Internet search engine leader Google on Wednesday said it had offered up to -million to settle a lawsuit by advertisers who accuse it of overbilling them through ”click fraud”. Google Associate General Counsel Nicole Wong stressed that ”until the settlement is approved by the judge, it is not final”.
A San Francisco man with a knack for numbers has come up with a formula to help United States wine lovers figure out when a vintage is a bargain. QPR Wines compares critic reviews and retail price data to reveal which bottles are steals and which are rip-offs, according to its founder, Neil Monnens.
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/ 16 February 2006
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered California to reformulate the lethal-injection method used to kill condemned inmates, saying the original might be unconstitutionally painful. United States District Judge Jeremy Fogel refused to stop the February 21 execution of Michael Morales in San Quentin State Prison, but ruled it can proceed only if a quick-killing drug cocktail were used.
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/ 8 February 2006
Google married its e-mail and instant messaging services on Tuesday in a union designed to streamline online communications. The Silicon Valley-based Internet search giant introduced Gmail Chat, which allows users to quickly start instant message conversations with people they are e-mailing.
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/ 1 February 2006
Google said on Tuesday that fourth-quarter profits surged 82%, but its shares took a battering in after-hours trading because the figure was below Wall Street expectations. Google’s earnings were hurt by a higher-than-expected tax rate, sending its shares plunging as much as 19% in after-hours trading.
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/ 25 January 2006
Steve Jobs, the man who gave the world Apple computers and iPods, is poised to take a seat of power in Walt Disney Company’s magic kingdom. Apple-founder Jobs will get a spot on the Disney board of directors as part of a deal announced on Tuesday by Disney to buy Pixar Animation for ,4-billion.
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/ 22 January 2006
Apple’s grand switchover to Intel processors was originally planned for summer 2006. Yet Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the opportunity at the recent MacWorld Expo in San Francisco to announce that the iMac would come equipped with dual-core processors from Intel effective immediately.
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/ 21 January 2006
A legal stand-off between the United States Justice Department and internet search giant Google has added fuel to an already heated debate over the government’s right of access to potentially personal data. Google has decided to oppose a government subpoena to turn over records on millions of its users’ search queries.
Microsoft released a security fix for a recently discovered flaw in its Windows operating system several days early, in a bid to foil hackers trying to exploit the vulnerability. The software giant released the security ”patch” on Thursday, ahead of its original plan to distribute the update on January 10.
A new security flaw exposing hundreds of millions of Windows PCs to easy infiltration by hackers worsened over the New Year weekend, with Microsoft failing to issue an official patch on Monday. The flaw stems from the way the Windows operating system treats image files.
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/ 13 December 2005
New maps show that the Earth is rapidly running out of fertile land and that food production will soon be unable to keep up with the world’s burgeoning population. The maps reveal that more than one-third of the world’s land is being used to grow crops or graze cattle.
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/ 6 December 2005
Nearly two years after Nasa’s twin rovers parachuted to Mars, a Jekyll-and-Hyde picture is emerging about the planet’s past and whether it could have supported life. Both Spirit and Opportunity uncovered geologic evidence of a wet past, a sign that ancient Mars may have been hospitable to life.
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/ 6 December 2005
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, is tightening submission rules after a prominent journalist complained that an article falsely implicated him in the Kennedy assassinations. Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St Petersburg, Florida-based website, said on Monday.
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/ 18 November 2005
United States internet search giant Google saw its stock price surge to new highs on Thursday after launching an online service that challenges classified-advertising sites such as eBay and Craigslist. Google Base is an online service enabling people to advertise freely anything from apartment rentals to used sporting goods.
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/ 13 November 2005
Cars usually hit wild animals on rural roads, but a motorist in California had a deer slam into him just as he was checking his car for signs of an animal collision, the highway patrol said. Robert Brooks was driving about 45km from San Francisco at dusk on Tuesday when he swerved to miss a deer.
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/ 2 November 2005
Microsoft on Tuesday announced online versions of its Windows operating system and other popular software programs, hoping to defuse a growing threat from Google and other fast-moving challengers. With Windows Live, Microsoft hopes to create a new platform that will unfasten some of its applications from a computer hard drive.
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/ 26 October 2005
Google is testing technology that would expand its online empire to include internet auctions and classified ads, the company said on Tuesday. The internet search leader and stock market darling made the announcements after researchers uncovered sample web pages on the company’s internet site.
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/ 25 October 2005
A disgruntled buyer of Apple’s hit miniature music player the iPod Nano is suing the company for knowingly selling a defective product and is hoping to turn his case into a class-action lawsuit, according to reports on Monday. The suit was filed last week by Jason Tomczak, who bought an iPod Nano in September.
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/ 19 October 2005
Two men at the centre of one of the sporting world’s largest drug scandals were sentenced to prison terms on Tuesday by a United States federal court judge on Tuesday. Judge Susan Illston sentenced Victor Conte, founder of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), and Greg Anderson, who served as a personal trainer to Barry Bonds, to penalties of four months and three months in jail respectively.
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/ 11 October 2005
Championships were created to bring together the best players from around the globe. They have turned into an annuity for the world’s top-ranked player. In the year Tiger Woods won his 10th major championship, his play-off victory on Sunday over John Daly in the American Express Championship was his 10th world title since this series began in 1999.
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/ 10 October 2005
In a phenomenal display of power between golf’s two biggest sluggers, Tiger Woods outlasted John Daly in the American Express Championship because of a one metre putt. Woods made up two shots over the final three holes on Sunday to force a playoff, then won on the second extra hole when Daly three-putted for bogey from 4,5-metres on the 16th, badly pulling his short par putt.
Yahoo chairperson Terry Semel belittled rival Google’s recent efforts to expand beyond its leading internet search engine, describing the diversification as a haphazard attempt to catch up with his company. ”So far they don’t seem to have a plan, but maybe they do,” Semel said on Thursday.
A new video-enabled iPod is expected to be unveiled by Apple Computer during a press conference next week — though the maverick company is masterful at foiling such predictions. Apple e-mailed invitations that included the words ”One more thing …” printed over a background photo that appears to depict theatre curtains.
United States internet giant Yahoo! unveiled plans on Monday to take on its arch-rival Google with the launch of an ambitious and controversial online library of tens of thousands of classic books. Google last year unveiled similar plans but later suspended them amid fierce opposition from publishers and traditional libraries.
Google wants to connect all of San Francisco to the internet with a free wireless service, creating a springboard for the online search-engine leader to leap into the telecommunications industry. The company filed an application on Friday to provide a wireless service that would enable anyone in San Francisco to connect to the internet.
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/ 29 September 2005
In an embarrassing public-relations glitch, Apple on Wednesday admitted a flaw in its new iPod nano music players, saying that a small number of units have screens that could crack easily. The announcement sent shares of the company down by about 5% at one point on Wednesday when they touched ,70 from ,44.
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/ 27 September 2005
Google will stop boasting on its home page about the number of web pages it has stored in its index, even as the online search engine leader continues a crusade to prove it scans substantially more material than its rivals. The company planned to remove the index size late on Monday.
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/ 22 September 2005
United States health officials are considering an unprecedented plan to stock homes with antidote kits in the event of a bio-terror attack, the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed on Tuesday. The feasibility of home antidote kits could be tested in the city of Seattle in the Pacific state of Washington, said Von Roebuck of the CDC.
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/ 3 September 2005
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to ”kill” internet search leader Google in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive ”like wolves”, according to documents filed in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals. The allegations were filed on Friday in a Washington state court.
Google really started talking on Wednesday. The internet search titan unleashed Google Talk, an instant messaging program designed to unify the factionalised world of online chat, according Georges Harik, director of ”Googlettes,” or new products, at the United States company.
Computer wizards on Monday launched an online battle of the brains for cash and a chance at a career with United States internet search powerhouse Google, the company said. The qualification round of ”Code Jam 2005” commenced with geeks testing their programming prowess in a virtual tournament designed to uncover brilliant minds, said a Google official.
A computer worm targeting corporate networks with the Windows 2000 operating system arrived less than a week after Microsoft warned of the security flaw. As experts predicted, the Windows hole proved a tempting target for rogue programmers, who quickly developed more effective variants on a worm that surfaced over the weekend.