Internet

After countless threats of legal action and allegations of a carefree approach to copyrighted material, two of the most powerful media companies are embarking on a joint venture that will showcase their own material on some of the Internet's biggest ... websites. The move puts the two media giants in direct competition with YouTube and the other online video-sharing sites that hold no copyright for the material they provide. The News Corporation and NBC Universal will distribute their latest content, like television episodes and movies, on AOL, Yahoo, MSN and MySpace. It is estimated that 96 ... (view more)

Cisco Systems has purchased the online meeting and web conferencing company, WebEx, for approximately US $3.2 billion. The acquisition exemplifies Cisco's desire to move beyond their familiar networking technology and into the world of business ... communications. Cisco is perhaps best known for manufacturing routers and switches that direct data over computer networks. The company agreed to purchase WebEx for $57/share; approximately 23 percent over WebEx's closing price of $46.20/share on the purchase date. (Source: nytimes.com ) WebEx produces applications that enable online conferences and ... (view more)

Last Thursday, Yahoo announced a new beta version of its personalized My Yahoo start page. The launch will be gradual and will begin over the next few months. Although only a limited number of Yahoo members will be able to try out the beta version, ... these users will have access to create their personalized space by simply dragging and dropping the content they would like to include on their My Yahoo start pages. Beta testers will also have access to a pre-created My Yahoo page based on the other Yahoo services that they use. For example, members who often use Yahoo's shopping service will see ... (view more)

Be careful what you post on Wikipedia! Although the online encyclopedia boasts that it's essentially an open source intellectual tool that uses publicly submitted articles, not everything is without consequence. While Wikipedia tends to monitor all ... of the posted articles with its own editors, a recent post on pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller has the subject suing the article's writer for defamation. Zoeller is outraged that a post on Wikipedia labeled him a drug user, alcoholic, and abuser of his family. Report suggest that the poster's IP address has been traced back to an education consulting firm ... (view more)

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org is currently a source of major controversy at universities everywhere. Some professors rave about Wikipedia's usefulness, while others have outright banned their students from using it. But love it or hate it, ... Wikipedia's popularity cannot be discounted. It was already among the top ten most popular websites in the world. However, surprisingly enough, there was one country where Wikipedia didn't hold that same distinction -- the United States. In January, that finally changed, with Wikipedia cracking the U.S. top ten in popularity for the first time ever ... (view more)

These days, advertisements are almost everywhere. But there's at least one place they can't be found: on Wikipedia. The website's advertisement-free model surely has generated a great deal of talk, with some praising and others opposing the site's ... refusal to include ads. Recently, discussions have evolved around the sustainability of Wikipedia's ad-less site. Currently, Wikimedia (the non-profit organization running Wikipedia) is funded almost entirely from donations, many of which are small individual donations. Wikimedia has managed to control its expenses in some areas such as labor -- the ... (view more)

Alas, Gmail's day has come! Google has finally decided to nix the "by invitation only" requirement and allow anyone interested in Gmail to sign up for a free account. Google has been phasing out the invitation restriction geographically, beginning ... last week with Europe. This past Wednesday, North America, South America, and Asia all gained restriction-free access to Gmail. (Source: news.com ) Although the nearly three-year-old service is still in beta mode -- signaling that Gmail is still a work in progress -- lifting the invitation restriction is a big step for Google. Keith Coleman, Product ... (view more)

The problem with having an encyclopedia to which anyone can add information is just that -- the fact that anyone, including non-credible sources, can add information. ;-) While Wikipedia has become a hit for both typical Internet users and students, ... it has failed to strike a chord with professors. Professors and other educators have developed concern about the reader-produced Wikipedia, noting the inaccuracies found throughout the website. Recently, the history department at Middlebury College in Vermont has decided to take a stronger stand against students using Wikipedia. It voted this ... (view more)

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is in the process of finalizing a deal with search engine powerhouse Google. The conditions of the agreement will make BBC programming available on the online video site YouTube.com. The deal will once ... again exemplify the site's growth in global popularity as it continues to add international content to its service. A spokesperson for the BBC recently confirmed that the publicly funded broadcasting corporation had spoken with Google. The extent of the conversations have not yet been reported, but several sources have confirmed that many different ... (view more)

Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group have agreed to provide music downloads from America and distribute other western content directly onto mobile phones for sale in the Asian market. The two will operate out of China in association ... with the already established ACCESS China Media Solutions. ACCESS China Media Solutions is its own international joint venture, combining ACCESS Ltd. of China and Melodeo of the United States. ACCESS China Media Solutions was formed in early 2006 as a means for Melodeo to distribute its technology to wireless carriers and handset makers in China. ( ... (view more)