Study: The Internet's spam problem is getting worse
A study finds that only one out of every 20 e-mails is from a legitimate source, and business professionals now rate it the top form of junk advertising.
Barracuda Networks found that nearly 95 percent of all e-mail sent today is spam. This is up from just five percent of all e-mail in 2001, and 85 to 90 percent of e-mail in 2006.
AT&T to put RFID and GPS in schoolbuses
The San Antonio telco announced today the availability of "black box" type solutions for K-12 school busses, working toward a day when school vehicles can be tracked like aircraft.
The devices provide GPS-based mobile resource management (MRM) solutions, tracking school bus locations, monitoring their speed and providing on-board driving information to bus drivers.
Pro sports teams embrace HDTV, but are unsure about wireless
Among professional sports leagues, high definition video is a permanent fixture, both inside the new stadiums where fans congregate and on HDTVs that fans are watching. But there's confusion there today, it seems, over wireless technologies.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - Although big league sports stadiums are now standardizing virtually unanimously on high definition TV for use in both internal and external broadcasts, wireless technologies are still so fleeting that teams aren't quite certain yet which ones to support, said executives of the New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, and New York Giants NFL franchises, and the Orlando Magic NBA team.
Preview patch returns ActiveX to the way it was
Over a decade after Microsoft used an idea for making binary programs work with one click from inside Web pages, the company is testing a patch that restores that functionality in the wake of a settlement with the idea's creator.
Last August, rather than prolong its ongoing IP infringement battle with rights holder Eolas Technologies over the embedding of binary functionality into Web pages, Microsoft agreed to settle that dispute. The settlement apparently consisted of a one-time payment, whose amount is still undisclosed, in exchange for a perpetual license for the notion that clicking on something in a Web page can trigger an embedded binary control.
Google's Street View expansion brings privacy jitters
Google's expansion of the street view option for its mapping service into another eight US cities has renewed privacy concerns over what it photographs.
With the addition of the new cities, 23 municipalities can now be viewed in a realistic street-level view through Google Maps. While the focus is currently on the major cities of this country, Google says it plans to add cities big and small in the future.
The 2007 'Word of the Year' is...w00t!
That's not an interjection from the reporter. The exclamation "w00t" was chosen by Merriam-Webster's online users as 2007's Word of the Year.
An interesting choice if not simply because half of the word is spelled with numbers instead of letters, w00t is a neologism showing the effect that technology has on common language.
Radiohead to bypass record labels, letting its publisher handle rights
Radiohead's album in Rainbows was revolutionary for its "pay what you like" availability. Now the band's plan for licensing that album continues the trend, further eroding the bond between bands and the record industry.
The band Radiohead baffled many with the choice to release their in Rainbows album as a DRM-free download with no fixed price, but rather with a non-compulsory fee similar to purchasing admission to a museum.
FCC commissioner compares DTV transition to Y2K
After a congressional report last month criticized the FCC and private industry for not working better together to ensure a smoother DTV transition, one commissioner responded by saying the executive branch should get involved.
In response to a US Government Accountability Office report issued three weeks ago suggesting that the government lacks a comprehensive plan for marshaling the nation's transition from analog television to digital come February 2009, Federal Communications Commission member Michael Copps suggested the White House should become directly involved in the DTV plan.
How much open source software are businesses really using?
Open source vendor OpenLogic is today kicking off a new industry initiative meant to help both users and software companies find out precisely what kinds of open source software is being used -- and who is using it.
Software developers are downloading lots of open source software from the Internet, and much of that is free of charge -- but what, exactly, are they downloading? OpenLogic, Inc. is today rolling out a new industry initiative called the Open Source Census which is aimed at answering that question for developers, their employers, and software vendors.
Microsoft ends free software for monitoring giveaway
Microsoft pulled the free software offer from its Web site Tuesday, which made free copies of Vista and Office among other applications available in exchange for feedback.
Users will be required to install a piece of software on their computers for three months in order to receive the software for free. However at the same time the offer may have been tantalizing for some, for others it may have raised privacy concerns.
Office for Mac set to ship next month
The long wait for a new version of Microsoft Office for the Mac OS X platform is just about over, with development of the suite completed.
Microsoft said the code was released to manufacturing Tuesday night, and an official launch is set to occur at Macworld Expo in January. The new version of Office ends a nearly four year wait for the software.
Vista SP1 release candidate goes live
This morning, BetaNews FileForum was alerted to the availability of the latest release candidate for Windows Vista Service Pack 1, just released from Microsoft.
FileForum posted a live link immediately. In an indication that this may be the only RC release prior to SP1's final endorsement, no number has been attached. Microsoft is only describing the file as an "RC," not an "RC1."
Video search engine and indie film festival collaborate
Blinkx, a video search engine featuring over 18 million hours of searchable video with more than 200 media partnerships already, announced a new one yesterday with the Raindance Film Festival.
Under the terms of an agreement announced yesterday, Blinkx will host, transcribe, and index top independent shorts, features and documentaries from the independent Raindance Film Festival.
AT&T: 1 million U-verse subscribers by end of '08
This morning, the head of AT&T said his company expects to have attained one million U-Verse subscribers by the end of 2008, and coverage for 30 million by 2010.
At a meeting of financial analysts in New York City this morning, where he touted continued double-digit revenue growth for his company going into next year, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson made some bold predictions for his U-verse triple/quadruple-play media service. He reported AT&T was on target to attain one million U-verse subscribers by the end of this year.
OpenDocument debate resumes in the Netherlands
While Microsoft's Office Open XML format slowly makes inroads towards acceptance as an international format, the Dutch government debates whether the software behind that format must also be open-source.
A Dutch news service is reporting this afternoon that Microsoft has issued formal objections against a junior economic affairs minister's proposal last September, which would mandate that the Netherlands government restrict itself to the use of open source software that specifically uses the OpenDocument Format.
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