Several Verizon Wireless employees have been suspended after the company learned that some had accessed Barack Obama's cell phone records without authorization. Whether they'll face criminal charges is not clear.
Google has big plans for Chrome, and they don't involve keeping the browser in a perpetual beta twilight. The search giant intends to seize a significant chunk of the browser market in 2009, and could offer competition the likes of which Internet Explorer has never faced.
Major movie studios aren't happy that Australian ISP iiNet won't disconnect users after receiving evidence that they have been sharing movies over BitTorrent. iiNet doesn't want to play traffic cop, but Australian law does demand it have (and act on) a disconnection policy for copyright infringers.
A copyright lawsuit against a man who posted instructions on how to print unlimited coupons online has finally been dropped after he argued that he didn't circumvent anyone's copyright protection in order to produce his "hack."
Apple released iPhone OS 2.2 last night, the latest update for the iPhone and iPod touch. A number of new features and fixes have arrived across the board, making this a must-have update.
7-Eleven is getting into the gaming business by offering a small selection of big-name console and PC games. With broken street dates and easily fenced goods being kept in stores, the business may be more trouble than it's worth. Ars talks about the challenge of selling games in a convenience store.
Software appliance tools maker rPath has added CentOS and Ubuntu support to rBuilder, its web-based software appliance constructor.
Microsoft has joined forces with GIS vendor ESRI to build a suite of collaboration tools for intelligence gathering and processing. This software will be used by the Department of Homeland Security's fusion centers.
Sony has been found guilty of willfully infringing Agere System's patents; several of the company's devices, including the PSP, use Agere's IP. Call it a victory on principle—Sony won't be losing any sleep over an $18.5 million fine.
Gov. Schwarzenegger and several Bay Area mayors have joined forces with start up Better Place to transform California into an electric vehicle wonderland.
A large survey of studies that explore the use of the Internet by children in the second decade of their lives find that, in general, it's acting as just another social tool, while providing them new outlets for learning and creativity.
HP's newest tablet launched yesterday, with a combination of features and capabilities that might breathe new life into a product segment that's languished in niche status for nearly a decade. With multitouch rapidly ascending the list of desired features on both laptops and cell phones, Tablet PCs might finally have their day in the sun.
Google's SearchWiki—the feature that allows people to annotate, add, delete, and move around search results—will soon be available to all users logged in with a Google account. The company's not sure yet what it plans to actually do with the data, though.
Location may be the next holy grail for social networking, and plenty of startups are already chasing it. Brightkite, a location-based social network focused on meeting friends and making new ones, has just introduced a new way to show off what everyone is doing in a particular location. Businesses, meet location-based social networks.
YouTube is experimenting with high-definition videos on its site, and you can access the capability using a handy URL trick. If YouTube manages to score enough movie and TV content from its owners, then it might eventually give Hulu some competition.
Yahoo introduces “Glue” visual search
20-Nov-08
Yahoo Glue combines search results into a single visual page. Ars takes a quick peek at this new service.
The EU has finally launched Europeana, a digital online library that hosts more than 2 million books, maps, recordings, photographs, paintings, and documents from cultural institutions in its 27 member states. The EU hopes to have 8 million more works added by 2010.
Google launched its Lively project in July as a customizable, interactive world that website owners could us to foster a new kind of interactivity with their visitors. Lively never received much adoption for a variety of reasons, though, and Google says it will shut down the service at the end of 2008.
Canadian regulators allow P2P throttling
20-Nov-08
Canada's telecom regulator won't stop Bell Canada from throttling P2P traffic on its retail and wholesale Internet services, but it will launch an entirely new inquiry into the big questions surrounding traffic management and network neutrality.
Microsoft has struck deals with music labels in order to allow Zune Pass subscribers to keep up to 10 songs every month: $15 for up to 10 songs for keeps and unlimited access to the rest of the online music library. Not bad Microsoft, but not perfect.
The Chicago Transit Authority, following the conclusion of a drawn-out law suit with Take-Two over Grand Theft Auto IV ads, has banned all ads for violent video games from its buses and facilities.
It's back to the original line of scrimmage for the great slugfest between Comcast and the NFL Network. An FCC administrative judge says the case needs more time to be resolved.
IBM to buy Transitive
20-Nov-08
IBM has announced plans to acquire Transitive, the company that makes the code translation technology behind Apple's Rosetta. IBM says Transitive's software will enable x86 Linux applications to run on Power systems.
VoIP over WiFi with a flat-rate monthly charge for both calls and the network—what's the catch? Provider DeFi says they can deliver it all: now to Nokia S60 phones, and soon to iPhones.
The Semiconductor Industry Association is predicting a significant decline in industry earnings for Q4, with a following downturn in 2009. The good news is that we shouldn't see anything like the 2000-2001 plunge, but the tech industry's previously strong performance in 2008 may have unceremoniously ended.
The Bush administration is coming to an end, but the FCC web site is still stuck in the Clinton administration. We've got four suggestions on how to bring fcc.gov into a Web 2.0 world.
Mozilla has published its financial statements for 2007, which reveal that the organization brought in $75 million. Mozilla chairperson Mitchell Baker says that Firefox's broader user base and expanded geographical reach are signs of success.
In 1991, the original George Bush was midway through his term, music came on cassette or CD, and Guns 'N Roses released their last album of original material. That will change at midnight Thursday as Chinese Democracy, 17 years in the making, is streamed for free on MySpace Music.
Xobni made its public debut earlier this year as an Outlook plug-in that let users visualize e-mail habits and make better use of their contacts. Now, it's back with an update that offers integration of social networking tools and services like Skype, Facebook, Hoovers, and more.
The Chair of the FCC has been offering hot words about Comcast's response to a channel pricing inquiry. Now everybody is trying to cool off.
What's cooler than the Internet and cooler than outer space? Why, the Internet in outer space, of course. This month, NASA is building on ten years of work by testing an Internet-esque communications protocol designed for data transmission in deep space.
Thanks to inflation, low confidence in the economy, and unemployment, almost 71 percent of online shoppers plan to cut back their spending this holiday season. Things are not looking so rosy in Whoville, it seems.
The National Resources Defense Council has a released a report revealing that a) your game consoles can greatly increase your annual electricity bill, and b) there are some very simple steps one can take to avoid such costs.
The ongoing battle against malware-friendly, child pornography-distributing ISP McColo hit a snag over the weekend when the ISP activated an emergency connection agreement and hopped back online. McColo's access was cut once again within hours of the reconnect, but the event raises security concerns over how such emergency contracts are negotiated.
Sequencing DNA preserved in permafrost has allowed researchers to obtain roughly two-thirds of the genome of a mammoth. In conjunction with the announcement, Nature has published a perspective on what it would take to reverse the species' extinction.
New measurements from the top of the atmosphere at the bottom of the world reveal a oddity in the distribution of electrons hitting the Earth. Researchers suggest that the finding is consistent with the annihilation of dark matter particles predicted by a theory that requires extra dimensions.
A group of scientists from Spain, Italy, and the UK have successfully 'grown' a replacement length of airway, specific to an individual patient, and have used the airway to resect a damaged portion of her lung.
The Federation Against Software Theft is miffed at the UK Intellectual Property Office for not considering "recommended" changes to the copyright law that would punish online copyright infringers with 10 years of imprisonment in order to "bring parity with commercial dealing in pirated works."
The European Union has launched a public consultation on Internet security and is requesting feedback from the public about how to address network infrastructure security challenges.
An FCC Commissioner calls for the agency to get serious about an audit of Arbitron's Portable People Meter, an issue that has the attention of the next president.
Amazon has announced the launch of CloudFront, a new content delivery network service built on top of the company's cloud storage platform.