Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Microsoft maps get Photosynth panoramas

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

A Photosynth view of the CNN Center in Atlanta, Ga., retrieved with Microsoft's Live Search Maps.
(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft now lets people using its Live Search Maps service get a more immersive view by integrating the company’s Photosynth panoramic viewer technology.

Photosynth stitches multiple images together into a 3D view, and people can in effect gaze around from […]

Live blog: Mark Zuckerberg at Web 2.0 Summit

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO–Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg takes the stage at 1:45 p.m Thursday here at the Web 2.0 Summit in a talk with John Battelle of Federated Media Publishing. CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy will analyze the full conversation after the fact. But here’s our take on what Zuckerberg says, as he says it:

See all the […]

Twitter’s Evan Williams: Making money through corporate accounts?

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO–In a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams wouldn’t concretely answer one of Silicon Valley’s biggest unanswered questions: how the company plans to make money.
But he gave some strong indications. Hint: it’s not advertising.
He spoke obliquely of a possible business model that we’ve heard whispers about before, corporate […]

Web 2.0 Summit videos: Yang, Doerr, Armstrong

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

The Web 2.0 Summit isn’t just for geeks and software industry insiders–not with a speaker list that includes the likes of Al Gore and Lance Armstrong.
Day 1 of the San Francisco event featured on-stage talks with Armstrong, the multiyear Tour de France champion and force-of-nature bicyclist, along with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and top-shelf venture […]

Dex: The business ‘poke’

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Dex is an interesting new personal and business-focused contact manager with two special tricks: First, it tells you who, of the people you know, you should get in touch with to keep your personal relationships alive. Second, it’s a unique CRM tool for businesses, since it lets employees take their contacts with them if they […]

Microsoft ditches old Hotmail design; users gripe

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Yahoo and Google aren’t the only ones whose Web site changes incur the wrath of users who’d rather things stay the way they were.

Microsoft is discontinuing an option to use Hotmail’s older “classic” interface, merging it with a newer “full” design into a hybrid the company says is faster to use than both the predecessors. […]

Paul Otellini and his magical mystery gadget

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Intel's CEO Paul Otellini demos new mobile tech.
(Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)
SAN FRANCISCO–There is a light at the end of the dark financial tunnel, Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini said onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday morning. And he brought out a shiny new toy to prove it.
“All the smart people […]

YouTube tweaks its embedded video player

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past three years you’ve watched a YouTube video off of YouTube.com. So many viewers watch videos this way (YouTube says it’s 44 percent of viewership), the company has overhauled its player, making several of the site’s latest features available off of YouTube’s site.
The biggest change […]

Microsoft discontinues Windows 3.x licensing…watch out Vista

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Featured links from the CNET Blog Network

Microsoft discontinues Windows 3.x licensing…watch out Vista–Just when you thought paintbrush would live forever, Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows 3.x.

Dell MP3 bundles sound pretty smart–Today, Dell began offering bundles of songs preloaded on new computers. An odd move at first glance, it actually makes sense when you […]

Jerry Yang: I’m a fighter

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Yang (left) and Battelle on Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET News)

SAN FRANCISCO–This hasn’t been the best year for a lot of people in the tech industry. But nobody can argue that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has had a particularly rough time.
“Jerry Yang has had a tough nine months,” Web 2.0 Summit host […]

John Doerr’s advice to President-elect Obama: Take Bill Joy

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO– In an interview with John Heilemann at the Web 2.0 Summit here today, Kleiner-Perkins VC John Doerr, formerly a Hilary Clinton supporter, relayed the technology advice he would have for President-elect Obama.
As Heilemann noted, Obama has announced that he will look at appointing a chief technology officer to the United States. He asked […]

Google Street View: The musical extravaganza

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Earlier this year artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley teamed up with Google to create what might be the oddest thing caught on Street View, Google Maps‘ virtual man-on-the-street service. Hewlett and Kinsley managed to get a large group of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, locals together to participate in a variety of activities on-camera, including organized jogging, […]

Web 2.0 Summit: Larry Brilliant on investing in the future

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO–”We are at an inflection point where there are enormous problems to be solved and enormous opportunities.”
Those weren’t the words of President-elect Barack Obama. It was the Pied Piper of Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly, making his opening remarks at the Web 2.0 Summithere Wednesday.
Against the back drop of the change in power […]

Video: Daily Debrief: After Google, what’s next for Yahoo?

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and his company face a new future following Google’s decision not to pursue a proposed ad deal in the face of likely government opposition. On the CNET News Daily Debrief, Charles Cooper speaks with Dawn Kawamoto about the reasons behind this Wednesday morning stunner.
Original post by Gadgets, gizmos, and video games […]

Upcoming live blog: Jerry Yang at Web 2.0 Summit

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is scheduled to talk with Web 2.0 Summit co-host John Battelle at 4:50 p.m. PDT Wednesday. Given the collapse of the Yahoo-Google advertising deal, it should be an interesting discussion. We’ll report on it live…

See all the Web 2.0 Summit news.

Original post by Rafe Needleman and software by […]

Make bookmarking a shared experience with BookmarkG

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

BookmarkG is a new bookmarking service that aims to fill the gap left by mainstream bookmarking utilities by focusing on groups. Users can create their own group, invite friends, and begin adding links with tags, ratings, and metadata that can be searched.
What makes the product interesting is that you can set the invites to be […]

Just a thought: To ensure success, plan for failure

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

The popular election prediction and tracking site fivethirtyeight.com posted an ominous message on top of a post last night:

Ominous news from fivethirtyeight.com

While it looks like the trouble at fivethirtyeight was transient, one wonders what fallback plan site organizer Nate Silver had for a meltdown at their blog host. An alternate host? A stripped-down version of […]

Ten election tweets worth remembering

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

It was a marathon evening for media buffs as Barack Obama swept rival John McCain to become the first African American elected president in the U.S. You couldn’t miss it on Twitter, as the microblogging service exploded with election updates, commentary, and speculation.
Miraculously, Twitter’s servers lasted the night, and had quite a lot of terrific, […]

Live blog schedule for Web 2.0 Summit

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

We’ll have team coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit, which starts in San Francisco this morning. Look for analysis posts following the major talks and product launches, and tune in to our Twitter feed of happenings at the conference. Also, there will be live running commentary during a few key sessions. Check back here, on […]

More Web 2.0 in video games: The ‘LittleBigPlanet’ workshop

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

For a little over a week now PlayStation 3 owners have been creating thousand of levels in LittleBigPlanet, a platformer where creativity is both encouraged and rewarded using an ever-expanding level making tool set. The only problem is that these tools are relegated to the game, meaning if you’re away from your console there’s nothing […]

Opera patches again

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

If you’re an Opera user, the Norwegian browser has upgraded to version 9.62 to plug two potential security breaches that could be used to execute arbitrary code.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Opera labeled the History Search security hole as “extremely severe.” The exploit could be used to execute arbitrary code through the search results […]

A quick endorsement: PopUrls, the home page for lazy geeks

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Despite my fondness for customizable start pages (Netvibes, iGoogle, My Yahoo, etc.), I have found myself continuing to use PopUrls, a pre-built aggregation page that’s almost as useful as a customizable page.

Unlike other start pages, PopUrls is not general-purpose like iGoogle or My Yahoo. It is an aggregation site for dweebs, with a focus, by […]

Video: Daily Debrief: Father of the iPod steps down

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

As the man considered the father of Apple’s iPod steps down, it becomes clear why the company was eager to hire Mark Papermaster, an IBM chip designer. On this Daily Debrief, CNET’s Kara Tsuboi and Tom Krazit discuss the reasoning behind the move and why a consumer product company like Apple would want a guy […]

Google Trends shows U.S. searchers prefer free food to candidates

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Early Tuesday Google posted some insights on the hottest search terms, as marked on its trends site. Not surprisingly the majority of search queries within the U.S. have been related to politics, with a staggering 87 out of the top 100 relating in some way to today’s election.
What might be more amazing is that […]

Web freeloaders can breathe easy at Web 2.0 Summit

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

With warnings of doom coming from Web investors, and CEOs cutting back on staff in order to focus their companies on revenue, I am not expecting the Web 2.0 Summit, which opens this Wednesday in San Francisco, to be the happy and upbeat affair it’s been in years past. People at the conference will be […]

Twitter: Hey! We’re hiring!

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Biz Stone, co-founder of microblogging service Twitter, sent out an e-mail to the site’s members on Monday night. The take-home point: They’re hiring.
“We’re hoping to hire for a bunch of new positions,” the e-mail read. “If you or someone you know wants to work at a small company with a bright future then by all […]

First ‘Steam Cloud’ game coming this week

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Later this week Valve Software, makers of the popular Half Life series, and the Steam software distribution system are releasing the first version of the Steam Cloud service in the demo for the upcoming cross-platform title Left 4 Dead. The service will keeps things like game saves, mouse and keyboard settings, and player profiles the […]

Flickr’s 3 billionth photo: DSC_2672_1

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

I’ve always been annoyed by the significance we humans attach to numeric milestones just because they happen to involve a lot of zeros.

But 3 billion–the number of photos now housed at Flickr–is undoubtedly a big number, even if its intrinsic excitement diminishes when, for example, translated into octal as 26,264,057,000. It’s also more notable when […]

Gorgeous docs host Issuu launches pro service

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Last week Web-hosted documents service Issuu launched a brand-new service for business users who want to host document files without Issuu’s branding or advertising. Users who subscribe to this model can be billed by the page view, all the way up to a million views a month, with a special viewer that can be both […]

Video: Daily Debrief: Sigh, e-voting still stinks

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

As Election Day approaches, many voters across the country are still skeptical about the accuracy and efficiency of electronic voting. On this Daily Debrief, CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh tells Kara Tsuboi why he prefers voting by paper and pencil, when e-voting technology will be up to snuff, and how Congress really messed this […]

Yahoo Live fails to gain traction, forced to close

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

After gaining a lot of press initially, Yahoo’s experimental live streaming site, Yahoo Live, will be shut down on December 3rd. While it does not appear that the closure of this Yahoo Brickhouse project is directly related to the current economic downturn, belt tightening at Yahoo may have played a role. The leading […]

AOL launches When.com beta for online events

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

AOL on Monday launched When.com, a rebranded version of Zvents’ online events guide.

The two sites are largely indistinguishable except for one element: “Where when.com differentiates is the addition of Kids and Family activities, which we feel is important to our audience,” said AOL spokeswoman Jaymelina Esmele. Zvents handles the categorization, but AOL draws more attention […]

YouTube now auto-translates subtitled vids

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Over the weekend YouTube introduced a new feature to help make captioned or subtitled videos more accessible to International users. The new system uses machine translation to convert any of these videos into your language of choice in real-time.

To access this feature users simply need to turn it on from the lower-right hand corner of […]

To beat Apple, RIM must stop favoring AT&T

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Featured links from the CNET Blog Network

To beat Apple, RIM must stop favoring AT&T–If Blackberry really wants to compete with the iPhone they should take advantage of other carriers who need to compete.

Somebody Else’s Phone: Would you look through it?–Wieden + Kennedy London translated the idea of “Cellular Oversharing” into a much gushed-about advertising campaign […]

Video: Water sensors confirm you’re a klutz

Friday, October 31st, 2008

As klutzy Apple laptop users know, damage from spilt water, coffee, or other liquids is not covered under the standard warranty. To uncover any potential for warranty fraud, it’s rumored the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has installed liquid sensors in its new line of MacBooks and MacBook Pros. CNET’s Kara Tsuboi looks into the rumored move […]

Daily Debrief: Why Apple’s after a chip designer

Friday, October 31st, 2008

A high-profile chip designer is leaving IBM for Apple, causing IBM to file a non-compete lawsuit and creating much speculation over Apple’s possible renewed interest in the server market. Why does IBM cares so much and what does this hiring could mean for Apple, a company best known for consumer products?
Original post by Gadgets, gizmos, […]

Happiness is…Beatles version of ‘Rock Band’

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Featured links from the CNET Blog Network

Happiness is…Beatles version of ‘Rock Band’ — The overlap between Beatles fans and “Rock Band” fans is bigger than you might think.

Download full seasons of popular TV shows for $5 — Get Battlestar Galactica, House, Heroes, and more for just 5 bucks per season.

Apple fanboys vs Microsofties: the […]

Scanned documents found…by Google

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

If you’ve ever had trouble finding scanned documents on Google, it’s probably because it was not indexing them. On Thursday, this all changed. Google has announced that it is now indexing scanned documents.
Google is now able to perform optical character recognition (OCR) on any scanned document it finds stored in the PDF format. OCR technology […]

Video: Daily Debrief: The customization of Gmail

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

On this edition of the Daily Debrief, CNET’s Kara Tsuboi talks with senior writer Stephen Shankland about the constantly evolving features on Gmail, Google’s Web-based e-mail program. From calendar modules to colored stars to quick access to your Google Docs, Shankland explains how the popular service is trying to become a one-stop shopping landing page […]

Video: Venture capitalists: We’re still open for business

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

At a VentureBeat conference on managing through the economic downturn, a panel of venture capitalists painted a gloomy picture for the economy overall. But they’re still making investments, they said. Rafe Needleman covered the event and got reactions from experienced and new entrepreneurs.
Original post by Gadgets, gizmos, and video games - CNNMoney.com and software by […]

Video: Daily Debrief: Microsoft Office online

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Of all the announcements to come out of Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, Webware Editor Rafe Needleman is most excited about the company’s version of Google Docs. On this Daily Debrief, he explains to CNET’s Kara Tsuboi why he’s pleased to see a competitor to Google’s free, shareable, Web-based program and why Microsoft’s […]

Yahoo’s Zimbra e-mail service heads to school

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Yahoo on Tuesday released a hosted version of its Zimbra e-mail and calendar software for educational customers.

Zimbra is open-source software, which means anybody can install it for free, but Yahoo also offers Zimbra Hosted as a subscription for which customers pay. The education version has a “substantial discount” in pricing over the regular commercial version, […]

Yahoo and Google race to rebuild sites, lure coders

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Note: this story was updated at 12:34 p.m. PDT with analysis and information about Google.

It’s like watching a race between two glaciers.

Yahoo and Google are undeniably the two biggest powers on the Internet, each with a vast number of features and users. Each is trying to remake itself during a time when faster-moving start-ups show […]

Video: Daily Debrief: Fixing copyright for political campaigns

Monday, October 27th, 2008

The McCain-Palin campaign wants YouTube to give political ads special treatment when responding to copyright complaints. Is a better solution to amend federal copyright law? CNET’s Declan McCullagh interviews Paul Levy, an attorney with Public Citizen in Washington, D.C., who has litigated countless free-speech cases. Also: Levy’s courtroom defense of a window salesman accused of […]

Manage WordPress blog comments in AIR

Friday, October 24th, 2008

(Credit: Daniel Dura)
If you’re keen on moderating blog comments in near real time and would prefer to do so without a browser window open, you should check out Moderator. It’s a hybrid tool that uses both a WordPress plug-in and an Adobe AIR desktop application to keep you up to speed with the latest user […]

Video: Daily Debrief: Microsoft hopes 7 is lucky

Friday, October 24th, 2008

A two-day Microsoft developer conference begins Monday in Los Angeles, Calif., where the company is expected to give details on its cloud platform and Windows 7. In this Daily Debrief, CNET’s Ina Fried explains to Kara Tsuboi why consumers can expect more “dessert” and less “vegetables” from the new OS, and talks about the reasoning […]

Think Firefox 3 is fast? Try Firefox Minefield

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Featured links from the CNET Blog Network

Think Firefox 3 is fast? Try Firefox Minefield–Firefox is outdoing itself with Minefield, which sets new speed records.

Retail game card sales may hit $100 million this year–Game cards are the unsung heroes of the retail industry. Sales are increasing dramatically and retailers are embracing this new way of selling […]

Video: Carlos Santana talks tech

Friday, October 17th, 2008

CNET’s Kara Tsuboi interviews rock legend Carlos Santana about how technology may erode musical creativity, why he agrees with Metallica’s view on copyright protection, and the gadget he can’t live without.
Original post by Gadgets, gizmos, and video games - CNNMoney.com and software by Elliott Back

Video: Carlos Santana talks tech

Friday, October 17th, 2008

CNET’s Kara Tsuboi interviews rock legend Carlos Santana about how technology may erode musical creativity, why he agrees with Metallica’s view on copyright protection, and the gadget he can’t live without.
Original post by Gadgets, gizmos, and video games - CNNMoney.com and software by Elliott Back

Google’s Street View arrives in France

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Google Maps Street View has begun arriving in France. Blue lines on roads indicate where the view is available.
(Credit: CNET News)

Google has begun expanding its Street View feature of Google Maps to several major cities in France, the first European country to get the Internet giant’s driver’s-eye view.

“We’ve added coverage for 6 major cities in […]