On Thursday, the day after many websites blacked out in protest of SOPA, the government shut down one of the most popular file-sharing websites.  Along with shutting it down, a federal indictment accused the owners of Megaupload.com of facilitating millions of illegal downloads.

Megaupload, a Chinese based company, is accused of costing copyright holders at least $500 million. The United States had jurisdiction because some files were being hosted by leased servers in Ashburn Va.

The shutdown came on the heels of a hacker attack that shutdown the Justice Department’s website and other federal sites.  Officials declared the shutdown of the Justice Department’s site “a malicious attack,” according to the Boston Globe. A hacker group known as “Anonymous” took credit for the attack.

According to the Globe, a Justice Department statement said that Kim Dotcom, 37, and three other employees were arrested in New Zealand on Thursday in relation to Megaupload.  Three more defendants have not yet been apprehended. Dotcom, who had his name legally changed from Kim Schmitz, is the founder, former CEO and current chief innovation officer of the file-sharing website.  The others arrested are Finn Batato, 38; Mathias Ortmann, 40; and Bram van der Kolk, 29.

“This kind of application of international criminal procedures to Internet policy issues sets a terrifying precedent,” said The Electronic Frontier Foundation that defends free speech and digital rights, according to The Globe. “If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?”

Before it was shutdown, Megaupload posted a statement that declared the SOPA bill a huge breach of copyright laws.

“The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch,” the statement said, The Globe reports.

Megaupload had the support of celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West.  These endorsements were unusual because the entertainment industry usually condemns the downloading of illegal material, as they lose money from it.

The company cited Swizz Beatz, a musician, as its CEO, but he declined comment to the Boston Globe.

The former website, which was listed at one point to be the 13th most visited website, is charged with copyright infringement, conpiracy to commit money laundering and racketeering.

Hope you’re all set with your storage needs.

The heavy rains that fell in Thailand this fall have led to serious flooding. The floods forced many of the world’s hard drive-producing factories to temporarily shut down.

The factory closures have affected several companies, including Western Digital and Seagate and some 40 percent of world hard drive manufacturing.

You can expect hard drive shortages. A few of the hard drives we’re tried to review this month — or include in gift guides — could not be sent to us because some companies have suspended their review programs.

With PC sales already slowing, this could have huge implications for the industry.

Interestingly, solid-state hard drive manufacturing was not affected, which may also lead to this medium taking off more and more.

A huge news event just broke and you’re having one of those moments that all writers alike wish for: clarity of thought and direction in your writing. As you’re typing away your thoughts, excited to hit the seductive “publish post” button after you’ve proofed your piece a bit, a familiar nagging at your gut tells you that you may have some typos due to how fast you did all this.

Now, there’s a solution to that feeling: Edit Huddle.

Edit Huddle is a tool that helps writers and bloggers stop worrying about having several rounds of proofing before publishing a post. In a fast-moving Internet age, when people are racing to chime in on current events on blogs, worrying a little bit less about simple typos is a precious tool.

Founder of Edit Huddle, Imran Ahmad, a ’14 MBA candidate at UChicago Booth School of Business, describes Edit Huddle as “a tool to help bloggers stop worrying about petty edits or people flooding their comment stream focusing on grammar, spelling, or other issues that hurt discussion.” Ahmad says the goal of the tool is ”to allow bloggers to privately get specific editorial feedback on their blogs.”

So how does Edit Huddle work?

As described by the Edit Huddle team, “Readers simply highlight the text they want to edit and identify what type of error it is. That information goes directly to the blogger in a series of charts that allow them to sync directly with WordPress and other sites to seamlessly fix any potential errors.” One useful detail to note is the proposed integration of the Edit Huddle tool as a button on popular blogging sites.

Ahmad and his team, including Adam Bain, Pradeep Maddineni, Kunal Shah, took part in a Hackathon as part of the 2011 Chicago Social Development Camp. Ahmed formed a team and over the course of 36 hours and developed Edit Huddle. Ahmad’s team was selected as the winner for best design and won second place out of a field of around 30 entries.

When asked how he came up with the idea, Ahmad recounts the simple way it happened while he was reading a TechCrunch article online. Ahmad saw an error and wasn’t able to easily report it to the writer. Ahmad asked himself why there wasn’t a simpler way for the blogger to be notified about the error?

Ahmad explains, ”I kept seeing blogs with basic errors. The wrong use of “your”, factual misstatements and even simple spelling errors. With thousands of readers reading your blog, lots of people identify the same issues.”

Following the “Fix It” mentality that Edit Huddle brings to the blogging world, Ahmad says, ”I decided that it was high time we used the power of the crowd to provide private feedback directly to the bloggers so that they can make the changes and not be worried about people flooding the comments section with grammatical issues.”

The Edit Huddle team is currently at Startup Weekend Chicago making progress on their company. So far, the team has contacted over 1,000 bloggers and has collected numerous survey responses gauging the need for a tool like Edit Huddle.

Rachel Hyman, part of Edit Huddle marketing, reports that Seth Kravitz, co-founder of Technori and avid blogger, stated that “This is something we would definitely use on our website…I love the simplicity of your implementation.”

Hyman also reports that Alec Wilhelm from The Next Web has also demonstrated significant interest in Edit Huddle’s progress.

The team plans to launch the tool live on 8 blogs by Sunday, just in time for their presentation at Startup Weekend Chicago, competing with 9 other teams at the Excelerate Labs headquarters.

If you are a blogger or just someone interested in this tool, here are a few things you can do to get in the Edit Huddle loop: Check out Edit Huddle’s page and contact Rachel Hyman if you are interested in beta testing. Also, complete this one-minute survey and connect with Edit Huddle on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

As a blogger that gets bogged down by perfecting grammar and spelling at the cost of interrupting my thought-flow, this is a tool I’m looking forward to having at my disposal. And since I wrote this article so fast and I’m sure there are typos galore, I wish Edit Huddle’s “Fix It” button for your grammatical-error-induced annoyance to let me know.

InMotion, in an email to users, said Sunday that the homepage defacement attack launched by the southeast Asian hacker TiGER-M@TE was not meant to do permanent or catestrophic damage to the hundreds of thousands of websites that were hit.

“We understand the method the attacker used to accomplished this and the main exploit path was through an internal management server that can control Cpanel on other servers. The management server was used to change passwords on the Cpanel servers then login with those passwords,” said Todd Robinson, president of the hosting company.

The defacement attacked worked by replacing index files in all public_html directories with the attacker’s own branded index.php. InMotion does not believe that any data was stolen or that any passwords were compromised.

“It does not appear that gaining passwords was a goal or was accomplished, just password changes were used. Access to the management server was gained from an exploited customer’s server that was within our network,” Robinson said. “Though our team moved quickly to disable the internal management server and limit the exposure of the servers to this attack when it began, it
was a very serious breach and could have been much worse if the hacker had intended to do more harm.”

This does fit the modus operandi of TiGER-M@TE, who often claims to hack for fun or just to prove that “it can be done.”

Blast Magazine’s network of websites were defaced during the attack on InMotion, as was the offical City of Providence website.

InMotion took responsibility for failing to prevent the damage. Some estimates have the attack hitting more than 500,000 websites, making it historic in its proportions if not in its level of damage.

“Please accept our apologies as we go through this process,” Robinson said. “We are very aware of our failure in this situation and we will provide more details when we have completed the work of recovery.”

For several hours Sunday morning, Blast Magazine and many other websites in the InMotion Hosting network were attacked by a hacker called TiGER-M@TE.

InMotion, where Blast hosts one of its servers, acknowledged the breach.

“At around 4 a.m. EST, our system administration team identified a website defacement attack affecting a large number of customers. We are still investigating, but it appears that files named index.php have been defaced. We are evaluating how this has occurred and our security team will have more information shortly,” InMotion said in a statement. “While we review this issue, cPanel and SSH access has been disabled on various platforms. For additional security, we are rotating passwords on a number of accounts.”

It is unclear how many sites were hit, but it is likely hundreds, if not thousands.

This morning, the Blast homepage was briefly replaced by a black background with the red letters “Hacked” (See photo below) and all of our blogs and articles were unreachable.

This appears to be the same hacker who successfully attacked Google previously. The Hacker News interviewed TiGER-M@TE, who claimed to be hacking since 2007, working alone, and only using private exploits and zero-day attacks.

In an online posting, TiGER-M@TE claimed responsibility for launching the homepage defacement attack.

“While we can respect TiGER-M@TE’s abilities, we are disappointed that our websites were hit,” said Blast Magazine editor-in-chief John M. Guilfoil. “What truly concerns me, however, is that InMotion Hosting appeared woefully unable to prevent or defend against this kind of attack, even though homepage defacements have been going on seemingly forever. We will consult with InMotion on Monday and plan to press the company to be more proactive in its security if InMotion values its customers.”

Tenenbaum and Nesson (JoelFightsBack.com)

In a decision sparse in terms of legal precedence, Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston University student involved in a civil suit with the Recording Industry Association of America, again finds himself staring down the barrel of a six figure judgment. This comes on the heels of a decision by a Federal Appeals Court to reverse former District Court Judge Nancy Gertner’s ruling that Tenebaum’s fine be reduced from $675,000 to $67,500.

Now he owes $675,000 again.

Gertner felt that the jury’s initial ruling was excessive, and therefore a violation of due process. While the appeals court did not directly address the constitutional issues raised by Gertner, they took issue with her “disregard for procedure” in reducing the fine levied against Tenebaum. The appeals court cited that Gertner, in lieu of an arbitrary reduction, should have proposed a figure that the Record Companies could settle on or choose to decline; the latter resulting in a second trial.

The constitutional gray area brought into the spotlight by Gertner’s decision seems to form the foundation of the argument launched by Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law Professor, and his team of law students aiding him Tenebaum’s defense. Nesson and his team seem intent on promoting the idea of the Copyright Statute being vulnerable in its application upon individual file sharers who have no intent to profit from their infringement, a point brought up by Tenebaum in his own defense.

Jason Harrow, one of the students aiding Nesson, stood before the First Circuit Court of Appeals and argued that so few cases of this nature had been filed because “no one thought the statute would apply to consumers like this.” The Judge quickly dismissed this notion by stating that “the literal language of the statute does not include an exception for consumers.” She also pointed out that Congress could have easily written in this exemption had it been their intent for the statute to be interpreted thus. However, Harrow still argued that the statute should be fairly interpreted in order to suppress any constitutional red flags, and that Congress did not necessarily intend for the copyright laws to be enacted in a way that gave leeway to such “absurd results.”

The actual body of the Copyright Law of the United States reads that, “In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000.” As a result, Tenebaum, who is considered a willful violator responsible for 30 separate infringements, faced a maximum settlement of $4.5 million.

Tenebaum is grateful that the judgment did not reach this multi-million dollar ceiling, saying “That to me sends a message of ‘we considered your side with some legitimacy’”. However, he has also noted that even the significantly smaller figure set by Nancy Gertner, and recently overturned by the appeals court, will result in his filing for bankruptcy.

This is the first case of its kind to reach the Federal Appeals Court, although a similar case involving Minnesota mother, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, is also destined to appear before a Federal Court after three years of circulation in the legal system.

We reported on this type of problem back in November. A problem with domain name servers may be negatively affecting Comcast internet customers.

Four days ago, a broad DNS attack was reported that hit the sites of UPS, Acer, and others in a coordinated attack that may have been carried out by Turkish hackers. That was a hack on the NetNames DNS provider.

TechCrunch.com also reported at 11:30 p.m. Thursday that Microsoft services, including Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Office 365 were all down because of a DNS problem. Service was restored about four hours later.

Tonight, some Comcast customers in Boston have reported that “the lights are on” on their cable modem, but websites will not load. Changing the DNS servers on your router and/or computer to Google’s public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as secondary) just as we recommended in November, seemed to fix the problem. Make sure you restart your computer or other device before trying to get back online.

Are you having/did you have Internet problems? Let us know where/when by commenting on this story!

Advertising giant and search engine default Google has agreed to forfeit $500 million in proceeds it received from allowing Canadian pharmacies to illegally target American consumers for prescription drugs, the Justice Department announced.

“The Department of Justice will continue to hold accountable companies who in their bid for profits violate federal law and put at risk the health and safety of American consumers,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, in a statement. “This settlement ensures that Google will reform its improper advertising practices with regard to these pharmacies while paying one of the largest financial forfeiture penalties in history.”

Google had sold the ads through its AdWords network.

The news was announced at press conference Wednesday morning in Providence.

As a general rule, the shipment of prescription drugs from foreign pharmacies to people inside the United States violates the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and in the case of controlled prescription drugs, the Controlled Substances Act, according to federal officials.

According to the statement, Google knew as early as 2003 that it was usually illegal for its Canadian pharmacy advertisers to ship drugs to the US.

Besides the patent illegality of it, federal regulators obviously take no steps to verify the legitimacy or chemical makeup of foreign drugs.

“This investigation is about the patently unsafe, unlawful, importation of prescription drugs by Canadian on-line pharmacies, with Google’s knowledge and assistance, into the United States, directly to U.S. consumers,” said U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha. “It is about taking a significant step forward in limiting the ability of rogue on-line pharmacies from reaching U.S. consumers, by compelling Google to change its behavior. It is about holding Google responsible for its conduct by imposing a $500 million forfeiture, the kind of forfeiture that will not only get Google’s attention, but the attention of all those who contribute to America’s pill problem.”

The Boston Globe reported that in May Google noted in a regulatory filing that it had set aside $500 million to settle a Justice Department investigation of “certain” advertisers.

Hewlett-Packard Sr. VP of Global Marketing from wireimage.com

Hewlett-Packard will end its tablet computer and smartphone businesses, and may sell its PC business as well.

The company has been rumored to have been in talks about selling its PC business, but the smartphone announcement came as a surprise especially since HP recently paid $1.8 billion to smartphone maker Palm in 2009.

HP is the biggest maker of PCs and printers, but has been trying to expand and focus more on technology services.

The question is less of a “HTML5 conquer Flash?” and more of a “WHEN will HTML5 take over?”

A preview version of the Adobe Edge development tool was released yesterday by Adobe Systems, and it promises to help web developers create animation and other such things on the Internet without Flash.

Edge, which can be downloaded from the Adobe Labs site, is ready and available for developers now. This is a way to let you know that that the company is attempting to move away from Flash, and is focusing its efforts on HTML5, which can create some of the same effects, but without the plug-in.

Edge is actually in the early stages of development, much earlier than the beta stage, because HTML5 is evolving and it supports the browsers that are up and running now.

Doing this will allow Adobe to address any issues that may arise from developers testing the new features of HTML5 and deal with it not rather than later.

Edge will also be focused on the mobile Web, such as Apple, Android and Blackbery OS systems, but not to worry as the tools will also work well with traditional desktop browsers that support HTML5 which would be Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome.

Edge utilizes the same language that longtime Flash programmers are accustomed to, which promises a familiar transition. It uses the timeline development metaphor that will be familiar to longtime Flash programmers.

As of now no word on what this will cost or when this will be released, but Adobe seems determined that HTML5 will take over for Flash.

If you are a customer of Netflix, then you would have received an email yesterday that explains that the service will now separate their services into two payment structures. Here is a copy of an email I received:

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $14.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month

Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 2 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $11.99 a month

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $19.98 a month ($7.99 + $11.99). You don’t need to do anything to continue your memberships for both unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs.

These prices will start for charges on or after September 1, 2011.

You can easily change or cancel your unlimited streaming plan, unlimited DVD plan, or both, by going to the Plan Change page in Your Account.

We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have questions, please feel free to call us at 1-888-357-1516.

–The Netflix Team

The reaction to this?

Well if you are on Twitter, the trending topic for the past two days has been “Dear #Netflix,” where people from around the world have voiced their displeasure at the 60 percent price increase. Some are quite funny, some sad, while others lament the fact that the streaming service, which is the cheapest option, does not have as good a selection as the DVD’s they offer.

Here are a few dissatisfied customers from twitter:

@ChrisThomas:

Dear @Netflix: Not cool. Sincerely, Me and everyone else who have loyally paid you $ for years. P.S. Please fix it.

@adkalmanack:

Dear #netflix, You can’t double the price of a product without providing more value. Bad business move — #redbox here we come.

With that said, will you continue on with Netflix? Leave your comments below!

Microsoft announced that as of Monday they have sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses worldwide since its release in October 2009.

While that is great news for the company, they also discussed their Windows 8 OS during a Worldwide Partner Conference, but only briefly, as more will be revealed later on in the year.

Why all the fanfare over Windows 7? Besides the growth, the company also wants people to ditch XP for 7, because Microsoft announced that customers now have 1,000 days until the company stops supporting Windows XP.

According to Erwin Visser, senior director for the Windows Commercial Product Marketing team “Windows XP served us well, but in the ten years since it launched, the world has changed. It’s time to retire Windows XP and move to Windows 7 to take advantage of the last decade of innovation in areas such as security, performance and more natural, intuitive interface.”

How will this work, since the two OS are not really compatible with each other? Microsoft lauded the cloud-based service Intune can help users manage and secure their computers from any location.

“Windows Intune has proven to be the comprehensive solution [partners and customers] need, giving them cloud services for PC management and security and upgrade rights to Windows 7 Enterprise (and future versions of Windows) from a single, simple subscription,” said Visser.

It sounds like Microsoft is trying to help the demise of XP by providing tools to help people make the transfer.

Many XP users stuck with the venerable operating system after downgrading from the failed Windows Vista a few years ago.

Over 700 million users on Facebook have faced this dilemma … confirm or ignore a friend request. We’ve all been there, weighing the options of allowing yet another friend into our lives. Some may be nonchalant about adding friends, “the more the merrier.” Other users may be more selective, only allowing “specific” friends into their lives. One thing they all have in common… there aren’t many rules when it comes to Facebook.

Social networking is a huge force to be reckoned with. We are consumed by posting on news feeds, giving status updates, and sharing pictures with our “friends.” But what does all of this mean? More than you think… here are six (unofficial) rules for using Facebook.

1. Know your friends. First and foremost, would you randomly walk up to a total stranger, and show them a picture of your adorable and innocent children?

Most likely not, yet people accept friend requests from friends of friends they barely know, or strangers who happen to know someone they’ve met once. Participating in the world of social networking doesn’t mean you have to throw all your regular rules out the door. Just because you can’t see the predator at the door doesn’t mean they aren’t lurking in cyberspace when your safety guard is down. When you’re chatting with someone, are you chatting with a true “friend?” Think about the person you’re adding, and who’ll be seeing the most intimate details of your life. Posting your husband will be out of town for a couple days is probably not the best idea, but numerous times a day, people do share this type of information. Would you post a huge note on your front door reading, “My husband is not home, he’s away on business until Friday?”
Common sense and knowing who you’re friends are will help keep you and your secrets safe within your inner circle of friends.

2. Know what matters to you. People often join Facebook on a whim, but don’t really grasp the enormity of what social networking has become. Why are you choosing to be a member? Do you want to catch up with old friends? Do you want to share your life with everyone you know, or are you just nosy and want to snoop around and not participate? If you’ve identified yourself as at least one of these people, than you’re a step ahead of everyone else. Always remember the real reason you joined a social networking site in the first place. If you start straying from that truth and allow outside influences to distract you, your judgment can become clouded. Stick with what matters and be honest with yourself. If you own your actions and the way you handle yourself on Facebook, you’re less likely to run into trouble.

3. Know what to share. Who are your “friends?” Do you care who sees your posts or pictures? If the answer is no, than go about your day but still have your eyes wide open for your sake. For people who want to share their information and details of their life with just “friends,” think before posting or downloading. Once you click the button, there’s really no turning back. Yes, you can delete your post or pictures, but who is to say someone hasn’t already taken your words or photos and saved them to their account or computer? An innocent post or picture can be timeless in the world of social networking. Don’t take the power of social media lightly.

4. Know if you want to please people. Are you “liking” everything in sight? Do you encourage and comment on “friend’s” posts constantly? Do you say things you really don’t mean, because you don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings? Facebook and social networking can mirror high school, the days where acceptance and fitting in were staples in the world of adolescence. Fast-forward five, ten, or twenty years. If you had the chance to do anything over or be someone else, would you? Being true to who you are is probably one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Don’t sell out or pretend to be someone you’re not, and sacrifice a part of you for that acceptance. Try not to compromise yourself for people who you didn’t really care for in the first place.

5. Know to anticipate the “what ifs.” No one really thinks confirming a friend is difficult, but it’s not as innocent as it seems. What if your ex friends you out of the blue? Do you confirm them as a friend? What if you’re married? Do you tell your mate your ex has friended you…or is it none of their business? What if your spouse finds out you confirmed an ex without disclosing or discussing it first? What if you aren’t prepared to allow someone back into your life? Temptation has never been this close. With a click of a button, you can see what your ex is doing at that very moment and instantly communicate with a person you haven’t seen in years. Are you prepared for what comes next? Curiosity can lead to the “what ifs” being answered, even if they aren’t necessarily good.

6. Know your boundaries. How far is too far? You’re married but speak with an old friend, sharing more intimate thoughts with that person than your significant other. An emotional connection can lead to something more dangerous … a physical affair. Can a friendship with an ex be platonic? Is discussing intimate topics, meeting for coffee or dinner, and becoming more secretive and withdrawn from your significant other crossing the line? Can you look in the mirror, and know you’re not doing anything wrong? Temptation and availability can cloud someone’s judgment, leading to mistakes and regret. When have you gone too far? Difficult questions that should be answered before it’s too late.

Today, Facebook and other social networking sites are under a microscope. Without established rules, people are making mistakes and paying for them. Have you encountered anything in life that hasn’t had some form of rules or regulations? Temptation is a driving force within social media. People simply can’t help themselves, but what are the consequences? Recent scandals show no one is immune to scrutiny and the negative spotlight that comes from making a social media blunder, so to all of you addicted to social media, remember to use with caution!

Google has never been accused of sitting idly by, what with it still being the number 1 search engine across the world, and constantly trying to branch out into other fields that are already dominated by other juggernauts like Skype and Facebook.

On Google’s blog, they have just announced a new social media function called Google+ which is trying to incorporate your online world and real world experience into one.

Google+ is actually several different social media ideas to get you involved with the people in your network, both on and off line.

• +Cirlcle is a way to connect with a select few people in your social network of friends. Instead of blasting the world you interact with a “circle” of friends with the same likes.
• +Sparks delivers a feed of highly contagious content from across the Internet. On any topic you want, in over 40 languages. Simply add your interests, and you’ll always have something to watch, read and share—with just the right circle of friends. This sounds like it would be the equivalent of Twitter and Facebook combined.
• +Hangouts By combining the casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you’re free, and spend time with your Circles. Face-to-face-to-face. In other words, this would be the equivalent of Face Time on a phone or Skype.
• +Mobile has three counterparts such as +location, +instant upload, +huddle. Each of these make your phone a way to connect with your circle online offline, by giving your location where they could join you for fun, by checking out a photo you just took, and by coordinating with a meetup that you’ve planned.

As you can see Google+ is not only stepping into the social media landscape, it is trying to carve out its own niche as well. It is combining several popular medias such as Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and Skype. Why use all four when you can have it all in one place?

Want to get in on the action? Right now it is currently available in the Android Market and will be available at some point in the future on other platforms.

Sometimes even executives have a bad day at the office. Skype, the video chat service that allows you to talk to anyone around the world with a computer, a camera and a microphone, is closing in on a deal with Microsoft and fired several executives to make a sweeter deal with the company this past Monday.

Why? Well according to Bloomberg, firing them now, before the deal is final will actually reduce the actual value of their payouts. Ouch. Talk about company sincerity.

Skype even let go Allyson Campa who just started with the company when they acquired Qik to boost their already popular video chat service.

If the execs had stayed around until after the deal closed with Microsoft, then their stock options would be worth more, so Skype and Microsoft save money by firing them now, Bloomberg reported.

The acquisition was approved on Thursday, by the Department of Justice $8.5 billion.

A judge ruled against the twins who waged the legal battle against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, made famous by the movie “The Social Network,” on Wednesday, ending the case.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss originally agreed to a $65 million settlement in 2008, but then tried to undo the deal.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the duo and they denied a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Their stock is now worth more than $100 million, according to Boston.com.

As recently as March this year VISA and Mastercard trialled a new wireless payment technology called Near Field Communication (NFC). It would allow customers to pay for products by simply waving a handheld in the vicinity of a receiver, revolutionizing the way we shop, but how long will consumers have to wait before this futuristic alternative to plastic hits the streets? Well in short, it’s already here.

NFC is a short-range (approximately 10cm) wireless technology that uses electromagnetic radio fields to transmit data a short distance from a transmitter to a receiver. The transmitter would be a mobile phone that could be activated and simply waved in the vicinity of a device that effectively acts as an electronic checkout to offer fast payment for goods and services.

One of the hurdles NFC needs to overcome before it becomes commonplace is security, and IBM has already voiced its concerns about how it could lead to increasing interest by malicious parties. Americans seem less skeptical however – a recent survey by research specialist Compete1 reports that one in four are prepared to pay for groceries with a phone, and one in five are happy to pay for clothes, coffee, cellphone top-ups and the like.

And there’s certainly an incentive from the retail side as well – Juniper Networks, BullGuard technology partner , suggest that NFC will bring in $50 billion over the next three years.

The Wall Street Journal reports that New York will be the first to adopt the technology, with retail partners such as Macy’s, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway already on board.

At the forefront of this rollout is Google, which has teamed up with MasterCard and CitiGroup to produce the service. It’ll work via Google Wallet2, an app that allows customers with compatible phones to begin using NFC. To address security concerns, a dedicated chip called the Secure Element, separate from a phone’s memory, uses MasterCard’s secure encryption technology to protect credentials as they are transferred. In addition, PIN code authorization is required to carry out a transaction in the same way as a regular card. While Google has obviously gone to great pains to secure users of the Wallet, how effective those measures actually are remains to be seen – rule of thumb is that storing credit card details anywhere with online access leaves those details open to hackers.

To encourage consumers to use the service Google plans to work in a series or promotions and discounts from associated retailers offering money off vouchers and loyalty schemes – similar to the one currently offered by Starbucks, that are sent to a phone and can be instantly redeemed in store.

You’ll need an NFC enabled phone to get involved. The Nexus S 4G, available on Sprint, is the only Google Wallet enabled phone currently, but an increasing number of new handsets are looking to include the technology as standard, suggesting that NFC is likely to become widespread much sooner than many of us could have predicted.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, wants kids under 13 to be allowed on Facebook, saying the youngsters should be allowed, for educational purposes, to access his social network.

In theory this sounds like a great idea, especially as children are the future and definitely more savvy when it comes to computers and the internet, but some groups — and law — would disagree with the plan.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) bans sites from collecting information from kids under 13. Parental groups also worry that child predators out there could possibly be detrimental to this plan.

Zuckerberg is tech savvy as well as business savvy, and opening the flood gates to children would certainly be good for Facebook’s bottom line, but at the same time, the question reamins: how can he stop those who are still out there waiting for something like this? For parents of younger children, they may not want their kids online.

What do you think of the idea? Comment below!

Netflix has finally come to an agreement and will start streaming Miramax movies in June. This deal so far is only for U.S. members to watch instantly. No word yet on when and if available to outside the U.S.

This is the very first time that Miramax titles would be available through a digital subscription service, making Netflix the clear winner in this deal.

So what are you getting for your subscription service? Among the many award-winning, fan favorite and commercially successful movies are: “Bad Santa,” “Chasing Amy,” “Cinema Paradiso,” “Clerks,” “Cold Mountain,” “The English Patient,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Kill Bill Volumes” I and II, “Muriel’s Wedding,” “The Piano,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Reindeer Games,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and many of the “Halloween,” “Scary Movie,” “Scream” and “Spy Kids” movies.

Is this a deal-maker for you? Share your comments below!

Google is becoming more of an internet giant everyday it seems. Today they announced their launch of something new called Music Beta. It is a service that will allow users to upload their music to the site where they would then be able to stream it. What do you think of this new service being provided by the company? Want to get in on this service? Since it is in a beta format, they is accepting request at music.google.com

But according to Billboard, this is not what the company wanted. They actually wanted deals with the major music labels to effectively offer a service to people but per Zahavah Levine, representative for the Google who was part of the negations process lays blame for the company not getting what they want.

“We’ve been in negotiations with the industry for a different set of features, with mixed results,” she told Billboard the night before the announcement was made. “[But] a couple of major labels were less focused on innovation and more on demanding unreasonable and unsustainable business terms.”

What did Google actually want? They wanted “to offer a scan-and-match style locker service — where instead of uploading different copies of the same track to store in a locker for each users, the service would scan users’ libraries and match the songs they own to a centralized server, paying rightsholders for each stream.”

All of this was to coincide with Google’s music player app which will be available for Android smartphones. With so many services offering similar options, is Google becoming a bit greedy in its need to expand in every market? Or is their room for what they are offering?

In its largest purchase ever, Microsoft said Tuesday that it will purchase Skype SA for $8.5 billion.

Skype, the mega-popular Internet telephone and video chat service, gives Microsoft 170 million people in its user database, with users spending 207 billion minutes of voice and video airtime in 2010, Microsoft said in a statement.

“Skype has been a pioneer in creating rich, meaningful connections among friends, families and business colleagues globally,” the statement said. “Microsoft has a long-standing focus and investment in real-time communications across its various platforms, including Lync (which saw 30 percent revenue growth in Q3), Outlook, Messenger, Hotmail and Xbox LIVE.”

Skype will become a new business division of Microsoft, while bringing its services to Xbox, Kinect, Windows Phone and a variety of other Microsoft devices and services.

“Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in the statement. “Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.”

Skype CEO Tony Bates will become president of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Ballmer.

“Microsoft and Skype share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers,” said Bates. “Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype’s plans to extend our global community and introduce new ways for everyone to communicate and collaborate.”

Skype was founded in 2003 and purchased by eBay in 2005 and then by another investment group in 2009. The majority of its users are in Europe, and country-to-country calling is its most popular service.

Google has announced that it will begin to start rolling out the new Google Talk video chat on Android devices.

If you have an Android phone or device you will be able to video or voice chat with anyone who has compatible devices such as an Android tablet or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer. This will work over and 3G or 4G data network or over Wi-Fi.

The way this will work is in your Google Talk friends list, a video or voice chat button will appear next your contacts and all you have to do is touch the button and you will be able to connect with them.

If say you needed to check something while you were chatting, the video pauses automatically so that way you can go back to the phone’s home screen or even another app.

The feature will be added to the Nexus S devices in the next few weeks and will be eventually be added to other Android 2.3+ devices.

Today it was announced that YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen have purchased the social bookmaking site Delicious from Yahoo, which acquired the site back in 2005.

Per the press release, Delicious will become part of AVOS, a new Internet company. Current users using Delicious will continue to use the service, but it will now be easier and more fun to save and share what is already on the web.

“We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level,” said Chad Hurley, CEO of AVOS. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”

“We spoke with numerous parties interested in acquiring the site, and chose Chad and Steve based on their passion and unique vision for Delicious,” said John Matheny, SVP of Communications and Communities at Yahoo!

The YouTube founders plan to work closely with the community over the next few months to develop innovative features to help solve the problem of information overload. “We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type,” said Chen.

Could this mean that sites like Digg and Reddit are not that far behind as being sold off as well? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

It seems that Google is not the only kid who wants a piece of the “deals” block. In breaking news via Mashable.com Facebook is now getting into the coupon deals business.

This news follows on the heels of Google’s big announcement, and like the other coupon deal sites (Groupon and Livingsocial), Facebook will also offer enormous deals at huge percentages off “unlimited bowling with six friends for an evening for $60 (75 percent off)” and “luxury winery tour and 25 percent off all wine purchases for $50.”

Facebook Deals will launch Tuesday five cities starting only: San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta and San Diego, and since it is Facebook, the deals will appear on the user’s newsfeed as well as via email.

This will make Deals more of social thing because the idea is once people start engaging and using the deals, they will then share those deals with their friends and so on.

(Mashable)

Google has added another service to its growing list of things they offer: Google Offers.

It is a direct competitor for Groupon, which was ridiculed earlier this year for the poor taste in super bowl commercials, but it also put them on the map of coupons and offers.

With an already growing number of sites offering similar or the same thing (such as LivingSocial ect.) can Google Offer really offer anything new to the table?

Mashable first reported the news.

Google tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion just months ago. Groupon declined the offer and is preparing to launch an IPO at about $15 billion.

Well it appears that since Google couldn’t buy them, then creating their own service is one way of trying to beat them at their own game.

Can Google succeed? Or will Groupon or even LivingSocial, who already have an established customer base, will they still continue to succeed with the giant that is Google?

This week, many social media platforms were dead. No life. Just a screen that screamed server is down will be up later. Or the connectivity was so slow maybe having a message that the server was down would have been better.

In this day and age, social media is not a byword but the end all be all for so many businesses and people that having a well known server host like “Amazon’s AWS services, which together comprise the company’s cloud computing platform” go down for a good portion of day is not a good thing.

If you use foursquare, you could not check in to get your points. No mayorship or badges unlocked.

If you use paper.li the new kid on the social media block, then you were not able to see your own newspaper full of tweets or Facebook feed with the most popular stories of the previous day.

The list goes on and on with people not being able to get their social media fix.

As of today though, per mashable.com, the servers, while not full capacity, some of the big sites are viewable and working fine.

Could this happen again? And should some of these sites look for other alternatives?

Independent film production took another giant step forward this week at the National Association of Broadcasters Show, with a pair of software debuts from Sony Creative Software sure to make waves in both the professional and consumer markets.

In the area of film editing, Sony’s debuted Vegas Pro 10.0d, an innovative program that boasts extensive post-production capabilities. An update to the already successful Vegas Pro 10 series, the non-linear video editing software expands into the burgeoning fields of 3D film and Blu-ray disc storage.

“The new enhancements in Vegas Pro 10.0d … provide cutting edge tools that equip industry professionals with improved capabilities to produce quality work at a greater efficiency,” said Dave Chaimson, vice president of global marketing for Sony Creative Software, in a press release Monday. These improvements include streamlined closed captioning embedding, as well as support for Advanced Micro Device (AMD) graphic chipsets – an upgrade that allows for faster project rendering. Additionally, the software features a new burning capability that allows for complete high-quality 3D Blu-ray film creation.

Vegas 10.0d has adopted Open Computing Language (OpenCL) – a cross-platform programming framework that has become an industry standard in recent years – a decision that Manju Hegde, the corporate vice president of the AMD Fusion Experience Program, sees as “key to advancing innovation, helping creative professionals to rely on and fully leverage available computing power on a common industry platform to bring inspiration to reality.”

Registered Vegas Pro 10 users can enjoy the 10.0d upgrade, which also includes improved audio track workflow and support for 3D Multiview Video Coding (MVC) and Multi Picture Object (MPO) file formats, free of charge starting in late April. The full suite will retail with a suggested price of $699.95.

On the sound-editing front, Sony Creative announced a high-quality sound effect series developed in partnership with acclaimed production studio The Detroit Chop Shop. The series spans a range of genres – from Action to Nature, from Transportation to Explosions & Impacts – in 10 volumes. Delivered in broadcast standard 24-bit/48 kHz sound, the effects are encoded with metadata, allowing for full searchability in standard search engines like Google and Bing.

Already an industry standard, The Detroit Chop Shop’s partnership with Sony Creative will “ensure parity for producers working with high-impact sound in the broadcast and film industries,” said Chaimson. The series is now available, retailing for $99.95 for individual titles or $799.95 for all 10 volumes.

Both products will be available for download from www.sonycreativesoftware.com or for purchase at retailers worldwide.

In a move that surprised pretty much no one, Apple officially unveiled the iPad 2 to the world yesterday. What may surprise you though is that the new models release date, March 11, is just days away.

While the new model doesn’t feature anything revolutionary, it does feature an impressive feature set that improves on the original. iPad 2 features a 33% thinner frame than it’s predecessor; going from 13.4 mm to just 8.8 mm (which makes the iPad 2 smaller than even the iPhone 4). The iPad 2 also fixes what many thought was one of the original’s biggest flaws by making the unit 15% lighter.

On the tech side the iPad 2 features a brand new dual core processor known as the A5. Accodring to Apple, the new processor is twice as old as the original and allows the graphics performance to run remarkably better. As expected, the new model also comes packed with many of the features that the rest of the iOS family can already claim, including front and rear facing cameras that allow for face time and the ability to shoot videos in 720p (and yes, this iPad will have an HDMI output) along with the gyroscope technology seen in the iPhone 4.

What hasn’t changed? The pricing structure. Just like the original model, iPad 2 will retail for $629-$829 depending on the model.

As the world watched IBM supercomputer Watson wipe the floor with veteran Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, much was made of the impact this victory could have on society. With robots already replacing humans in assembly lines and factories internationally, this demonstration of a computer’s ability to learn over time and understand the nuances of language – including puns and jokes — raises the spectre of intelligent machines taking over even more advanced jobs.

According to Martin Ford, author of “The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future,” it is already happening.

Ford, a graduate of the University of Michigan, boasts more than 25 years in the field of technology and has seen the ever-growing influence of automation firsthand. Since starting his own business over 15 years ago, Ford has watched his company’s technology rapidly progress. “Even as a small business, I see the impact,” Ford said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Everything used to be done by telephone, the software sent by mail. Now we have the Internet.”

Beyond its social significance, the increase in automation at his own software company inspired Ford to explore the ramifications of burgeoning technology on the economy. “At the rate at which technology is advancing, repetitive, routine jobs are likely to get automated in the next 10 to 20 years,” Ford explained, and he doesn’t believe it will stop there. As an intelligent computer like Watson demonstrates, increasingly sophisticated machinery could soon replace humans in more and more complex, analytical fields.

“There is a limit to (human) capability. If you’re working at McDonalds, you’re probably not going to get a PhD,” Ford said, adding that as robotic intelligence is developed, it will begin to push against that capability. When machines grow beyond simple physical tasks to the skilled, mental work of middle- and high-level jobs, the dwindling opportunities for workers will continue to drag the economy deeper into recession. As Ford explains it, in a mass-market economy like the United States, the problem is simple: “There will be fewer and fewer people with the discretionary income to participate in the economy. You can’t drive the economy like that.”

Ford’s solution is unorthodox at best – he promotes a model of progressive taxation and the payment of a basic income to all citizens, whether they work or not – and a far cry from our modern capitalism. “It’s a radical idea in terms of politics,” he acknowledges, noting that the current conservative policies that seek to de-fund social welfare programs are “accelerating the process.” With automation gaining ground all fields of employment, Ford feels that economic change is all but inevitable and the government must prepare for the eventuality that technology may one day have the ability to put any American worker out of his job.

There is perhaps no greater evidence of this than Watson’s staggering win, which demonstrated computing ability far beyond even the sizable skill of Deep Blue, the IBM computer that defeated famed chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. “The technology is pretty amazing,” Ford stated. “I’ve never seen a machine, a computer, handle language in this way.” But it is more, he insists, than mere understanding. Ford emphasized Watson’s machine learning as the true secret to its success: “A machine that can get better and better – it’s proven that its operating at a championship level. There are big implications for the future in that.”

Indeed, as companies like Google continue to develop supercomputers of their own, the expansion of automation seems increasingly likely. “We’re going to see it in the coming year,” Ford said, predicting that these types of technology will begin to encroach on higher skill jobs. “It’s going to be a huge issue for us as a society,” he stated.

As Watson and his contemporaries are designed to perform ever more complicated tasks, the impact on the economy looks increasingly bleak. With robots performing more jobs once reserved exclusively for college graduates, Ford predicts that the displacement of workers will only continue to grow: “It is unclear where the jobs of the future are going to come from.”

This piece started as a “10 Laptops to buy” type-piece, but laptops are dynamic in the sense that you could want an entertainment laptop, a multi-function laptop, a highly portable laptop, a business laptop, etc. and it is hard to decide what is better across categories for different needs. Therefore, we compiled a list of 10 things you should look after you figure out what type of laptop you want.

1. Hard Drive

The size for your hard drive really depends on what you are storing (that’s what she said!). If you have tons of digital media at your disposal, then perhaps a 500GB-1TB hard drive is what you should seek. On the other hand, if all you have is program files, music, and documents, then maybe something smaller will suffice like a 125GB hard drive. But of equal importance is the type of hard drive. Solid State Discs are starting to come down in price even though they are still relatively expensive, but they last longer, have no moveable parts, stay cool, and have fast transfer rates. Another example, such as a SATA II Hard Drive, would allow for around 3GB/sec transfer speeds and a SATA III Hard Drive would get more than double the SATA II. So, pending on your needs there are options that you should explore instead of just blindly selecting.

2. Memory

For memory, I look for laptops that have extra expansion slots in the event I wish to increase my laptop’s memory. As my base, however, I wouldn’t purchase a laptop with any less than 2GB of memory. Today you will see laptops with 3GB, 4GB, 6GB, or even 8GB of memory either provided already or available to upgrade at your leisure. Luckily, most stock laptops today come with a chunk of memory from the get-go and you will also likely have the ability to upgrade. But if you see a computer with only 1GB of memory or less, prepare yourself for a more frustrating experience in comparison to a computer that has more memory.

3. Weight

For me, anything over 6 pounds is too much weight for a laptop. There is no reason that you should be lugging around a hunk of metal and plastic when the sole purpose of the laptop is mobility and portability. Most of the laptops that have a 15 inch screen or less will be under my 6 pound benchmark, but if you are in the market for a big screened media laptop, then it will likely go above 6 pounds. Just think about the bag you use to carry your laptop and if your travels will have you wishing that you were transporting less weight.

4. Battery Life

This part is essential. With a decent battery life, you can take your laptop wherever you go and you won’t have to worry about charging. Laptops with below 4-5 hours of battery life seem useless to me since the actual battery “decays” over time, that is that it loses its ceiling battery life the more it is charged and drained over and over again. Initially having 4 hours of battery life will eventually become 3 and a half and then down to 3 hours before you realize it. However, there are ways you can get crafty to put less strain on your battery (for example, getting a solid state hard drive or keeping the brightness of your screen down, etc.).

5. Warranty

Although seemingly unimportant, the warranty of your laptop may be the most vital aspect of your laptop purchase. For example, if you are acquiring a refurbished computer, you are likely going to see a 30-90 day warranty. If you think about it, the computer was refurbished because there was something wrong with it (it could have been something benign or extremely malignant), and getting a one month to three month warranty does not secure your laptop for long. If you are purchasing a new laptop, most warranties are around 1 year and they may even cover accidental damage (water spills or even dropping the laptop). For business laptops, you may see a warranty of up to 3 years. So when looking at laptops, be sure to find out what the warranty is and what it covers. The longer the warranty and the more coverage it provides the better.

6. Processor (CPU)

We live in a world where computers are offering multiple cored processors that go into the dozens. Nowadays, I wouldn’t purchase a laptop that isn’t at least dual cored, but understand that the clocking speed is of true importance. If the laptop you are looking for is dual-cored, but doesn’t have a good enough clocking speed, then the “dual-coreness” will be practically useless. Understand that just because the laptop is dual-cored, does not mean that it is twice as fast. Most dual-cored laptops are only about 50% faster than their single cored counterpart. Either way, I would specifically look for a clocking speed of no less than 1.6 GHz which will be common among most laptops today.

7. Ports

Ports are extremely necessary with the amount of gadgets that are computer connected capable and the more ports the better (cough, cough, Macbook Air). To start, multiple USB ports are a must and if you can get your hands on at least one USB 3.0 port and the rest USB 2.0, then you will be in good shape. Other ports that you should look for include HDMI and VGA. With a VGA cable you can hookup your laptop with a computer monitor, especially if your laptop screen is small, for your viewing pleasure. With an HDMI port, you can hook-up with your HDTV and watch HD movies/videos with great clarity. Also, look for SD/MicroSD ports as it will likely make uploading your digital camera photos or anything else easier when stored on an SD card.

8. Webcam/Touchpad/Keyboard

I see some laptops out there that have only a 0.3 megapixel camera and I think that with skype/gchat/whatever video conferencing program you fancy, you should at least have a semi-decent camera so that your friend or even business associate isn’t seeing you all pixelated when in a video chat. So if you want a laptop with a camera, make sure it has at least a 1 megapixel camera. Otherwise, just purchase a USB attached camera. Other things to consider are the touch-mouse pad and the keyboard. Presently, more and more touchpads are being made multi-touch, meaning that you can use more than one finger to give commands like zoom in/out, scrolling, etc. With the keyboard, personally, I like the chicklet keyboards that have the raised, individuals keys, but if you prefer something that boasts ergonomics then go with that.

9. Optical drive

Sometimes, it may not even be necessary to have an internal CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive. But if you plan on using CD’s, DVD’s, or even Blu-ray Discs to use or burn you should look into the drives that are offered with your laptop. It is possible to get an external drive where it is attached via USB and functions just like it would if it were inside the laptop. Understand though that if you do not need one of these drives, it may be best to just leave them out and keep the laptop’s weight down because online storage and USB storage has trumped the world of CD/DVD storage.

10. Brand

Lastly, the brand should carry some weight. Up and coming brands will have a tendency to be cheaper and provide more with their computers than the leading brands simply because they have something to prove against the market and those other larger companies. Style is also inherent with the brand that you choose, so if you are looking for a particular style, certain brands may carry that setup while others might not. Brands also carry with them similar warranties and as a result, special attention should be made when choosing a particular brand.

Many customers have been unable to get on the Bank of America website Friday afternoon.

Bank of America Corp. acknowledged the outage.

The Boston Globe reported that the outage began at 7 a.m. after a “routine change to the bank’s computer systems.”

“The majority of our customers are banking normally,” a bank spokeswoman told the Globe.

At 3:30 p.m., attempts to access the website were unsuccessful. The Globe’s Hiawatha Bray was unable to get on the site at 2 p.m.

If you haven’t heard, IBM has built a masterpiece of a machine that is scheduled to compete in Jeopardy against the best two contestants to ever grace the show: Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The show is scheduled to air February 14-16, but the taping is occurring over the next couple of days with a practice round performed today in front of an audience invited by Jeopardy and IBM. In the practice round Ken, Brad, and Watson managed to knock out three categories with 100% accuracy and at the end of the practice Watson was leading with $4,400 over Ken’s $3,400 and Brad’s $1,200.

The reason IBM chose Jeopardy is that the trivia show inherently favors humans over machines. There are endless idioms and turns of phrase that allow a human contestant to pick up on clues to allow them to answer questions faster that a normal computer would be blind to. Information recall is simple for computers and hard for humans while contextual clues and comprehension are a far easier process for humans than computers. Watson is not only able to pick up on contextual clues and generate the questions to the Jeopardy answers, but it is also able to measure how confident it is in those answers and will only answer a question if the confidence is above a set threshold. In recent live tests with humans, Watson was able to buzz in about 50% of the time and answer 95% of the questions correctly, putting it at a level that matches some of Jeopardy’s top competitors.

There are seemingly infinite applications for Watson. At the Jeopardy event today IBM seemed keen on getting Watson into the health care field touting that Watson would be able to read your medical history and test results in an instant giving a helping hand to diagnosticians. Another application would be search. Google search is considered the best in the industry right now, but to work properly it requires a human to think like a computer and pick out keywords that will result in the best search. Ask Watson a question in plain English, on the other hand, and you will be returned with the answer you are looking for. Watson truly is what AskJeeves.com tried to be. Unfortunately, such programming and computer power does come at a cost. To purchase the computing power required to run a program like Watson would cost over $1 million. IBM intends to bring the software and computer system to market and believes as computing power increases the cost will fall quickly.

MySpace, the former king of social media, is rebranding itself as an entertainment hub.

Apparently it takes fewer employees to run an entertainment hub than it does to run a social network. (Apparently parent company News Corp. didn’t see the movie.)

MySpace has fired 47 percent of its workforce, about 500 employees, as the company struggles to survive.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the company is forging relationships with companies in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia

As part of the restructuring, the company is forging partnerships in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia for advertising sales and content for its new “hub” operation.

MySpace still has 110 million members worldwide. But Facebook has grown to about 600 million at this point.

When you’re Mark Zuckerberg what’s a cool $8.5 mil?

Apparently not much.

While Zuckerberg previously announced Facebook’s purchase of fb.com in November, the American Farm Bureau (the previous owners) let the domain’s $8.5 million dollar price-tag slip at a conference this week.

The domain was purchased for Facebook internal use. Zuckerberg announced his acquisition of fb.com in true TIME person-of-the-year-fashion: “the farm bureau has agreed to give us FB.com and we in return have agreed to not sell Farm subsidies.”

On another note, if you have been mindlessly searching the internet for the Farm Bureau only to be redirected someone’s status about impending snow cancellations their site has been moved to fb.org.

Walgreens pharmacy chain alerted customers today that their email addresses may have been stolen by spanners.

“We recently became aware of unauthorized access to an email list of customers who receive special offers and newsletters from us,” the company said in the email. “As a result, it is possible you may have received some spam email messages asking you to go to another site and enter personal data. We are sorry this has taken place and for any inconvenience to you.”

The company did not say how many addresses may have been stolen.

According to the statement, only the customers’s email addresses were taken. No prescription information, credit card numbers or addresses were stolen.

“Online security experts have reported an increase in attacks on email systems, and therefore we have voluntarily contacted the appropriate authorities and are working with them regarding this incident,” Walgreens said.

Concerned customers can call Walgreens at 888-980-0963.

WikiLeaks, which published a quarter-million sensitive diplomatic cables on Sunday, came under a denial of service attack by a hacker styled “th3j35t3r” (The Jester).

When the attack happened, th3j35t3r tweeted, “TANGO DOWN – for attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, ‘other assets’ & foreign relations.”

According to PCMAG.com, F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer, Mikko Hypponen said, “It was a weird case. Everybody assumed it was some large-scale Distributed Denial of Service attack, but the guy himself says it’s not. It’s a protocol-based attack from a single source.”

WikiLeaks recovered by changing its hosting providers, which were in France when the attack happened. They are currently using two different servers hosted by Amazon.com.

The hacker, th3j35t3r, characterizes himself as ex-military and often uses military terms. He uses a Russian Hotmail account.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ordered the seizure of 82 domain names of websites they say are engaged in the “illegal sale of counterfeit foods and copyrighted works.”

Federal authorities said the sites were selling counterfeit sports equipment, shoes, handbags, athletic apparel and sunglasses as well as illegal copies of copyrighted DVD boxed sets, music and software.

“The sale of counterfeit U.S. brands on the Internet steals the creative work of others, costs our economy jobs and revenue and can threaten the health and safety of American consumers,” said ICE Director John Morton. “The protection of intellectual property is a top priority for Homeland Security Investigations and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. We are dedicated to protecting the jobs, the income and the tax revenue that disappear when counterfeit goods are trafficked.”

Click here for the complete list of domain names.

“By seizing these domain names, we have disrupted the sale of thousands of counterfeit items, while also cutting off funds to those willing to exploit the ingenuity of others for their own personal gain,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “Intellectual property crimes are not victimless. The theft of ideas and the sale of counterfeit goods threaten economic opportunities and financial stability, suppress innovation and destroy jobs. The Justice Department, with the help of our law enforcement partners, is changing the perception that these crimes are risk-free with enforcement actions like the one announced today.”

But the practice does call into question the government’s use of power and ownership over top-level domain names and some rights groups have questioned the practice.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said most of the domains were owned by people or businesses located overseas.

QUINCY — Internet outages were reported by Comcast customers across Massachusetts and elsewhere as the communications giant’s DNS servers appeared to have crashed Sunday night.

The problem was corrected by Monday, but many people still had problems or needed to power cycle their modems.

To prevent the problem from happening again, change your network adapter’s DNS settings to a public DNS server, like Google’s 8.8.8.8 server. Instructions can be found here.

While service was not technically “down,” countless thousands of customers did not have Internet access, as changing your DNS server settings is not a common computer task among home users.

The internet service was “down” on the North Shore and South with other reports as far as New Haven and Western Connecticut. Reports then came in from Washington, Baltimore, New York State and across Northern New England.

Television service was not affected.

In Quincy, where Blast is headquartered, DNS service was down, but high-definition TV is working. Changing to the Google DNS service solved the problem.

This article was initially written via an iPhone with AT&T 3G service.

Here’s yet another reason to fear people on social networks.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about privacy issues on social networks, but more than 200 young girls now know the consequences of being too trusting on these sites all too well.

In a practice termed “sextortion” by the FBI, a hacker gathered personal information and used it to extort young girls into providing him with risque pictures and videos in exchange for not forwarding the information to their parents and email contacts.

The hacker, a 31-year-old California man whose name was not released, was arrested following a two-year investigation by a Los Angeles squad of Federal Cyber Investigators.

The method used to hack these computers was called “spear phishing” and the hacker posed online as a friend or relative who wanted to share a video, this was done mostly on popular social networking sites. After clicking on the video, the victims’ computers were completely compromised and the hacker instantly had access to the victim’s files, webcams, and microphones. The hacker was literally given access to spy on the individual through their webcam and could track every keystroke.

“The victims were tricked. They had no idea what had happened until it was too late,” said FBI Special Agent Tanith Rogers.

This method was easily implemented, and the hacker learned it from researching readily available online sources.

“What’s so frightening about this case was how easily the victims’ computers were compromised,” said FBI Special Agent Jeff Kirkpatrick, one of the Los Angeles cyber investigators who worked the case.

Although the hacker was only interested in exploiting these young women sexually, the privacy issues extend to all realms of personal information and security, including identity theft, access to bank accounts or any other records stored on a personal computer. Actual crimes such as robbery or assault could also be cause for concern when addresses revealed. The idea of this virtual stalking has gone from a joke within the virtual world and should now be taken seriously as a potential threat that has attracted federal attention.

What is a greater cause for concern is the potential for people who have a vested interest implementing this type of virus on your computer in order to gather incriminating information on you in your daily life.

The FBI has tips to try and avoid victimization, however until more precautions are put in place, your computer may not be a secure and private haven, not even when you are alone in your home.

Almost two years have passed since Carol A. Bartz, who was originally hired to restore the company’s growth, took over as chief executive of Yahoo.

The company’s financial results, revealed Tuesday, show that Yahoo is making only modest headway as it tries to regain some of its former growth as well as its glory. Its business was nearly flat in the third quarter.

“They’re treading water right now,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Stifel, Nicolaus & Company told the New York Times. Bartz also acknowledged that much work was ahead for Yahoo, based in California.

“First you walk, then you run, then you fly,” Bartz commented in a conference call with securities analysts.

Still, though, she pointed to certain areas showing signs of improvement or at least stability. Yahoo’s display advertising business is doing relatively well since revenue from display ads on the Web portal increased 17 percent. But declines elsewhere sadly eroded those gains. As a result, revenue from search advertising and fees both fell.

Overall, Yahoo’s net income more than doubled, to $396 million, or 29 cents a share, from $186 million, or 13 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. The majority of the increase, 13 cents a share, was a result of a one-time gain from the sale of its HotJobs business. Excluding the sale, Yahoo would have had a profit of 16 cents per share. Revenue climbed 2 percent, to $1.6 billion. Excluding payments to advertising partners, total revenue was $1.2 billion.

Yahoo is trying to emerge from financial stagnation, and now Bartz is under pressure to show actual results.

Her plan has been to focus on the company’s strengths as a Web portal. Yahoo receives nearly 830 million unique monthly visitors, making it still the most visited website on the Internet, worldwide.

Bartz considers outsourcing services less important. Yahoo has already handed its search engine off to their rival, Microsoft. She talked about the transition of Yahoo’s search engine to Microsoft, a process that is about to being finished in the United States. She also mentioned the progress Yahoo has made behind the scenes revamping the technology behind its Web portal. The overhaul is eliminating many of the roadblocks that made it nearly impossible to introduce new services quickly. Bartz also noted an improvement in profit margins, a result of her cost-cutting strategy over the last year. Margins in the quarter doubled to 12 percent from the same quarter a year earlier.

Yahoo shares rose 0.7 percent in after-hours trading, to $15.60.