Google

YouTube has announced a partnership with Sony and Nintendo to create "YouTube for Television". As the name suggests, users can now watch their favorite Internet videos on their big-screen television sets. What's the catch? Since YouTube for ... Television runs over the Internet, the link needed to log onto the service is only accessible via a game console. Since the partnership is exclusive to Sony and Nintendo, the user first needs to pick up a PlayStation 3 or Wii to start watching television-displayed YouTube videos. Conspicuous by its absence in the partnership is Microsoft and its Xbox 360. ... (view more)

After the success of the first mobile phone using Google's Android operating system, the tech world is turning its attention to the follow up. So far, there's even a claim that it could involve a touch-screen handset previously pulled from release ... in the United States. Android is an open source system, meaning phone manufacturers are free to use and modify it as they wish. It's a rival to Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Apple's own system used on the iPhone. The first Android phone, T-Mobile's G1, has sold more than half a million so far and is even stocked in Wal-Mart. The first question is ... (view more)

Sarah Palin may have lost her vice-presidential bid, but she has won at least one prize this year by topping Google's list of the most popular search terms. Rather than measuring the raw number of searches for a particular term, the list measures ... how rapidly a term increased in popularity. Google dubs the study 'Zeitgeist' after a German phrase translating as "the spirit of the times". (Source: bbc.co.uk ) 'Sarah Palin' topped the global list with Obama in fifth, which has several possible explanations. First, Obama was relatively well-known at the beginning of the year, while Palin came to ... (view more)

Google has unveiled technology that allows search users to customize their results and even post comments about particular sites for other users to read. However, the firm has dropped a separate unbranded search engine which it had been using to ... test out new features. The main feature of the new SearchWiki tool is a series of buttons which appears next to each result whenever you search while signed into a Google account (such as Gmail). The first, an arrow pointing upwards, allows you to move a site up the list of the results. (After doing so, you also then get the option to move it down ... (view more)

Think the iPhone is a fantastic new technology that should be celebrated the world 'round, not unlike Apple's iPod? Well, if you live in Britain (or perhaps any region other than North America) you may have trouble with one of its popular features. ... The iPhone includes a number of handy tools, including a touch screen, mp3 playback, video display, organizational utilities, and games. However, many fans in the US are particularly fond of a new iPhone tool: voice recognition-based search. Unfortunately, for those using the device in Britain the voice-recognition tool is struggling to compensate ... (view more)

Just a few days ago I reported on rumors that Google was nearing a deal that would lead to the placement of full-length movies on its popular video site, YouTube. Now, it appears Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), one of Hollywood's biggest studios, is on ... board with the idea. The precedent for full-length movies was set back in the summer, when prominent Canadian studio Lionsgate (behind flicks like W. and The Transporter 3) announced they would be placing shorts on Google's popular video site. Of course, that's besides the fact that more and more people turn to web sites like Hulu for their favorite ... (view more)

At one time, the Internet was targeted by the Motion Picture Association of America as a serious threat to the industry. For most of the last decade, file-sharing protocols and Torrents have been home to many free, pirated flicks for greedy movie ... fans with the tech-savvyness to download and burn them for free. However, it looks like that cynical attitude towards the world wide web is about to change -- primarily because the movie industry now recognizes that big bucks can be made online. According to reports, Hollywood is seriously considering posting full-length movies on YouTube, the home ... (view more)

Just as we reported yesterday, it seems the Yahoo and Google web advertising deal has been rejected by the Department of Justice. The decision came early Wednesday morning when the Justice Department announced to the two top search engines that if ... they went ahead with their planned agreement (which would see Google ads on Yahoo's web pages), a lawsuit would be filed to block it. According to reports, over the last few weeks federal antitrust regulators steadily became more and more critical of the deal. Although there's still a chance the deal could be made with significant changes to its ... (view more)

Not long ago, Google agreed to pay $125 million to the book industry to settle claims of copyright infringement over its BookSearch scheme. The agreement means Google can now legally scan copyrighted books and put them online as long as they are no ... longer in print. The cash will go towards setting up a registry of books involved, compensating authors and publishers affected by Google's violations, and paying the legal fees of the case. The agreement will have to get the backing of a New York court (where the case was brought) before it takes effect. (Source: google.com) The case involved a ... (view more)

It looks as if the download service for Google's new Android smartphone operating system has had a successful launch. While figures are too hazy to make a firm comparison, first-day figures appear to have beaten the launch day of the Apple iPhone ... Apps store. While the Android system launched with around 10% the number of applications available as the iPhone, a media research firm says nine applications had between 10,000 and 50,000 downloads in the first day. That's compared with just two applications doing in the same range on the iPhone Apps launch. Before you conclude that this marks a ... (view more)