Internet

eBay has escaped potentially huge compensation claims after a court ruled it isn't responsible for trademark infringement by sellers hawking counterfeit goods. The case followed complaints by jeweller Tiffany ... (view more)

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has decided to radically expand the choices of domain names that can be assigned. Two new proposals to the regulatory group were recently considered: a) allowing non-Latin characters (e.g. ... Russian, Chinese, Arabic, etc.) and b) domains that consist of any letter or number combination up to 64 characters in length. (Source: cbc.ca ) The proposal to consider non-Latin characters will be tested before final approval. The proposal to open up domain names was approved. The change was initiated by concerns that all the meaningful domain names ... (view more)

One-third of the long-running major search engine love triangle is now quite literally giving it away. Yahoo has launched what it calls an 'open search web services platform'. In effect, it's letting outside firms use its technology to run ... independent search engines. While that's been done before, this is the first time a major search group has made its technology available without any restrictions on what you do with it. The Yahoo deal has no limits on how many searches you can offer each day, or how you order and present the results. And for the first time companies using Yahoo's search ... (view more)

A surprising study suggests broadband usage may be about as widespread as it's going to get in the United States. It seems comparatively few dial-up users are stuck that way through a lack of availability. Instead, many of them either think ... broadband is too expensive, or flat-out don't want it. The study has been carried out every year for the past decade or so by the Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent think-tank. While broadband use is growing year-on-year, the figures are virtually unchanged since last December, suggesting the market has hit saturation point. (Source arstechnica.com ) ... (view more)

Scrabble is finally coming to Facebook. If that surprises you because you thought it was already there, Electronic Arts (EA) lawyers would probably like to call you as a witness. As we reported back in January , the popular Scrabulous feature on ... Facebook is entirely unofficial. Like most Facebook add-ons, it's run independently -- in this case, by two Indian brothers. They are estimated to make around $25,000 a month selling adverts which appear beside the game. Given the obvious legal difficulties involved in profiting from another firm's game in this way, the pair specifically avoid the ... (view more)

Jupiter Research has recently published the results of an exhaustive research project meant to determine the actual growth of worldwide usage of the worldwide web. Their findings confirm that the Internet is increasingly becoming more accessible to ... the global population, although a vast majority still have not enjoyed the online experience. Jupiter estimates that nearly 1.8 billion people will be online by 2012, representing just under a quarter of the world's population. The most significant growth is expected to be in rapidly-developing countries like China, India, Russia and Brazil. These ... (view more)

A Turkish hacking group has vandalised the websites of those groups that run the Internet's address system. Sites belonging to the Internet Assigned Numbers Agency (IANA) and its parent organisation the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and ... Numbers (ICANN) both fell victim to the hackers. ICANN and IANA manage the routing system which allows web users to type in a domain name (such as www.infopackets.com ) rather than having to know the specific IP address (a string of numbers which identifies a particular computer) where the website is physically located. Their sites briefly redirected ... (view more)

A new Google tool to track the comparative popularity of websites has a notable hitch: it doesn't measure Google itself. The service also doesn't cover sites owned by Google, such as YouTube or Blogger. Google Trends for Websites is an extension of ... the existing service which measures the phrases people are looking for most often and how popularity changes over time. The new service tracks websites, making it a competitor to established trackers such as Alexa.com. Any user can get a graph showing traffic over time, while registered users can get further details such as estimated numbers and a ... (view more)

Major recovery organizations have been using the Internet to help individuals recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. An increasing number of support groups are springing up all over the web with one goal: to provide online, 24/7 assistance to ... people recovering from some form of substance abuse. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, almost 2 million people this year will find themselves entering some kind of rehabilitation for abuse of various drugs or alcohol. In the past 70 years or so, these alcoholics and addicts would have left various rehabilitation ... (view more)

There are major changes in store for the way Internet addresses work; The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which runs the system used to 'translate' website addresses to the particular computer used to store each site's ... content, held its annual general meeting this week. It has backed plans to completely overhaul the top level domain system, which involves the letters that come after the final period in a site address. At the moment, the only letters which can be used are a two letter code for each country (such as .ca for Canada), or a few generic domains such as ... (view more)