The case against enterprise microblogging
As a consistent Twitter user, I’ve found the service to be a valuable marketing tool, as well as an entertaining activity for my friends to shoot one-liners at each other.
Last week, I started experimenting with Yammer, a Twitter clone that facilitates private microblog user groups, a feature that Twitter not only doesn’t have but refuses to say if it will ever offer.
My team of five started using Yammer on a Monday, and by Friday, we decided that it was pointless. First, it’s not integrated with anything else we use–Twitter, IM, Skype, e-mail, etc. What’s more, the Yammer application for BlackBerry is embarrassingly bad. I realized pretty quickly that it’s better to just use e-mail, if you want to communicate to a small private group–at least for now.
Google tool uses search terms to detect flu outbreaks
(CNN) — If you have a fever, headache and runny nose, you might go to Google and type the words “flu symptoms” to see whether you’ve come down with influenza.
Google knows that you might do something like that, and it also knows which U.S. state you’re in. Now, it’s putting that information together in a tool that Google says could detect flu outbreaks faster than traditional systems currently in use.
`Mail Goggles’ might prevent e-mail regrets
SEATTLE – Here’s the scenario: It’s Friday night, and what began as an innocent happy-hour margarita morphed into a few pitchers. After all, those tacos were salty.
Bidding friends adieu, you jump in a cab, head home and decide a quick e-mail check is in order. And there it is: a message from your ex. Or your boss. Or that friend you’re secretly mad at.
If you’re the kind of person who types tipsy and regrets it in the morning, Google’s “Mail Goggles,” a new test-phase feature in the free Gmail service, might save you some angst.
Skype says China JV partner stores text messages
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Skype, eBay Inc’s Web communications unit, said on Thursday that TOM Online Inc, majority owners of Skype’s Chinese venture TOM-Skype, had been monitoring and storing some of its users’ text messages without Skype’s knowledge.
Skype apologized after a report revealed that the Web service monitors text chats with politically sensitive keywords and stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could be easily accessed by anybody, including the Chinese government.
Top firms band together behind Mobile Broadband
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Top computer makers, mobile operators and technology providers announced on Tuesday that upcoming laptop computers would feature mobile broadband making them ready to surf right out of the box.
Led by the GSM Association (GSMA), a global trade association of mobile operators, the group of 16 companies said the “Mobile Broadband” service mark would be pre-installed on laptop and notebook PCs coming out later this year.
Equipped with “ready to run” wireless Mobile Broadband devices, the GSMA said in a statement that the “always-connected” PCs would be “ready to switch on and surf straight out of the box in 91 countries across the world.”
Larry Page blasts white space FUD on Capitol Hill
Google co-founder Larry Page says the time for delays has passed: he wants the Federal Communications Commission to open up fallow “white space” in the TV broadcast spectrum for unlicensed use, and to do it before November’s presidential election. Page, who spoke at a Capitol Hill event Wednesday, blasted incumbent broadcasters for lobbying “against the public interest” to block access to the unlicensed spectrum. Calling claims of potential interference with existing broadcast stations “garbage” and “despicable,” Page charged that FCC field tests this summer had been “rigged” against spectrum-sensing technology that’s designed to enable exploitation of white space.
The event, sponsored by the Wireless Innovation Alliance, highlighted how fierce the battle between white-space advocates and incumbent broadcasters has become. Wednesday also saw the release of a statement from the National Association of Broadcasters that attacked Google’s pro–white space petition, which Page said has attracted some 16,000 signatories to date. The NAB argued it gives short shrift to interference concerns, but Page dismissed the interference argument as a red herring deployed by incumbents anxious to stifle competition. “It’s just garbage,” said Page, “It’s not true.”
China running out of IP addresses
Chinese officials are calling for a mass migration to IPv6 after disclosing that they have only 830 days’ worth of IPv4 resources left.
The disclosure was made by Li Kai, director of IP of the China Internet Network Information Center.
Li explained at a conference that, without a rapid changeover to IPv6, internet users in China will start having problems getting online.
A new way to find online videos
There’s a ton of videos to watch on the Web. YouTube uploads 13 hours of video each minute. But finding what to watch isn’t easy.
Video search is one of the biggest challenges on the Internet today. A number of online video companies are trying to figure out how to find and discover content for viewers, but a debate rages on the best method to deliver results.
VideoSurf is the latest startup that claims it has solved the video search problem. Major video search players like Blinkx, Truveo, and Everyzing rely on tagging video clips with descriptions and analyzing the audio portion of clips to make videos searchable through text. Google (GOOG) and Microsoft’s Live Search (MSFT) are also making headway with speech-to-text technology to index videos. VideoSurf cofounder Lior Delgo, a former Yahoo search executive, says his company has made a video search breakthrough by scanning and analyzing the images within videos as a way to organize the content.
More people get news from web than TV or print
The web is now a more important source of news for most Americans than either newspapers or free-to-air television.
Only just over a quarter of Americans – 27 per cent – picked up a newspaper on any given day, whereas well over a third – 37 per cent – regularly go online for news, according to a report.
Only cable television remains more popular, with 39 per cent regularly tuning in to bulletins on a subscription service – up from 34 per cent two years ago, the Pew Research Centre survey found.