News

Greenpeace cheers Apple--asks for more
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Greenpeace says "we are cheering!" but goes on to say that the statement is "not everything we asked for." Is Apple doing enough for the environment--vote.
Jason O'Grady: Apple bows to 'green' pressure; divulges LED plans

Meet Microsoft, the advertising company
Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft isn't adding all this social-software goodness to its products just because the up-and-coming generation wants and expects it. Microsoft sees a way to make money here.
Ryan Stewart: Mono founder says Silverlight will come to Linux
Mix '07 Focus: The remix from day one

BlackBerry throws a Curve 8300
Russell Shaw: BlackBerry's new smart phone comes with 2 megapixel camera, enhanced media player and high-performance browser.
Photos: Blackberry Curve 8300
Photos: Barracuda rides new Nokia wave

IBM puts vacuum spaces in chips
Nothing insulates like a vacuum. Big Blue says its Airgap technique will increase chip speed and reduce power consumption.
Images: IBM's vaccuum techique
Video: IBM adds vacuum to processors

Solving the Web app's 'offline problem': How Zimbra did it
David Berlind: Zimbra's unique selling proposition is that its solutions take the Web 2.0 approach to e-mail and collaboration.
Gallery: Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.5

 

 

Technorati tags: zimbra, web apps, ibm, blackberry, microsoft, advertising, microsoft advertising, apple

Microsoft to ship critical Windows, Office patches

Microsoft to ship critical Windows, Office patches
Ryan Naraine: Next week's Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft will include fixes for a wide range of "critical" vulnerabilities in the Windows, Office and Exchange product lines.

Best Buys US .com

 

If We Don't Have It, They Don't Make It!

Source: Best Buys US .com

 

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Best Buys US .com

 

If We Don't Have It, They Don't Make It!

Source: Best Buys US .com

 

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Qualcomm Likes Juice Wireless

Wireless chip maker joins $2.3 million investment round.
By Scott Martin

Mobile video startup Juice Wireless has quietly captured $2.3 million in funding from a pair of investors including Qualcomm. Juice Wireless' technology allows people to shoot video on mobile phones and then upload it to the startup's JuiceCaster video boxes that can appear on social-networking destinations and other sites. The investment, part of a second round, includes 21 Ventures and has yet to be formally announced. The company said the additional funds will allow it to pursue deals with large wireless carriers. "The funding is used to get the carrier deals and then support the carrier deals," Juice Wireless CEO Nick Desai said.

Find out more in today's story.

 

Yahoo: Right Media for $680M
Search company picks up Internet ad exchange.
By Red Herring Staff
Yahoo on Monday agreed to acquire Right Media, an online advertising exchange, for $680 million in cash and stock. "We see that to be a very vibrant marketplace," Yahoo CEO Terry Semel said in a conference call. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo plans to purchase the remaining equity in Right Media, following its October 2006 agreement for a 20 percent ownership stake in the startup, formed in 2003. Yahoo took the original position in Right Media as part of a $45 million second round investment in the advertising company that included Redpoint Ventures and other existing investors. The October investment gave Right Media a valuation of about $200 million at the time. The move comes just days after Google agreed to pay $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, stealing it away from interested bidders including Microsoft and Yahoo. The DoubleClick deal promises to give Google a significant foothold in display advertising.

Report Card for VCs
TheFunded.com turns tables, letting startups rate funders.
By Ken Schachter
Venture capitalists, long accustomed to taking the role of Simon of "American Idol" in judging startups, are seeing the tables turned. That's because TheFunded.com recently launched, inviting entrepreneurs to post to its web site ratings of venture capital firms. On Thursday, after collecting more than 500 reviews, TheFunded.com released a list of the top five venture firms worldwide. Venture capitalists said it was inevitable that VCs became subject to the same scrutiny as college professor (RateMyProfessors.com), doctors (RateMDs.com) and contractors (AngiesList.com). "It was only a matter of time before this came up," said Sarah Tavel, an analyst at Larchmont, New York-based Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the firms ranked in the top five. "Increasingly the process is becoming more transparent and, perhaps, more symmetrical."

GE Spins Out VideoIQ
VideoIQ business exits parent, gets $8 million in funding.
By Ken Schachter
In what amounts to a rounding error for the multinational giant, GE has spun off its video analytics business into a 13-person startup, VideoIQ. As part of the deal, VideoIQ closed an $8-million first round of funding from Atlas Venture and Matrix Partners. The funding will be used primarily for research and development. Video analytics systems are designed to recognize threats without the need for people to review hours of video. In the wake of the 2005 London subway bombings, for example, investigators had to pore over video from 2,500 cameras.VideoIQ's systems can analyze networked video—differentiating, for instance, between a man and a dog or a car and a truck—and generate a QuickTime movie clip of the relevant event that is emailed to the user's mobile computer.

Dell picks Ubuntu for Linux PCs

'Highly critical' Trillian, Winamp flaws flagged
Security holes in two popular desktop software applications could put millions of computer users at risk of code execution attacks.

Another piece of Microsoft's cloud programming model revealed
Mary Jo Foley: At Mix '07, Microsoft revealed yet another piece of its puzzling cloud-programming puzzle: "Astoria," a set of patterns and infrastructure for Web data services.
Microsoft expands its set of Live programming interfaces
Mix '07's sleeper announcement: Cross-platform CLR
The scoop on Silverlight for developers
Focus on Mix '07

Report: Microsoft to buy 24/7 Real Media for $1 billion
Larry Dignan: Google grabs DoubleClick. Yahoo grabs Right Media. And now Microsoft is reportedly going to take out 24/7 Real Media.

Google denies Viacom copyright charges
Google responded to Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit, arguing that it has not infringed on the rights of the media company and that the lawsuit threatens the viability of YouTube.
Larry Dignan: Google's Viacom response: An army of lawyers cut and paste
Donna Bogatin: Google accuses Viacom of 'unclean hands'

Computer maker is trying a second time to sell Linux PCs and has chosen Canonical's Ubuntu to supply the operating system.
Screenshots: First look at 'Feisty Fawn'
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: First thoughts on Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn

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Search Engine Shoot-Out

Whether you're searching for text, video, images, news, or local information, you have lots of options beyond Google. We tried dozens of search engines and found some worthy challengers to the king.

 

Not many brands become verbs, as in "I googled [fill in the blank] last night." Nielsen/NetRatings' January 2007 report found that more than half of all Web queries in the United States in that month went through Google. The second-most-popular engine, Yahoo Search, garnered less than half that amount.

Which led us to wonder: Does Google deserve all that traffic, or is it living off its reputation? Are people using it because they're not aware of other, potentially better search engines? To find out, we pitted Google against its big-name competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search, as well as against smaller challengers such as AlltheWeb, AltaVista, and Ask.com--plus a couple dozen of the specialty search services, including Blogdigger, Picsearch, and TubeSurf.

Our verdict? Google is indeed the best search engine, even though two other services topped it--barely--in our text-search tests. Google's index proved to be the most accurate, comprehensive, and timely of the bunch. It also bested the majority of the specialty-search sites we tried, meaning those that focus on a category or file type, such as videos, images, news, blogs, or local info delivered on a mobile phone.

Recent enhancements to Live Search's mobile component moved that service into the lead in our test searches for local information, although you have to navigate manually to its mobile-optimized site rather than being redirected automatically when you log in from a cell phone or other handheld device (see our charts throughout this story for details).

That said, the competition is fierce--and Google had better stay on its toes. Its challengers are implementing some innovative tools and interface upgrades (Ask.com is particularly impressive in this area) that enhance the user experience and deliver more relevant information than do the standard ten blue links on a results page. We also like several useful tools that can help you go beyond the basics of search.

Chart: Text-Search Blanket Finish

In our tests, variation among the top four general Web search engines was minor, with Microsoft's Live Search coming in a distant fifth; Ask.com finished two points behind Live Search and ranked in sixth place. Click the icon below to see how the tested engines performed, including their scores in each round.

See Chart

New DNS service

 

A San Francisco start-up on Monday is expected to begin offering its users a new way to do Web browsing: customizable keyword shortcuts.

Created by a company called OpenDNS, the idea is to allow people to create keywords that point to favorite Web sites. Gadget buffs could link that word to CNET News.com sister site Crave, for example, so they would be taken there merely by typing "gadgets" into their browser's address bar.

"OpenDNS shortcuts are designed to make the address bar usable again," said David Ulevitch, the company's chief executive. The service requires creating a free account and configuring a computer to use OpenDNS.

OpenDNS works by replacing the current domain name servers that computers use to translate addresses like CNET.com into numeric addresses like 216.239.113.101. The company says it offers faster browsing, automatic correction of domain name typos like .cmo for .com, and blocking of phishing sites. OpenDNS makes money through a Yahoo partnership that serves ads on pages that appear if Web addresses are mistyped.

The idea of keywords redirecting to Web sites isn't exactly new. RealNames tried to make a business out of it through a partnership with Microsoft, but it closed shop in 2002, after burning through tens of millions of dollars.

In addition, it's already possible to add keywords to browsers. Firefox comes standard with the dict keyword (try it by typing something like "dict news" into the address bar). Some Web sites even offer lists of keyword-Web site matches you can download.

The free OpenBook add-on offers far greater keyword flexibility for Firefox users, and the Opera Web browser has a similar feature.

Internet power users, in other words, already have plenty of options for keywords that point to Web sites. An advantage of OpenDNS, however, is that it can be configured for many computers at once, so a network administrator for a company or university can set up useful keywords like "hr" for human resources that will work across the entire network.

Another advantage to OpenDNS's service is that, because it's part of the domain name system, it's able to work on browsers like Internet Explorer that may not have add-ons available. In addition, Ulevitch added in a telephone conversation, OpenDNS shortcuts can work on mobile devices like a Treo that can be configured to use his company's domain name servers.

(Editor's note: OpenDNS is funded in part by Minor Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Halsey Minor, who founded News.com parent company CNET Networks.)