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| Apple fires its return salvo as Microsoft issues misleading 5th ad
May 15, 2009 at 9:55 pm
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|  After appearing to remain aloof to Microsoft's jabs that Macs don't give enough choice, Apple has responded with ads which insist that poor Windows PC choices are no choices at all. Two of the three new TV spots debuting this week directly reference Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" ads, which since their debut in March have insisted that Windows PCs offer more choice for less money. |
| Tibco chief cheers up TieCon with talk of recovery and enterprise 3.0
May 15, 2009 at 9:33 pm
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|   Tibco Software chief executive Vivek Ranadive said the worst of the tech recession is behind us as he addressed the TieCon conference - an annual event in Silicon Valley heavily attended by the venture capital and entrepreneur communities. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tibco makes software that gives real-time insight into the operations of a company and thus it has insight into the enterprise market, which has been pummeled by the recession during the last couple of quarters. |
| 5,000 fans watch Wolfram Alpha go live … very slowly
May 15, 2009 at 9:32 pm
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|  Wolfram Alpha, the much-anticipated service from scientist Stephen Wolfram for computing the answers to factual questions, will officially launch on Monday, but its team is working hard to gradually roll the service out tonight. How do I know? I, along with more than 5,000 others, are watching the launch on livestreaming video service Justin.tv. |
| Gambit: Facebook Users Have Deeper Pockets Than Their MySpace Counterparts
May 15, 2009 at 9:28 pm
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|   When it comes to the amount of money being made on social networks, it seems like nobody really knows what's going on. Sure, we occasionally hear about huge paydays for companies like Zynga, but very few people are willing to talk, and even when they do their figures are nearly impossible to verify independently. |
| iriver P7 ships in South Korea, Americans look longingly across the sea
May 15, 2009 at 9:24 pm
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|   Sadly, we're still no closer to understanding when iriver will allow its striking P7 to escape the chains of "pre-order status" here in North America, but geeks in South Korea can now feel free to indulge. 4.3-inches of luscious screen real estate slapped onto an 8GB PMP will set you back just under ?200,000 ($160), and we're guessing the more capacious 16GB variant will cost just a wee bit more. So yeah, we're going out on a limb here and assuming that a homeland launch foreshadows a splashdown on US soil -- don't let us down, iriver. |
| Panasonic's Lumix DMC-GH1 produces sample shots and videos galore
May 15, 2009 at 8:45 pm
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|  Panasonic's Lumix DMC-GH1 has already shown off its visual prowess a time or two before, but the eagle-eyed photogs over at DPReview have finally hosted up a cornucopia of sample shots and videos for those still unsure if a Micro Four Thirds camera is right for them. And hey, even those cats obviously understand a little tongue-in-cheek humor, wouldn't you say? Tap the read link for the full array of goods. |
| LIVE: The Wolfram Alpha Non-Launch
May 15, 2009 at 8:30 pm
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|   Here we are, watching the live (!) Wolfram Alpha launch.
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| Canon Pixma MX860 Inkjet MFP
May 15, 2009 at 8:22 pm
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|  Canon's Pixma MX860 color inkjet multifunction printer is a nicely equipped, moderately priced ($200 as of May 5, 2009) machine that would serve a small office well. Its older cousin, the Canon Pixma MX700, is faster and a little cheaper, but has fewer features. This boxy, silver unit harbors a multitude of features... |
| Canon Pixma MX330 Inkjet MFP
May 15, 2009 at 8:20 pm
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| Canon's Pixma MX330 color inkjet multifunction printer offers students and home-office users basic functionality for a low initial price. If you print a lot, however, look elsewhere, because this unit's inks can be expensive. As is typical of inkjet MFPs priced in the vicinity of $100 (the Pixma MX330 costs $110 as of May 5, 2009), this model has a feature set suitable for low-volume use... |
| HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One Inkjet MFP
May 15, 2009 at 8:18 pm
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| HP's OfficeJet Pro 8500 Wireless All-in-One is a color inkjet multifunction printer built to take anything that a small office can throw at it. Granted, it's expensive, but if you do high-volume printing, consider buying it for the low consumables costs if nothing else. This MFP's generous paper-handling features include a 250-sheet input tray, a 150-sheet output tray, and a 50-sheet automatic document feeder... |
| Brother MFC-6890CDW Inkjet MFP
May 15, 2009 at 8:15 pm
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| Ledger-size products like Brother's MFC-6890CDW color inkjet multifunction printer let you skip the local print shop and print a wider (literally) range of documents in-house. But as with similar products we've tested (including the HP OfficeJet K8600dn and the Oki Printing Solutions C8800N), this MFP's talent comes at a price. Furthermore, it's a very slow performer. |
| How the Cloud Will Disrupt the IT Status Quo
May 15, 2009 at 8:15 pm
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|   The transition to delivering software, services and compute infrastructure via the web will change the dynamics of the IT industry, shifting power away from the services players such as IBM and HP and toward companies running monolithic data center operations such as Salesforce...
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| Obama eyes next NASA boss
May 15, 2009 at 8:15 pm
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|   US President Barak Obama is expected to tap four-time shuttle astronaut and retired Marine major general Charles Bolden as NASA's next Deputy Administrator, according to several news reports. Pending senate approval, Bolden would be the first black person and second astronaut to take the post. He would also oversee the space agency's transition to the Ares rocket and Orion spacecraft program, as well as push NASA's plans for a new lunar program. |
| Free Coldplay Album: Good Luck Downloading It!
May 15, 2009 at 8:12 pm
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|  In another sign of the times for the evolving music industry, Coldplay today released a free album online. LeftRightLeftRightLeft, a collection of live performances, had previously been handed out free at Coldplay shows, but moving the distribution online was a smart progression for the UK band. The group aren't strangers to the digital realm either: appearing in the wall-to-wall iTunes ads lead to record breaking download numbers. |
| Mozilla invites all comers on post-tab future
May 15, 2009 at 8:12 pm
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| Having finally caught up to - and embraced - tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer, the ground could again be shifting for Microsoft. Mozilla Labs has launched a competition challenging developers to re-invent the whole idea of tabbed browsing to help return to a clean and usable interface. The Labs Design Challenge Summer 09 is looking for ideas that help people create, navigate and manage multiple web sites within the same browser instance. Competition winners are due to be announced on July 8, 2009. |
| Rumor: Apple Considering iPhone Background Apps
May 15, 2009 at 8:10 pm
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|   Apple's said no background apps on the iPhone forever, citing it destroys stability and system resources. Today, three reputable publications have independently claimed that Apple is having a change of mind. What the hell? Techcrunch, Gruber and Alley Insider (Alley first) all claim to have sources that say Apple is working on and discussing just how they can run applications in the background... |
| Roundup: Has Della got its groove back? Hulu, Google, etc.
May 15, 2009 at 7:57 pm
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|  Here's the latest action: Dell revises "Della," its netbook marketing web site targeting women, after allegations of sexism - As Jezebel covers. The once and future Valleywag - Owen Thomas is leaving to become editorial director of NBC Bay Area later this month. Ryan Tate will be taking over. Here's Thomas' farewell post. |
| Samsung's MEMS shutter could massively improve high megapixel cameraphones
May 15, 2009 at 7:35 pm
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|  We won't go so far as to say that SE and LG are waiting for this here technology to go commercial -- after all, we're still years (at best) away from that -- but considering that the ninth iteration of your favorite smartphone is likely destined to boast a 453 megapixel camera, we're thrilled to see someone working to make those captures worth looking at... |
| New materials change color when stressed, making fans of mechanochemical transduction positively giddy
May 15, 2009 at 7:29 pm
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|  A U.S. Army-funded research project at the University of Illinois has developed a material that changes color when it is met with force or becomes overstressed. Among the examples trotted out in this month's issue of Nature are an elastomer that starts out the color of amber and turns progressively more orange as it's pulled, eventually turning red as it reaches its point of failure and snaps (see the photo on the right)... |
| Apple Is Indeed Talking About Opening iPhone Background Tasks
May 15, 2009 at 7:15 pm
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|  As great as the iPhone is, it has one glaring weakness: The inability to run third-party applications in the background. That badly cripples certain types of apps, such as those that do instant messaging, music streaming and location-based services. Apple's Push Notification system coming with the iPhone 3.0 will help slightly, but it will not be a complete solution. And Apple clearly knows that, because it's talking about ways to do background tasks. |
| Why Google's Outage Wasn't a Complete Failure
May 15, 2009 at 5:43 pm
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|  I noticed something interesting in the Google outage and its aftermath on Thursday. Google's sites, in case you were hiding in a cave yesterday, were unreachable around the world for a good hour and a half. Gmail, YouTube, Google News, even the google.com home page were inaccessible to scores of people. |
| ACE robot asks for directions, purpose in life
May 15, 2009 at 5:38 pm
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|  The Tweenbots project already demonstrated that at least some folks are willing to help a lost robot find its way, but this new ACE bot developed by researchers at the Technical University of Munich has now ramped things up in a fairly big way, with it actually asking passers-by for directions and developing a map as it moves through the city... |
| Firefox Fennec now available for WinMo in alpha form
May 15, 2009 at 5:35 pm
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|  Up until now, if you wanted Mozilla's dearly anticipated mobile port, you had a couple options: you could buy a Nokia N800 / N810, or you could score a Touch Pro and deal with a build ominously described as pre-alpha...
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| Take-Two sues over death of Duke Nukem Forever
May 15, 2009 at 5:33 pm
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|  The abrupt end of PC gaming's most infamous vapourware, Duke Nukem Forever, isn't going to pass by without some legal fallout. 3D Realms was supposedly designing DNF since 1997 (way back before there was even such a thing as Google or the International Space Station), but terminated the project and shuttered its studio on May 6. |
| Hacked flight sim site in catastrophic crash and burn
May 15, 2009 at 5:30 pm
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| A popular website for users of flight simulation gear has been felled, most likely fatally, after malicious hackers attacked both of the servers housing more than 12 years worth of content supplied by its 60,000 members. Tom Allensworth, the founder of Avsim.com, said in a statement that that an attack on Tuesday left the site "effectively destroyed." He added: "The method of the hack makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. We are not able to predict when we will be back online, if we can come back at all." |
| DIY Light Box in a Suitcase
May 15, 2009 at 5:15 pm
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|   A clever user at DIY site Instructables walks through how to transform an old suitcase into an impressive, portable light box. The result: This handy little on-the-go light box. We've covered several DIY light boxes, soft boxes, and other DIY photography projects in the past, but the fold-up portability and inexpensive design of this suitcase light box makes it a gem. The author uses the light box for tracing old-school animations, but if you're more of a digital sort, check out previously mentioned DoInk.Cheap light box [Instructables via Make] |
| Why Online Video Ads Still Don't Work
May 15, 2009 at 5:12 pm
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|   From the funny-and-true! department: A biting clip from the dudes at College Humor, satirizing the lousy ad options, and mind-numbing ad jargon, that dominate the online video business. And a good reminder that even though Google's YouTube (GOOG) generates more than 5 billion streams a month, and Hulu has grown 490% in the last year, no one's really figured out a good way to turn all those eyeballs into dollars. Yet. |
| IBM supers shun nukes for biz analytics
May 15, 2009 at 5:09 pm
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| As part of its briefings to Wall Street and investors this week, IBM trotted out its recently announced System S streaming system and the "Watson" QA super. Both are variants of its BlueGene/P Power-Linux supercomputer lineup, but both are aimed at solving business problems instead of simulating weather or nuclear explosions. |
| iPhone Application Sales Are Tiny
May 15, 2009 at 5:00 pm
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|  Sure, the iPhone Application Store is big business for developers and consumers. For Apple? Not so much. Like always, it's all about selling hardware in Cupertino. Since Apple doesn't release detailed sales information for the iPhone App Store, this figure is just an approximation. |
| First Look: Twin 1.0 for Mac OS X
May 15, 2009 at 4:57 pm
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|   Time Machine made it easy for Leopard owners to back up their Macs on local external hard drives, and lately we've seen a number of online backup services such as Carbonite, BackBlaze, and MozyPro debut for the Mac platform. These online services are great (I personally use BackBlaze), but there's a monthly cost associated with them. What if you already have access to a large volume of server space? |
| A Barrel of Apple Rumors: iPod Gets Camera and 'Project Charlie'
May 15, 2009 at 4:50 pm
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|  With all the unsubstantiated rumors buzzing about a new iPhone and its alleged features, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Apple will launch some sort of new or upgraded device very, very soon-perhaps even at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) June 8-12 in San Francisco, or maybe later this summer in a separate announcement. |
| DOE stimulus drops $2.4 billion on carbon sequestration
May 15, 2009 at 4:50 pm
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|  
Steven Chu, head of the Department of Energy, has announced the latest plans to spend its share of the stimulus money: $2.4 billion to pilot various forms of carbon capture and storage, including some money to train a generation of engineers and geologists to work in the field. |
| Fujitsu's supercomputer-ready Venus CPU said to be "world's fastest"
May 15, 2009 at 4:47 pm
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|  Due to the intrinsic limitations of machine translation, it's hard to say exactly what makes Fujitsu's latest supercomputer the "world's fastest," but we'll hesitantly believe for the time being. We're told that the SPARC64 VIIIfx (codename Venus) can churn through 128 billion calculations per second, which supposedly bests the current champ -- a chip from Intel -- by 2... |
| Xsigo raises funds for wireless data centers
May 15, 2009 at 4:39 pm
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| Xsigo, maker of a device that virtualizes network connections in data centers, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from North Bridge Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, among others. The San Jose, Calif. company sas its technology can drastically reduce the number of wires running through server farms. |
| Google Blog Search improvements show how it still sucks
May 15, 2009 at 4:36 pm
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|  Google Blog Search just got a few upgrades - it apparently wants to become more like algorithm-driven news aggregator Techmeme, before that site let in the humans. Specifically, Blog Search has added more items to its "clusters" of stories about a particular topic, as Jeremy Hylton, Google's head of search quality in New York, details to Search Engine Land. Now, it is trying to feature "the freshest and most authoritative blog content" using "a lot of signals…. [S]o the post that breaks a story and gets a lot of links is more likely to become the lead story." |
| The Mythic Apple 'Tablet': More Burning Questions
May 15, 2009 at 4:35 pm
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| When word recently leaked that Apple bought 10-inch touch screens from a Taiwanese manufacturer, the mobile world buzzed and twittered. Is it a giant iPhone? A flying netbook? Probably more like Clark Kent's reporter tablet.  The new tablet is supposed to come out in the fall or maybe this summer, analysts predict, which has only raised the hype meter.
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| Battelle Looks To Hand Over The Reins At Federated Media; Not Leaving The Company
May 15, 2009 at 4:34 pm
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|   Social media-focused blog net Federated Media's looking for someone to take over at the top. In a vaguely-worded post on FM's official blog, John Battelle, the company's founder and CEO, said that the company needs a new leader to move the company forward. Battelle was slightly more clear about one thing, however: he's not leaving the business. He didn't indicate when he came to this realization or if a change is imminent. |
| Next new biz: Free computers for small businesses?
May 15, 2009 at 4:23 pm
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|  Small and medium businesses (SMBs) -– companies of less than 50 employees -– are the holy grail of software. They compose 99.7% of all U.S. employers and generate 40-50% of GDP, but are notoriously resistant to technology: Only 39% think IT can help them compared to 80% of large businesses. 70% of SMBs don't even have a website. Technology vastly enhances productivity but as analyst Steve Hilton writes, "SMBs are stuck in a productivity malaise using technology no more helpful than a bikini in a meat locker." |
| Wall Street Beat: IT Vendors Feed Investor Optimism
May 15, 2009 at 4:20 pm
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| Though virtually all IT vendors say they'll face a tough sales environment over the next few quarters, a range of companies including IBM, Intel, CA and even financially beleaguered Nortel offered some hopeful words this week. At a meeting with analysts Wednesday, IBM officials were positive about prospects for the rest of the year, saying they should be able to meet financial goals and generate earnings per share of US$9.20, a healthy jump from $8.89 last year. IBM also said EPS should be in the $10 to $11 range next year. |
| Meizu talks M8 followup: 3G, GPS, 5-megapixel camera
May 15, 2009 at 4:16 pm
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|  The Meizu M8 may have only just recently ceased to be a figment of our collective imagination, but the always talkative J...
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| Albatron storms back with 10.2-inch ultrathin netbook
May 15, 2009 at 11:53 am
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|  Nice timing, Albatron. With the whole world feeling that the time is right to enter the quaint and mysterious realm of "thin and light" netbooks, this just proves that you're totally vibing with money-hungry suits the world over. Truth be told, there's not much we know about the admittedly striking laptop above. It's got a 10.2-inch panel, weighs around 2.2 pounds and packs at least an audio input and output. We're promised that more images and even a video are on the horizon, so hold tight, vaquero. |
| Spira foam car enters Automotive X Prize, our hearts
May 15, 2009 at 11:50 am
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|  There's something to be said about a car that gets 100 miles per gallon and floats. We're still trying to figure out what exactly that phrase is, but we're certain something has to be exclaimed. Designer Lon Ballard has concocted the, um, object you see above, which is actually an automobile modeled after Crocs and built almost entirely from foam... |
| Bebot turns your iPhone into the cutest instrument ever
May 15, 2009 at 11:43 am
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| I don't think I've ever fallen in love with an app as quickly as Bebot. Not only is it a pretty darn powerful synthesizer with an interesting touchscreen interface, but that robot. That robot! He makes you want to play something, anything, with those cute little closed robot eyes and that dashing tux and that knowing smile... |
| Facebook users warned over renewed phishing assault
May 15, 2009 at 11:38 am
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| Facebook users are facing a new wave of phishing attacks following a previous barrage in April. Fraudulent messages from already compromised accounts on the social networking website attempt to trick users into handing over their login details to one of a series of fake sites. The assault follows the pattern of a previous similarly-focused attack last month. |
| Play.fm Lets You Tune In To An Impressive Collection Of DJ Sets Online
May 15, 2009 at 11:24 am
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|  I've fiddled with the beta version a few times before, but I'm happy the Vienna, Austria-based startup is now ready to release its eponymous service, Play.fm, publicly so I can finally tell you about it, too. Yes, it's another online music startup, but worth a second look if you want my opinion. Here's how the young company pitches the service (it's hard to categorize in a short summary): |
| Asus to slash retail Eee PC line-up to three netbooks
May 15, 2009 at 11:22 am
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| Asus today confirmed a version of its MacBook Air-like netbook, the 1008HA, with a removable battery will indeed be coming to the UK, part of a scheme to slim the Eee PC line up here. By July, Asus will be offering just three Eee PC netbooks to the general public - all of them 10in models pre-loaded with Windows XP and equipped with 160GB hard drives. |
| Nerds 'Rickroll' Spammy Auto-Warranty Telemarketers
May 15, 2009 at 11:15 am
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|   The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed lawsuits yesterday against several companies for spam "robo-calling" Americans more than 1 billion times about supposedly expiring auto warranties. But some people are taking the law into their own hands, fighting back at telemarketers with civil disobedience -- including the Rickroll. |
| Mickey Rourke to star in emMona Lisa/em rehash
May 15, 2009 at 11:14 am
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| Evidently not satisfied with taking a hatchet to Get Carter and The Long Good Friday, Hollywood has now decided Neil Jordan's 1986 gangster film Mona Lisa would benefit from a rehash starring Mickey Rourke. According to Variety, Handmade Films is the guilty party producing the reinvention, which will see Rourke playing "an ex-con who takes a job as a chauffeur for a high-class escort". |
| EU selects satellite broadband providers
May 15, 2009 at 11:13 am
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| The EU has awarded Inmarsat Ventures and Solaris Mobile enough radio spectrum to run trans-Europe satellite data networks, but Ofcom remains undecided if they'll still have to pay market rates to run their network down to the UK's street level. The spectrum concerned, two blocks around 2GHz, has been allocated to satellite data services by every country in Europe... |
| Hulu Traffic Controversy Pits comScore Against Nielsen
May 15, 2009 at 11:13 am
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|   In the world of competition between and among websites, search engines and online publishers there is also the "behind the scenes" competition between Nielsen and comScore. Both want to be the source of record for traffic data and both are occasionally the subject of controversy. There was the incident early in 2008 where comScore put out a report that Google's paid clicks were down, sending Google shares down... | | | 
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