Office may fall under Microsoft’s own definition of adware. It links to third-party commercial add-ons, includes up-selling promos, requires cookies for certain functions, and collects technical information. While this is like a normal day on the web, should the commercial office suite be held to a different standard and possibly be considered adware? The article also notes that clicking advertising links in Office will bring up Internet Explorer, regardless of whether or not it is the default browser — via Slashdot
Repairs on two out of three broken undersea cables providing data services to parts of the Middle East and Asia should be completed by Sunday, while the third should be fixed by Saturday
A deal has been struck between the major media companies and the Writers Guild of America to end the writers’ strike, former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner revealed on CNBC
Documents dating from the Civil War and others to and from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt are among hundreds of stolen documents sold online that eBay is agreeing to buy back and return to New York’s archives. The online auction giant has no liability in the sale of the stolen artifacts, but agreed voluntarily to offer buyers the amount that they paid, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because not all details of the investigation have been announced
Polaroid is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs. Polaroid is closing factories in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands and cutting 450 jobs as the brand synonymous with instant images focuses on ventures such as a portable printer for images from mobile phones and Polaroid-branded digital cameras, televisions and DVD players
Google is introducing an online business software package designed to make it easier for people in the same organisation to share documents and information. The free Team Edition software represents the internet search leader’s latest attempt to attract more users to free applications, which poses a potential threat to rival Microsoft’s highly profitable word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and calendar programs
Two Victorian real estate agents have launched a defamation action against Google. Counsel for agents Mark Forytarz and Paul Castran of Castran Gilbert, appeared in the Supreme Court today for a directions hearing, alleging their clients have been defamed by articles found via Google searches
For ten years, skeptic magician James Randi has offered a million dollars to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event
. He’s just announced that the James Randi Educational Foundation is discontinuing the Million-Dollar Challenge two years from now. The money will be freed, he says, to generally add to our flexibility
and enable the group to do many more projects
— via Boing Boing
Yahoo this week introduced a new monthly Web Hosting service for small and medium sized businesses, which provides unlimited hosted storage capacity and bandwidth. Subscribers to the new service, priced at $11.95 a month, are free to take up as much disk space on Yahoo’s servers as they need to transfer data, store information or secure e-mail without fear of shrinking capacity restrictions
The tattoo of the future may be good for your health rather than just your image. German scientists say that work on mice showed that tattooing was a more effective way to deliver a new generation of experimental DNA vaccines than standard injections into muscle. Using fragments of DNA to stimulate an immune response is seen as a promising way of making better vaccines for everything from flu to cancer
This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had
Pentagon-backed researchers want the prosthetics to feel like real limbs, so they’re creating patches of synthetic skin that’ll provide direct feedback to the brain
After two years of waiting, Australian and New Zealand residents can now officially order Photobooks, calendars, postcards and prints directly from iPhoto. Pricing is reasonably competitive too, given the convenience of publishing directly from iPhoto. Picture Books start from $39.99, calendars are $26.99, postcards and greeting cards range from $1.99 to $2.69 while individual prints start at 29c. More detailed pricing is available from Apple
An estimated 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE have been affected by the recent undersea cable damage. Internet data was majorly affected as it is the biggest capacity carried by the undersea cables. However, all voice calls, corporate data and video traffic were also affected. A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each
TPG and SP Telemedia (SOUL) and have announced a merger in a deal worth $250 million
An open wireless network led to a Danish police investigation of a stolen credit card. The police wanted to confiscate the author’s computer. When the author’s roommate agreed to also let the police look at her first generation iMac, they were frustrated because they thought the iMac was just the screen. They wanted to know where the actual computer was and got rather heated about finding it, according to the author of Rottin’ in Denmark
The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and communications minister Stephen Conroy this morning announced Telstra would turn on the ADSL2+ broadband capability it has at 900 exchanges around the country. Telstra reversed its decision of keeping the ADSL2+ DSLAMs in cold storage because the new Labor government gave it an assurance it would not have to provide ADSL2+ wholesale access to other ISPs
Indiana University researchers are studying a ground-breaking theory that young children are able to learn large groups of words rapidly by data-mining
Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient’s upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen. Researchers said on Friday the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spares parts for humans a step closer to reality
Google is adding more e-mail security and storage products for businesses, sharpening its aim on a Microsoft stronghold while the competition between the two rivals also heats up in Internet search and advertising
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