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Slingbox Personal Broadcaster To Hit Stores Thursday
Posted by Devin Categories: Home Entertainment, Internet, Movies,
Blake Krikorian, CEO of Sling Media, has announced that the Slingbox Personal Broadcaster will be available at from at least two national retailers come June 30th. CompUSA and another unannounced name have already agreed to carry Slingbox for around $250. The official announcement from Sling Media will be made on June 30th as well. Just in case its function slips your mind, or your unfamiliar with the product, the Slingbox will allow you to stream TV content from your satellite, cable, or DVR to a computer with a high-speed Internet connection.
Read More 
| engadget
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Next Version Of Windows To Include Support For RSS Feeds
Posted by Devin Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Software,
Microsoft announced Friday that its next version of the Windows operating platform would include built-in support for Internet data feeds. Even though RSS isn’t currently in widespread use, Microsoft believes that in the future this increasingly popular way to get news will become a mainstay. Of course, we reported our take on this a few minutes after the Gnomedex announcement.
In the long-delayed Windows upgrade, code-named Longhorn and expected to be released late next year, an RSS icon will appear in the Internet Explorer Web browser to make it easy for people to find, much like Apple Computer Inc. has done with its Safari browser. Longhorn will store all data downloaded to a computer via RSS in a single place. It will maintain a central list of all of a computer user’s RSS subscriptions, from Web log entries to photos pulled from an online family picture gallery.
Read More | USA Today
Time magazines’ Internet counterpart has unveiled their list of the 50 Coolest Websites for 2005. This years’ list includes a newly added blog section, which coincidentally had the highest amount of sites on the list, at fifteen. Wondering how Time Online Edition chooses their list? It’s a mix of reader suggestions, colleagues, and general surfing.
Read More | Time 50 Coolest Websites
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Security company Secunia is warning that many major Internet browsers contain a vulnerability that could allow cybercriminals to steal personal information. The problem has to do with the fact that JavaScript boxes do not show where they originate, so users could be tricked into putting their information into a form they believe is from a trusted site. The browsers that are reportedly affected are latest versions of IE, IE for Mac, Safari, iCab, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox and Camino. Opera 7 and 8 are affected, but not 8.01, according to Opera. Even though Secunia has labeled the problem as “Less Critical”, most companies are already trying repair the problem.
To take advantage of the flaw, a cybercriminal would have to direct a Web user from a malicious site to a genuine, trusted site such as an online bank, in a new browser window. The malicious site would then open a JavaScript dialog box in front of the trusted Web site, and a user might then be fooled into sending personal information back to the malicious site.
Read More | ZDNet
An online research company called Entertainment Media Research has recently released the 2006 Digital Music Survey. The survey, using information collected from 4,000 people, says that 35% of consumers now download tracks legally thru the Internet. They estimate the number will continue to climb and eventually surpass the 40% who continue to obtain music illegally online. The main reasons cited for using legal downloads were fear of prosecution, viruses, and low quality.
Read More | Reuters
I just saw a commercial for NetZero’s latest gimmick, NetZero High Speed 3G. They are saying it is so fast, you won’t believe it’s not broadband. I had to check out the site and find the legal mumbo-jumbo, and here it is:
Speed reference based upon comparison to nationally available dial-up ISPs. NetZero HiSpeed 3G accelerates certain web page text and graphics when compared to standard dial-up Internet service. Actual results may vary. Some web pages such as secure or encrypted web pages will not be accelerated. NetZero HiSpeed 3G is not a broadband service and actual data transmission rates are not faster than standard dial-up Internet service. Transmission of files including, without limitation, streaming audio or video, digital photographs, MP3 or other music files, executable files and other downloads, is not faster using NetZero HiSpeed 3G than with standard dial-up service. NetZero HiSpeed 3G may not be compatible with proxy based software or services such as content filters or firewalls. NetZero HiSpeed 3G is only compatible with Platinum service and specified browsers. Available only for Windows.
So, they are basically caching, and possibly pre-fetching in a similar manner to the Google Toolbar. The thing is, it only seems to speed up text, which doesn’t really need to be sped up in the first place. Oh, and do you see the gall that they have referring to the service as 3G?
Read More | NetZero 3G
Within the next few weeks, America Online plans to showcase a new feature on their newly designed free Internet website. Users will have the choice of two custom start pages- the first with text and image links like any other site, and the second filled with video content. Users who choose the latter will have their own personalized “Video Hub” allowing them to view anything from news highlights to movie trailers. AOL isn’t the only web giant getting “tuned in” however. MSN, Google, and Yahoo are also getting on the network bandwagon, all of course hoping to increase revenue through advertising.
Read More | USA Today
Those of you who don’t like PayPal should be pretty happy to hear this news- the Wall Street Journal reported online Friday that search engine giant Google is planning to roll out it’s own payment proccesor sometime later this year. This could be bad news to PayPal owner eBay, since the payment processor accounted for 23% of eBay’s revenue in the first quarter of this year. Google could pose a major financial threat to one of it’s biggest advertisers, but that might not be such a bad thing.
Expanding into online payments might make Google less dependent on advertising, which accounted for nearly all of its first-quarter revenue of $1.26 billion. The merchants who run auctions on eBay are major buyers of Google’s ads, which appear alongside search results.
Read More | USA Today
Two computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania think that within a human generation we may have the ability to replicate any 3D object out of a material made of small synthetic “atoms”, giving us the ablity to “teleport” over the internet. Professors Todd Mowry and Seth Goldstein first came up with the idea from a process known as claymation, an animation process that uses clay figures and manipulation to produce an images of realistic movement.
Cameras would capture the movement of an object or person and then this data would be fed to the atoms, which would then assemble themselves to make up an exact likeness of the object. ‘When you watch something created by claymation, it is a real object and it looks like its moving itself. That’s something like the idea we’re doing… in our case, the idea is that you have computation in the ‘clay’, as though the clay can move itself.
Read More | BBC
Opera software unveiled Opera 8 web browser for Macintosh today, to moderate fanfare and a few raised eyebrows from those who wonder whether it can take on Firefox, or Apple’s native browser for OS X, Safari.
The features of the new version of Opera were detailed in a somewhat dubious press release:
“With Opera, Mac users can surf fast, comfortably and efficiently using a full-featured browser that is not tied to the operating system (OS),” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Rather than incurring costly upgrades to your OS to get the newest features, Opera allows Mac users to browse, e-mail, download and chat using one program, requiring minimal system resources due to Opera’s small size.”
Costly upgrades to the OS to get new features? Since when? Firefox is free, for crying out loud, and as far as I know, Safari doesn’t charge per update or anything ridiculous like that. Obviously von Tetzchner hasn’t done his homework in this case — I can’t think of any browsers, regardless of platform, that require “costly upgrades to [the] OS” for new features.
Click to continue reading Opera 8 Released for Mac
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