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.
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.
Created by music artist Peter Gabriel, The Filter looks to recommend music, movies, and Web video based on the individual users tastes and mood.
Gabriel and several others have reportedly invested about $5 million USD in The Filter, a service that can apparently recognize about five million songs.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
Disputing rumors that the first Android-enabled phone won't ship until 2009, a Google spokesperson today pointed BetaNews to "public statements" made by T-Mobile as corroboration.
Rumors of an Android delay were raised this week in a blog posting by The Street's Gary Krakow, who cited only information supplied to him by a "source familiar with the situation."
Microsoft subsidiary Massive Inc. teamed up with media research firm Interpret LLC to study the efficacy of in-game advertising, and today released its findings.
The study was commissioned by Massive's customers, including Adidas footwear and three unnamed other companies, which represented a "quick service" restaurant, a candy company, and a movie studio. All four companies had a new product that they wished to test by serving ads to connected gamers.
At the Intel keynote today at Computex, EVP Sean Maloney officially unveiled the new 4 Series chipsets and prognosticated a bright, high definition future delivered via WiMAX.
Intel Executive Vice President Sean Maloney was "more optimistic than ever," about the future, thanks to all the innovations on the Computex show floor in Taipei, Taiwan. Perhaps he's not so much giving credit to the industry as giving himself a high-five for the sheer mass of Intel-powered hardware being shown off this week.
Managing a massive Windows installation has already been likened to administering a colossal database. Today, Microsoft added new functions to its Installer for setup packages, that really does start treating Windows like one.
Despite its exit from the next-generation DVD race, the one-time champion of HD DVD is not giving up on the promise of high definition on optical disc. Rather, it seems to be working to improve standard DVDs.
Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida has said that his company has no plans to market optical disc players compatible with Blu-ray, according to a citation that appeared last week in Japan's Daily Yomiuri.
Citing heavy customer feedback, Microsoft officials as high up as Bill Gates himself revealed today that the next public beta of IE8 won't be going home with Tech·Ed attendees this year.
Though the beta roadmap for Microsoft's next release of Internet Explorer has never been quite clear, one of the key "takeaways" from Bill Gates' keynote address at Tech·Ed 2008 in Orlando this morning -- other than this week's pending release of Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 -- is the fact that testers and developers won't get a chance to see the next public beta of IE8 until late this summer, at the earliest.
AT&T has agreed to settle a class action suit issued against it in Georgia, for allowing third parties to charge customers on unclear or wholly undisclosed terms for downloads.
The settlement received preliminary approval in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia on Friday. The final hearing for the settlement will not occur until December 8th, giving customers approximately six months to file their claims.