Yahoo! Music General Manager Ian Rogers recently gave a speech to some music executives about the future of the Internet music business and promised his company will not be involved in Digital Rights Management any more
A virtual character, or avatar, for all the virtual worlds in which people play is the goal of a joint project between IBM and Linden Lab. The computer giant and the creator of Second Life are working on universal avatars that can travel between worlds. The project aims to open up virtual worlds by introducing open tools that work with any online environment. The companies hope to boost interest in virtual worlds as well as make them easier to navigate
Less than a month after publicly calling executives at his music label unprintable names, rocker Trent Reznor has signaled that his days of working for a record company are over. The only official member of the band Nine Inch Nails, Reznor announced that the group is now free of any recording contract with any label. Representatives from Reznor’s music label, Universal Music Group, were unavailable for comment. Oasis and Jamiroquai are also heavily considering jumping aboard the direct-to-audience express
Mozilla has announced a new initiative to bring Mozilla to the mobile web, including a fully functional mobile version of Firefox. The focus will be part of Mozilla 2, the big revision coming after Gecko 1.9 and Firefox 3. Minimo, the previous attempt to port Mozilla to mobile platforms, is apparently dead, but has already provided us with valuable information about how Gecko operates in mobile environments, has helped us reduce footprint, and has given us a platform for initial experimentation in user experience
via Slashdot
Most current plasma TV models would be banned from sale in Australia as early as October next year under onerous mandatory energy requirements recommended in a report commissioned by the Federal Government. The consulting firm Digital CEnergy, which prepared the report for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, also recommends a second tier of even tougher restrictions that would then ban almost all current LCD models from the market in April 2011
Just three weeks after Mozilla spun off its Thunderbird to a new subsidiary, the only two paid developers working on the e-mail client said they were quitting the company. Both Scott McGregor and David Bienvenu used terse blog posts last week to announce that their last day with Mozilla will be Friday
Google bought Finnish startup Jaiku, which makes a mobile phone application people can use to send short messages about where they are and what they’re doing. Google believes Jaiku’s technology can help develop new ways to use mobile devices. Founded last year in Helsinki, Jaiku specialises in mobile phone software that makes it easier to share updates about their whereabouts and thoughts. The concept, known as microblogging
, also is being promoted by another startup, San Francisco-based Twitter
A malicious hacker broke into an eBay server last week and temporarily suspended the accounts of a very small
number of members. eBay has secured and restored
the affected accounts and is calling the affected users without specifying how many accounts the hacker accessed and tinkered with
The UK government considers possession of The Anarchist’s Cookbook, even though it’s available in Amazon UK, an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 and is prosecuting a 17 year old boy, in part, for having a copy of the book. The teenager faces two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000. The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year. The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism
Seagate’s hybrid hard drives hit the market on Monday, joining hybrids from Samsung in creating a new storage category that combines the best of flash with traditional magnetic recording technology
Microsoft is to allow pirated copies of Windows XP to download and install Internet Explorer 7 without gaining Windows Genuine Advantage authentication, which is a move to boost security but not encourage piracy, according to the software giant
MSNBC.com is diving into citizen journalism and social media by acquiring Newsvine.com, a small but innovative player in what is known as participatory journalism
. It is MSNBC.com’s first acquisition in its 11-year history — via Newsvine
Renewable energy company Epuron is seeking approval to build Australia’s largest wind farm in the New South Wales outback and generate enough energy to power up to 400,000 homes
Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the long-running SCO case, Novell wants to get paid. Now. They’re requesting that the customary stay on SCO’s finances (as a result of their bankruptcy) be lifted so that Novell can begin recouping some of its losses from the protracted legal battle — via Slashdot
After receiving umbilical cord stem cells to replace bone marrow as treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Greg Graves temporarily had three different sets of DNA. Eventually, one of the two sets of cells transplanted into his bone marrow took root, leaving him different DNA in his blood from the rest of his body
Miniature cameras have given scientists a rare glimpse into how New Caledonian crows behave in the wild. The birds are renowned for their sophisticated tool-using ability, but until now, observing them in their natural habitat has proven difficult. But specially designed crow-cams
fitted to the birds’ tails have shed light on the creatures, recording some tool-use never seen before
A piece of outer space named for George Takei is in kind of a rough neighborhood for somebody who steers a starship: an asteroid belt. An asteroid between Mars and Jupiter has been renamed 7307 Takei in honour of the actor, best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek
series and movies
Pioneering research into a gay bomb
that makes enemy troops sexually irresistible
to each other has scooped one of this year’s Ig Nobel Prizes. Other winners included work on treating hamster jetlag with impotency drugs, extracting vanilla from cow dung, and the side-effects of sword swallowing. The awards, founded in 1991, mark achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think
Every year, in Germany alone, around 7000 people wait for a new cornea to save their eyesight. But donor corneas are in short supply. In an EU project, researchers have developed an artificial cornea which is to be clinically tested in early 2008
A hacker’s diversion of traffic from a California county government Web site to a porn purveyor spiraled into IT chaos yesterday after a countermeasure applied from Washington essentially deleted the ca.gov domain
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