Google today launched a new version of Google Talk for iPhone and iPod Touch that includes no new features but looks slightly more pleasing than the regular Flash based Google Talk gadget.
If you like to use the new iPhone version of Google Talk gadget on a desktop browser or your Firefox sidebar, just use the following links.
For Google Accounts / Gmail users: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/m
For Google Apps: http://hostedtalkgadget.google.com/a/mydomain.com/talkgadget/m
With Google Apps nearing the venerable age of 17 months, we have already seen more than 500,000 organizations adopt Apps as part of their business, with another 3,000 signing up every day. Many of those customers are small- and medium-sized businesses, but more and more large enterprises are also opting for the cost savings and greater flexibility that cloud computing offers.
A good example is Taylor Woodrow, a UK-based construction, facilities management and engineering company that has just moved all its employees onto Google Apps Premier Edition. Their 1,800 users can now collaborate from offices, construction sites, and client premises across the UK and Benelux. Not only has it brought greater mobility and flexibility to everyone, but Taylor Woodrow's director of IT estimates he's saved £1 million in the process. Read more on the Google Enterprise Blog.
Prospective and current graduate business students who used a Web site to cheat on entrance examinations over the past five years could have their scores thrown out.
Business-school students beware: If you cheated on your GMATs, the exam's maker may toss out your scores.
The exam's publisher, the Graduate Management Admission Council, is tracking down users of Scoretop.com after winning a lawsuit to shut down the site and seize a computer hard drive containing payment information and user identifications.
Scoretop sold VIP access for $30 a month, giving users previews to current questions on the latest Graduate Management Admission Test. Some were posted by users after taking the exam.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema also ordered site operator Lei Shi to pay $2.35 million plus legal costs in a June 20 ruling in the copyright infringement lawsuit.
In court documents, GMAC cited a posting by a user who said the information offered on the site was "inestimable," saying that he saw 10 to 12 "word by word" items and "many of the other questions felt very familiar."
About 6,000 GMAT scores from when the Web site started in 2003 to the present are in question, GMAC spokeswoman Judy Phair said Wednesday. It's unclear how many test-takers are involved, because they can take the test several times a year.
"We have an ethical responsibility to schools and students to say this is a secure and fair test," Phair said. "Obviously, you're not being fair if you have an unfair advantage."
The council plans to match data with test-takers and cancel the scores of anyone it determines knowingly used Scoretop to cheat on the GMAT. It will also notify the schools receiving scores, and perhaps prevent them from retaking the test. Phair said she can't offer a timetable on the process.
Shi wasn't represented by an attorney, according to court documents. McLean, Va.-based GMAC said Shi has returned to his native China and couldn't be reached.
About 200,000 students a year take the GMAT, and its scores are used by more than 4,000 graduate management programs at 1,800 business schools worldwide, GMAC said. Test-takers must sign a no-cheating pledge when registering for and when taking the test.
Business schools are trying to determine how they will handle canceled scores, including those of students already enrolled in master's of business administration programs and those admitted for the fall term.
The dean of the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, Robert Bruner, wrote on his blog that Darden "will brook absolutely no cheating."
Melvin T. Stith, dean of the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, said that most of the school's incoming MBA students have informed them that they haven't used Scoretop, but if GMAC discovers otherwise, the school will make them retake the GMAT.
"To us it's a great test up front to determine the ethics and honesty of students you're admitting," Stith said in a telephone interview.
Anxious MBA students have been calling GMAC seeking information, and possibly reassurance.
Phair said the council is focusing on Scoretop's VIP members -- users bragging about the questions they had in advance, for example -- not those who just casually accessed the site.
"If you posted live questions, then you should be worried," Phair said. "Canceling scores is a really serious thing. We're going to be careful but also we're very serious about this."Google scored a legal victory in keeping its search source code secret from Viacom, but YouTube users were not so fortunate with their privacy.
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the search giant doesn't have to turn over the code to Viacom, which filed a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google in 2007. In granting Google's motion for a protective order, U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton in Manhattan agreed with Google's characterization of the source code as a trade secret that can't be disclosed without risking the loss of business.
"YouTube and Google should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation," the judge said. "A plausible showing that YouTube and Google's denials are false, and that the search function can and has been used to discriminate in favor of infringing content, should be required before disclosure of so valuable and vulnerable an asset is compelled."
The judge also denied Viacom's motion for Google to produce source code for its Video Identification Tool, which helps copyright notify Google of copyright infringement.
However, the judge granted a Viacom motion that records of every video watched by YouTube users, including their login names and IP addresses, be turned over to the entertainment giant.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the ruling a threat to YouTube users' privacy.
"The court's order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), ... Read more
A bit of deja vu is creeping into recent media reports of Microsoft whispering into the right ear of News Corp. and Time Warner's AOL about potential partnerships, while Yahoo is whispering in their left.
According to a
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo's talks with Time Warner have regained some traction, now that Microsoft's withdrawn offer of $33 a share for the Internet search pioneer appears to remain comatose. But as with Reuters, the Journal also notes that the discussions don't appear to be serious. For one thing, the Journal notes such a combination had put an approximate $10 billion valuation on AOL, but that was before Yahoo's stock had plummeted back to trading levels near the pre-Microsoft offer watermark.
In the end, Yahoo is looking for ways to bring its value back to the $33 a share that Microsoft had offered before merger talks broke off in early May, and Microsoft is looking for ways to bring scale to its online advertising search business, which may one day ultimately pay for any free business applications the Redmond giant gives out to compete with those currently ... Read more
One of the burning questions in technology the past year, also played a major role in the dispute between social networks ConnectU and Facebook, according to documents obtained by CNET News.com.
Some interesting details about Facebook's valuation were revealed in partially redacted court records released Wednesday by James Ware, a Federal district court judge. The documents were a transcript of a June 23 hearing in the case that Ware closed to the public. The judge released the redacted transcripts after CNET Networks, parent company of News.com, filed an objection.
ConnectU, founded by twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, filed suit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and accused him of stealing their business plan. The two sides reached a settlement, but ConnectU's side tried to pull out of the deal after alleging that Facebook fraudulently misrepresented the value of its stock. Ware disagreed and last week ordered that the settlement be enforced. That means Facebook is nearing the end of the ConnectU case.
But what the transcripts show was just how much Microsoft inadvertently influenced the proceedings.
Last fall, Microsoft paid $240 million to acquire a 1.6 percent share of Facebook. The day news of the deal broke, headlines screamed that Facebook was worth $15 billion based on Microsoft's purchase.
Analysts said all along that the money Microsoft paid was more a reflection of the company's need to strengthen ties to Facebook
... Read moreA new study suggests that attitude rather than availability may be the key reason why more Americans don't have high-speed Internet access.
Thirty-five percent of those surveyed say they're still on dial-up because broadband prices are too high.
The findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project challenge the argument that broadband providers need to more aggressively roll out supply to meet demand.
Only 14 percent of dial-up users say they're stuck with the older, slower connection technology because they can't get broadband in their neighborhoods, Pew reported Wednesday.
Thirty-five percent say they're still on dial-up because broadband prices are too high, while another 19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade. The remainder have other reasons or do not know.
"That suggests that solving the supply problem where there are availability gaps is only going to go so far," said John Horrigan, the study's author. "It's going to have to be a process of getting people more engaged with information technology and demonstrating to people it's worth it for them to make the investment of time and money."
Nonetheless, the Pew study does support concerns that rural Americans have more trouble getting faster Internet connections, which bring greater opportunities to work from home or log into classes at distant universities.
Twenty-four percent of rural dial-up users say they would get broadband if it becomes available, compared with 11 percent for suburbanites and 3 percent for city dwellers.
Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's key inventors and an advocate for the idea that the government should be more active in expanding broadband, suspects that many more dial-up users would be interested in going high-speed if they had a better idea of what they're missing. He pointed out that broadband access is available from only one provider in many areas, keeping prices high and speeds low.
"Some residential users may not see a need for higher speeds because they don't know about or don't have ability to use high speeds," Cerf said. "My enthusiasm for video conferencing improved dramatically when all family members had MacBook Pros with built-in video cameras, for example."
Overall, Pew found that 55 percent of American adults now have broadband access at home, up from 47 percent a year earlier and 42 percent in March 2007. By contrast, only 10 percent of Americans now have dial-up access.
Despite the increase in overall broadband adoption, though, growth has been flat among blacks and poorer Americans.
Of the Americans with no Internet access at all, about a third say they have no interest in logging on, even at dial-up speeds. Nearly 20 percent of nonusers had access in the past but dropped it. Older and lower-income Americans are most likely to be offline.
Got a secret message to share with someone? Check out Privnote.
Privnote (short for Private Notes) is a simple web service for creating web notes that self-destruct or become unavailable as soon as they are read.
Type a text note in the space provided and you’ll be provided with a one-time use hyperlink that you can send over an IM or email message. Once the link is clicked, the associated text note is deleted forever.
There’s a read receipt option if you like to get notified as soon as your web note is opened by the recipient.
PrivNote - If you send a note and suddenly regret having done so, just click the link yourself which will erase the note forever so no one can read it. Thanks Robin Good.
Flash Drive Reminder is a handy utility for people (especially college students) who work across different computers and carry their data on a USB memory stick.
This will display a desktop reminder saying that the USB drive is still in the computer if you try to log off without unplugging the stick.
Brad Greco writes – “I have an annoying tendency to leave my flash drive plugged in to the computer when I leave. I began to get tired of returning to the library and asking the front desk if anyone had found a flash drive, so I decided to write a little program that would ensure that I’d never leave it plugged into a computer again.”
Flash Drive Reminder adds an option to the autorun box that appears when you insert a flash drive into the computer. When you log off from Windows, this will pop up a dialog box reminding you to remove the flash drive.
Works on Windows XP and Vista systems provided AutoPlay option is enabled on the computer where you insert the drive.
Google announced that “Google Adsense referral program” is now retired and will be stopped during the last week of August.
If you are using Google Adsense referral units to promote Google products or Adsense referrals then you need to remove referral ad code from your site before August end, in order to effectively monetize your ad spaces. Also if you are using referral reports then run and save all important report data on your machine.
Google also suggested revenue source for publishers in order to fill the referral revenue gap. The two obvious options suggested by Google are:
1) Use Google Affiliate Network: Obvious since Google acquired DoubleClick’ affiliate ad network. In this Affiliate programs you will need to apply for advertiser programs and will get paid according to actions.
2) Increase Adsense for content ad units on your sites: Obvious solution to fill the revenue gap anyone can think first. If you are currently running two Adsense ad units then make it to three.
The first option is not good for many publishers outside US, as you will see very few good targeted affiliate programs to show on your sites having main traffic from other counties than US.
Many US publishers have good earnings from Adsense referral program and they are going to hit by this Google move.
