Stories related to: Internet

The outgoing Italian government posted all citizens’ earnings and tax information, briefly, on the Internet yesterday, sparking outrage over lost privacy, the BBC reports. The site was quickly clogged by Italians checking up on neighbors’ and celebrities’ financial status. The information went offline after about 24 hours in response to a complaint from the country’s privacy overseers. More »

Steve Ballmer's next move on Yahoo is expected momentarily, and one option is to nominate a proxy slate for the board of directors, the Wall Street Journal reports, but hold off on making a new hostile bid for the company. Microsoft could buy time for setting a new price for Yahoo, which rejected the company's $42-billion bid, but keep the option of a hostile campaign later. More »

In an ominous sign of the times for printed news, a struggling 90-year-old Wisconsin daily newspaper is shutting down its daily print operation, but will continue to exist online, the New York Times reports. Most of the 18,000 current subscribers of Madison's afternoon Capital Times are switching to the city's bigger daily. More »

It's been a while since AOL was associated with rising numbers, but a jump in traffic to its content sites shows the company's transition to an ad-supported business is on track, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company redesigned its news, sports, and health sites and created some new ones after its 2006 decision to make its service free. More »

Wikipedia will soon hit bookshelves, the AP reports: German giant Bertelsmann AG is publishing a condensed print edition of the user-generated encyclopedia. The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia will contain 50,000 of the most-searched-for German entries this year—and it could be the first in an annual series. “A yearbook really can be a documentation of the zeitgeist,” said a publishing exec. More »

In 2000, technology watcher George Gilder argued in a book called Telecosm that infinite bandwidth and instant communication were on the way, thanks to booming construction of fiber-optic cable. Eight years later, post-bust (both dot-com and telecom), the “telecosm” is not far from what Gilder predicted, writes Mark Williams in Technology Review . More »

Microsoft is testing a new product that will allow users to link data across multiple electronic devices through the internet—so the picture you took on your phone can be in the digital picture frame in your home within minutes. It’s a big step for Microsoft, which until now has resisted the “cloud computing” movement, Reuters reports. More »

Take an idea, a video camera and an Internet connection, add a little how-to know-how and a portal like YouTube, and start counting your clicks. Reach enough viewers, and start counting your cash. That’s the premise behind a burgeoning Web industry attracting entrepreneurs and investors hoping to catch the next big wave, the New York Times reports. More »

Spending on Web 2.0 technologies is ready to explode, according to a new report from Forrester Research. The market will reach $4.6 billion by 2013, the report predicts, as the technology starts to saturate the business world. To get there, it’ll have to jump an average of 43% a year, since this year’s sales amount to a mere $764 million. More »

Want to chart real estate listings on a Google map? A free browser extension from Intel can do that and more. Intel Mash Maker, released in beta today, lets users edit Web pages and combine information from different sites using widgets. Users can copy existing widgets from an Intel gallery, adjust them to work on different sites, or write their own, reports CNet. More »

Internet calling system Skype is introducing a plan for unlimited overseas phone calls for $9.95 a month, CNET reports. The plan includes 34 European and Far Eastern countries, along with Australia and New Zealand—but the deal is limited to landlines except for calls to cell phones in Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The plan also includes unlimited domestic calls in the US. More »

Freud would have a field day studying Google searches, posits a blogger who tracked the terms visitors to his web page used and found a window into man's pathologies. John Kelly, a columnist on leave from the Washington Post, writes in the Guardian about "how the fetishes, pathologies and strange obsessions of humankind are catalogued every day on the world wide web."  More »

Wasting people’s time is an odd job—but it’s also a big business, writes CollegeHumor.com editor Streeter Seidell in the New York Times . Seidell spends his days wading through an “ocean” of submitted videos and other items, choosing which funny or bizarre selections deserve publication. Yet there’s no method to the madness: every day is a guessing game as to what will draw in time-wasters. More »

Is it another triumph of Web 2.0, or a concession to the rampantly collaborative tone of the Internet these days? Either way, "Dilbert" has gone interactive, the New York Times reports. On the popular comic’s website, fans can now substitute their own pithy retorts for text bubbles in the final panel, and they'll soon be able to run wild with the whole strip. More »

Call it therapeutic or call it revenge, but more ex-spouses are airing their dirty laundry on the Internet—and courts are supporting them even if their former partners are not. Personal blogs have quadrupled since 2003, the New York Times notes in a look at the trend, with many using them to dish about everything from marital affairs, divorce proceedings, or their ex's profile on Match.com. More »

Britain's Internet Watch Foundation is calling for the creation of an international body to help stamp out internet sites profiting from images of child sex abuse, the BBC reports. There are nearly 3,000 such sites worldwide, a number that has stayed constant over the last three years as sites move from country to country to stay ahead of the law, according to the organization. More »

A recent quantum computing breakthrough is a step towards creating a quantum Internet—which would be "automatically secure," a researcher told Technology Review . A Northwestern University professor has created a fundamental element of a quantum computer, a quantum logic gate, within an optical fiber, where previous gates used laser passing through air. This “could lead to distributed networks,” said one expert. More »

Gawker Media is cutting loose three of its blogs, CNET reports: Wonkette, Idolator and Gridskipper. “To be blunt," explained Gawker founder Nick Denton in an internal email, "they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did." Denton wouldn't comment on the prices the sites might've fetched. More »

Hillary Clinton's strong public stance against the crackdown in Tibet flies in the face of her husband's past fundraising ties in China, reports the LA Times . At the crux is a 2005 speech the former president gave for which he received an undisclosed donation to his charitable foundation—from Internet giant Alibaba. More »

A car thief in Calgary didn't count on rising to internet fame when he stole a rare Nissan Skyline GTR from a dealer, the New York Times reports. The owner posted a picture of the vehicle on an internet car lovers' forum and before long, his fellow forum members had not only spotted the car, they had photographed the suspect, found his details on Facebook, and called the cops. More »