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CNET
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Jun 17, 09 2:43 PM CDT
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Bing's second week wasn't such a bad one, CNET reports. Microsoft’s brand-new search engine has eaten into the market share of its competition, tacking on a 1% gain in both number of searchers and results returned last week, putting it up about 3% in both categories since launch: It captured 16.7% of search users and returned 12.1% of all results pages.
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Jezebel
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Jun 16, 09 2:06 PM CDT
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In a somewhat baffling move, Mary J. Blige has recorded a duet with alleged Rihanna-beater Chris Brown, Jezebel reports. Blige has been outspoken about her suffering at the hands of a former boyfriend and the terrors of growing up around domestic violence. To make matters more uncomfortable, it appears that the Blige/Brown song, leaked on the Internet, was originally intended for Brown and Rihanna.
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Washington Post
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Jun 15, 09 5:31 PM CDT
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Traditional media are having a tough time covering the Iranian election fallout, but fear not: Web 2.0 is up to the task. The Washington Post runs down the best destinations for those hoping to stay on top of the situation: PicFog.com: Current, unedited photos containing "a level of gore or manipulation not found on traditional news sites."
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Ars Technica
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Jun 15, 09 2:07 PM CDT
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Evidence suggests that Google will soon introduce a “MicroBlogsearch” feature, indexing and searching Twitter and its imitators, Ars Technica reports. Google-watchers noticed a reference to the new feature hidden in Google’s translation service. Unlike Twitter’s own search, which seeks out any and all tweets containing the search terms and displays them chronologically, Google will seek to rank the links by relevance.
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Reuters
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Jun 15, 09 1:34 PM CDT
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Orthodox Jews have long been discouraged from searching the Internet due to rabbinical restrictions on viewing immodest content. No longer, Reuters reports. Enter Koogle—the name is a mashup of Google and a traditional Jewish noodle dish—a Hebrew-language search engine that filters out non-kosher content and appears to meet Orthodox standards.
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The Atlantic
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Jun 12, 09 12:30 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Creigh Deeds owes a debt to Google after his surprising come-from-behind win in this week's Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary. Starting the day before the election, Derek Thompson writes for the Atlantic, Deeds’ campaign employed “Google Blasting, an eleventh-hour strategy to blanket Google-affiliated webpages in an area with a single ad campaign to impact voters' final decision.” And he’s not the only one.
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Wired
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Jun 11, 09 2:21 PM CDT
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The US Army has lifted a years-long ban on online social networks, commanding bases to let soldiers access sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr so they can “tell the Army story,” Wired reports. The change doesn’t apply to all overseas bases or other armed forces, and it leaves MySpace, YouTube, and Pandora blocked. But it marks a shift in the military’s thinking towards the web tools.
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Ars Technica
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Jun 10, 09 2:26 PM CDT
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France’s constitutional council today shot down the country’s newly minted “three strikes” law against Internet piracy, Ars Technica reports. The council said the law, which set up an administrative body to punish pirates, violated basic principles of French law, assigning essentially judicial duties to a non-judicial body, and putting the burden of proof on the accused, not the accusers.
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Wall Street Journal
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Jun 10, 09 7:53 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Federal authorities have seized or frozen bank accounts holding $34 million belonging to online poker players in what appears to be the start of a crackdown, the Wall Street Journal reports. The accounts are managed by a company that handles payments for several popular online poker sites, and the cash belongs to some 27,000 winning players.
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BBC
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Jun 10, 09 7:20 AM CDT
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China's blocking of Twitter ahead of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre last week didn't foil the country's computer-savvy youth for very long, the BBC reports. Users swiftly shared information about visiting the site through proxies or software applications, and the subsequent twittering made Tiananmen one of Twitter's most-discussed topics last week.
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TechCrunch
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Jun 9, 09 5:48 PM CDT
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A website hopes to meet the "tiny challenge" of cataloging every concert ever given, writes MG Siegler on TechCrunch. Songkick, a site developed in 2007 to provide recommendations for live music based on where you live and what you like, also wants to add a mix of social networking to its database. An “I Was There” button in the site’s catalog allows concertgoers to chime in about a particular show.
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Mashable
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Jun 9, 09 4:40 PM CDT
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Facebook will now offer users an alternative to the clumsy random URLs currently assigned for personal pages, Mashable reports. Starting Friday, users can apply for an actual named website to supplant a mix of numbers, such as facebook.com/john.q.public. The “vanity URL” system has been available on Twitter and MySpace, but this is Facebook’s first concession to the trend.
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Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Jun 8, 09 3:11 PM CDT
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Minnesota has dropped a bid to cut off access to online gambling after a legal challenge from an industry group, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. The state had petitioned Internet service providers to block the sites. Whether the lobby “ultimately would have prevailed in court is unknown,” a state official said. “It may be more appropriate to resolve this problem by working to create clear and effective government policies.”
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San Jose Mercury News
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Jun 7, 09 3:43 PM CDT
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A Stanford computer science professor who mentored Google's founders has drowned in his swimming pool, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Rajeev Motwani, 47, who could not swim, drowned at his Atherton, Calif., home, leaving a wife, two daughters, and many admirers in Silicon Valley. “It's a rare combination to have somebody who is so smart and also such a nice guy,” said Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
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Financial Times (UK)
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Jun 2, 09 3:00 PM CDT
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Facebook is breaking an age-old business rule: Never do business with friends. In a bid to achieve profitability, the social-networking site is testing an internal payments system that allows its 300 million users to purchase credits redeemable for virtual goods, from Facebook itself or third-party applications. “Over time, this will be very significant,” one analyst tells the Financial Times .
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Daily Telegraph (UK)
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Jun 1, 09 3:11 PM CDT
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Some in the technology world are questioning Microsoft’s decision to enable its new search engine, Bing, to display video on the site itself, the Telegraph reports. The new technology—not shared by Google and the like—allows for pornographic film to run on the search page should the searcher input the proper terms. Though “safe search” is on by default, it’s easily disabled.
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