John Lister

Industry analysts are scratching their heads after Microsoft recently decided to join a project measuring how people are using open source software. The Open Source Census is run by OpenLogic, a company that aims to help organisations obtain, use ... and control open source software -- programs where the underlying code is open to everyone to see and to share ideas on improving it. The project launched in April and has so far taken details from more than 200,000 places where open source software is being used. It's got several industry backers, but Microsoft has become by far the biggest. It's ... (view more)

The man who once dubbed himself the 'King of Spam' is finding unsolicited messaging isn't always a cheap form of advertising. A court has ordered him to pay $6 million in damages and legal fees to MySpace. Scott Richter has already announced he ... won't appeal the award, which is just 5% of the $120 million that MySpace requested. Last month a court awarded the company a record $230 million against two men who'd sent almost 750,000 messages to MySpace members. Unfortunately, the pair no-showed the court date and went into hiding without paying the fine. Richter's fine could have been ... (view more)

It seems every polling day sees pundits hyping up "the first real Internet-era election", but the 2008 US Presidential race really has brought us close to that point. A study of 2,251 adults suggests that 46% of Americans have followed the elections ... either through the Internet or via text message. That's up from around 33% in 2004. However, that figure is a little vague as it incorporates gathering information, sharing opinions and influencing others -- three activities which most likely cover very different numbers of people. (Source: cnet.com ) And yet, the study did also find 35% of adults ... (view more)

In a recent interview, CEO of Google Eric Schmidt recently admitted the firm still hasn't figured out a way to make money from YouTube. He's also discussed the company's supposed web domination and its moral positioning. Speaking to a New Yorker ... journalist at a Syracuse University event, he said Google should be able to make "significant amounts of money" from the video sharing site considering it has such a huge audience. He also pointed out that Google is fortunate enough to have the time and money to invest in the site without an immediate return. With 129 million viewers a month, an ... (view more)

A tech firm is using a form of human GPS to let users know which nightspots are the most lively. Sense Networks, a newly-launched New York company, has developed a database system titled Macrosense. It brings together both the details of phone users ... who've installed their software, and other details, like where taxis are heading. The idea is based on the way GPS systems analyse the speeds of thousands of different cars to build up a picture of which roads are particularly congested. They are trying out the technology with Citysense, a free feature for smart phones such as the BlackBerry and ... (view more)

Three of the major US Internet providers have agreed to cut off their subscribers from accessing explicit images of children on the Internet. Sprint, Time Warner and Verizon have all made a voluntary agreement with the New York attorney general ... Andrew Cuomo. They'll also pay a combined $1.125 million to fund efforts to crack down on the problem. While some reports have said they'll be blocking websites, the main target is actually Usenet newsgroups. These are discussion forums which predate the World Wide Web itself. Once the web became popular, they lost a lot of their appeal for discussion ... (view more)

Google has found a new testing panel for its in-development software: the entire Gmail user base. The company already has a dedicated 'Labs' website for the public to test new software and give feedback. Now they are building a Labs option directly ... into the Gmail website, meaning every user will see the features that are being developed. Sensibly enough, the option only includes features designed for Gmail itself, rather than general Google software. Users can read a description of each feature and turn it on or off (they are turned off by default). There's also a web address which users can ... (view more)

One of Wikipedia's co-founders has just announced major changes to Wikia, the search engine he launched earlier this year. Jimmy Wales describes the relaunch as "a complete overhaul of everything", applying the Wikipedia philosophy of user ... involvement to search. This all means that users can add or delete the results appearing for any particular search. They can also rank the relevance of results, which will affect how high up in the list they appear. They'll also be able to edit the headline and description which appears alongside the web address for each result. This means people ... (view more)

Microsoft has found yet another way of promoting its Live.com search engine: targeting those people who either mistype a page address or follow a duff link. It's thought that this happens between 2% and 10% of the time when people try to visit a ... page on a major website. Normally when that happens, you get what's known as a '404' page. That's a reference to the relevant Internet error code, which means that your computer was able to contact the relevant server, but couldn't get a response to your specific request. In most cases, you'll simply get a standard message -- depending on which ... (view more)

A security firm claims Hong Kong is home to the Internet's biggest security holes, with 19% of sites using the .hk domain posing a security risk. The country has rocketed up (or down, depending on your perspective) the charts, having been ranked ... just 28th-most-risky last year. Second place in this year's study, which looks at 74 domains, went to China, which was 12th last year. Other countries which performed poorly included Romania, Russia, and the Philippines. Finland was ranked the safest, followed by Japan and Norway. The survey also looked at the generic domains (such as .com) which aren ... (view more)