TECHNOLOGY

PC makers voluntarily supply Web filter in China

By (AP)

Several PC makers were including controversial Internet-filtering software with computers shipped in China on Thursday despite a government decision to postpone its plan to make such a step mandatory.

Beijing's decision this week to delay the requirement that the filtering software _ known as Green Dam _ by pre-installed or supplied on disk with all computers sold in China averted a possible trade clash with the United States and Europe. But the move by some makers to include the software anyway could reignite complaints by Chinese Web users.

Also Thursday, a government...

By (AP)

Sometimes Twitter can make newcomers feel like twits because the online messaging service isn't as simple as it sounds.

The idea of sharing information in 140-character snippets is easy to grasp, but it can be confounding to navigate the communications crossfire while trying to learn Twitter's etiquette and idiom. Then there's the befuddling matter of trying to figure out whom you should follow and which Twitter tools you should use.

It all starts to make sense after reading "The Twitter Book," a primer co-written by two of the messaging service's early evangelists, Tim O...

By (AP)

Beijing's retreat on its latest Internet-censorship effort highlights the rise of China's increasingly tech-savvy, vocal public as a factor in the authoritarian government's decisions.

China gave in late Tuesday to complaints by Web users, manufacturers and foreign governments and postponed a plan to require producers to supply a government-endorsed filtering software known as "Green Dam" with every personal computer sold in China.

"We think this is a result of the efforts of all the parties, but we think public opinion played an even more important role than the others,"...

By Greg Baker (AP)

In a rare reversal, China's government gave in to domestic and international pressure and backed down Tuesday from a rule that would have required personal computers sold in the country to have Internet-filtering software.

Just hours before the rule was to have taken effect, the government said it would postpone the requirement for the "Green Dam" software. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it made the decision partly because some PC markets were having difficulty meeting the deadline. It did not say whether the plan might be revived.

The change of cour...

By Greg Baker (AP)

China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software Tuesday, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Chinese Web surfers just hours before it was due to take effect.

The rule would have required manufacturers to include filtering software known as Green Dam with every computer produced for sale in China starting Wednesday.

A two-sentence announcement by the government's Xinhua News Agency said regulators "will delay" the plan but gave no indication whether it might take effect later. It gave no other details.

Top...

By Jim Buell (AP)

No more asking around the office for the right sort of charger. At least that's what European Union and cell phone makers are hoping.

The world's leading mobile phone makers announced Monday that they will ensure that their data-enabled phones and chargers will all work together, as of next year.

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said a standardized charger will cut costs for manufacturers and reduce the number of chargers thrown away when consumers buy new phones.

Though the agreement applies to the EU, it's likely that the standardization will apply to phones...

By Paul Sakuma (AP)

Apple says CEO Steve Jobs is back at work a few days a week and working from home other days.

Jobs, a cancer survivor, had been on leave since the end of January.

...

By (AP)

Scott Painter makes his living betting on startup companies, having played a role in launching 29 of them over the years. But with the bad economy choking initial public offerings and acquisitions, Painter is now backing an idea that makes it easier for insiders like him to sell shares in their companies even before they go public.

SharesPost, which was founded by Painter's business partner, Greg Brogger, launched publicly in June. Through SharesPost's Web site, Painter is trying to sell shares in several companies he helped found, including car pricing startup TrueCar.com. He also...

By Jae C. Hong (AP)

Michael Jackson's death has led to skyrocketing sales of his music and videos, with major retailers selling out of products that have regained immense popularity overnight.

Bill Carr, Amazon.com Inc.'s vice president for music and video, said Friday that once the world learned that the pop icon had died Thursday, the Web site sold out within minutes all CDs by Michael Jackson and by the Jackson 5 _ the group Jackson and his four older brothers formed out of Gary, Ind., in the late '60s.

Jackson's albums accounted for all 10 of Amazon's "Bestsellers in Music" list Friday, ...

By Moises Castillo (AP)

Jean Anleu was so fed up with corruption in his country that he decided to vent on the Internet, sending a 96-character message on the social-networking site Twitter.

That message has now earned him a potential five-year prison sentence and the unfortunate distinction of becoming one of the first people in the world to be arrested for a tweet.

Writing under his Internet alias "jeanfer," Anleu urged depositors to pull their money from Guatemala's rural development bank, whose management has been challenged in a political scandal: "First concrete action should be take cash out...

By Rick Rycroft (AP)

The Internet's key oversight agency has selected former U.S. cybersecurity chief Rod Beckstrom as its next chief executive.

The appointment, effective next Wednesday, comes as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN (EYE-can), caps weeklong meetings in Sydney, Australia.

Friday's approval by a voice vote (Thursday evening in the United States) puts Beckstrom, 48, at the helm of an international organization with oversight of the monikers behind every Web site and e-mail address.

ICANN is in the midst of revamping procedures for adding domain...

By (AP)

Lenovo put nearly a year of research into two design changes that debuted on an updated ThinkPad laptop this week. No, not the thinner, lighter form or the textured touchpad _ rather, the extra-large "Delete" and "Escape" keys.

It may seem like a small change, but David Hill, vice president of corporate identity and design at Lenovo, points out, "Any time you start messing around with the keyboard, people get nervous."

Computers get smaller and faster every year, but keyboard design remains largely stuck in the 19th century. When Beijing-based Lenovo, which bought IBM Corp...

By Greg Baker (AP)

Days before a deadline abruptly imposed by China, computer makers are scrambling to comply with an order to supply Web-filtering software with PCs and worrying what it might do to their reputations.

Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Inc. and Taiwan's Acer Inc. _ the top three global producers _ are asking regulators for details of the order that takes effect July 1 to provide the "Green Dam Youth Escort" software with every laptop and desktop PC sold in China.

China is important to PC suppliers both as a major manufacturing site and a fast-growing market. It accounts for up to 80 pe...

By Wally Santana (AP)

Internet users in China were unable to access search giant Google Inc.'s main Web site or its Chinese service, and the company said Thursday it was investigating.

The outage came after the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center last week accused Google of providing links to vulgar and obscene sites. Google, based in Mountainview, California, said it would do more to stop users in China from accessing pornography.

The outage began late Wednesday and affected Google's main site, its Gmail.com e-mail service and its China-based site, Google.cn. On Thursday, all...

By Madalyn Ruggiero (AP)

Washington is calling on Beijing to revoke an order to personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software with every PC, adding to an array of disputes between the major trading partners.

In a letter to Chinese officials, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the order might violate China's free-trade commitments and raise security risks for users, according to a statement Thursday by Kirk's office.

"China is putting companies in an untenable position by requiring them, with virtually no public notice, to pre-install software that...

By Alex Brandon (AP)

For about 90 minutes Wednesday, visitors to the Oregon University System's Web site found themselves taken for a ride they didn't ask for. They were redirected to another site under the control of a hacker, who posted an 89-word screed criticizing the protests in Iran.

"We never cheated in elections," the site read, in black and red. The message included invective aimed at President Barack Obama and made derogatory comments about Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims the June 12 presidential election was rigged.

As Internet attacks go, this type isn't un...

By Paul Sakuma (AP)

A celebrity like Apple CEO Steve Jobs scores a rare organ transplant and the world wonders: Did he game the system? The rich have plenty of advantages that others don't. But winning the "transplant lottery" involves more than the size of your wallet _ and true medical need.

A Tennessee hospital has confirmed that it performed a liver transplant for Jobs, putting him among the lucky 6,500 or so Americans each year who get these operations. Nearly 16,000 others are waiting now for such a chance.

No one can buy a transplant _ that's against federal law. And no one is suggesting...

By (AP)

I've always secretly wanted to learn to DJ, so I was excited to develop my skills on the awkwardly named Pacemaker portable DJ system. After spending some time determining the difference between a crossfader and a cue point, I've found that it's not easy _ at least, not on this device.

Made by Swedish company Tonium and currently available in the U.S. only through the Pacemaker Web site for $600 or Amazon.com for $500, the Pacemaker crams 60 gigabytes of storage space, tons of audio effects, two channels for listening to songs and a neat rounded touchpad into a device that resemble...

By Paul Sakuma (AP)

Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs appears to be a step closer to returning to work, as a doctor gave him an "excellent prognosis" after receiving a liver transplant at a Tennessee hospital.

"He received a liver transplant because he was ... the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available," Dr. James D. Eason, chief of transplantation at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, said in a statement late Tuesday. "Mr. Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis."

Eason said in a news release posted on t...

By (AP)

The Associated Press is digitizing and has begun to release a "treasure trove" of historical film footage from the 1960s and '70s that had been sitting in Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's former World War II headquarters in London.

The archive includes color film recordings of a young Yasser Arafat, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi immediately after taking power, Richard Nixon with Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Fidel Castro meeting Latin American and Eastern European leaders, as well as a young Saddam Hussein in Paris.

"The range and quality of what we're finding in this lo...

By (AP)

In a big break for online shoppers, Web retailers generally don't have to charge sales taxes in states where they lack a store or some other physical presence.

Increasingly, states aching under the weight of the recession are seeking a way around that rule. Because companies like Amazon.com Inc. get help drumming up sales from online affiliates _ people who link to products on their blogs, promote Web shopping deals and offer coupons _ several states say the Internet retailers should charge sales taxes in states where those affiliates are based.

The financial benefits may not...

By (AP)

TV regulators say they are trying to help stations that lost viewers because of a switch to new frequencies on June 12, when they turned off their analog signals.

Hundreds of stations moved their digital signals from the UHF band to the VHF band, previously used only for analog broadcast, and viewers in cities like Philadelphia and Chicago are having problems receiving them.

The Federal Communications Commission is working with two dozen stations, mainly on VHF, to help them improve reception, says Robert Ratcliffe, acting chief of the media bureau at the Federal...

By (AP)

A technology expert said Wednesday that potentially years' worth of Mayor Ray Nagin's e-mails have been deleted.

Christopher Reade, a partner in a tech firm who assisted the Louisiana Technology Council in efforts to recover data for the mayor's office, said the mailbox was removed between June 2008 and May 2009. He said 22 gigabytes of data vanished from a defunct server on May 5 _ the day of a conference call with the city on the work the outside technology experts would do _ but he did not know if the mailbox was among that data.

City technology chief M. Harrison Boyd, who...

By (AP)

Companies that track consumer behavior online for advertising purposes are vowing to make their practices more transparent and to give people a way to decline being shadowed.

It's unclear how much of an effect the new policies will have. One consumer group said the changes don't go far enough, and that extensive profiles of people still will be collected without their complete consent.

The new guidelines, which were due to be unveiled Thursday, represent the industry's attempt at self-regulation as Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have been examining online behaviora...

AP News

 

French investigators release report on Flight 447     By Otavio de Souza (AP)

French investigators on Thursday will present their initial findings into what caused Air France Flight 447 to drop out of the sky in the middle of the Atlantic a month ago, prompting one of history's most challenging plane crash investigations.

The Airbus A330-200 plane flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris went down with 228 people on board in a remote area of the Atlantic, 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) off Brazil's mainland and far from radar coverage.

A burst of automated messages emitted by the plane before it fell gave rescuers only a vague location to begin their search, which has failed to locate the plane's black boxes. The chances of finding the flight recorders are falling as the signals they emit fade. Without them, the full causes of the tragic accident may never be known.

The French air accident investigation agency, the BEA, will present its preliminary report to journalists at its headquarters in Le Bourget, outside Paris.   Read More...



 

 

 

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