It appears that Google is working on integrating IMAP into Gmail. However, it is only appearing in select few Gmail and Google Apps for domains accounts at the moment
British and Dutch police have shut down a widely-used
source of illegally-downloaded music. A flat on Teesside and several properties in Amsterdam were raided as part of an Interpol investigation into the members-only website OiNK. The UK-run site has leaked 60 major pre-release albums this year alone, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)
The team behind Firefox 3 plans to ditch the unified cross-platform look of the browser in favor of a sexier look tailored to specific operating systems. Rather than a single look across all platforms, which is the way Firefox currently ships, Firefox 3 will feature different skins for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and various Linux distributions
Comcast actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally. The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a US Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users. If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content
Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download. This fee is the work of a measure proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada. About two cents would be added to every song downloaded, with 1.5 cents being added to album downloads. Streaming services and subscriptions would also be taxed, to the tune of about 6% of the monthly fee. Most interesting — the tax would be retroactively applied to every transaction processed since 1996 — via Slashdot
What makes the Dash device so different is that it not only receives location data from the satellites of the Global Positioning System, like other navigation units, but it also broadcasts information about its travels back to the Dash network. The continuous two-way reporting lets the system accomplish several things. It can measure how fast traffic really travels on a given road, and use that to compile a highly detailed and accurate database of traffic information. Dash units can warn each other through the network the second they hit a traffic slowdown. And because the units stay connected to the Internet, information on nearby points of interest like restaurants is instantly available and current
Flickr has chosen Seattle-based Picnik to handle the long requested photo editing feature for Flickr users. Currently, you can rotate photos on Flickr, but the editing stops there. When the new tools launch, users will be able to edit photos more extensively using the Picnik Flash based tools. The deal has been signed and implementation will occur sometime in the next few months. Users will be presented with an edit option on the photo page. Clicking it takes the user to a new Flickr photo edit page, with the Picnik tools integrated via an iframe. After editing, users can add the edited photo to their Flickr account or, if they are a Flickr pro user, overwrite the original
University of Manchester researchers have transformed fat tissue stem cells into nerve cells — and now plan to develop an artificial nerve that will bring damaged limbs and organs back to life. Dr Paul Kingham and his team at the UK Centre for Tissue Regeneration (UKCTR) isolated the stem cells from the fat tissue of adult animals and differentiated them into nerve cells to be used for repair and regeneration of injured nerves. They are now about to start a trial extracting stem cells from fat tissue of volunteer adult patients, in order to compare in the laboratory human and animal stem cells — via Slashdot
Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon has been released. Download options include mirrors and torrents. Wired has a review based on the release candidate: Gamers and hardcore media hounds may still feel left out… but we found playing music and watching movies in the new Ubuntu to be every bit as pleasant as it is under OS X or Windows… Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation — no drivers or other software required… I did have to install additional codecs to get MP3 and Windows Media Audio support
— via Slashdot
After years of trying, Australian power rockers AC/DC have finally obtained acdc.com from a porn company that used the site to redirect many an unwitting fan to sites offering filthy photos of bondage, water sports and other types of kink
The BBC’s online services will be made available free of charge at thousands of wi-fi hotspots around the UK. The corporation has agreed a deal with wi-fi firm The Cloud, which operates 7,500 hotspots around the country. The news website, programme sites and downloads of TV shows via the currently Windows XP only iPlayer can be accessed freely. The BBC has also confirmed that users of Apple Mac and Linux machines will be able to use its TV catch-up service from the end of the year
Researchers at Dartmouth University have recently discovered that infrequent anonymous contributors, so called Good Samaritans
, are as reliable as registered users who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain — via Slashdot
Apple plans to drop the price of all iTunes Plus tracks. Currently, each track is US$1.29 while normal
DRMed tracks are 99¢ apiece. That discrepancy will be no longer, as Apple will begin pricing all of its iTunes Plus songs at 99¢ apiece (DRMed tracks will also remain at 99¢)
Carnegie Mellon University’s Adrian Perrig and Jason Franklin, working in conjunction with Vern Paxson of the International Computer Science Institute and Stefan Savage of the University of California, San Diego, have designed new computer tools to better understand and potentially thwart the growth of Internet black markets, where attackers use well-developed business practices to hawk viruses, stolen data and attack services
It’s been a long time, but Led Zeppelin, one of the last superstar acts to refrain from selling its music online, is finally offering its catalogue to digital-music fans. The shift by Led Zeppelin, whose reunion concert in London next month has already incited a frenzy for tickets, highlights the clout of digital sales in the music market as mass merchants reduce the shelf space devoted to compact discs1
A single hard drive with four terabytes of storage (4TB) could be a reality by 2011, thanks to a nanotechnology breakthrough by Japanese firm Hitachi. The company has successfully managed to shrink the read-write head of a hard drive to two thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. The smaller head can read greater densities of data stored on the disk. Hitachi said the advance would fuel the terabyte era
, with a 4TB drive able to hold more than a million songs
A number of Australian ADSL broadband providers are gearing up to launch naked DSL plans, enabling users to for the first time bypass costly line rental charges. iiNet’s plans are scheduled to launch in November, while Engin’s will debut during the first quarter of next year. TPG and Internode have also indicated they will unveil naked DSL plans in the near future
California’s Jeffrey Kilbride and James Schaffer of Arizona, have been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison. Both were convicted of conspiracy, money laundering, fraud, and transportation of obscene materials
A California court case is pitting blind users against the retailer Target over the lack of accessibility of Target.com. The case is being brought under a federal statute, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and two California laws that are somewhat broader. Even though Target has made improvements to the site since losing the first phase in court, the judge has just ruled that the case is eligible for class-action status. The end result could be mandated accessibility for for all Web sites reachable by visually impaired users in California — via Slashdot
Since the Internet came into widespread use, those among the 70 percent of the world that doesn’t speak English have argued that the Web is inaccessible. So next week the nonprofit group contracted by the US government to run the Internet will begin testing domain names in other alphabets. On Monday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will conduct a test to see whether domains written entirely in foreign scripts can work without crashing the Net. For several years, the company has allowed domains that are half in foreign characters, such as [Chinese text].com or [Arabic text].org. For the test, domain names will look like [Korean text].[Korean text]. The long road to this stage, which comes nearly a decade after the technology for creating multilingual domains was invented, has left many in the non-English-speaking world impatient and angry. Questions of political and linguistic sovereignty, alongside accusations of American digital colonialism
, have motivated some countries to create their own Internets, effectively mounting a challenge to the World Wide Web
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