Archive for February, 2008

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is suing the DOJ (Department of Justice) over its contact with Google, Inc. via a DOJ employee who now works for Google. The Department of Justice employee, Jane Horvath, was sympathetic with Google's privacy concerns while the Internet giant was fighting a subpoena requesting search engine data.
The initial request was finally restricted to a limited number of search engine requests (only 5,000 as opposed to unlimited requests). The courts determined at the time that [...]

FaceBook has entered the music fray, adding music functionality complete with links to iTunes. The new music section is set to compete with rival social network MySpace's already well established section for musicians. The addition of music purchase capability is an intriguing twist that could give FaceBook an edge, at least temporarily.
Much like MySpace and music-only networks like Trig, FaceBook's music section will allow musicians to create a profile for themselves or their bands. The profile can include [...]

CampusBug is dedicated to a concept they call social learning. Their goal is to make education a community experience much like FaceBook and MySpace, but with actual hands on help with homework, classes and hands on learning.
The concept intrigued me, and I eagerly went to the site to check it out. That was on Monday, and it took me this long to get the site to work long enough to review its features. That isn't good. All week the [...]

Last year, German's Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the German Ministry of the Interior began looking at Web 2.0 platforms as a way to inform the public about criminal suspects and ask for assistance in solving crimes and apprehending suspects. A commenter on the article noted that plans were underway to allow the German police and other government agencies to not only monitor your PC for criminal activity, but also utilize a PC's installed audio and/or video peripherals to [...]

While many of the Baby Boomers have traded protests for portfolios, there is another generation utilizing the latest and greatest in Web 2.0 technology to really affect change, and it's not just the microfinance lending companies like Kiva and FINCA.
Last year alone, $3 billion (USD) was invested in clean tech, in a total of 221 deals, a 43% increase over that market segment in 2006. Steve Newcomb, co-founder of Powerset, thinks that the growth in clean tech will grow exponentially, [...]

Odds are if you are reading this blog, you are already using at least one, and probably many more, Web 2.0 apps. But I've seen several things over the past week that make me question how well people can stay "off the grid," maintaining even a partial online anonymity.
I've stated before that I'm a fairly private person. Until I started writing for blogs professionally, I kept my identity online behind a handle. When registering for sites that I test for [...]

In a world where google has now become a verb, and where someone would have to be living under a rock not to have heard of the search giant, does Google actually know what it takes to aid the homeless?
In an announcement earlier today, Google revealed their plan to provide every single homeless person in the city of San Francisco with a free personal phone number  complete with voicemail, which would be accessible from any phone. Those who accept the [...]

With all the hype about social gaming lately, there has been a gaping hole in the player roster; companies like Zynga seem to be everywhere, but the Web 1.0 companies like PopCap and Pogo have been visibly absent. Electronic Arts, however, is creeping onto social networks, with an under-the-radar release Monday of a Facebook application, widget, and embeddable game for their Pogo platform.
Unfortunately, EA is still not getting the whole social networking idea. The application allows Club Pogo members (those [...]

The news popped up on Twitter almost immediately; YouTube was down. After the Amazon S3 outage earlier this month, I'm sure everyone was wondering if YouTube was to blame or Google themselves had gone down. We now know what happened; in Pakistan's attempt to block the video-sharing site due to what it considered to be offensive material about Islam. In doing so, they hijacked some of the IP addresses directing traffic to YouTube, propagated the hijacking to other DNS [...]