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2006-09-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

US to review Internet control in 2008

The US Commerce Department said on Friday it would retain its oversight of the company that manages Internet domain names, renewing an agreement that was scheduled to expire this weekend. The government signed a new three-year agreement with the ICANN, which controls addresses such as ".com" and country domain names. The new agreement aims to eventually turn over control of ICANN to the private sector, and calls for a review in 2008 of ICANN's progress toward becoming more accountable, the government said.

"We are committed to working with ICANN to ensure that they have the established transparency and accountability mechanisms necessary to be a stable, lasting and independent institution."

The current agreement between the U.S. government and ICANN was scheduled to expire on September 30. The Commerce Department said it consulted with more than 700 companies, trade groups, foreign governments and individuals before deciding to renew the agreement. Some critics say the U.S. government has too much control over ICANN, which has evolved into a crucial engine for global commerce, communications and culture. The US government has pledged to cede control of the net to private sector hands at an unspecified future time. - US takes big step to end Internet oversight - ICANN independence closer - NDTV.com - Political Gateway - New York Times - Los Angeles Times

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2006-08-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

How to Launch A Business in Your 20s

If you've got the job jitters or are feeling burned out, it may be time to put out feelers before starting an all-out employment search, says CareerJournal.com.

"It's better to lay the groundwork for a job search before you get burned out. It's often easier to find a new job while you are still employed."

There are many safe harbors where you can informally network, without alerting your employer that you're job hunting. CareerJournal.com offers these ways to get started: Look before you leap. You way want to explore employment opportunities within your own company before deciding to look for jobs elsewhere. Make yourself visible -- discreetly.

"The Internet has made it easier to raise your career profile through social-networking like ecademy, Linkedin.com, openBC, Ryze, Soflow or Zoominfo.com . You can connect with colleagues at companies you're interested in and raise your visibility without quitting your job."

Work your industry associations. Participating in a business organization with which your company is affiliated won't raise the eyebrows of your colleagues or boss. Attending monthly meetings and mingling can boost a job search and allow you to network with potential employers. Network like a headhunter. Target 10 or 15 companies you want to work for. Then use Web search engines to identify some of their former employees and their current contact information. Phone them, and ask them about the company, the potential boss and the department you're interested in. Rebuild your network. When you know you're going to need your network in the next few months, start putting it in place now. You need to figure out who is going to be an important contact for you. Do some self-assessment. Think about what you really want to do. Take into account your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Ask yourself what you want more and less of so you can pursue a more satisfying career. - Social networking sites a hacker's paradise? - Spoke frees up its database - Submit Express - Red Herring - Akron Beacon Journal - Digital-Lifestyles.Info

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2006-07-31T13:44:00.000-07:00

Google launches open source hosting centre

Google has started to add open source project hosting to Google Code. The new site might go up against the most popular open source project hosting sites like SourceForge or Tigris. Google’s new hosting service will be without ads. Google will use the open source version control system Subversion, to which several Google developers contribute. The Subversion repository will store projects’ code and other data in Google’s BigTable database, which is also the data store behind Google Reader. BigTable can run on thousands of inexpensive computers for load balancing and reliability. Google’s new source code hosting service is not yet ready for production use. According to a post by Greg Stein on Sunday night

We just pushed out a fix for the Subversion performance. Please let us know if you see any continued problems.

However, when integrated with Google Groups, GMail, Google Talk and other services, the offer could become very popular with developers. To entrer into Google Code a free projcet code source it should be one of theses licences:

Apache
Artistic
GNU General Public License
Lesser General Public
Mozilla License
BSD
MIT

Uo to now approximately 2,000 projects have been created on Google Code including 239 Java projects, 149 in Python, 71 in Ruby, and 19 mentioning Eclipse. - Google to host open-source projects - Google Sets Up Open Source Service - Builder AU - LinuxWorld.au - WebProNews - itWorldCanada.com

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2006-06-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

The Miracle of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates

Warren Buffett today signed over much of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uniting the world's two richest people in a bid to fight disease, reduce poverty and improve education. The roughly $30.7 billion donation doubles the Gates Foundation's size to $60 billion, five times larger than any other U.S. charitable group and larger than the gross domestic product of Kuwait. Bill Gates, the world's richest man, co-founded and remains chairman of Microsoft Corp.. Warren Buffett built his fortune running Berkshire Hathaway Inc., an insurance and investment company.

"I am not an enthusiast for dynastic wealth, particularly when the alternative is 6 billion people having much poorer hands in life than we have."

Gates said he plans in July 2008 to step down from his day-to-day Microsoft role to focus on his foundation, one of the goals of which is to improve access to technology in U.S. public libraries. Buffett pledged 10 million Berkshire Class B shares to the Gates Foundation. He also pledged 2.05 million Class B shares to foundations in the name of his late wife, Susan, who died in 2004, and for his three children, Susie, Howard and Peter. The total donations of about $37.1 billion amount to roughly 85% of Buffett's net worth, and constitute the largest single act of U.S. charitable giving ever. Buffett made the donations fewer than four months after he said Berkshire's board had identified a successor for him. Gifts to the Gates Foundation will be made in stages, and are conditioned on money being distributed the year it is donated. The foundation gave away $1.36 billion in 2005, so Buffett's first gift of $1.5 billion, in July, may double its spending.

"This is his life's work. Now that the money is going to be as much Warren's as the money my job helped generate, it's almost scary."

Time magazine last year named the Gateses and Irish singer Bono of the band U2 its "Persons of the Year" for 2005, citing their charitable and philanthropic pursuits.

"I've watched Bill and Melinda Gates for a number of years. It was clear that an outstanding mind with the right goals was focusing intensely with passion and heart on improving the lot of mankind."

Both Buffett and Gates emphasized the importance of keeping philanthropy separate from Berkshire's operations. Buffett's donations of Berkshire shares means the ultimate value of his gifts will be tied to the company's share price.

"I would be surprised, disappointed, if we can't manage Berkshire well enough so the increase on value, on average, (isn't) more than 5% a year."

Berkshire owns large stakes in such blue-chip companies as American Express and Coca-Cola and owns some 50 businesses, including Dairy Queen ice cream, Fruit of the Loom underwear and Geico auto insurance. Berkshire shares have lagged the Standard & Poor 500 index over the last two years, but have far outgained the benchmark since Buffett took over Berkshire, then a struggling textile maker, in 1965. - Warren Buffett's Unprecedented Generosity - Buffett accelerates philanthropy with Gates gift - Washington Post - Forbes - Financial Times - MSNBC

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2006-06-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

Pakistan bans Da Vinci Code film

Under the Motion Pictures Ordinance of 1979, the government of Pakistan has banned the Ron Howard’s contentious movie The Da Vinci Code for including material that is offensive to both Christians and Muslims.

The Da Vinci Code is a mystery and detective novel by the American author Dan Brown and published in 2003 by Doubleday Fiction. It became a worldwide bestseller with more than 60.5 million copies in print as of May 2006 and has been translated into 44 languages. It might be the sixth biggest selling book of all time. Combining the detective, thriller and conspiracy fiction genres, the book is part two of a trilogy that started with Brown's 2000 novel Angels and Demons, which introduced the character Robert Langdon. In November 2004, Random House published a "Special Illustrated Edition", with 160 illustrations interspersed with the text.

In a recent statement, according to India News, any viewing of The Da Vinci Code or distribution of the film will be met with stern action:

"In a statement issued by the country’s Central Board of Film Censors, the government warned of strict action against screening of the movie and those involved in its sale and purchase."

Although The Da Vinci Code continues to be a financial windfall for Sony Pictures, having grossed $475 million worldwide to date, Fox News elaborates on the reasons for the action taken by the government of Pakistan and the film being banned,

"Although the film has not been screened in any theater in mostly-Muslim Pakistan, authorities decided to ban it out of respect for the feelings of the country's minority Christians."

Christians in Pakistan staged two protests earlier in the week, calling for a worldwide ban of The Da Vinci Code, which came amid other protests against the film in India. The the screening of the film in Pakistan, or possession of it on video cassettes or discs, was prohibited and unlawful, said Jalil Abbas

"The film is sacrilegious to all religions, that's why we did this."

Police had been ordered to conduct raids and confiscate pirated copies of the film available in markets of the Muslim-dominated country, he said. Christians make up about 3% of Pakistan's overwhelmingly Muslim 160 million people, while in India Christians hold only 2% of the total population. Also late last week, two more Indian States banned The Da Vinci Code, doubling the number of states to take strict action against the film, authorities in southern Andhra Pradesh state and Meghalaya in the Christian-dominated northeast blocked the film late on Thursday. Two other states, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, had earlier banned the film. Despite the protests and the film being banned, it appears not all have agreed with the recent backlash, most notably members of the Indian film industry. According to The Hindu News

"... the Film and Television Producers Guild of India has asked the Governments there to reconsider their decision. The Guild has written to the Governments of all the states, specifying how the film was cleared by the censor board and asking that they help to clear its release..."

In addition to the uproar in Pakistan and India, and the film being banned, The Da Vinci Code appears to be making waves in Egypt as well, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports,

"Police seized 2,000 pirated DVDs of 'The Da Vinci Code' on Saturday, and the Egyptian Coptic Christian church demanded the film be banned in Egypt."

To date, no decision has been made by the Egyptian government on whether to ban the film in that region. Since its publishing began in 2003, The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, netting author Dan Brown $442 million. The Da Vinci Code has been released in paperback in the United States and has sold 500,000 copies. The Da Vinci Code movie stars Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Audrey Tautou and Jean Reno. The movie is directed by Ron Howard .'The Da Vinci Code' heresy - India extends Da Vinci Code ban - Times of India - People's Daily Online - The Conservative Voice

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2006-05-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

Yahoo personalizes new homepage

Yahoo Inc. launched a redesign of its popular Internet home page at www.yahoo.com, displaying a more prominent section for Web searches and reconfiguring its display menu. Like Google and Microsoft, Yahoo is introducing clickable tools to let users customize what they see. Alongside the search box will be an assistant that tells people if new messages are in their Yahoo e-mail inbox, a section for popular searches and an expanded news section. In making the changes, Yahoo is the last of the big three search firms to re-focus its main web presence on what users want to do. There will be a variety of new and enhanced features, including:

Yahoo! Pulse: People can instantly discover what's hot on the Web in this unique new section of the home page - including the most popular and interesting Yahoo! searches, as well as the latest trends, music, videos, photos, people and opinions. Yahoo! Pulse highlights what the estimated half a billion monthly users of Yahoo! branded services are looking for, reading, viewing, listening to, rating or sharing online.
Expanded Content: Thought-provoking feature stories, fresh entertainment, sports and finance content, as well as more of the latest national, world and video news are all hand-picked and updated by Yahoo!'s home page editors.
Enhanced Search Box: The newly designed and positioned Yahoo! Search box offers consumers a more prominent gateway to the Web, news, multimedia content, local information, shopping and Yahoo!'s directory to help them find exactly what they want quickly. Additionally, home page visitors can leverage the collective knowledge and experience of real people by accessing Yahoo! Answers just beneath the Yahoo! Search box.
Simple Navigation: Buttons near the top of the page link to Yahoo!'s other popular starting points, My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Mail. Other frequently used Yahoo! products and services are easy to find in a simple column of links, and new content tabs deliver more of the day's important news right on the home page.
More Control: Colors are easily tailored to fit a person's preferences with only a click of the mouse. Complementing My Yahoo!, the most popular personalized start page, the new yahoo.com gives consumers a home page that is immediately more useful and relevant for them.

The new Yahoo! home page is available as a beta, or test, version for the next month to assess how users repond to the alterations in the United States at www.yahoo.com/preview, with local preview versions in the UK and Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. More enhancements to the page will be added over the coming months, and it will be made generally available in all global markets later this summer. The new look pages aim to move away from the old-fashioned static site where people were simply presented with a page listing everything a web portal did. Users will now be able to customise what they see, remove the bits they never look at and add those others parts of the Yahoo empire that they regularly use. They will also be able to change the layout and the colour of the page. The driving force behind these acquisitions has been the desire to get hold of ready-made communities to sell to. - Internet war between China and US - Should Microsoft Give In To Investor Panic? - eWeek - Telecom Asia Daily / Wireless Asia - All Headline News - kgw.com (subscription)

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2006-05-11T23:19:00.000-07:00

Search engines will remain Google's future

Google has unveiled a new wave of software and desktop gadgetry in its ongoing quest to dominate users' experience of the internet. The world's most popular search engine, which faces mounting competition from rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, showcased innovations while pledging to focus renewed energies on its core business of online search technology. At a meeting with reporters from around the globe, Google introduced several new search enhancements, including a way to subscribe to health research from experts and tools that let people save portions of websites in a pop-up box that can be shared via e-mails. Google's share of online searches rose to 42.7% in March from 36.4% a year ago. Yahoo's and MSN's shares fell, says research firm ComScore Media Metrix. Page says 98% of what will exist in 10 years "has yet to be done, and we won't get there by looking at what other companies are doing." The new tools are:

Google Co-op. Users can sign up at www.google.com/coop/directory to subscribe to free health information from several organizations, including the federal Centers for Disease Control, the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente. Their tips on the best health data will show up in search results. Google Co-op also offers city guide information for more than 300 cities, including London and New York. Co-op is designed to let organizations label Web pages relevant to their areas of expertise.
"We're going to take the Tom Sawyer view and see how our users paint the fence"
Google Desktop 4An extension of Google's tool to search for items on your computer now comes with more than 100 "Gadgets" — little widgets that do things such as list friends' birthdays, show videos and play music.
Google Trends. Lets users examine searches for market trends. For example, a search for "surfers" will show that most searches come from Hawaii and Australia and link to news stories about surfing. "For the first time ever, Google is making it possible to sift through billions of search queries from around the world to see what people are thinking about," said Mayer. Trends is targeted primarily toward marketers.
Google Notebook lets people save a portion of a website to a box that can be shared with others. Google showed an example of shopping for shoes, saving a certain pair and writing a note about it, then sending it to friends. The tool works in conjunction with Desktop 4.

Executives denied the new products, especially an upgraded Google Desktop with a multi-media player, were a challenge to the dominance of Microsoft's Windows operating system. Eric Schmidt said he saw "no limit" to the company's growth, adding that Google would devote 70% of its resources to search technologies during the next 50 years. Elliot Schrage said Google's goal is more transparency and to be more open about what Google is doing and what not.
Google Strengthens Focus on Search with Four New Tools - Google goes after Microsoft - PC Magazine - Forbes - USA Today - iTWire

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2006-05-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Turns To Tech
Yahoo! took another step aimed at turning itself into a one-stop information hub Monday by launching a new site focused on consumer technology and gadgets. Yahoo Inc. unveiled a shopping site for gadgets laced with plain-English advice by experts and user-contributed reviews, entering a market long dominated by tech-focused media firm CNet Networks Inc.. Yahoo! Tech marks the latest move by the world's biggest Internet media company to reinvigorate or expand into areas such as travel, finance, automobiles, and now technology. Yahoo! Tech is set to offer hundreds of thousands of products with user product ratings and reviews through its Yahoo Shopping site, as well as question-and-answer guides and community features that exist within the wider Yahoo realm. The site aims to set itself apart from gadget enthusiast sites by focusing on how to make technology easier to understand, the executive-in-charge said.

"What we are trying to do is to make it simple to choose and use the technology that is easiest to use. We built Yahoo! Tech for people who might not have the time nor inclination to learn about bits and bytes."

The advice site draws upon familiar Yahoo tools. It is designed to serve as the anchor across the Internet media giant's network of sites for technology advertising, a lucrative category that is among the most popular online markets for advertisers. Already, big ad spenders Hewlett Packard, Verizon Wireless and Panasonic have signed up. Yahoo! Tech is focusing on the U.S. market and there are no plans to expand into other countries, Houston said. Yahoo also plans to embed original video programming it is producing throughout the site. - Yahoo Introduces a Site on Consumer Technology - Yahoo seeks more advertising with new tech section - CNET News.com - - Earthtimes.org - All Headline News

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2006-04-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

Koirala set to be sworn in as Nepal's Prime Minister

Girija Prasad Koirala was sworn is as Nepal's new prime minister today by King Gyanendra, following weeks of violent pro-democracy protests. The king, humbled by the protests and facing possible moves to end the monarchy, administered the oath of office to his 84-year-old arch foe at the Narayanhity royal palace in the capital, Kathmandu. A frail Koirala, who is suffering from bronchitis, waved at reporters outside the iron gate of the palace after becoming Nepal's 15th prime minister in 16 years. Koirala, the head of the Nepali Congress party, did not take a separate oath to establish himself as a member of the Raj Parishad, a privy council that advises the king. The prime minister automatically becomes a member of the council under Nepal's constitution but political parties have called for it to be abolished. It was the first time a prime minister had declined an oath to the council since multi-party democracy was established in 1990 and marked the latest of several recent moves by political parties to distance themselves from the monarch. Koirala, who has been prime minister four times before, was accompanied by his doctor to the ceremony. Last week, the king appointed Koirala as prime minister on the recommendation of the seven political parties that launched weeks of street protests in which at least 15 people were killed and thousands wounded. The king also reinstated parliament disbanded in 2002. At least 117 cases of journalists being attacked and wounded, including some by gunfire, by security forces while covering pro-democracy demonstrations were also recorded. Critics said the unpopular king may be down now but not yet out.

"Given his personality, as long as he is around, even if he is a symbolic monarch, he will be up to some mischief."

Dixit said the king had money and controlled the army which would tempt him to meddle in the unsettled politics.

"Therefore, one of the first things parliament should do is to clip the king's wings."

Koirala, in a notice to parliament which convened for the first time in four years, proposed elections for a special assembly to draw up a new constitution that would decide the future of monarchy. Political parties are under popular pressure to abolish the monarchy and turn Nepal into a republic. This is also a key demand of Maoist rebels to end a decade-old insurgency in which more than 13,000 people have been killed. Officials said Koirala's plan would be discussed at the second sitting of parliament which is due to meet on Sunday. The parliament is expected to give directives to the new government to match the Maoists who announced a unilateral three-month ceasefire last week and to start talks with them. - Koirala sworn in as Nepal's new premier - New Nepal prime minister sworn in - Economic Times - Pittsburgh Post Gazette - CNN-IBN - TMCnet

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2006-04-06T01:05:00.000-07:00

Firefox Jumps 10% Bar
Firefox has broken the 10% market share barrier, Net Applications published this week in its share report, by jumping a quarter percentage point from February to March.

"The open-source browser now owns 10.05% of the global usage market"

February's Firefox share was 9.75%. Microsoft's Internet Explorer slipped by nearly the same amount that Firefox rose, falling from 85.03% in February to 84.7% in March. A year ago, IE held down 88% of the browser market. Apple's Safari browser also climbed slightly from 3.13% during February to 3.19% in March. Many analysts have called the 10-percent mark an important milestone for the Mozilla Corp. browser, although reaching it took longer than anticipated; Mozilla itself had sent 2005 as the goal. NetApplications' other findings include a continued weak showing by the Norwegian browser, Opera, which controls only 0.53% of the market; and the very small take-up of IE 7 Beta 2 Preview, which is being used by only 0.26% of surfers. - Report: Firefox Past 10 Percent Share - Safari Gains, FireFox Tops 10% in March - Ars Technica - Macworld - MacNN - NetworkWorld.com

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2006-03-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

Do 25 startups build the Next Net?

A new Web revolution might be picking up steam and the next Google or Microsoft could emerge from the companies that are in the vanguard. Things are crackling in Silicon Valley now. There's the frenzied startup action, the rising rivers of VC cash.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Digg - Last.fm - Newsvine - Tagworld - YouTube - Incumbent to watch: Yahoo

MASHUP AND FILTERS

Bloglines - Eurekster - Simply Hired - Technorati - Trulia - Wink - Incumbent to watch: Google

THE NEW PHONE

Fonality - SIPphone - Iotum - Vivox - Incumbent to watch: Skype

THE WEBTOP

JotSpot - 30Boxes - 37Signals - Writely - Zimbra - Incumbent to watch: Microsoft

UNDER THE HOOD

Brightcove - Jigsaw - SimpleFeed - Salesforce - Six Apart - Incumbent to watch: Amazon

There's so much happening that the buzzword recently employed to try to encapsulate the era, "Web 2.0", seems inadequate, defined and redefined by entrepreneurs, marketers, and web experts. Driven by ubiquitous broadband, cheap hardware, and open-source software, the Web is mutating into a radically different thing than it has been. It's leading to the creation of entirely new kinds of companies, new business models, and countless new opportunities. We are in the early stages of what might be better thought of as the Next Net. The Next Net will encompass all digital devices, from PC to cell phone to television. Its defining characteristics include the ability to interact instantaneously with any of the more than one billion Web users across the globe, not by only instant messaging, but by evolving instant-voice-messaging and instant-video-messaging applications that will make today's e-mail and IM seem crude. The Next Net is deeply collaborative: People from across the planet can work together on the same task, and products or tools can be rapidly tweaked and improved by the collective wisdom of the whole online world. The new era is creating a realm of endless mix and match: Anyone with a browser can access vast stores of information, mash it up, and serve it in new ways, to a few people or a few hundred million. The Next Net will create endless possibilities for entrepreneurs and established players alike to take advantage of the Web's new power. They are building on the success of early standard-bearers, Flickr, MySpace, Wikipedia, but also moving beyond those pioneers in creative and fascinating ways. There were identified 25 companies, in five Next Net categories, whose approaches help illuminate where the Web is headed and where the opportunities lie. Most are startups, a lot of them with less than 10 full-time employees. Few are currently making money, and it's a given that many will fail. But it's equally likely that somewhere within this group lurks the next Google or Microsoft or Yahoo -- or at least something that those giants will soon pay a pretty penny to have. - Marketers Are All Talking About Social Networking - Business 2.0 Names Fonality Top 25 Startup - GigaOm - Business Wire - Sydney Morning Herald - The Age

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2006-03-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

Social networking startup LinkedIn turns a profit

LinkedIn announced that due to the rapid adoption of its premium services, the company expects to reach profitability this month. LinkedIn's premium accounts were introduced seven months ago and are priced between $60 and $2,000 per year. LinkedIn's emphasis for the next six to nine months will be to broaden the utility of its offerings that are free to all members. The most active members are those who frequently need to contact professionals as part of their job: recruiters, analysts, researchers, investment professionals, entrepreneurs and management consultants. Hiring managers and job seekers search on LinkedIn when they need to identify top recruits or inside connections to employers. Relationships matter to professionals across all industries and functions, and LinkedIn's product initiatives for 2006 aim to make LinkedIn a useful business web site for millions of professionals world-wide. LinkedIn launched new features to help members connect with past employees and classmates. Success in business is not only based on what or who you know, but who your contacts know. LinkedIn is developing matching technology to identify contacts for members among the people their connections know. This matching takes into account the individual career history of members, as well as future career progression based on the aggregate data of LinkedIn profiles created by over five million professionals. In 2006, people search is expected to become another major vertical in the Internet search category. LinkedIn members see shared professional connections and can get in touch with the people they find via introductions from people they already know. LinkedIn is committed to making people search smart and easy. Members can create search agents that notify them of new members who match their criteria. Job seekers routinely look up the profiles of employees who will be interviewing them. When it comes to career success, degrees of separation can be more important than academic degrees.

"Our investors are interested in driving the growth of the company. Our next goal is reaching the 10 million user mark. You just focus on your business, and how the company is funded is a secondary concern."

LinkedIn is employs 50 employees and will grow its staff based on increased revenue from premium accounts, job listings and advertising. It took LinkedIn three years to gain five million members. LinkedIn is the world's largest and most effective business network. On LinkedIn, more than five million professionals find jobs, people and service providers through their existing network of business relationships. LinkedIn's membership is diverse: 1.8 million members are in Europe and over half a million in Asia. Personal LinkedIn accounts are free, but LinkedIn earns revenue through a number of premium services. Hiring managers posting jobs on LinkedIn Jobs receive candidates recommended by fellow employees or other trusted contacts. More than 300,000 service providers listed in the LinkedIn Services B2B directory have an opportunity to be at the top of the search results when contacts of their former clients search for recommended service providers. More than 1,200 membership organizations use LinkedIn for Groups to strengthen connections between members and develop greater loyalty to the organization. LinkedIn Business and Pro Accounts enable recruiters and researchers to find people beyond their networks and get in touch with job candidates and experts more quickly and efficiently.
Show and tell onlin - Social Networking - The Next Great Marketing Medium? - Albuquerque Tribune - Small Business Computing - ClickZ News Blog - - InternetNews.com

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2006-02-24T02:52:00.000-08:00

Google starts webpage creation tool
Google has introduced a new do-it-yourself website builder facility. The initiative, known as Google Page Creator, attempts to simplify the creation of web pages with minimal knowledge of HTML and allow non-techies to get a web presence as quickly as possible. As a simplistic way for less-technical people to put up a web page, the free service will compete with products from Microsoft, Apple Computer, Adobe and News Corp.'s MySpace. Individual pages will be hosted at "username.googlepages.com" and each user will be able to store up to 100 megabytes of information, including images. Pages created with Page Creator will be crawled by Google within a few hours, making the content immediately searchable. This is an advantage over other web-site hosts, which can take days to be included in Google's search results. Google has often noted its desire to make all the world's information searchable! Page Creator fits with that goal, especially if it is integrated with content uploaded to the web with the company's other properties like Blogger, Base and Picasa. If combined with Gmail and Google Talk, the service could take on a social-networking flavor, which analysts note Google lacks when compared with Web portal competitors like Yahoo! or openBC. In order to compete with a social site like MySpace, however, Page Creator's customization options will have to increase. In the current beta version, only four basic templates and 41 designs are available, though Google is actively soliciting feedback from beta testers on its site. - Google Sets Sites on User-Generated Web Pages - Build a website with Google - Techtree.com - Newsday - TechNewsWorld - InformationWeek

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2006-02-18T13:53:00.000-08:00

Web surfers just want to have fun
Nearly one-third of American Internet users surveyed said they go online just for fun rather than to check e-mail, read news or use a search engine, a sharp increase from a year ago, the Pew Internet & American Life Project said. Among the dozens of activities that are tracked on an average day by the Pew Internet Project, the act of surfing for fun trails only the more purposeful activities of doing their email and using search engines, and lies in a virtual dead heat with reading the news. Two-thirds of all internet users have tried surfing the Web, and in a survey conducted in December 2005, nearly half of those, some 40 million people, said they were surfing for fun on a typical day during the month. This number is up from 25 million people who were browsing for no particular reason in November 2004, the most recent time when this question was asked by the Pew Internet Project.

"This tells us the internet is another place where people increasingly go to while away their time or just to hang out. That has potentially big consequences for the way people spend their time".

A survey of 1,931 Internet users conducted by Pew in late November and December 2005 found 30% of respondents said they went online "for no particular reason" on the previous day.

34% of online men were surfing for fun on an average day in December, compared with 26% of women.
37% of internet users between ages 18 – 29 were browsing for fun on an average day; 31% of those ages 30 – 49; 24% of those over age 50.
39% of home broadband users were browsing for fun on a typical day, compared with 23% of dial up users.

That was up from 21% in a November 2004 survey. Pew credited the increase on growing availability of broadband access and expanding Web content. When it comes to other online pursuits, Pew said that sending or receiving e-mail ranked highest with 52% of Internet users saying they did this on a typical day. Using a search engine ranked second with 38%, while reading news online was third with 31%. Pew said the margin of error on the survey was plus or minus 2% points. - Web surfers just want to have fun - Study: Internet Users Go Online for Fun - Ars Technica - Playfuls.com - NBC5.com - All Headline News

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2006-01-22T11:44:00.000-08:00

Google refuses to let US examine search requests
Google users will face US government monitoring if the American authorities win a court case aimed at getting the website to hand over copies of every search conducted. ACLU said an attempt by the Bush administration to force Google to turn over a broad range of materials from its databases set a dangerous precedent that should worry all Americans.

"This is the camel's nose under the tent for using search engines and all kinds of data aggregators as surveillance tools"

The Cato Institute who also runs Privacilla.org. The Bush administration is under fire from a number of rights groups over security measures it has taken since the September 11, 2001 attacks on America. The Justice Department stated that Google had refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for one million random Web addresses from Google's databases as well as records of all searches entered on Google during any one-week period. The government said it needed the information to prepare its case to revive the 1998 COPA, which the Supreme Court blocked from taking effect two years ago. The law prohibited Internet companies from knowingly making available obscene or pornographic material to minors. The Supreme Court said there were potential constitutional problems with the law and sent the case back to a lower court for consideration. The Justice Department said on Friday that America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft had all complied with similar requests. Alberto Gonzales rejected concerns that the subpoena might violate individual privacy rights.

"We're not asking for the identity of Americans. We simply want to have some subject matter information with respect to these communications. This is important for the Department of Justice and we will pursue this matter,"

A Google spokesperson said the company objected to the breadth of the government's request but did not consider it to be a privacy issue since the search terms would not include personally identifiable details. Edward Markey said he would introduce a bill to strengthen consumers' Internet privacy by prohibiting the storage of personally identifiable information Internet searches beyond a reasonable time.

"Internet search engines provide an extraordinary service, but the preservation of that service does not rely on a bottomless, timeless database that can do great damage despite good intentions"

Chris Jay Hoofnagle of the EPIC worried that the government could follow up its initial request with a demand for more information. Ari Schwartz of the CDT said he was glad Google was fighting the case but the company needed to make privacy a more fundamental part of its products.

"Such a move absolutely should breed some paranoia. They didn't ask for data this time, but next time, they might."

On the other side, the Cincinnati-based National Coalition for Protection of Children and Families, a Christian fundamentalist group, said search companies should be willing to help the government defend children from pornography. - Uproar Grows Over US Demand for Google Search Records - Search engines vs. the DOJ: The aftermath - Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription) - eWeek - TMCnet - InformationWeek

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2006-01-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

Number of Chinese netizens grows to 111 million!
The number of Chinese netizens rose to 111 million at the end of 2005, an increase of 17 million from a year ago, according CNNIC that published its 17th China Internet Development Report on Tuesday. 91.69 million Internet users live in urban districts. Through the end of 2005 China had 49.5 million online capable PCs, up 19% from 2004. Internet expenditure in China surpassed 100 billion yuan for 2005. It was the first time spending data has been released. CNNIC mentioned that China's Internet users spent an average of 15.9 hours per week on the Internet or 20.5% more than the previous year. It also said Internet users in eastern China, the country's most affluent region, accounted for 57.8% of the total, representing a sustantial digital divide between the east and the rest of the country. CNNIC is a government-backed non-profit organization providing Internet-related services including domain name registry, IP address application as well as Internet surveys. - China Internet users at 111 mln at end-2005 - CNNIC - In China, 111 million Net users counted - People's Daily Online - DigiTimes - Moldova.org - Computer Partner

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2006-01-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

Blogs Buzzing With Google PC Report
A Los Angeles Times story says the search engine giant has been chatting with Wal-Mart and others to sell a computer that would run a Google-developed operating system, not Microsoft's Windows The PC would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap - perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars. Bear Stearns analysts speculated in a research report last month that consumers would soon see something called "Google Cubes" - a small hardware box that could allow users to move songs, videos and other digital files between their computers and TV sets. Larry Page will give a keynote address Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show. Analysts suspect that Page will use the opportunity either to show off a Google computing device or announce a partnership with a big retailer to sell such a machine. - CES Suspense: Does Google Have Low-Cost Web Device Up Sleeve? - Google PC on the horizon? - Search Engine Watch - Register - Inquirer - RealTechNews

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2005-12-29T14:54:00.000-08:00

Study: Men and Women Use Internet Differently
Men and women have different motivations for surfing on the Internet. According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life, women view the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities. Men tend to see it as an office, a library, or a playground, screw the community, this is about function not family. The report found that women are more enthusiastic communicators, using email in a more robust way. Not only sending and receiving more email than men, women are more likely to write to family and friends about a variety of topics, sharing news, joys and worries, planning events, and forwarding jokes and stories. While both sexes equally appreciate the efficiency and convenience of email, women are more likely than men to value the medium for its positive effects on improving relationships, expanding networks, and encouraging teamwork at the office. The report found that women are more likely to use the Internet for emailing, getting maps and directions, looking for health and medical information, seeking support for health and personal problems, and getting religious information. Men tend to be more intense Internet users than women, being more likely to go online daily and more likely to go online several times a day. Men also tend to go online in greater numbers than women but for a much broader variety of reasons. Men are more likely to use the Internet to check the weather, get news, find do-it-yourself information, acquire sports scores and information, look for political information, do job-related research, download software, listen to music, rate a product/person/service through an online reputation system, download music, use a webcam, and take a class. Women catching up with online activities - Web Study Reflects Gender Gap - Techtree.com - BBC News - Seattle Times - World Peace Herald

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2005-12-18T03:39:00.000-08:00

Why Was Google So Desperate for AOL?

Web search leader Google is in exclusive talks to buy a 5% stake in Time Warner's AOL Internet unit for $1 billion. A deal would shut out Microsoft, which was seeking its own arrangement. News of the deal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, propelled Google shares to a record high. Under the terms of the proposed deal, which could close within days, Google would continue to provide AOL with its paid search advertising technology for five years. The deal would allow AOL to sell display and banner advertising to other Web sites using Google's ad serving technology. AOL accounts for from 2% to 4% of Google's revenue on net basis. Microsoft had been negotiating to get AOL to use its search technology instead, which would have almost immediately given the software giant a huge presence in its fledgling paid search business.

"AOL would have been a huge opportunity and a natural fit to jump start that business for Microsoft. If Google has boxed Microsoft out, it begs the question: How is Microsoft going to flourish online?"

Google, and to a lesser extent Yahoo!, have enjoyed dramatic growth in their search advertising businesses over the past year. The companies generate revenue each time a Web user clicks on text advertisements that run alongside Internet search results. A deal with AOL would set the stage for Google to expand into display advertising, taking dead aim at Yahoo, which is entrenched in both paid search and display advertising. Together the different types of advertising make up a market of roughly $12 billion annually. Early talks with Microsoft centered on putting its online network MSN and AOL together, but that was too complex and talks shifted to a joint venture that would include search advertising and display or branded advertising. Less than two weeks ago, Time Warner Chief Executive Dick Parsons said the joint venture was the way Time Warner wanted to go and terms of the deal changed little between then and its final offer. The source said, "What did change a lot was the pressure being applied to Time Warner in the course of that time frame," referring to corporate raider turned shareholder activist Carl Icahn, who is leading a group of shareholders advocating a breakup of Time Warner. Icahn's group, which has a 3.1% stake in Time Warner, says the company is worth more in pieces than as a conglomerate.

"It is my belief that, if the proper partner were allowed to have control of AOL, shareholder value would be much more greatly enhanced than through a half-hearted joint venture that might only serve the purpose of entrenching management"

AOL is seen is a critical swing factor on search technology traffic among Internet media rivals Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, just as it once was on online advertising, a category it practically invented in the early 1990s. AOL made surfing the Internet and chatting online a household phenomenon. Time Warner has acknowledged in the past that one of the key missing components of its Internet strategy was a paid search component. Google in $1bn link with AOL - AOL EXECS WIN ONE - Best Syndication - Seattle Post Intelligencer - SYS-CON Media - MSNBC

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2005-12-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

There's no Wikipedia entry for 'moral responsibility'

On Monday, in one of his now-weekly appearances on cable news defending the latest Wikipedia scandal, the project's figurehead Jimmy 'Jimbo' Wales expressed his desire to find the anonymous internet user who had libeled John Seigenthaler. It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. Brian Chase, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Mr. Seigenthaler on Friday that he had written the material suggesting that Mr. Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Wikipedia, a nonprofit venture that is the world's biggest encyclopedia, is written and edited by thousands of volunteers. Mr. Seigenthaler discovered the false entry only recently and wrote about it in an op-ed article in USA Today, saying he was especially annoyed that he could not track down the perpetrator because of Internet privacy laws. His plight touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia - and by extension the entire Internet - and the difficulty in holding Web sites and their users accountable, even when someone is defamed. In a confessional letter to Mr. Seigenthaler, Mr. Chase said he thought Wikipedia was a "gag" Web site and that he had written the assassination tale to shock a co-worker, who knew of the Seigenthaler family and its illustrious history in Nashville. "It had the intended effect," Mr. Chase said of his prank in an interview. But Mr. Chase said that once he became aware last week through news accounts of the damage he had done to Mr. Seigenthaler, he was remorseful and also a little scared of what might happen to him. Mr. Chase also found that he was slowly being cornered in cyberspace, thanks to the sleuthing efforts of Daniel Brandt, 57, of San Antonio, who makes his living as a book indexer. Mr. Brandt has been a frequent critic of Wikipedia and started an anti-Wikipedia Web site (www.wikipedia-watch.org) in September after reading what he said was a false entry about himself. Using information in Mr. Seigenthaler's article and some online tools, Mr. Brandt traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to the delivery company in Nashville. Mr. Brandt called the company and told employees there about the Wikipedia problem. Mr. Brandt also sent an e-mail message to the company, asking for information about its courier services. A response bore the same Internet Protocol address that was left by the creator of the Wikipedia entry, offering further evidence of a connection. A call by a New York Times reporter to the delivery company on Thursday made employees nervous. On Friday, Mr. Chase hand-delivered a letter to Mr. Seigenthaler's office, confessing what he had done, and later they talked at length. Mr. Chase told him that the Seigenthaler name had come up at work and that he had popped it into a search engine and was led to Wikipedia, where, he said, he was surprised that anyone could make an entry.

"I am truly sorry to have offended you, sir. Whatever fame comes to me from this will be ill-gotten indeed."

Mr. Seigenthaler said Mr. Brandt was a genius for tracking down Mr. Chase. He said he would not take Mr. Chase to court. Mr. Chase resigned from his job because he did not want to cause problems for his company. Mr. Siegenthaler urged Mr. Chase's boss to rehire him, but Mr. Chase said that this had not happened. Mr. Chase said that as Mr. Brandt and the news media were closing in and he realized how much he had hurt Mr. Seigenthaler, he decided that stepping forward was the right thing to do. Mr. Seigenthaler said that as a longtime advocate of free speech found it awkward to be tracking down someone who had exercised that right.

"I still believe in free expression. What I want is accountability."

Jimmy Walessaid that the site would make more information about users available to make it easier to lodge complaints. But he portrayed the error as something that fell through the cracks, not a sign of a systemic problem. Wikipedia "joker" apologizes for phoney online bio - Caught red handed - p2pnet.net - United Press International - BetaNews - Kashar News

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2005-12-09T00:16:00.000-08:00

US still holds key to climate forum success
Delegates appear close to agreement on one of the last two major issues to be decided at the United Nations conference on climate change. Tony Blair has been warned not to allow the US to dictate the future of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change by refusing to participate in discussions. The Prime Minister was accused by aid and environment groups of sending out confusing and ambiguous messages on the subject. The UK coalition - the first of its kind - aims to highlight the problems human development and ecosystems are facing as ministers discuss the issue in Montreal. It is calling for official recognition that the threat from climate change is so large that it threatens all the internationally-agreed targets for poverty reduction - the Millennium Development Goals. It is also lobbying that any deal to develop the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 should force countries to adopt greenhouse gas reduction targets which are adequate to stop dangerous climate change. Sufficient resources must be provided to enable developing countries to adapt to the degree warming already built into the earth's climate system, it urges. The groups are calling on Tony Blair to resist pressure to block progress in order to appease the current US administration. The coalition's report "Africa: Up in Smoke?" makes it clear that Mr Blair's efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa will ultimately fail unless urgent action is taken to halt dangerous climate change. Rich countries have failed to join the dots between climate change and development, particularly in Africa, it said. And unless addressed, this could condemn generations in the world's poorest nations. Africa is on the front line of global warming, with 70 per cent of the workforce relying on mostly rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods. Climate change is already disrupting these vital rains, bringing more droughts and floods. The report, with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, details the impact that climate change is already having on Africa and the threat it poses to human development. John Magrath of Oxfam said: "The Kyoto Protocol must and will go forward. It is the only game in town." Similarly, Catherine Pearce, of Friends of the Earth, said: "Politicians gathered here in Montreal need to take on board that the public want action. Coalitions like ours are now emerging in other countries. Andrew Simms, of the New Economics Foundation, said: "The Government's chief scientific adviser Sir David King, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, and Sir John Houghton have all said that global warming is a bigger threat to society than terrorism. That means it needs a stronger international response." Trail goes cold in search for climate deal - US Execs Clamping Down on Environment - Winnipeg Sun - Sify - New York Times - Xinhua

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2005-11-20T12:26:00.000-08:00

Tunisia Internet Summit Marred By Criticism

Building a global information society that is fair, equitable, and accessible to everyone is challenge that is going to take years to achieve. It was not going to happen in three days of discussions at this week's UN World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. If half of the world's population is online by 2015, who knows that the web will look like, what kinds if speeds we will have, and whether keyboards, monitors and grey boxes will exist outside of museums. But the equalising force of networks which holds an unfathomable wealth of information, knowledge should be as free and ubiquitous as the air we share. There are divides within the digital divide that jostle for priority in many countries. The challenge is designing and making available technologies, which can help everyone in the worlds take advantage of this cerebral network. As Yoshio Utsumi put it in his closing remarks at WSIS, the internet is like a "living, breathing creature", still finding its feet. It is toddling towards puberty, but there is still a long way highway ahead of it. And to many, it is not yet a "super" highway. Technology is changing at such a tremendous speed, that the scenery of the internet may look completely different in five years' time. For millions of digitally dispossessed global citizens who know what opportunities the net can offer, there is a lot of frustration. This is evident among young people who are envious of what fortunate digital citizens in the West enjoy. Efforts by non-governmental groups, the private sector, governments and charities are ensuring that projects to provide the infrastructure, both wired and wireless, the hardware and the knowledge are in place, and sustainable. The UN net summit was marked by a lack of attention by the global mainstream media. Much of the summit, the single biggest thing to happen to Tunisia in recent history, was dominated by whether the US should keep technical control of the net and freedom of speech on the net. The issue was resolved partially in a compromise solution to set up an international forum to look at issues such as cyber security. China is setting up its own Chinese net addresses, which are not provided by the US-based Icann group, creating, a regionalised internet over which Chinese authorities have more control.

"The net is not just one internet controlled by one centre, regionalisation has already started and I suspect that in a few years, the scenery of the internet will be a quite different one"

"Many fear giving over this type of control at a government level compromises the net's legacy of liberal, loose, grass roots lifeblood that feeds on debate, diversity, opinion and opposition. e-learning, e-government, e-commerce and e-medicine are commonplace to many in the West, but they are still of paramount importance to developing nations who need political pressure. Civic responsibility needs to have priorities. Developing nations need a helping hand to join the richer nations online. But it remains to be seen if any of the talk at the UN summit materialises into political action to narrow the technology gap. Lack of freedom of speech in Tunisia disappoints US Khaleej Times
Tunisia: Legitimacy of UN Summit called into question by Tunisian ... Amnesty International
The peaks of an information summit NZZ Online
Swissinfo - Yahoo! News - TIME - Ninemsn

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2005-11-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

Google offers free analytical tools

A move by Google towards offering some kind of web analytics tool has been on the cards since March of this year when the search engine announced the purchase of Urchin software. Web analytical tools have become a vital component in the search engine optimisers' armoury. Whilst the analysis of server log files has been a no-brainer for any serious web site for over a decade web analytical tools are able to delve much deeper and provide information that allows an optimiser to study where the traffic from search engine comes from, what is does when it arrives on landing pages and, most importantly what it does when it gets there.

"These services help provide answers to questions like: Which keywords attract the most visitors?"

Which email campaigns create more customers and how to design web page content that holds people's attention are some of the questions webmasters have to find answers to. The Google Analytics tool has been integrated with the company's AdWords contextual advertising programme with a new set of tools. The search engine says Google Analytics can automatically tag keyword destination URLs. It also imports cost data for ROI reports either as raw data or in chart format. Google Analytics can be used to track the results of any online marketing campaign, including banner ads, referral links, email newsletters, and organic and paid search. Web analytics tools allow a web master to spot whether their ads are being spammed by competitors or whether web sites are boosting the click through rate on the ads they serve to get money from the Google AdSense programme. Although Google Analytics is intended for the company's AdWords customers, the service is provided free for anyone with a web site. The service has been launched with support for 16 languages, along with three built-in summary reports for the executive, marketer and webmaster. Bumpy start for Google analytics giveaway - Announcing Google Analytics Support - Google Analytics: Rising Tide, or Tsunami? - SEO Blog - Computer Business Review

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2005-11-03T04:39:00.000-08:00

Seventh Night of Riots in France

Violence continued for a seventh night in towns on the edge of Paris with youths taking over a police station, vandalizing a shopping center and setting fire to businesses, buses and cars. Youths clashed with police in at least nine towns and communities, most of them concentrated in Paris' northern suburban areas. In La Courneuve two shots were fired at police but no one was injured. Most of the rioters have used rocks, sticks and Molotov cocktails in their attacks. Jacques Chirac met with his cabinet Wednesday to map out a strategy for combating the continuing violence, but officials failed to announce any decisions.

"Zones without law cannot exist in the republic."

The president declared that law would be enforced firmly but also acknowledged frustrations and urged dialogue. Chirac has not personally addressed the French public about the unrest that erupted last Thursday night when two teenagers were electrocuted in a power substation while dodging a police checkpoint in the impoverished town of Clichy-sous-Bois. An escalation of violence appeared to shock France's leadership. Youths set fire to 228 vehicles in 13 towns and communities and attacked a fire station in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a vacant social center in a southeastern community in the departement of Seine-et-Marne, set fire to cars in Yvelines. Riot police fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters in an effort to disperse the attackers. Television footage showed one group of riot policemen pointing their guns through the window of an apartment building's door as women and children cowered and ducked out of sight. The violence was contagious in communities of immigrants and second-generation French citizens where unemployment is more than twice the national average, crime is rampant, social services are minimal and residents are packed into the shabby high-rise apartments of subsidized housing. Because of the violence, Dominique de Villepin postponed a planned visit on Wednesday to Canada and Nicolas Sarkozy canceled a four-day trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Chirac's cabinet members announced no concrete plans for countering the spiraling violence. De Villepin and Sarkozy have blamed each other for inaction in a series of nasty public barbs. Both men are competing within Chirac's political party to run for the French presidency in 2007. The Socialist Party criticized Chirac and de Villepin for their silence over the violence and criticized Sarkozy for his hard-line approach toward the poor communities. The violent outbursts have been particularly sensitive for Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, who has advocated more rights for immigrants and has proposed changes in French law that would allow government buildings to be used as mosques. But he also has ordered major crackdowns on crime in poor communities where residents say police often harass them needlessly. The street fighting threatened to take on religious overtones Sunday when a police tear gas canister was thrown inside a mosque where about 700 worshipers were taking part in prayers. Local Islamic leaders said they have attempted to persuade local youths to refrain from violence. French officials said 34 people were detained in Tuesday night's street fighting. 7th night of violence in Paris - Paris riots lay bare deeper problems - Guardian Unlimited - CNN - BBC News - Globe and Mail

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2005-10-31T03:06:00.000-08:00

IBM signs up for Google desktop search
IBM has released a free plugin that makes its enterprise search technology accessible through the corporate edition of Google Desktop Search. IBM and Google Inc. are collaborating to make it easier for office workers not only to search for local documents and personal e-mail but to delve deep into corporate databases. IBM is linking up its OmniFind corporate search system with Google's free desktop search for business to make it easier for users to locate information throughout an organisation that is often locked up in many separate systems.

"Getting these two products together makes sense for both of us. If you want to have a good corporate search product, you have to have desktop search."

Google wins IBM's endorsement among corporate technical managers for its desktop search product and IBM gives corporate information workers an already popular entry point into back-office databases through Google's search. Searchable data ranges from e-mail to computer files to blog postings to corporate repositories of data, images, audio or video. Much of this is not available using public Web search tools. It is hard to reach inside a company except by trawling through many different programs.

"There is a lot of information that passively sits inside an enterprise. Our intention is to provide more of an active service that gives a single view of all that information."

No money is changing hands in this loose partnership by the world's biggest computer company and the leader in Web search. But coming just weeks after a software and research pact by Google and Sun Microsystems Inc., the new deal with IBM enlists another potential ally as Google increasingly faces off with rival Microsoft Corp. on PC desktops. Prial downplayed any grand strategy in IBM's dealings with Google, but said it was part of a broader push IBM calls information as a service, which the computer company plans to make more explicit over the coming months. Users of IBM's WebSphere integration software would have access to information stored inside rival business databases and content management systems, not just those from IBM. IBM customers can use the Google-IBM search combination by buying IBM products and services and building their own in-house system or rely on IBM to create a pre-packaged system, tailored to the company's industry. Mountain View, California-based Google eschews big, formal alliances with corporate technology suppliers like IBM. That's been the traditional route less-established software suppliers have used to win corporate acceptance of their products. Google's strategy is rather to use its popularity with consumers at home to slip into offices by relying on the actions of millions of employees to each download its tools. IBM partners with Google on information service - IBM, Google Team on Search - Computer Partner - TechWhack - Earthtimes.org - CMPnetAsia

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