eBay will lay off about 10 per cent of its workforce, the company announced Monday in the US, and said third-quarter results will come in at the low end of expectations. The company also announced plans to acquire online payments business Bill Me Later for US$820 million in cash and approximately US$125 million in outstanding options, as well as Danish classifieds specialist Den Bla Avis and vehicle site BilBasen for approximately US$390 million in cash
A research group in Canada has discovered that Skype and its partner in China TOM Online have been spying on its users, eavesdropping on chat sessions and deploying software that searches for keywords. The revelations, in a report written by Nart Villeneuve at the Citizen Lab unit of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, have horrified Skype users and could result in a user backlash against the service
PayPal, the payment service used by 20 million online shoppers in Britain, has given in to consumer demands to offer full refunds to buyers defrauded on eBay. Previously, anyone using PayPal to buy items such as a laptop or furniture risked losing hundreds of pounds on something that might not work or even arrive. Consumers who buy an item worth more than £150 using PayPal on eBay will now have protection
A computer is as good as a second pair of eyes for helping a radiologist spot breast cancer on a mammogram, one of the largest and most rigorous tests of computer-aided detection found. Like spell-checkers looking for mistakes, the computers flag suspicious areas on X-rays for a closer look by a radiologist. Mammograms are used to screen women for early signs of breast cancer but the tests aren’t perfect. In the US, the X-rays are read by a single radiologist and cancers are sometimes missed
Radiohead have joined FAC, which seeks to give artists greater control over their music. More than 60 artists, including Radiohead, Robbie Williams and the Kaiser Chiefs, have announced they have banded together to seek more rights over their music and break free of record labels
There are still places on the world where having anonymity might mean the difference between life and death. Covering one’s tracks is considered to be of such paramount importance that we are now witnessing the rise of a Linux distro catering to the most paranoid. The alpha-alpha
version of ParanoidLinux is now out. But is this the best way to protect oneself? Couldn’t it be easily circumvented? — via Slashdot
Weird Al has announced that with the Internet he can now release his songs for sale as he records each one rather than waiting for a whole album to be produced — via Slashdot
A new space race is officially under way, and this one should have the sci-fi geeks salivating. The project is a space elevator, and some experts now believe that the concept is well within the bounds of possibility — maybe even within our lifetimes
We all know it and science has proved it — wires, string, and hair will inevitably tie themselves in knots. This astonishing non-revelation is one of 10 pieces of real research honoured this year with Ig Nobel Prizes. The spoof alternatives to the rather more sober Nobel prizes were presented in a ceremony at Harvard University. Other winners included studies that showed Coca Cola was an effective spermicide; and that fleas on dogs jump higher than fleas on cats
The federal Government says it may be flexible with mobile internet providers in its mandatory ISP filtering policy. The Australian Communications and Media Authority is planning to test internet filtering technology in a live environment after trials by the agency were deemed successful
One of the only Australian start-ups to present at the recent round of conferences in the US was Sydney-based spellr.us, which has launched a Web-based tool to check and monitor web sites for spelling mistakes. Founder Kevin Garber, who is also founder and general manager of spellr.us parent company Melon Media, told bootstrappr that the self-funded start-up grew from the need of some Melon’s customers wanting to keep their web sites free from typos
Toshiba has unveiled a battery prototype that offers a 90 percent charge capacity in just 10 minutes. The Super Charge Ion Battery is capable of handling 5,000 to 6,000 recharge cycles, compared to the typical 500 offered by standard lithium-ion batteries. The new battery is composed of a durable material that offers a high level of thermal stability and prevents overheating. In addition, the unit will not explode when crushed
A collaborative effort by HP Labs and Rice University has produced a technique that could lower the cost of identifying dead zones
in large wireless networks. The technique enables Wi-Fi architects to test and refine their layouts before a network is deployed
The infamous Gpcode ransomware
virus that hit computers in July was the work of a single person who is known to the authorities. The individual is believed to be a Russian national, and has been in contact with at least one anti-malware company, Kaspersky Lab, in an attempt to sell a tool that could be used to decrypt victims’ files
Detective work by an Australian online poker player has uncovered a $US10 million cheating scandal at two major poker websites and triggered a $US75 million legal claim. In two separate cases, Michael Josem, from Chatswood, analysed detailed hand history data from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and uncovered that certain player accounts won money at a rate too fast to be legitimate
A pair of alleged scammers who made millions from unsuspecting Internet users have been outed, resulting in the disappearance of all their scam sites. Matt and Jake Dylewski infamously ran fullreleases.com, which sold monthly subscriptions in exchange for standard search results from popular torrent sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay
The much-troubled Iridium, the part-Australian owned company that operates a fleet of 66 satellites delivering wireless mobile services across the world, is planning to send up a new satellite network. Hopefully they’ll provide a better service than the current one, which has its share of problems. To be fair, in Australia as elsewhere it does offer mobile phone services in remote areas no other service can reach, such as drilling rigs, deep sea fishing boats and surveying teams deep in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory
A glitch in Hutchison 3 Mobile’s internet service has left some of its mobile broadband customers in four major capitals struggling to use some of the most popular sites on the web. The problem began to emerge after the carrier started issuing customers with a new set of IP addresses about a week ago
O3B Networks has been quietly preparing itself over the last 12 months for the moment last week when it announced that it was going to be offering cheap, low latency satellite bandwidth that can cover any part of Africa by 2010. It has put in place early finance with Google, Liberty Global and HSBC
Blind-rights activists had noticed that blind people couldn’t independently access iTunes or the iTunes U service. Jim Denham, the assistive technology coordinator at the Perkins School for the Blind, is looking forward to spending this rainy weekend, at home, on his computer. Thanks to a technological advance, Denham, who is blind, can sit at home by himself and browse among the thousands of audio books, podcasts and albums digitally stored on Apple’s iTunes
RSS – Posts