In-game advertisements coming to Sony PS3
Sony has selected IGA Worldwide as its first partner to provide dynamic in-game advertisements for PlayStation 3 games, with an initial focus on the frequently delayed MMO undertaking called Home.
Within Home, the company says the simulated environment will "depict brands in various forms...where users would expect to see them in real life: on billboards and posters, on shopping bags and soda cans and on images of TV screens."
Wikia search engine now lets users add their own results
The Wikia search engine, controversial brainchild of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, this week added groundbreaking social networking-oriented features that give Web users the ability to make adjustments to the search results others see.
After startup search engine Wikia entered alpha in January, it got drubbed by many critics, who objected to its reportedly paltry search results and failure to move much beyond the machine-generated approach of existing search engines.
Microsoft's Search 4.0 for desktops emerges from beta
No, it's not WinFS, the file system that was supposed to revolutionize the way files and documents are stored in Windows. But if it gives users tools that accomplish the same things WinFS was supposed to provide, does Search 4.0 come close?
Download Windows Search 4.0 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 from FileForum now.
Comcast, TWC test curbs on heavy Internet use
Time Warner Cable and Comcast are launching tests this week of new management controls for bandwidth consumption -- alternatives to the approach of throttling packets outright, though they may not prove to be any more popular.
Both major cable ISPs are limiting their tests for now to just a few places in the US. Yesterday, it was learned that TWC plans to try out a new metered billing scheme that will charge users on the basis of individual bandwidth consumption.
SpiralFrog signs on EMI for free music downloads
The ad-supported music service said today it had struck an agreement with major record label EMI, meaning it will now carry content from two of the four majors.
The service apparently struck an agreement with EMI previous to its launch back in 2006, but the deal fell through, and it launched with only Universal Music Group and a scant few independents last September.
Windows XP lives on in the next embedded OS upgrade
The versatility of Microsoft's previous generation of operating system is about to be shown off some more, with a new edition that will be customizable for various embedded devices, using a special version of Visual Studio.
It's no secret that the Windows XP kernel is better suited for small devices than the Vista kernel, whose new architecture -- including such features as Address Space Layout Randomization -- requires a larger memory footprint. What may be a surprise is how much Microsoft has managed to compress into the next edition of Windows for embedded devices, now called Windows Embedded Standard, including .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Media Player 11, Silverlight, and Internet Explorer 7.
Is Google living up to privacy legislation?
Google is coming under fire from members of 14 advocacy groups, who want the search engine giant to post a link to its privacy policy directly from its home page so as to assure compliance with a California privacy law.
"Google's reluctance to post a link to its privacy on its home page is alarming," contends a letter sent to Google CEO Eric Schmidt by a coalition of groups that includes the World Privacy Forum, the ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example. "We urge you to comply with the California Online Privacy Protection Act and the widespread practice for commercial Web sites as soon as possible."
Craiglist's newest competition in the online classified space: Wal-Mart
Although some may question how this latest move fits into the strategy of the retailer, the retailer has launched a test of a free classified ads service.
Powered by Oodle.com, retailer Wal-Mart last week launched with very little fanfare a "pilot test" of a free online classified advertising service for essentially all product categories. It carries about 30 million listings, is essentially a co-branded version of Oodle's service, and could pose some very sudden competition for Craigslist.
Fanning's payday: $30 million from Electronic Arts
Computer programmer Shawn Fanning, known for having created the original Napster, has sold his latest company ThreeSF to game maker EA.
ThreeSF controls Rupture, which is essentially a social-networking system for gamers that publishes profiles to a central space, serving as a means of communication between World of Warcraft players.
Music recommendation site listens to what you're listening to
Microsoft will fix its 'Live' branding problem, says exec
With Google entrenched at the top of the search industry, and a deal with Yahoo looking less likely, a Microsoft division president said yesterday it's time for his company to deal with the confusion spawned by its own multiple online brands.
"There's an opportunity for us to fix those brands. We acknowledge that we need to get that fixed," admitted Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Platform & Services Division, during his keynote speech on Tuesday at the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle.
Graphic overlays soon to be added to YouTube videos
YouTube has been given a feature upgrade which allows for annotations to be added to a user's already uploaded videos.
Listed under the "My Videos" heading, a new button has been added called "Edit Annotations" which allows speech bubbles, subtitles, internal links, and spotlights to be embedded in videos.
Pandora launches a new beta of its desktop music app
The Music Genome Project has released a beta of its music-recommending internet radio service Pandora as a gadget that works independently of browsers, based upon Adobe AIR.
Everything that the user gets in the in-browser version of Pandora can now be delivered from the system tray or dock of his system, with the latest Pandora Desktop beta for Windows and Mac, released this week. This is beneficial because the gadget itself is no small item. In the Pandora blog, this issue is somewhat shamefacedly addressed:
Mozilla issues Release Candidate 2 of Firefox 3.0
Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0 RC2 for Windows from FileForum now.
While Web users everywhere have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the final edition of Firefox 3.0 -- an event which some thought could happen this very week -- late yesterday, Release Candidate 2 of the browser appeared on Mozilla's FTP site.
New Google Site Search lets Web sites shape search results
Tuesday, Google launched Site Search, a rebranded overhaul of "Google Custom Search Business Edition" that gives Web site owners tools to influence the search results that appear on their sites' custom search pages.
The new hosted solution allows Web sites to offer Google-powered custom searches that are free of Google ads, stated Vijay Koduri, product manager at Google, in a company blog post yesterday.
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