Welcome Back.

""Owning Performics thrust Google into an uncomfortable position because the service devises technical tricks to highlight Web sites among the nonadvertising results of searches. That part of Performics' business threatened to break Google's long-standing vow not to allow cash to influence the order of the so-called "organic" links featured in the center of its results page.

Landing near the top of the first search results page is prized because it can bring hordes of traffic without costing any advertising dollars.""

Read the rest here
via Seattletimes.nwsource.com

""WASHINGTON - A government report says money lost in Internet crimes hit a new high last year, approaching about $240 million. The FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center say the number of Internet scams dropped slightly from previous years, but the total lost jumped by $40 million. The report says more men than women filed complaints saying they were scammed. The average loss for men was $765 and for women, $552.""

Read the rest here
via CBC.ca

""Researchers in the United States and Singapore have developed a fully functioning silicon integrated circuit that can be bent, stretched and folded. Traditional circuits are made on thin, rigid silicon wafers, but building on the concept of accordion bellows, the researchers in Illinois and Singapore have transformed the technology into a stretchable form, opening the possibility of applications in medical monitoring.""

Read the rest here
via cbc.ca

""Google is planning a conference call with journalists on Monday to discuss a company filing with the FCC regarding the use of unused portions of the TV spectrum band, known as white spaces. On the 11:30 a.m. EST call will be Rick Whitt, Google's Washington telecom and media counsel.

Technology companies want to be able to use the spectrum between the TV channels for Internet access, and the FCC is considering opening up the white spaces for use by unlicensed Internet devices. But broadcasters oppose the move, saying it will cause interference.""

Read the rest here
via News.com

""Google Inc. is a year into its ground-shifting strategy to change the way people communicate and work.But the initiative to reinvent the way that people use software is running headlong into another new phenomenon of the information technology age: the unprecedented powers of security officials in the United States to conduct surveillance on communications. Eighteen months ago, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., had an outdated computer system that was crashing daily and in desperate need of an overhaul. A new installation would have cost more than $1-million and taken months to implement. Google's service, however, took just 30 days to set up, didn't cost the university a penny and gave nearly 8,000 students and faculty leading-edge software, said Michael Pawlowski, Lakehead's vice-president of administration and finance. U.S.-based Google spotlighted the university as one of the first to adopt its software model of the future, and today Mr. Pawlowski boasts the move was the right thing for Lakehead, saving it hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual operating costs. But he notes one trade-off: The faculty was told not to transmit any private data over the system, including student marks.""

Read the rest here
via Calgary.ctv.ca

""Largely unnoticed by the public, botnets have come to inundate the Internet. On a typical day, 40% of the 800 million computers connected to the Internet are bots engaged in distributing e-mail spam, stealing sensitive data typed at banking and shopping websites, bombarding websites as part of extortionist denial-of-service attacks, and spreading fresh infections, says Rick Wesson, CEO of Support Intelligence, a San Francisco-based company that tracks and sells threat data.""

Read the rest here
via USAToday.com

""Regardless of how the first trial of a person accused of illegally sharing music online turns out, the record industry plans to keep suing listeners for a while.

"We think we're in for a long haul in terms of establishing that music has value, that music is property, and that property has to be respected," said Cary Sherman, President of the Recording Industry Association of America, which coordinates the lawsuits.

Some 26,000 lawsuits have been filed starting in 2003, but the case against Jammie Thomas, a mother of two from Brainerd, is the first to go to trial. Many other defendants settled by paying the record companies a few thousand dollars.""

Read the rest here
via wcco.com

""WASHINGTON–The Supreme Court on Monday handed Microsoft Corp. a defeat by refusing to rule on the software giant's request to halt an antitrust suit against it.

The suit was brought in 2004 by Waltham, Mass.-based Novell Inc., which said in court papers that Microsoft "deliberately targeted and destroyed" its WordPerfect and QuattroPro programs in order to protect its Windows operating system monopoly.

Novell alleged that Microsoft targeted the programs because they could run on alternative operating systems and therefore could enable alternatives to Windows to gain market share.""

Read the rest here
via TheStar.com