The Internet

Everyone knows Craigslist, but Craig himself is getting a little restless. Craig Newmark is spending more time and money on outside projects, the New York Times reports, even with his company in a high-profile tiff with eBay. Newmark, 55, says he spends half his time on customer-service issues, the other half on public-service projects and causes like Barack Obama's campaign. More »

Spanish health officials are opening a virtual clinic in the popular online world Second Life, where they plan to advise teens who are too shy to consult flesh-and-blood doctors, the Guardian reports. It will appear as a consultation room for now, but officials hope to expand the service and eventually “deal with problems of dermatology and psychology through a webcam," one doctor said. More »

Facebook has implemented more than 40 additional measures to protect users from pedophiles and online bullying, the AP reports. The site now limits results for older users searching for minors, and has banned sex offenders from registering. "Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said the site’s chief privacy officer. More »

MySpace fell short of revenue targets in the most recent quarter, but, Adam Ostrow argues in Mashable, it’s still proven a phenomenal deal since Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought it for $580 million in 2005. Revenues from its unit are pulling close to its purchase price and it’s on track to make more with music downloads, sponsorships and targeted ads. More »

China apparently will continue to censor the Internet during August's Olympics, but says the international press will have the access it needs to function, Jacqui Cheng writes on Ars Technica. Officials said they would guarantee as much access “as possible,” but “controls on some unhealthy websites” would continue. In defense, they said, “every country limits access to some websites.” More »

It took the public two days to lead authorities to the Internet pedophile Interpol had been hunting since 2006, ABC News reports, with US authorities arresting Wayne Nelson Corliss, 59, early this morning in New Jersey. Police had been scouring the globe for a man seen abusing young boys in at least 800 photos circulating online. More »

Facing a lawsuit, the FBI has withdrawn a secret order demanding that an Internet library turn over a user's records—only the third time the bureau has backed down from such a demand, known as a "national security letter." The San Francisco-based Internet Archive, which stores old versions of websites, challenged the order on the grounds that the Patriot Act provision that protects libraries from similar requests should apply online as well. More »

Papa John's passed the $1-billion mark in online pizza orders yesterday, trumpeting growth in Internet sales averaging 50% per year since it debuted the service in 2001. Domino’s and Pizza Hut join the third-place pizza-delivery chain in reporting that the Internet is giving the business new life and increasing their slice of the casual dining pie, reports the AP. Pizza Hut says its online orders have grown sixfold in the last 3 years, and Domino's says its tracking system has given the company a "big bump." More »

The Olympic torch is bringing more than controversy on its round-the-world trek—it’s also responsible for the world’s highest Internet café, the People's Daily reports. China Mobile built the communications center at Mount Everest's 17,000-foot-high base camp to ensure communications for relay teams as the torch scales the mountain. More »

Spam turns 30 today, but don't break out the champagne just yet: The junk e-mail is as healthy as ever, frustrating tech experts desperate to blow out its candles. It all started on May 3, 1978, with a pitch for a new computer on a government-run precursor to the Internet. Even then, the reaction was fierce, the Washington Post says. More »

With an assist from a pesky, unforgiving press, Bill Clinton has turned into a faux pas machine—making him seem more a liability than an asset for his wife. But the former president is in truth the most convincing person on the campaign trail, and is animated by a deep-seated anger at Barack Obama’s attacks on the Clinton legacy, Ryan Lizza writes in the New Yorker . 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 »

French website Vie de Merde is receiving all the misery it can handle, Der Spiegel reports. Since its February launch, France’s answer to group therapy (translated "life is shit") has posted 2,400 tales of woe. Another 40,000 are waiting in the wings, says its founder. 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 »

Two-thirds of American teens aren’t keeping their LOLs to themselves: They're turning in papers and lab reports with abbreviations, dropped punctuation, and other informalities inherent to Internet and text-message vocabularies, the AP reports. Kids who write blogs and have Facebook pages are more likely to slip from formality in their schoolwork, a new survey shows—but OMG! grown-ups aren’t that upset about it. 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 »