Ap/hitech/ from www.tdn.com

• AOL seeks growth in shift from mass site to niches
  NEW YORK - A company rooted in bringing the Internet to the masses, AOL is shifting its focus toward serving niche audiences with the launch of dozens of specialty Web sites.
• AOL sheds its brand to draw specialty audiences
  NEW YORK - Unless you're looking carefully, you'll likely miss the fact that the new Asylum Web site for young men is a creation of Time Warner Inc.'s AOL. Same for WalletPop on personal finance, Spinner on indie music and StyleList on fashion.
• Routine conduct at risk with MySpace suicide case
  NEW YORK - Think twice before you sign up for an online service using a fake name or e-mail address. You could be committing a federal crime.
• Cable companies to ramp up Web, HD, mobile service
  PHILADEPHIA - Cable operators are riding high heading into this year's industry trade show, which kicks off this weekend.
• EchoStar to showcase first product for cable
  PHILADELPHIA - Former satellite TV provider EchoStar Corp. on Sunday will demonstrate its first product for cable companies at the industry's trade show: a unit that can tune in television and act as a cable modem.
• Lawmakers concerned over Charter's Web tracking
  ST. LOUIS - Cable TV, phone and Internet service provider Charter Communications drew concern Friday from two congressmen and a privacy advocate over its plan to experiment with tracking its customers' Web use in collaboration with an online advertising firm.
• Nintendo's latest game wants you off the couch
  NEW YORK - Sumo wrestlers were the main inspiration behind Wii Fit, Nintendo's latest attempt at getting you off the couch when you play video games.
• Yahoo seeks to conceal parts of shareholder suit
  SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. is seeking to conceal large portions of a shareholder lawsuit alleging the Internet company's board improperly thwarted Microsoft Corp.'s $47.5 billion takeover offer, raising shareholder questions over the motives for the secrecy.
• Craigslist answers eBay allegations in court
  SAN FRANCISCO - Classified ad Web site Craigslist is denying online auctioneer eBay's allegation that it unfairly diluted eBay's stake in it and says its board was acting to protect the company.
• 5 computer hackers arrested in Spain
  MADRID, Spain - Spanish authorities say they have arrested five young computer hackers accused of disabling Internet pages run by government agencies in the U.S., Latin America and Asia.

The Social

• Vodafone acquires contact management service ZYB
  

  European telecom giant Vodafone announced Friday that its Vodafone Europe BV subsidiary has acquired ZYB, a Danish company that specializes in online contact and calendar management. The price, as stated by Vodafone, is 31.5 million euros, or $48.7 million.

  "Using a Web portal as a link between the ...

• Yahoo teams up with ad powerhouse WPP Group
  

  Yahoo announced Friday that it has formed a partnership with three subsidiaries of advertising giant WPP: GroupM, 24/7 Real Media and WPP Digital. Through the deal, WPP agencies will have access to Yahoo-served ad space and work closely with the Right Media ad exchange, in which Yahoo was a major investor ...

• Hey Facebook: No beer pong for you
  
  (Credit: Ricky Van Veen, editor in chief, CollegeHumor)
  
  

  With a $15 billion valuation, big-name investors, and high-profile Google employees jumping onto its payroll, Facebook can't play with the kids anymore.

  That's probably why its New York branch's hyped-up beer pong tournament against dude entertainment site CollegeHumor was ...

  
  
• Facebook suspends participation in Google's Friend Connect
  
  

  This post was updated at 3:17 PM with comment from Google's David Glazer.

  A post Thursday on Facebook's developer blog explains that the social network has suspended participation in Google's "Friend Connect" project, citing a violation of its internal terms of service.

  "Now that Google has ...

• Bubble 2.0 Watch: Aggregation site Brijit shuts down
  
  

  Brijit.com, an aggregation site that summed online news stories and other content up in 100 words or fewer for quick consumption, has shut its doors.

  The shutdown is ideally temporary, the site's management said Thursday, but a placeholder on the front page admitted that Brijit "is out of ...

• Google Maps lets loose a Flash-y API
  

  Google has released a Google Maps application program interface that enables developers to use the mapping software in applications that use Adobe Systems' Flash technology.

  "We've designed it so that Flash graphics can be used for each tile layer, marker, and info window," a n announcement by Google Maps engineer Mike Jones ...

• Report: Digg walked away from $100 million offer from Al Gore
  
  

  Plenty of would-be buyers have been named for social news site Digg, but one we haven't heard much about: Current Media, the cable and Web news channel that was launched by former vice president Al Gore.

  It's one of the juicy tidbits detailed in BusinessWeek columnist Sarah Lacy'...

• Zoho now accepts Google and Yahoo logins
  
  

  Online-productivity suite Zoho announced on Wednesday that it now accepts Google and Yahoo logins. An executive from Zoho parent company AdventNet announced last month that Google login compatibility was on the way.

  "For Google and Yahoo users who are curious about Zoho but don't want to set up another ...

• Kluster launches social-news site
  
  

  Just a few months after it enjoyed a high-profile launch at the TED Conference, Kluster--a social site for project collaboration that allowed members to share in potential profits--has restructured.

  On Wednesday, the company launched Knewsroom, a social-news site, as part of its new Kluster Labs strategy.

  

  A look at ...

• Facebook Chat to work on Jabber IM clients
  
  

  Facebook Chat might've had a simple and quiet launch, but a month later, the social network is already announcing plans to upgrade.

  Engineer David Reiss announced Tuesday evening on the Facebook Developer Blog that Facebook Chat will soon have an Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) interface--that's better ...

MiamiHerald.com: Technology

• AOL seeks growth in shift from mass site to niches
  A company rooted in bringing the Internet to the masses, AOL is shifting its focus toward serving niche audiences with the launch of dozens of specialty Web sites.
• AOL sheds its brand to draw specialty audiences
  Unless you're looking carefully, you'll likely miss the fact that the new Asylum Web site for young men is a creation of Time Warner Inc.'s AOL. Same for WalletPop on personal finance, Spinner on indie music and StyleList on fashion.
• Court sides with MySpace in suit over sex assault
  Federal law gives MySpace.com immunity from a lawsuit over the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl by a man she met on the social networking Web site, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
• NJ sex offenders charged for MySpace, Facebook use
  Three convicted sex offenders have been arrested for surfing social networking Web sites and are believed to be the first charged under the state's new law that restricts their use of the Internet, authorities said Friday.
• Woman indicted in Missouri MySpace suicide case
  A Missouri woman was indicted Thursday for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide.
• France's Orange signs new iPhone deal with Apple
  French wireless operator Orange said Friday it has signed a deal with Apple Inc. to sell its iPhone in the Middle East, Africa and several European countries.
• Cable companies to ramp up Web, HD, mobile service
  Cable operators are riding high heading into this year's industry trade show, which kicks off this weekend.
• '$100 laptop' nonprofit now teamed with Microsoft
  The One Laptop Per Child project is about to find out whether Microsoft Corp., a rival the nonprofit group once derided, is the solution to its problems in spreading inexpensive portable computers to schoolchildren.
• Routine conduct at risk with MySpace suicide case
  Think twice before you sign up for an online service using a fake name or e-mail address. You could be committing a federal crime.
• Nintendo's latest game wants you off the couch
  Sumo wrestlers were the main inspiration behind Wii Fit, Nintendo's latest attempt at getting you off the couch when you play video games.
• EchoStar to showcase first product for cable
  Former satellite TV provider EchoStar Corp. on Sunday will demonstrate its first product for cable companies at the industry's trade show: a unit that can tune in television and act as a cable modem.
• Icahn to Yahoo board: Sell to Microsoft or leave
  Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang spent months fending off Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited takeover bid. Now he may only have a few weeks to persuade the software maker to revive its last offer of $47.5 billion, or risk being fired in a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn.
• Yahoo seeks to conceal parts of shareholder suit
  Yahoo Inc. is seeking to conceal large portions of a shareholder lawsuit alleging the Internet company's board improperly thwarted Microsoft Corp.'s $47.5 billion takeover offer, raising shareholder questions over the motives for the secrecy.
• Craigslist answers eBay allegations in court
  Classified ad Web site Craigslist is denying online auctioneer eBay's allegation that it unfairly diluted eBay's stake in it and says its board was acting to protect the company.
• Lawmakers concerned over Charter's Web tracking
  Cable TV, phone and Internet service provider Charter Communications drew concern Friday from two congressmen and a privacy advocate over its plan to experiment with tracking its customers' Web use in collaboration with an online advertising firm.
• Sony shares rise in Tokyo after upbeat earnings
  Sony shares jumped nearly 9 percent in Thursday trading in Tokyo, a day after the Japanese electronics and entertainment company released upbeat earnings that included a record fiscal year profit.
• CBS in $1.8B deal for online news, info site CNet
  CBS Corp. is acquiring a big online reach with its acquisition of CNet Networks Inc. but also a company that's faced heavy criticism from investors. Those concerns as well as the hefty $1.8 billion price tag helped send CBS's shares down after the deal was announced Thursday.
• Video-game review: 'Iron Man'
  Ostensibly, "Iron Man" seems equipped to deliver the goods once the handholding ends and the real action begins. And like an asylum inmate who suddenly stops taking his meds, that's precisely what it does.
• Deutsche Telekom says iPhone meeting expectations
  Deutsche Telekom chief executive Rene Obermann said Thursday the company has so far sold more than 100,000 of Apple Inc.'s iPhones since the device's November debut in Germany.
• Video game, accessory sales jump 47 pct in April
  Americans spent $1.23 billion on video games, hardware and accessories in April, up 47 percent from a year earlier, even as the price of more essential items like food and gasoline soared.
• Icahn to Yahoo board: Sell to Microsoft or leave
  Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang spent months fending off Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited takeover bid. Now he may only have a few weeks to persuade the software maker to revive its last offer of $47.5 billion, or risk being fired in a shareholder mutiny led by activist investor Carl Icahn.

Slashdot

• Firefox 3 RC1 Out Now
  Jay writes "Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is out now. If yours didn't auto-update, then get it while it's hot! The release came a bit early with Computer World noting 'The appearance of Firefox Release Candidate 1 (RC1) came earlier than expected. As recently as last Saturday, Mozilla's chief engineer said that although the company had locked down RC1's code, it was planning to publicly launch the build in 'late May.'" My copy just downloaded- restarting after I save this story. God I hope it's better than the last beta.

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Unmanned Aircraft Pose US Airspace Problems
  coondoggie writes to tell us that congressional watchdogs have called on Congress to create a body within the FAA to oversee unmanned aircraft development and integration. The group cited the rapidly growing unmanned aircraft community and is worried about the possible repercussions. "The GAO also called on the FAA to work with the Department of Defense, which has extensive unmanned aircraft experience to issue its program plan. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assesses the security implications of routine unmanned aircraft access to commercial airspace, the GAO said. Even if all issues are addressed, and there are a number of critical problems, unmanned aircraft may not receive routine access to the national airspace system until 2020, the GAO concluded."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• World's Newest, Most Powerful Laser Comes Online
  deglr6328 writes "The OMEGA EP laser at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics was dedicated today at the Robert L. Sproull Center for Ultra High Intensity Laser Research. The new laser, which has been in design since ~2002 will, at 1 kilojoule per 1 picosecond pulse, be the highest energy petawatt scale laser ever created by far. For a fleeting fraction of a second, it will deliver a beam of infrared light at 1054 nm that is more powerful than the total energy consumption of all human activity on the planet, to a tiny spot the size of the head of a pin. Previous petawatt scale lasers such as the one created at Lawrence Livermore labs in the late 90's (and dismantled in 1999) were capable of only several hundred joules per pulse. The new OMEGA EP laser will be able to manifest power densities sufficient to examine Unruh and Hawking radiation-like phenomena in the laboratory and will have the capability to directly produce nuclear reactions through ultra high electric field initiated photodisintegration."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• The World's Spookiest Weapons
  DesScorp writes "Popular Science has a piece on some outrageous ideas for weapons; some came to fruition, and other's didn't. And while some of the weapons (atom bombs, chemical weapons, bats with bombs strapped to them that seek out homes and buildings at night) are truly frightening, some of them are also kind of silly, such as the Gay Bomb, and the Frisbee bomb that was labeled the 'Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munition.'"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• NSF Research Reveals Chain Letter Travel Patterns
  alphadogg writes to tell us that the NSF is researching chain letters and how they travel. The results aren't quite what one might expect, showing a pattern of more selective and circuitous travel. "One surprising finding was that messages often took meandering routes between people who knew each other, often through as many as 100 intermediaries. Many email users also received copies from multiple social groups. The researchers concluded that because messages come from many directions, there's ample opportunity for the messages to be edited along the way."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• US Senate Asks for National Security Letter Explanation
  A group of U.S. Senators are asking the FBI to explain a recent controversial National Security Letter sent to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive was able to defeat the request with help from the EFF and the ACLU this past April. "The Internet Archive's case is only the third known legal challenge to NSLs, despite the fact that the the FBI issues tens of thousands a year -- more than 100,000 such letters were issued in 2004 and 2005 combined. But despite the lack of legal challenges from recipients at ISPs, telephone companies and credit bureaus, successive scathing reports from the Justice Department's Inspector General have found illegal letters and a willy-nilly culture within the bureau towards tracking their usage."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• A Baseball Hat That Reads Your Mind
  esocid writes to tell us that researchers from Taiwan have created a new baseball cap complete with embedded -bio-signal monitoring system. The purpose was to give a neural interface that could be useful in everyday life. "The cap contains five embedded dry electrodes on the wearer's forehead, and one electrode behind the left ear, that acquire EEG signals. Then, the EEG signals are wirelessly transmitted to a data receiver, where they are processed in real-time by a dual-core processor. The BCI system includes Bluetooth transmission for distances of 10m or less (e.g., for driving applications), as well as RF transmission for distances up to 600m (e.g., for potential sports applications). Next, the processed signals are transmitted back to the cap, where the data can be stored, displayed in real-time on a screen, or be used to trigger an audio warning, if necessary."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Amputee Sprinter Wins Olympic Appeal to Compete
  Dr. Eggman writes "Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, has won his appeal filed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. This overturns a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, and allows Mr. Pistorius the chance to compete against other able-bodied athletes for a chance at a place on the South African team for the Beijing Olympics. He currently holds the 400-meter Paralympic world sprinting record, but must improve on his time by 1.01 seconds to meet the Olympic qualification standard. However, even if Pistorius fails to get the qualifying time, South African selectors could add Oscar to the Olympic 1,600-meter relay squad."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• $100 Laptop Platform Moves On
  The BBC is reporting that Sugar Labs is planning on taking "Sugar", the XO laptop's innovative interface, to the next level and distribute to a broader audience. "Sugar is a user interface that allows children to collaborate even when working on different machines. For example, they can write documents or make music together. The open source software also contains a journal and automatically saves and backs up all data. [...] Sugar Labs will work closely with developers from the open source community to develop the user interface for other computers and operating systems. It has already been bundled with the most recent releases of the Ubuntu and Fedora Linux operating systems."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Lockheed Martin Awarded GPSIII
  D Ninja writes "Yesterday, Lockheed Martin was awarded the $1.4 billion Air Force contract to build the next-generation global positioning satellite system. This occurred after a series of delays as the Air Force decided between Lockheed and the competing bidding contractor, Boeing Co. 'GPS III, will give new navigation warfare (NAVWAR) capabilities to shut off GPS service to a limited geographical location while providing GPS to US and allied forces. GPS III will offer significant improvements in navigation capabilities by improving interoperability and jam resistance. The procurement of the GPS III system is planned for multiple blocks, with the GPS IIIA portion currently underway. GPS IIIA includes all of the GPS IIF capability plus up to a ten-fold increase in signal power, a new civil signal compatible with the European Union's Galileo system, and a new spacecraft bus that will allow a growth path to future blocks.'"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight
  A Bill that could allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years to combat those who trade in child pornography has been unanimously approved by a Senate panel. "The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote. [...] An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

  

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• Shape-Shifting Malware Hits the Web
  Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that in a recent interview, Marc Henauer has revealed that security researchers are falling behind now that malware is starting to be able to change its signature every few hours. "Unfortunately the know-how and construction kits used to create this shape-shifting threat are now readily available and are unleashing a wave of malware based on social engineering techniques. [...] Sweeney believes that a non rules-based monitoring process must be set up to defend all ingress and egress points covering SMTP, DNS, HTTP(s), IM etc."

  

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• Dutch Voting Machines De-Certified
  Peer writes "The dutch government has officially decided that it will no longer use voting machines (Babel Fish Translation) for elections. So it's pencil and paper from now on. Activists have been campaigning against the use of voting machines for some time."

  

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• DARPA Celebrates 50 Years of Pushing the Envelope
  holy_calamity writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was founded in 1958 after the Soviets shocked the world by launching Sputnik. New Scientist recounts the history of the agency charged with protecting the US from 'technological surprise' and lists some of its most spectacular successes and failures."

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  

  
• Keeping Customer From Accessing My Database?
  cyteen02 writes "We run a data processing and tracking system for a customer in the UK. We provide a simple Web site where the customer can display the tracking data held in our Oracle database. From these screens they can query based on a combination of 15 different data fields, so it's pretty flexible. We also provide a csv report overnight of the previous day's data processing, which they can load into their own SQL Server database and produce whatever reports they want. Occasionally they also want one-off specific detailed reports, so we write the SQL for that and send them the results in an Excel format spreadsheet. This all ticks along happily. However they have now asked for direct read-only access to our Oracle database, to be able to run ad-hoc queries without consulting us. As a DBA, my heart sinks at the thought of amateurs pawing through my database. Unfortunately, 'because you are stupid' is not considered a valid business reason to reject their request. So can any Slashdotters assist me in building my case to restrict access? Have you experienced a similar situation? Have you had to support this sort of end user access? How would you advice me to keep my customer away from my precious tables?"

  

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.