John Lister

'Human-powered' search engine Mahalo is hoping capitalism can solve the spread of inaccurate information online. It's launching a new question-and-answer service where the questioner pays whoever gives the most helpful reply. Mahalo (Hawaiian for ... 'Thank you') is a search engine where all results are produced by humans (paid freelancers) rather than a computer index. While this clearly can't compete with Google's convenience and depth, the idea is to produce more credible and authoritative results for the most common topics. The new service is a take-off of sites such as Yahoo answers and Wiki ... (view more)

Sarah Palin may have lost her vice-presidential bid, but she has won at least one prize this year by topping Google's list of the most popular search terms. Rather than measuring the raw number of searches for a particular term, the list measures ... how rapidly a term increased in popularity. Google dubs the study 'Zeitgeist' after a German phrase translating as "the spirit of the times". (Source: bbc.co.uk ) 'Sarah Palin' topped the global list with Obama in fifth, which has several possible explanations. First, Obama was relatively well-known at the beginning of the year, while Palin came to ... (view more)

The Internet Watch Foundation has removed a Wikipedia page from its 'banned' list. The page, featuring an album cover by rock band Scorpions, had been blocked by several British Internet providers during the row. The organization, which has no legal ... authority, is a self-regulated charity. It monitors websites for content which is illegal to display in the United Kingdom and maintains a list of such material. What gives the IWF so much power and influence is that many of Britain's largest Internet providers (covering an estimated 95% of users) automatically block any pages that appear on the ... (view more)

Radio Shack is selling an Internet-ready laptop computer for just $99. However, the deal is only available to customers who subscribe to a $60/month 'data plan'. The device is an Acer Aspire One netbook: a slimmed down laptop designed mainly for ... Internet browsing. It's a relatively low-spec computer with a 120GB hard drive, a 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of memory. This helps keep the cost down; the machine is available elsewhere for around the $300-350 range. The computer comes with Windows XP pre-installed (Vista simply wouldn't run effectively on such a low-spec machine). That makes the $99 ... (view more)

Microsoft has reached a deal with a leading security firm that could give corporate users the ability to tighten up their defenses. The benefits could even extend to Windows home users. The deal has been made with EMC Corporation, a firm which ... produces the data storage system used by many large organisations. Microsoft has signed a deal with EMC's security division to licence the forthcoming DLP suite, a package designed to prevent data loss. The package will be used in Microsoft's server products. It allows users to find and monitor data across one or more networks and control who is able to ... (view more)

YouTube is trying to make it harder for users to distribute 'adult' content. It's part of a plan to clean up the site to avoid scaring off would-be advertisers. The video-sharing site is already much cleaner than many rivals, barring clips with any ... nudity -- let alone sexually explicit content. However, from now on any content deemed too 'suggestive' will be restricted to viewing by those over 18. The formulas used to generate lists of 'most viewed' clips and those which most people have marked as favourites will be redesigned to minimise the likelihood of suggestive clips appearing on the ... (view more)

Blockbuster has launched a service might save couch potatoes from travelling to their doorstep. The online MediaPoint player allows customers to 'rent' any of 2,000 titles for immediate viewing. The announcement may be the answer to Blockbuster's ... continued difficulty in making a viable business out of Movielink, the online video company it bought last year. The firm was created by a partnership of the major movie houses which appears to have lost a massive amount in selling to Blockbuster for $20 million. (Source: arstechnica.com ) The new service is Blockbuster's answer to similar offerings ... (view more)

Google has unveiled technology that allows search users to customize their results and even post comments about particular sites for other users to read. However, the firm has dropped a separate unbranded search engine which it had been using to ... test out new features. The main feature of the new SearchWiki tool is a series of buttons which appears next to each result whenever you search while signed into a Google account (such as Gmail). The first, an arrow pointing upwards, allows you to move a site up the list of the results. (After doing so, you also then get the option to move it down ... (view more)

For the first time ever, fewer than 90% of computer users are running Windows. The figures show the growing success of rival operating systems -- though there's no sign of Microsoft losing its dominant position any time soon. The figures come from ... Internet services firm Net Applications. They regularly measure which operating system users are using when connecting to web sites. While this is obviously not a perfect way to quantify market dominance, it does provide a decent sampling method given how many users have an Internet connection these days. The figure for Windows in November was 89.6 ... (view more)

New figures show the US is one of the few places where female Internet users outnumber male users. The study also unveiled intriguing facts about television and cell phone use worldwide. The figures, produced by British communications regulator ... Ofcom, directly compare the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Canada and Japan. The researchers also produced a separate report on countries with developing economies such as China and Russia. Because the analysis is so detailed and brings together several outside surveys, the figures cover activity in 2007 rather than this year. Across ... (view more)