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Sarah Palin and the Email Read ‘Round the World

Posted by K.C. Morgan Categories: Breaking News,

A bizarre series of events have culminated to create a few new truths in this year’s political race to the White House: one, Sarah Palin seems to have something to hide; two, the microscope under which Palin lives just got amped up; and three, Palin is truly one of the biggest celebrities in the world…for now. How will this change John McCain’s celebrity attack ads? Not at all - yet one more reason his campaign is completely and totally derailed, failing spectacularly to connect with the American public on any real level.

The thing is, potential President John McCain isn’t news. Hell, the man isn’t even relevant. Today, the media revolves around Sarah Palin. Maybe tomorrow, too. Palin is now the subject of inspection and Internet interrogation, her every move to be dissected and discussed. When the private email of a very public figure becomes a matter of public record, what else do you expect?

Click to continue reading Sarah Palin and the Email Read ‘Round the World

RIP Yahoo Mash

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Editorial, Internet,

Mash subscribers received this email message: “Thank you for trying out our Mash Beta service. We hope you had fun with it. Please note that we will shut down Mash on September 29, 2008. As a result, your current profile on Mash will no longer be available.”

So ends Yahoo’s second attempt at social networking, following the former demise of Mixd. One of Mash’s features was that you could create a profile for one of your friends, then ask her/him to customize it. Sounds a little creepy to us. We will now share about a nanosecond of silence to commemorate the loss, and ask Yahoo to stick to what it does best, if they ever figure out what that is.

Yahoo to Reorganize

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Internet,

Searchmonkey logo Yahoo has decided to regroup. They will be taking all their services, such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Upcoming, and transforming them into one network. Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer, said, “We are not building another social network. We are building social into everything we do.”

They have already created Searchmonkey that allows users and developers to easily utilize their search technology. The project, referred to as Y!OS (Yahoo Open Strategy,) should be open to all later on this year if Microsoft doesn’t take them over first.

Wikinear is Mobile Guide

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Smartphones, Google, GPS, Internet,

If you are unfamiliar with an area that you are trekking around, Wikinear is a new service that will tell you about its environs. Utilizing Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, APIs will find your location and display the 5 nearest interest points on a Google map courtesy of Wikipedia. The service is currently in beta, so you are required to sign up for Fire Eagle and there are only a limited amount of invitations available. Still, we like what we see since we love traveling, and hope that by the time it is officially open it will have more info for the rest of us.

JetBlue testing In-flight email and IM

Posted by Lolita Beckwith Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Transportation, Wireless / WiFi,

JetBlue Airbus A320 It’s no secret that the airline industry has spared no expense in terms of inflight entertainment, from iPod connectivity to DirecTV channels to interactive gaming and more. But secretly, we bet many of you just want to catch up emails and chat via Instant Message…right? Well JetBlue is on the case: starting today, one of its A320 planes will be equipped with Wi-Fi. Yahoo! and Wi-Fi-enabled Blackberry users will be able to read email and IM their buddies during flights. And you know this is only the beginning: for better or worse, we’re sure in a few short years we’ll be able to surf the ‘net from our laptops while flying the friendly skies. Cool….

Yahoo Japan Melds With eBay

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Internet,

YaBay logo Yahoo Japan has teamed with eBay to create a joint auction. The service allows the two countries to bid on both sites. Designed for simplified transactions between the two countries, this means that not only will the Japanese be able to bid on the Terminator Endoskeleton, but Americans will also be able to get a hold of some of those items that are only available in that country. The service should be up and running by the end of March 2008 and, depending on its outcome, may be offered in other countries.

PDFs to Become Mini-Billboards

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Misc. Tech,

PDF logo Thanks to an agreement between Yahoo and Adobe, PDFs will no longer be advertisement-free. Legally termed “Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo,” it is currently in its beta phase. The ads will be located on an adjacent panel and if clicked will open a new window. So far the service is only being used for pay-per-click text and is free for publishers, who can also block up to 200 urls if they don’t want it on selected files. On the upside, readers may now be able to obtain files that were formerly available for a charge or not provided online.

Firefox Plugin Spotlight: Mahalo Follow

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Software,

Mahalo Follow We all know the feeling - you submit a search to a service like Google, and the result you get back are mostly horrible. A lot of it can be considered spam, and it is just impossible to sift through the 3,480,000 results that have just been returned. This is where the new search service Mahalo comes in. They have a large team whose main goal is to put together quality search results by organizing the best links for common search terms. So you get all the good stuff, and none of the spam or other atrocities that have become the status quo. So, the tricky part - people are so used to Google and Yahoo!, so how do you get them to switch over to your service? This is where the new Mahalo Follow plug-in comes in. After installing it, you continue doing your searches in your normal search engine. However, when Mahalo has a result for the search, their results are displayed in a pane alongside them. This allows you to compare the quality of their results with those of your traditional search engine.

We’ve been using Mahalo Follow for a couple of days now, and while we weren’t sure we’d like it at first, it’s grown on us. If you are using Firefox, we suggest you give Mahalo Follow a try. If you do, hit us back in the comments and let us know what you think.

Microsoft Increases Hotmail Storage

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Microsoft,

Hotmail Microsoft has decided to more than double its Hotmail service capacity and will now store up to 5 GB of e-mail messages and images. They are undoubtedly hoping that this move will take them from the number 2 spot and unseat their rival Yahoo. The company also says that its performance will speed up, it will combine duplicate contacts in its address book, there will be a new “report phishing button,” and an option to log in straight to your inbox from the home page.

“We know this is going to be a big hit with a lot of you out there in blog land,” said Ellie Powers-Boyle, a program manager for Windows Live Hotmail.

It certainly is a big hit with those of us who like our Hotmail and have stuck with it despite the mini-storage for all these years.

New Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer In Three Days, And New Details

Posted by Chris Pereira Categories: Action, PlayStation 3, Trailers, Xbox 360,

In three days, the Internet is set to crash once again when the newest (the second of three) GTA IV trailer sees the light of day. Hopefully we’ll be seeing something more action-oriented this time around, as opposed to the first, which was more of a showcase for Liberty City than anything else. The video is titled “Looking for that Special Someone” and a special website is being prepped by Yahoo in order to withstand the insane amount of traffic it will receive once the trailer goes live. Anyone want to place bets on how long it’ll take for the site to crash?

Expect us to pick it apart piece by piece once it goes live, and later in the week Kyle and I will be debating over the excruciating details and nuances the trailer presents us with.

As an added bonus, last week, the Turkish Official Xbox Magazine revealed several tasty nuggets about GTA IV. Everyone loves lists, so I present you a list of GTA goodness:

There’s a slight vibration with every footstep when you run (sorry PS3 players)
No more HUD (health and armor indicators are gone), and instead everything is visual – if you have armor, you’ll see the bulletproof vest and it will visually deteriorates
Flamethrowers and rocket launchers are in the game
Explosions are larger, and the game features a missions where you cause a chain reaction of car explosions
Cars don’t explode from crashes or hitting them; you need to actually blow them up
Niko doesn’t get tired, he just begins running slower over time
The game is much more time-sensitive. An example that isn’t necessarily in the game was a mission where you need to catch a train by a certain time, and if you don’t, you don’t get to do that mission.
Gore is more prevalent; bullet wounds show, blood appears as you shoot people, they limp when shot in the leg, hold their arm if it’s shot, and running people over is “disturbing”
No more eating, working out or having a girlfriend, but skills improve over time
100% completion yields secret vehicles and “plenty of goodies”
The land size is larger than the three cities (sans countryside) from San Andreas

No more girlfriends? Hooray!

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