THE WEB

PayPal is preparing to offer a service for people to make purchases using simple text messaging via mobile phones.

PayPal Mobile will be launched in the next couple of weeks in the United States, Canada and Britain.

PayPal has quickly become a global leader in online payment solutions with 96.2 million account members worldwide. Available in 55 countries and regions around the world, buyers and sellers on eBay, online retailers, online businesses, as well as traditional offline businesses are transacting with PayPal.

Toshiba won a lawsuit against rival Hynix Semiconductor over patents for computer chips used in cell phones, digital cameras and portable mp3 players.

The Tokyo District Court ruled Friday in favor of the Japanese electronics company, saying that Hynix Semiconductor Inc. had infringed on Toshiba Corp.’s patents related to NAND flash memory.

Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (HSI) of Icheon, Korea, is the world’s top tier memory semiconductor supplier offering Dynamic Random Access Memory chips (“DRAMs”), Static Random Access Memory chips (“SRAMs”) and Flash memory chips to a wide range of established international customers. The Company’s shares are traded on the Korea Stock Exchange, and the Global Depository shares are listed on the Luxemburg Stock Exchange.

Google will join the broad Standard and Poor’s 500 index after the stock market closes on March 31, SP 500 revealed.

The announcement Thursday boosted Google share prices in electronic trading after the market closed. At 11:05pm (0405 GMT Friday), Google shares gained 7.4 percent to 367.11 dollars.

The S&P 500 is a list of 500 US corporations, ordered by market capitalization. The list is owned and maintained by Standard & Poor’s.

All of the companies in the list are large publicly-held companies which trade on major US stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The market-value weighted performance of the stocks of these companies is known as the S&P 500 index. After the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 is the most widely-watched index of large-cap US stocks and is considered to be a bellwether for the US economy. It is often quoted using the symbol GSPC or SPX.

Yahoo is planning to launch a Web-based phone service to compete with eBay’s Skype.

The new instant messaging client will allow users to make calls using conventional phones. The new offering may begin as early as next week. Yahoo!, which offers PC-to-PC calling through its instant messenger service, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

“Yahoo is getting serious about VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and voice opportunities,” wrote Malik, also a senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine. “It took them long enough.”

Whether VoIP is a good bet for Yahoo! shareholders is an open question. eBay investors are still unsure whether the company overpaid for its $2.6 billion acquisition of Skype Technologies last year.

Cingular Wireless, the No. 1 U.S. mobile carrier, said on Wednesday it would begin offering ringtones of live performances from “American Idol” made within 24 hours of the show’s broadcast.

Beginning Wednesday, customers will be able to buy ringtones of finalists’ performances from Tuesday’s show for $2.49 each. Ringtones will also be made during subsequent “American Idol” performance shows this season.

Cingular Wireless is the largest wireless company in the United States, with more than 54 million subscribers who use the nation’s largest digital voice and data network. Cingular is dedicated to providing customers with wireless technology designed to enrich their lives.

Alibaba.com spent USD 750 mln on VC pay outs and staff after Yahoo! deal, says CEO.

Alibaba.com the largest B2B portal in China, has spent USD 750 mln of the USD 1 bln investment from Yahoo! last August, paying venture capital firms and employees that have been working with the company for years, CEO Jack Ma said at a conference Friday.

“Softbank has cashed out its stake in Taobao, some VCs, who have been with us for more than five years have cashed out, and some of our staff members have cashed out,” Ma said. Taobao is a C2C subsidiary of Alibaba.com. “It makes our company more healthy, and therefore, none of our employees and shareholders will be in a hurry for a public listing. So we spent a lot of money on this.”

In August of 2005, Yahoo! announced an investment of USD 1 bln in cash plus assets in Alibaba.com in exchange for a 40% interest in the Chinese firm and a 35% voting right, while Alibaba took all of Yahoo’s China-based assets.

After conquering the camera market, the cell-phone maker is now targeting music players and handheld video. Plus: Google searches for classifieds business.

Business 2.0 Magazine - Last year, Nokia became the world’s largest camera maker when it shipped 100 million cameraphones. Top Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki took credit for driving Konica-Minolta out of the camera market, noting that the company first predicted the demise of the camera business in 2000. Now the company is setting its sights on the music player and camcorder markets, by adding those functions into its phones. One development that may help cell phone makers like Nokia push music players on to cell phones: NEC has developed a new chip that allows cell phones to play music for up to 50 hours. That would be a big improvement over the iPod, which claims a battery life of up to 20 hours.

Huffington Sorry About Clooney fake blog.

Political commentator Ariana Huffington has apologized to readers for passing off remarks made by George Clooney in interviews as a blog entry by the actor on her website.

Arianna Huffington said she was “sorry” to have made Clooney’s comments seem like an original article by the actor, and not a collection of quotes.

Yahoo on Tuesday said it is launching a service in the United States that lets people make phone calls through the company’s instant messaging software.

Available in several other countries since December, the service allows people to make calls from their computers for 2 cents a minute or less to the top 30 national phone markets, including the United States.

The “Phone Out” service also allows calls from computers to regular phones at varying rates to a total of 180 countries.

The nation’s schools, recognized incubators of respiratory diseases among children, are being told to plan for the possibility of an outbreak of bird flu.

Federal health leaders say it is not alarmist or premature for schools to make preparations, such as finding ways to teach kids even if they’ve all been sent home.

The urgency is about bird flu, the name for the deadly H5N1 strain of the avian flu.

StopBadware.org that monitors software for deceptive and abusive practices on Wednesday named a widely used file-sharing program and three other applications as violators of its guidelines.

Kazaa, which its producer Sharman Networks claims is the most popular program for sharing files over the Internet, “misleadingly advertises itself as spyware-free, does not completely remove all components during the uninstall process, interferes with computer use, and makes undisclosed modifications to other software,” according to a report from the group StopBadware.org.

The group, started by researchers from Harvard and Oxford universities, also named a video download manager distributed by Movieland.com, a spyware removal program from SpyAxe.com and Waterfalls 3 by Screensaver.com.

The report, the first to be released since StopBadware.org announced its formation in January, comes as critics say that spyware and other abusive software has emerged as a top scourge of Internet use.

Kazaa and two other programs also are hard to completely uninstall, StopBadware.org claimed.

Shares of Microsoft fell Wednesday after the software maker delayed the consumer release of its new OS Windows Vista until January 2007, after the holiday shopping season.

Shares of Microsoft dropped 76 cents, or almost 3 percent, to $26.98 in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

A tiny memory chip will become the main storage device incorporated into notebook computers beginning this year in place of conventional, bulky hard disc drives.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory chips, Tuesday unveiled such a scheme at the Samsung Mobile Solution Forum at Taipei. Source

During the third annual event, the firm demonstrated the world’s first 32 gigabyte NAND flash-based solid state drive (SDD) that will replace hard disc drives.

The 32 GB flash-SDD weighs only half as much as a comparable-sized hard drive, but reads data three times faster and writes data 1.5 times faster.

The Mozilla Foundation is close to releasing the first alpha edition of the next Firefox, the group’s Web site announced.

Firefox 2.0, which at one point Mozilla officials said would debut in Alpha 1 format by the end of February, may appear as early as Tuesday. The browser, which will stress bookmark, tab, and extension changes, is in early development, and is scheduled for a final rollout in the third quarter. Source

According to entries on the Mozilla Developer Center blog and minutes of a status meeting a week ago, Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 — also called “BonEcho” — may release Tuesday. Or Friday.

Microsoft is expected to announce today that it will soon bring television over the Internet, or IPTV, to thousands of Germans in a partnership with Deutsche Telekom, Germany’s largest phone company.

Microsoft will provide software that will run on Deutsche Telekom set-top boxes for the company’s TV services, which are expected to be available by midyear in 10 German cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Munich. IPTV stands for Internet Protocol TV.
Several companies in the United States are angling for a share of the IPTV market, which is still in its infancy. Microsoft’s service could provide a glimpse into what the future of television-watching may be. The company is providing television-related software for phone companies in the United States, including AT&T and Verizon, which are both conducting trials of TV services in a handful of U.S. cities.

Today’s announcement represents Microsoft’s largest IPTV agreement in Europe to date and a very significant milestone in our longstanding relationship with Deutsche Telekom,'’ said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. Working together, Microsoft and Deutsche Telekom will help create a revolution in TV entertainment for consumers across Germany.'’

Microsoft will delay the consumer release of its new Windows operating system until January 2007, missing the holiday sales season and throwing some PC makers and retailers into turmoil.

The delay in Windows Vista - caused by Microsoft needing more time to enhance security and other functions - will come as a blow to Microsoft partners who were looking forward to a new operating system to boost holiday sales.

Windows Vista is Microsoft’s first major update to the company’s flagship operating system since Windows XP was released in late 2001, meaning partners will be left with a fifth major holiday season without a new version of the operating system to promote.

The Atkins diet, which stresses low-carbohydrate, high-protein foods as a way to lose weight, might not be safe for everyone, new research suggests.

In a case report, Dr. Klaus-Dieter Lessnau, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine, and his colleagues describe a life-threatening complication of the Atkins diet that occurred in 2004 to a 40-year-old obese woman.

The report appears in the March 18 issue of The Lancet.

China has moved to protect its fixed telephone line business by banning free Internet telephone services for at least two years, the Financial Times reports.
 
Wang Leilei, chief executive of Chinese internet portal group Tom Online, which has a joint venture with Luxembourg-based telephony provider Skype, said China would not issue any licenses for computer-to-telephone calls until 2008.

The government “is not going to issue VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) licences until 2008,” Wang told the newspaper.

The move would likely be major setback to Skype, which was reportedly in talks last year with Chinese telecom operators to launch its computer-to-telephone service, SkypeOut.

Microsoft said it plans to boost shipments of the Xbox 360 game console by “two to three times” this week to address shortages that have crimped game sales across the industry.

Microsoft doubles Xbox 360 shipments

This comes a week after Sony announced it would delay the launch of the PlayStation 3 game machine until November to finalize standards for the Blue-ray Disc drive, a next-generation DVD player that will be included in PS3.

France’s lower house of parliament passed a law on Tuesday that could challenge Apple Computer Inc.’s dominance of the online digital music market by making it open its iTunes store to portable music players other than Apple iPods.

French officials said the law is aimed at preventing any single media-playing operating system, such as Apple’s iTunes or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Player, from building a grip on the digital online music retail market.

“These clauses, which we hope will be taken up by other countries, notably at the European level, should prevent the emergence of a monopoly in the supply of online culture,” Richard Cazenave and Bernard Carayon, National Assembly deputies from the ruling UMP party, said in a statement on Tuesday.

U.S. taxpayers aren’t the only ones busy as the April 15 tax filing deadline approaches. Identity thieves posing as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have also been active, sending out hundreds of thousands of phony phishing e-mail messages, according to the IRS and security vendors Symantec and Websense.

“We’ve seen a real uptick in the number of e-mail-type scams,” says Nancy Mathis, an IRS spokesperson. “In late January and early February, there was an explosion of these things.”

Much of anti-aging medicine, or as it is more often called in recent years “age-management” medicine, relies on dietary supplements, nutrition counseling and exercise programs.

But a portion of patients also get blood tests that detect supposedly low levels of a marker for human growth hormone. Those patients often go home with a prescription for injectable HGH and a $500 monthly hormone bill that insurance does not touch.

Human growth hormone is produced naturally by the pituitary gland and contributes to normal growth in children. In studies, HGH has been shown to increase muscle mass and reduce fat in men and women, with notable side effects, including diabetes.

National Institute on Aging fact sheet on hormones and aging: http://www.niapublications.org/tipsheets/pills.asp

Cenegenics Medical Institute: http://www.cenegenics.com

Microsoft announced an agreement with Epic Records to offer exclusive artist content and high-definition music video downloads free for all Xbox 360 gamers for a year.

“Our goal has always been to make Xbox Live a cutting-edge entertainment experience”, said Peter Moore, corporate vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “This agreement with Epic Records offers our members exclusive artistic content directly from the source. With Artist of the Month we will be providing exactly what music-loving gamers want: brand-new, exclusive music videos that can be downloaded quickly, easily and free of charge.”

Xbox 360 is in a better position to become the top gaming console, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

“In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation,” Ballmer told FORTUNE in an interview on Thursday afternoon. “Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did.”

Ballmer: “Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million [consoles]? Yeah, of course we did.”

But Microsoft will not formally revise its projected market share for the Xbox 360, and it will not speed up production to capitalize on Sony’s delay, because it’s already producing the Xbox as fast as possible. “We’ve been saying ‘make them faster’ before yesterday,” says Ballmer.

Microsoft tests Live ads

Microsoft has begun testing display ads across Windows Live Mail, Office Live and MSN Spaces.

The company said on Wednesday that is conducting tests under multiple ad formats as part of its strategy announced in November to offer Internet-based services supported by ads and subscriptions. The online versions of its software and services target small businesses and consumers. CNET News.com

Vast is a search service - we scour the web across millions of sites and billions of pages to find nuggets of information - jobs, cars, people, and other classifieds, and offer the resulting database to end-users and other web sites. We currently offer the largest database of cars and jobs, and one of the largest databases of people profiles on the entire Internet.

The Vast crawler even digs deep to find some of these listings, which you won’t find currently on any search engine! The Vast API is available, free and unlimited, for commercial and non-commercial use. Vast does not act as a broker, agent, or dealer, and the results aggregated by Vast always point back to the original listing for all of the information and to complete the transaction. Think of it as Froogle for classifieds, but with an open interface for partner sites and developers.

WildBlue offers Internet access in three service packages to consumers and small businesses for as little as $49.95 per month. WildBlue offers download speeds of up to 1.5Mbps. All packages include Internet Service Provider (ISP) services such as e-mail and Web space, the WildBlue Portal (featuring the latest news, information and entertainment), 24 hours per day/7 days a week customer care, and an equipment warranty. WildBlue’s equipment package is available for $299.00 and professional installation is $79.95.

“WildBlue is excited to provide its high-speed Internet access via satellite throughout Alabama,” said David Leonard CEO of WildBlue. “We are pleased to bring affordable, two-way broadband to virtually anywhere people work or live.”

An always-on broadband Internet connection, WildBlue’s service offers access speeds that are comparable to DSL and cable modem services. WildBlue’s two-way wireless service provides high-speed data in both directions, upstream and downstream. Customers will not need an additional phone or cable line in order to receive broadband Internet access.www.wildblue.com

Microsoft announced Wednesday it had filed lawsuits against eight eBay sellers in an effort to curb counterfeit software sales. The company alleges the sellers auctioned off illegal copies of its software to unsuspecting buyers.

The lawsuits were filed against sellers in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York and Washington.

Sony delays the release of the PlayStation 3 console until November from its planned spring debut because more work is needed on its next-generation DVD technology.

The PlayStation 3 is critical for Sony’s profits and brand image, so the delay is a major setback for the Japanese electronics and entertainment company as it struggles to mount a recovery after several years of poor earnings.

The reports sent Sony’s stock tumbling 1.8 percent to 5,470 yen ($46) Wednesday. Kutaragi announced the decision after the close of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Soon you could be running your laptop computer all day without a recharge as commercial versions of fuel cells go on sale. At the Cebit technology fair in Hanover, Taiwanese hi-tech firm Antig said its fuel cells should be on the shelves of computer shops by early 2007.

The first versions of the methanol-using units should keep a laptop going for up to nine hours. Fuel cell technology got a boost recently when international air flight regulators changed rules that banned passengers from carrying flammable methanol onto aircraft.

Linnet Tsai, deputy marketing manager for Antig, said the first fuel cells to go on sale would marry familiar lithium-ion batteries with the methanol-based technology.

A new survey suggests that people are more interested in watching video podcasts on their televisions than on their computer.According to research from Points North Group and Horowitz Associates, while 25% of Internet users are interested in watching downloaded TV shows and movies on their PCs, 38% (50% more) are interested in watching that video on their TVs.

Interest in watching on TV is even stronger among 18-34 year olds at 68%, compared with 45% interested in watching on PCs.
“In this PC and iPod generation, consumers still want to watch TV shows and movies on a TV, whether the programs are broadcast or downloaded,” said Stewart Wolpin, senior consulting analyst for Points North Group, “And that’s the one piece of hardware where Web-based video is not yet available.”

China on Thursday defended its right to police the Internet, one day after four American technology giants appeared before Congress on charges they collaborated with Beijing to crush free speech online in return for market access.

“It is normal for countries to manage the Internet in accordance with law and to guide its development in a healthy and orderly fashion,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. “China has also borrowed and learned from the United States and other countries in the world.”

A survey of 1,931 Internet users conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project in late November and December 2005 found 30 percent of respondents said they went online “for no particular reason” on the previous day. That was up from 21 percent in a November 2004 survey. The survey also showed that 34 percent of online men were surfing for fun on an average day in December, compared with 26 percent of women.”

A picture cloud is the easiest way to make a photo come to life. By using a picture cloud you can turn still photos into images that spin 360° by uploading images you take around an object with your digital camera. Whether it’s houses, cars, toys, or pets, picture clouds are easy to create and can be used anywhere. Picture clouds are helping give depth to the web, and best of all - picture clouds are free.

http://www.picturecloud.com/

.EU 

Europe’s New Internet Domain “.eu” Received 71 235 New Applications within the First Hour

The European Registry of Internet Domain Names opened its systems last week to receive applications for .eu domain names from anyone within the EU claiming prior rights to a certain domain name. Since early December it has, in principle, only been possible for trademark holders and public bodies to apply. Some 900 registrars are now sending in the applications they received from numerous candidate domain name holders all across the EU.
http://www.learningbusiness.fi/portal/34/?id=9195

Check this official Internet Explorer 7 commercial [WMV].

 [Via outer-court]

http://mediaaddict.members.winisp.net/video/IE/IE7_big.wmv

Scores of angry Tibetans on Tuesday protested Google’s launch of a censored version of its search engine in China which adheres to that country’s government restrictions on free speech.The protesters assembled in the central square of Dharmsala, the northern Indian headquarters of the exiled Tibetan government, carrying placards reading “Google, Don’t be Evil,” and “Gulag, Censoring Search by Search.”

The protesters also sent out 30,000 e-mails to people across the world urging them not to access Google on Tuesday.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_India_Tibet_Google.html

Valentine’s Day could be a bonanza for malicious hackers,
internet security experts are warning.
Fake Valentine’s e-cards and dodgy dating websites are among the tactics being used by fraudsters to relieve internet users of their money.

The government’s Get Safe Online campaign is urging users to take care.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4708876.stm

Hey, this is interesting. Google is testing some pay per call ads with a program called Click to Call .

Here’s how it works: When you click the phone icon, you can enter your phone number. Once you click ‘Connect For Free,’ Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party.”

http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/02/google-click-to-call/

Just read Seth Godin’s posting about Google’s Juicy New Tool.  When typing in “artisan hotel” one of the AdWords ads comes up with a “call” icon.   Put in your phone number and someone from “Courtyard Manhattan Hotel” will call you back immediately.

Like Seth says (and he’s almost always right) once this gets going it changes the game of Search Marketing again.

http://www.webmetricsguru.com/2006/02/googles_juicy_new_feature_pay.html

Maybe you’ve seen it, I hadn’t. This is a new feature inside of Google AdWords. Do a search, in this case for the Artisan Hotel, and a string of ads pop up. But one ad has a green phone.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/02/juicy_new_googl.html