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Once upon a time, all those who designed and manufactured sporting equipment gathered around to share a common complaint: the technological movement was becoming a direct threat to their industry! The rationale made sense. These companies, who were ... once selling high volumes of equipment and merchandise, were now set to lose big business because their consumers would rather stay inside and surf the web. That was 1999. Today, the same companies who once regarded the age of technology as a sign of the physical education apocalypse are now doubling and tripling their annual income with the help ... (view more)

When Google purchased popular online video site YouTube for over a billion dollars a year ago, many industry analysts raised eyebrows in disbelief. The Big G is still struggling to make a profit with that investment, and recent copyright lawsuits ... demanding billions more dollars are not helping. That's why Google and YouTube have now officially unveiled a "content identification system," which will give copyright owners control over how their material appears on the video-based site. The new service's official name is YouTube Video Identification, and Google hopes it will calm angry legal seas ... (view more)

Miss Kazaa? Don't trust Torrents? You and everyone else not interested in paying thousands of dollars for an expensive CD collection might finally have found something worth looking into: a free music download website that makes its profit from ... someone other than you. The idea of SpiralFrog.com is fairly simple: blast the consumer with advertisements, soak up advertisers for the necessary resources to run the site, and in turn offer the music itself for no charge. Record labels actually receive about half of all advertising dollars reaped from the site. This sounds too good to be true... The ... (view more)

In the battle to become Masters of the Web Universe, there are good guys and bad guys. Those who might be considered He-Man-heroes are web sites like CastleCops.com, which offer help to online users who have been hit by irritating malware. On the ... other end, there's Skeletor's black hat baddies, who are right now doing everything in their power to take CastleCops and others right off the web. (Source: theinquirer.net ) The strategy of malware goons is to execute what's called a "distributed denial of service," where black hat malcontents attempt to shut down a site by hitting it with a massive ... (view more)

To those interested in the defense of copyrights, Torrents may be the next target on a judicial hit list. With most file-sharing protocols already tucked away nicely under the "legal" category, sites like Torrentz.com and BT-Mon could come under ... heavier scrutiny in the coming months. That may be especially true for one Torrent site, which was recently busted for linking visitors to illicit pictures of minors. The link remained operational not for a few hours, or a few days, but two full weeks. In a country seeking to rub out illegal file-sharing by making ISPs partially accountable, Swedish ... (view more)

The freedom to journey the web is largely taken for granted here in North America. Unfortunately, that's hardly the case in Asia, where mere images (or videos) are scrutinized for their most basic and even remote meanings. Two stories on this ... reality are emerging right now, and they're both fascinating glimpses of political environments Americans struggle to comprehend. And, despite that rather comforting disconnect, the United States plays a role in both accounts. The first involves (relatively) popular search engine Yahoo Inc, which is facing a lawsuit by imprisoned Chinese political ... (view more)

And now for a report that is sure to surprise no one but stimulate many: Facebook users expose themselves to identity theft and virus attacks. Wagging their fingers on this one is Sophos, a well-known web security company based in Boston, MA. Sophos ... has even gone so far as to set up their own fake account, in order to develop some interesting insights on the Facebook phenomenon. Although still trailing long-time society site MySpace, Facebook is one of the fastest-growing pages on the 'net. It allows a user to create his or her own mini-site, invite chums to become their online "friends" (it ... (view more)

Google has removed the sponsored links that had been manipulated to divert users into installing malicious software. By clicking on the link, users would eventually go to a legitimate site, but would first be diverted to another site that attempted ... a "drive-by installation" of password stealing software. (Source: news.com ) "Google identified and canceled AdWords accounts displaying ads that re-directed users to malicious sites," a Google representative wrote on the corporate blog. (Source: news.com ) The culprits engineered the debacle by taking advantage of a unique characteristic of Google ... (view more)

In an attempt to help businesses adapt to Windows Vista, Microsoft has released free tools that will help companies migrate to the new operating system, including software that will allow older versions of Windows to run alongside Vista in a virtual ... environment. Microsoft is hoping the tools will make moving to Vista less painless for business customers, particularly those who depend on older versions of Windows. During a meeting with financial analysts, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called analysts sales estimates for Vista "overly aggressive" and tried to downplay expectations for OS sales. ... (view more)

With the advent of the Internet, plagiarism has become a disease that teachers, web administrators, and editors alike have been trying to eradicate. Latest in the fight against plagiarism is a case regarding Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online ... encyclopedia that is written and edited entirely by its users. Recently, a critic of the site has accused Wikipedia of containing several biographical articles that seem to have word-for-word passages stolen from other websites. The critic, Daniel Brandt, found the suspected plagiarism examples by using a program that he created to run a few sentences ... (view more)