess, youngsters are going through the stages of vulnerable to impulsive to suicide.
Chat room communication reduced sensory experience; person’s expression/body language/ voice/tone aren’t there; and this can shape one’s perceptions of the interaction differently. Online session changes the perception to a dream-like state, and this unnatural blending of mind with the other person leads to entirely different meaning to friendships and relationships.
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