Google has taken the interesting step of launching a set of public DNS servers. DNS stands for "domain name service" and is the bit of the web that translates web addresses like "http://www.pocket-lint.com" into IP addresses of the servers that contain the websites.
Google refers to it, in the blog post announcing the launch, as "the switchboard of the internet", pointing out that the average web user makes hundreds of DNS lookups every day, so using a slow, unreliable server will slow down your web access.
Google reasons that the faster...
» Read the rest of the post
Display technologies are constantly in flux. Since Apple introduced the multitouch display for the iPhone a couple of years ago, touchscreens have become all the rage in the computer industry. Al Monro of NextWindow wrote about how Windows 7’s support for desktop touchscreens will make them not just cool, but mainstream.
Now we’re hearing from more startups that have been working for some time on solving the tough problems of making displays bright but low-power and making user interfaces much simpler and easier to...
» Read the rest of the post
FriendFeed has just posted a note to their blog with the announcement. FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor writes that the site will continue operating for the time being, but that the company is still “figuring out its longer-term plans for the product”. Likewise, the API will continue to function for the time being.
Facebook has just issued the following press release:
PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the...
» Read the rest of the post
Microsoft and Yahoo have now officially announced the search deal that has been rumored for long. Through the pact, Bing will become the default search engine on Yahoo, creating a search player with close to 30% market share of search queries, compared with Google's 65%, according to ComScore data.
This will have major repercussions for the online advertising industry, where both Microsoft and Yahoo are strongholds and carry a lot of weight. Likely, it will take months if not years to align these important businesses. As Yahoo CEO Carol...
» Read the rest of the post
On a PC, having to fill out a form and type in a credit card number to buy something is only mildly annoying. On a cellphone, it could make you want to skip the purchase entirely.
This is why investors, start-ups and major corporations are pouring money into services that make it easier to use cellphones to buy goods and transfer money.
The aim is to turn phones into virtual credit cards or checkbooks, enabling the kind of click-and-buy commerce and online banking that people have come to expect on their PCs. But shrinking down those...
» Read the rest of the post
Wikipedia has big plans for video; both in the sense of having more videos on the site, and letting contributors edit and annotate the actual videos.
The organization behind Wikipedia is close to launching an editable online video encyclopedia to enhance the current textual one. The hope is to revolutionize the popular reference site and goad content providers--from public broadcasters to the music industry--into allowing more video to enter the public domain.
Within two to three months, a person editing a Wikipedia article will find a...
» Read the rest of the post
New News Corp (NWS) digital media boss Jonathan Miller is about to fire MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and replace him with an as-of-yet unnamed new CEO, reports TechCrunch's Michael Arrington.
We’ve confirmed that things are actually moving much faster than we first understood, and that a decision has already been made to terminate Chris DeWolfe’s employment with MySpace. We’ve also been told that the core MySpace executive team will follow.
MySpace has a dozen or so “execs,” but our guess is that it’s the very senior team that...
» Read the rest of the post
United States
2 Votes
