A new form of wireless network known as
White Spaces will come online next month, the
FCC announced today.
White Spaces has been called "WiFi on steroids". White spaces are unused spectrum between broadcast television channels. It is faster than WiFi so it can handle more data. It can bring (nearly) free Internet access to the most remote areas of the country, places that can't get WiFi. Because it uses broadcast television signals, any place that can pick up a broadcast TV signal should be able to tap into
White Spaces.
posted by cashman
on Dec 22, 2011 -
34 comments
Google set up a sting operation to prove that rival Microsoft search engine Bing is cheating, using Internet Explorer to track users' Google search results and mining that data to improve Bing.
Here's the proof.
posted by 2bucksplus
on Feb 1, 2011 -
166 comments
We expect even more rapid innovation in the web media platform in the coming year and are focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles. To that end, we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies. - Google's Chrome is will be joining Firefox in
no longer licensing the MPEG-LA H.264 video codec favoured by Apple and Microsoft for use in the HTML5 <video> tag (
previously).
Not everyone is seeing this as a good thing.
posted by Artw
on Jan 13, 2011 -
145 comments
Google Chrome OS: Google says it will release a new operating system, built around its Chrome browser, which will be open source and will initially be targeted at netbooks. Shipment is expected second half of 2010. No response yet from Microsoft.
[more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle
on Jul 7, 2009 -
227 comments
Microsoft buys stake in Facebook. Microsoft has paid $240m (£117m) for a 1.6% stake in
Facebook that values the hugely popular social networking site at $15bn (£7.3bn). Facebook spurned an offer from Microsoft's rival
Google, which was also keen to invest the site.
Microsoft will also sell
internet ads for Facebook outside the United States as part of the deal that took several weeks of negotiating.
Mark Zuckerberg started the online social networking site in his Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.
[more inside]
posted by Tommy Gnosis
on Oct 25, 2007 -
114 comments
The Open Content Alliance poses a threat to Google and Microsoft's competing library digitization projects. OCA was founded by the
Internet Archive, whose main claim to fame is the Wayback Machine, designed to archive the internet's web history. OCA's mission is to open the nation's library collections to universal web search by digitizing books and making them as widely accessible as possible.
[more inside]
posted by richards1052
on Oct 22, 2007 -
9 comments
Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective Microsoft Employee writes: "The following has been making the rounds on just about every internal email list I belong to in Microsoft. Here it is to share a little insight with the rest of the world. Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. Any peek is a good peek." Let the
metavalanche begin.
posted by psmealey
on Jun 27, 2007 -
66 comments
A9 gets MS? Amazon's search tool / portal, formerly powered by Google, is now using Microsoft's
Windows Live search service. I first noticed when my image results went missing (which sucks, but I still use it for the
incentive program). Does this mean MS is shifting out of the half-assery phase of its search strategy? What happens when its
adCenter keyword program opens up? [
commentary]
posted by grobstein
on May 14, 2006 -
10 comments
NSA,FISA, and Privacy It is of course the president who finally approves of actions that may or may not be deemed legal but before 9/11, this is what he had been advised to consider "The largest U.S. spy agency warned the incoming Bush administration in its "Transition 2001" report that the Information Age required rethinking the policies and authorities that kept the National Security Agency in compliance with the Constitution's 4th Amendment prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" without warrant and "probable cause," according to an updated briefing book of declassified NSA documents posted today on the World Wide Web.
If this is the sort of reading you enjoy, then by all means dig about here:
But then Windows allowed NSA to have a sure access to your machine .
And by now we all know that
Google will fight the government on making its search data base available in order to protect your privacy.(Reality: to protect Google stuff). And if you worry about search engines tracking you and making data available,
then here is a workaround
posted by Postroad
on Jan 20, 2006 -
16 comments
The John Markoff of the New York Times
[registration required] reports that Google plans to roll-out a
text and file search tool code-named Puffin for finding information stored on PCs. The move is seen as a defensive one; Microsoft plans to include PC searching in its new operating system, scheduled to be released in 2006 (at the earliest).
posted by tranquileye
on May 19, 2004 -
7 comments
Google: the God that failed? is the title of the article on
MSN Slate. All of us know Microsoft is working on a new search engine technology. Till date everyone considers
Google to be
the Guru. MS obviously doesn't like that, so what it is doing? Well, the same thing it always does - to survive competition, eliminate it.
The reasons being given by the article are pretty silly and more aimed at 'faming down' Google.
posted by jayantk
on Jul 22, 2003 -
39 comments
Searching MSN for the phrase "Linux" yields some pretty amusing (but yes, unsurprising) results. The first site seems moderately legit - Amazon stuff related to linux. The second one - MSN has a tech section about Linux? Not exactly. It doesn't really have much linux content at first glance. The third link is most amusing - see for yourself.
Comparatively, a
google search for "linux" yields much more useful results.
This makes me wonder: should ethics be taken into consideration on search engines? MS has every right to have whatever they want come up when you type in "linux" - but they are willfully contaminating search results, which makes one wonder what
other search terms Microsoft might want to rig the output of, and also, which they might have
overlooked...
posted by twiggy
on Jun 30, 2003 -
44 comments
It starts with Delaware... Over at Google Answers, a Microsoft Games Studio employee has posted a most interesting puzzle to solve. Over the course of the last twenty
months a list of states has been gradually revealed by his boss, but under what criteria are they listed? He's giving $200.00 to the winner; just think of
what you could
buy. The fine folks at the
Straight Dope are already on the case. To the Googlemobile! [via
Cardhouse]
posted by thewittyname
on Aug 22, 2002 -
75 comments
Long Bets. SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--In 28 years, commercial airline passengers will routinely fly in pilotless airplanes. Sound ludicrous?
Not to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Craig Mundie, who recently bet Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt $2,000 that the prediction will come true.
This site is all about, well long bets. Oh, and it's all for charity.
posted by Zool
on Mar 26, 2002 -
10 comments
