Internet

Movie rental firm Netflix had to delay deliveries by a day after its site was down for nearly 11 hours on Monday. It's thought the problem was caused by a routine weekly maintenance session, scheduled for the middle of the night, mistakenly taking ... place during the day. Engineers noticed the problem at 7am Pacific time and didn't get it fixed until 6pm. (Source: wired.com ) Because the company's distribution centers all rely on the website to access customer data, no deliveries were possible on Monday. A spokesman said on Tuesday that "We're shipping everything that should have been shipped ... (view more)

Have you ever wanted to star in your very own television show? Thanks to the rising popularity of YouTube, it seems as if everyone has their own online show, complete with all the copying, deleting and editing that goes into production. But, have ... you ever wanted to star in your very own LIVE television show? Complete with no script, no rules, absolutely LIVE as it happens? If you own a cell phone, get ready for your close-up! It's inevitable now; every mobile phone will soon have a cellular video camera installed in it. While still in its infancy stage, Qik.com, a small start-up company based ... (view more)

Last week, I reported on the controversial case of social networking fan Chris Avenir, a Canadian university student facing expulsion for creating a Facebook group dedicated to providing hints for an upcoming exam. Seems Avenir won't be expelled ... after all, a result that has many in the web world -- and at Ryerson University -- applauding. Avenir, a first-year computer engineering student at Ryerson in Toronto, Ontario, first came under fire for his "Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions" group. The eighteen year old was harassed by school administrators who believed the group's sole purpose ... (view more)

Social networking sites that connect millions of users are increasingly the target of creative marketing strategies concocted by independent businesses. Facebook, with its 67million users is amongst the largest potential market available to these ... schemes. Until now, most marketing strategies entailed advertising on social networking sites, either directly or through proxy users. However, Denver-based bSocial Networks has introduced a new marketing strategy that attempts to use Facebook applications to generate sales. The company claims that this is "the first consumer-to-consumer (C2C) ... (view more)

Ever since Microsoft announced its failed attempt to acquire Sunnyvale-based Yahoo, the Internet portal has let out a flurry of activity to show that it is still strong enough to stand on its own. Now, Yahoo has announced its latest innovation: a ... Digg-style news page called "Yahoo! Buzz." The first thing Yahoo did once the Microsoft deal was denied was enter into a 'strategic partnership' with T-mobile to bring Yahoo content to European mobile phones. It has also acquired Maven networks, a video platform provider, to shore up its advertising business and the search company expanded its ... (view more)

Last week, Google announced that it had signed a deal with several telecoms to fund an undersea high-bandwidth fiber optic cable between the United States and Japan. The global consortium calls itself "Unity," and includes: Bharti Airtel, Global ... Transit, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel in addition to Google. (Source: google.com) The continent-connecting cable will span 10,000 km, will cost $300 million USD, and is expected to increase web traffic between the United States and Asia by 20 percent. NEC corporation and Tyco Telecommunications were chosen to build and install the cable, which ... (view more)

Just because they're the biggest software company in the world and, at the very least a heavy-hitter in the webosphere, Microsoft doesn't always have all the answers. The Redmond-based firm is struggling to determine exactly why millions of Hotmail ... users were recently barred from accessing their accounts. Although the problem has since been fixed, for several hours earlier this week about 80 million Hotmail users were unable to log in to their email or instant messaging accounts. The issue affected Hotmail fans around the world early yesterday afternoon, UK time. According to Microsoft, a few ... (view more)

Two congressmen have proposed laws which would enforce the principle of net neutrality. That's the idea that broadband providers should not be allowed to discriminate against particular sites, companies or technologies. The planned law would be ... called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. It's a joint effort by political rivals Republican Chip Pickering and Democrat Ed Markey, who described the Internet as "the greatest level playing field ever created". Though net neutrality is already widely seen as the basis of America's broadband network, the new law would specifically define US ... (view more)

Mozilla recently released Firefox 3 Beta 3 : a beta version of the latest edition of its Internet browser which is a rival to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For those unaware, A 'beta' edition is one that is largely operational but may still have ... some bugs which need finding and fixing before an official release. The software is freely available to download from Mozilla's website, though the firm says it's not ready for 'casual' users. The biggest changes include technical improvements that should make web pages load quicker, easier bookmarking of favorite pages, a progress indicator in the ... (view more)

Firms involved in filesharing technology have protested Comcast's decision to restrict its customers' use of peer-to-peer (P2P) software, such as BitTorrent. P2P is a system of distributing data which involves splitting one file into many pieces. ... Rather than downloading the file directly from a website, users get pieces from a variety of fellow users, with the file reassembled on their computer. This spreads the demand for data and means P2P can be used for files which would be too large for many people to download from a single site. Several firms complained to the Federal Communications ... (view more)