online

Gay marriage is always going to be a heated debate. But what rights do gays have when it comes to their video game consoles? Microsoft was recently forced to change a policy that prevented gay gamers from stating their sexual orientation in their ... Xbox Live profiles. Xbox Live is Microsoft's popular online platform for its console, the Xbox 360. When anyone links their Xbox 360 to a cable or a broadband Internet connection, they're automatically prompted to fill out an online profile that can be seen by other gamers, including friends and foes alike. Although users aren't allowed to play ... (view more)

Online Malware Scan This great online tool scans a selected file with numerous antivirus programs in order to maximize your computer's security. It's like hiring fifteen big, burly bodyguards to protect you and your PC instead of just one! ... http://virusscan.jotti.org Kiwi Application Monitor Kiwi application monitor is a small program that lets you monitor your apps, processes, Windows and User activity. All you need to do is select an application or process from the built-in process viewer or enter an application name. The program can be set to start with Windows and run in the background. ... (view more)

According to an online safety group, complete financial identities, including names, addresses, passport numbers and confidential data such as credit card numbers, are being sold online for 80 GB pounds for a bundled package, and as little as 5 GB ... pounds for a single piece of data. The Get Safe Online group, backed by police, government and banks, says ID theft is a serious problem because of an international trade in stolen identities and data. The bundles of data are harvested in concerted attacks against poorly defended computers in wealthier nations and are often sited in countries with ... (view more)

An online music company is launching a new take on the MP3 business model: it's offering unlimited listening (from any Internet-enabled device) to a track for 10 cents. For LaLa, the group offering the deal, this is the third different method it's ... tried. LaLa, which launched in 2006, began as a music business based on members trading physical CDs (originals, not copies), with LaLa charging a dollar to both parties as middleman. Last year it changed the focus to online music, with streaming music available with permission of the publishers (though this feature didn't last long) and the ability ... (view more)

Touchless Touchless enables touch without touching by using a webcam to track color based markers. There are 4 fun demos: Snake, where you control a snake with a marker; Defender, with up to 4 player version of a pong-like game; Map, where you can ... rotate, zoom, and move a map using 2 markers; and Draw, which is pretty self-explanatory. http://www.officelabs.com 150 Best Online Flash Games It was a long and exhausting task: playing hundreds of online games for hours in a row, day after day. A tough job, but the people at techcult.com have an exhaustive list for those of you looking for a ... (view more)

As part of its Trustworthy Computing Initiative, based on building the concept of "End to End Trust" proposed by Microsoft in April at the RSA Security Conference, Microsoft reportedly wants to create "digital playgrounds", sites where visitors have ... to prove their age using digital identity credentials. Microsoft is hoping its measures will make the Internet safer for children and adults wanting to conduct business, make transactions, and communicate confidently with people who are who they say they are. Part of the challenge concerns how to add more identity authentication without ... (view more)

It's one of the first rules of Internet 101: visiting questionable websites leads to viruses, which entices hackers to access your hard drive and monitor your every click. But can someone still be monitoring your web activity even if you're extra ... careful when selecting online destinations? The answer may just depend on which Internet provider you use. A few months ago, The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent out an open letter to 33 companies inquiring about their online targeting practices, or in other words, the extent to which the web activity of their customers is being ... (view more)

With most national newspapers experiencing record-low subscriber rates, many are starting to wonder if newspapers (at least in printed form) are on the brink of extinction. California start-up company Verve Wireless has come forward with a tempting ... offer that could save many newspaper companies. That's not to say that people are not reading newspaper content. Online newspapers, whether coming from national news sources or reputable newsletters like Infopackets.com, are being read by millions of people on a daily basis. In fact, after search engines and email services, newspaper content ( ... (view more)

Reading, at least in the conventional way of leafing page by page through a book, is at risk and the blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of the Internet and (of course) television. The decline of reading has fueled a massive national ... debate not only about 'if' we read but 'how' we read. The debate began in 2002 when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that the number of non-reading adults had increased by 17 million to 89 million adults, roughly one out of three adults. According to the NEA, only 47% of American adults read 'literature', including poems, plays, ... (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)