Top Items:
Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing:
DoJ search requests: Google said no; Yahoo, AOL, MSN yes. — Update: Earlier today, I asked a Justice Department spokesperson which search engines other than Google received requests to provide search records. The answer: Yahoo, AOL, and MSN were also asked to supply search records information, and all complied.
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Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Google Rebuffs Feds on Search Requests — SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet's leading search engine _ a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.
Arshad Mohammed / Washington Post:
Google Refuses Demand for Search Information — Government Asked 4 Firms for Data in Effort to Revive Anti-Porn Law — The Justice Department said yesterday that it subpoenaed four major Internet companies for data on what people search for on the Web as part of an eight-year battle …
Discussion:
Todd Bishop's Microsoft …
Gary Price / Search Engine Watch Blog:
Court Documents & Summary Of United States Versus Google Over Search Data — Earlier we reported in Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No, Yahoo & MSN Said Yes that the US Government seeks to force Google to hand over search data. That story explains more about the situation …
Arik Hesseldahl / Business Week:
Is the New iMac a Cash Machine? — Disassembling the first fruit of the Apple-Intel alliance raises some interesting questions about the model's profit margins — For years the thought of an Intel (INTC) chip going into an Apple computer (AAPL) was enough to make those who love their Macs turn various shades of green.
RELATED ITEM:
Sylvia Carr / silicon.com:
Tesco debuts 'VoIP for all' — "Simple service" to rival Skype — Retail giant Tesco has launched a new voice over IP service aimed at the mass market, which allows customers to place phone calls over the internet via their PC. — The goal is to make it easy enough for anyone - even those who've never heard of VoIP - to use.
RELATED ITEM:
Kevin Poulsen / Wired News:
The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat — At half-past noon on Jan. 9, cable TV contractors sinking a half-mile of cable near Interstate 10 in rural Arizona pulled up something unexpected in the bucket of their backhoe: an unmarked fiber-optic cable. "It started pulling the fiber out of the pipe …
Discussion:
Tech_Space
Greg Reinacker / Greg Reinacker's Weblog:
Image aggregator prototype — The other night, on the way home, an idea came to me...so I pulled up my development environment and decided to write some code. I think my terrified development team is probably locking me out of the source control systems as we speak... ;-) — My thought was this.
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
Are media consumers mostly couch potatoes? — Scott Karp, the managing director of research and strategy for Atlantic Media, seems to have a way of writing things that get under my skin. First he said that bloggers have it all wrong when it comes to the "new" media, and that the vision …
Philoneist:
Interview With Digg.com Founder, Kevin Rose — Digg is a website at the forefront of social news promotion for technology-based articles. Users submit stories they find interesting to a continuously updated archive where others can comment or vote approvingly/disapprovingly.
Fractals of Change:
Search Down Memory Lane — Was reading John Battelle's excellent book The Search (which I'll blog about when I finish it) and was suddenly sent hurtling down Memory Lane. John writes about the distant antecedents of today's search engines: — "Enter Gerard Salton, a Harvard …
Discussion:
Clickety Clack
Ashlee Vance / The Register:
Google's botched video store starts coughing up cash — Google has started returning money to those customers screwed by its hapless video service. — Last week, we told you how billionaires Larry and Sergey had taken 99 cents from us and others as a result of their handicapped Google Video store.
Dave Winer / Scripting News:
Six month Mac report — This is my sixth month primarily using the Mac. I still use Windows, but when I travel, the Mac is what goes with me. That goes for trips down the street to the coffee shop, or trips on BART to San Francisco, or United Airlines to Boston.
Robert Sinke / dapreview.net:
jWIN JX-MP93 can eat 2GB SD cards — Some of these reps at the CES in Las Vegas were just rude, which is okay as long as there's a valid reason. Something like "No sir, you cannot take pictures of this device because your camera's flash will cause this thing to mutate into some horrific giant sea cucumber …
Mark Ballard / The Register:
Crazy Frog scapegoat finds solace in porn — Every mobile content firm admits that all the money is in porn. But most pin-stripe firms tend to steer clear of the genre. They don't want to upset their respectable customers. — mBlox was one of those untarnished outfits until …
Discussion:
The Mobile Technology Weblog
Mark LaPedus / eetimes.com:
U.S. to open WiMAX spectrum — SAN JOSE, Calif. — Looking to stay ahead of Asian and European rivals in broadband deployment, the U.S. is making an aggressive bid to open up spectrum for emerging WiMAX technology, according to a Bush administration official.
Reuters:
Web sites judged in a blink — TORONTO, Ontario (Reuters) — Internet users can give Web sites a thumbs up or thumbs down in less than the blink of an eye, according to a study by Canadian researchers. — In just a brief one-twentieth of a second — less than half the time it takes to blink …
Peter Cohen / Macworld:
World of Warcraft passes one million European users — Blizzard Entertainment on Thursday announced that its online role playing game World of Warcraft has passed more than one million customers in Europe. — World of Warcraft brings players to the war torn fantasy world of Azeroth …