Posts on ‘August 13th, 2009’

The company is expected to announce Wednesday that gadgets for iGoogle can now take advantage of the Open Social API to build social-networking features into the small little software programs that iGoogle users can use to customize their home pages, according to Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and experience. For example, gadgets will [...]

For the second time in two days, Hollywood has racked up another major legal victory over DVD-copying devices the studios charge are illegal.
Kaleidescape, which had won a rare court victory over the film industry two years ago, saw a California appeals court overturn the ruling on Wednesday. The decision comes a day after a federal [...]

A presidential panel wrapping up a review of future U.S. manned space flight options delivered a grim assessment Wednesday, showing NASA’s current plan to retire the shuttle, finish the space station and return to the moon by the early 2020s is not remotely feasible without a significant restoration of previously cut funding.
In the absence of [...]

Google’s acquisition of video-compression software company On2 Technologies is being challenged in court by On2 shareholders dissatisfied by Google’s $106.5 million offer.
The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in Delaware Chancery Court, seeks class action status and a permanent injunction against the deal. The suit, first reported by the New York Post, also seeks an accounting [...]

As the ad-supported music sites cast about for ways to generate revenue, some of them are turning to selling downloads. This means they hope they can entice iTunes users, which represents the vast majority of the digital music market, away from Apple.
Others have tried this this tact, including Microsoft, MTV, and Wal-Mart and all have [...]

Initially, Warner Music Group used the platform to develop Web sites for two artists, Laura Izibor and reggae singer Sean Paul. On Wednesday, it announced it has expanded that relationship to include sites for other artists, such as Paramore, R&B singer Trey Songz, rock band Halestorm, and a redesigned site for Sean Paul. By the [...]

Paper books may be low tech, but no one will tell you how and where you can read them.
For many people, the problem with electronic books is that they come loaded with just those kinds of restrictions. Digital books bought today from Amazon.com, for example, can be read only on Amazon’s Kindle device or its [...]

Microsoft on Thursday confirmed several of the worst kept secrets in the industry, acknowledging the pricing, availability date, and capacities for its upcoming Zune HD.
The black 16GB version of the touch-screen media player will sell for $219.99, while a 32GB version in “platinum” color will cost $289.99. The pricing had already leaked via Best Buy [...]

Fans of the hit NBC show “The Office” may well remember an episode from season three called “The coup.” In that episode, one of the main characters, Jim Halpert, had recently joined a different office of the paper supplies company he works for, only to fall haplessly into the branch’s regular team-building sessions of the [...]

On a Monday night earlier this month, the projection screen hanging on the wall of a bowling alley in Brooklyn’s bar-heavy Williamsburg neighborhood was displaying neither strikes nor scores, but columns of the Twitter client TweetDeck.
More specifically, they were streams of Twitter search queries for a number of terms that would make little sense without [...]