For the Games, the digital revolution is armed with a double-edged sword — it has lured the younger generation away, but brings new opportunities.
A British actor who took her battle against her millionaire husband to the internet has been ordered to leave her New York home by a judge.
The video-sharing site YouTube will be allowed to mask the identities of individual users when it provides viewership records to Viacom.
A United States judge’s order to Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom has sparked an outcry from privacy advocates.
The 2008 US presidential elections are playing out in the glow of an internet that has come of age, and the impact was always certain to be profound.
China’s state media on Tuesday hailed Premier Wen Jiabao as the world’s sixth-most-popular politician on the social networking site Facebook — well ahead of United States President George Bush. Wen Jiabao’s profile was set up two days after he rushed to the scene of the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan province to oversee rescue efforts.
Democrat Barack Obama said on Saturday he had quit his long-time Chicago church after months of controversy over racially laced pulpit rhetoric that still threatens to tarnish his White House hopes. The Illinois senator said he and his wife, Michelle, were withdrawing from the 8 000-strong congregation of the Trinity United Church of Christ.
Barack Obama’s campaign on Friday tried to contain a new ”pastor disaster” prompted by a video of a Catholic guest preacher at his Chicago church mocking Hillary Clinton’s tears.In a sermon last Sunday, Father Michael Pfleger, a long-time ally of Obama, accused Clinton and white voters of believing she deserved to be president because she is white.
He has been a near-constant presence at hundreds of Barack Obama rallies across the United States over the past 15 months. David Axelrod, a melancholy, dishevelled figure with a drooping moustache, is Obama’s campaign strategist, and has overseen his rise from political obscurity to the verge of the White House.
David Budzinski was riding in a four-wheel drive across the Kruger National Park in South Africa in September 2004. His group spotted a few lions and a herd of buffalo near a watering hole, but it wasn’t long before the lions charged the herd, singling out a buffalo calf. What followed has become the stuff of internet legend.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, now in his 27th year as leader of the Arab world’s most populous nation, turns 80 on Sunday with no clear successor in sight. One of the oldest executive heads of state in the world, Mubarak leads a country where more than 60% of the population have never known any other president.
Ronaldo went into hiding on Tuesday after an encounter with cross-dressing sex-workers that prompted police to investigate whether to charge one with trying to extort money from the three-time Fifa player of the year. The AC Milan striker, in Brazil recovering from a knee surgery, cancelled two TV appearances, and local media said he will continue physiotherapy at his home.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston usually plays host to the world’s leading scientists, Nobel laureates and technological pioneers. But at the weekend it was overrun by more than 500 self-professed ”internet geeks”. They were attending ROFLCon, a web symposium which attempted to answer conundrums such as why so many people like watching animated hamsters dance.
A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged of the event, which occurred nearly a decade ago. Video of his ordeal was posted online to accompany an article in the April 21 edition of the New Yorker.
Sharon Sarmiento knew it was time to unplug when she realised she was blogging in her dreams and hearing imaginary instant messages. She is part of a new grassroots movement in which tech geeks, internet addicts, Blackberry thumbers and compulsive IMers are wresting back control of their lives by daring to switch off — if only for a day.
The internet company Google has defied predictions of economic doom by delivering a 31% surge in quarterly profits, which appeared to vindicate the company’s claims that people will continue searching the web in a recession. Google’s first-quarter earnings jumped from -billion to ,31-billion.
China on Thursday snubbed an apology from CNN over remarks by one of its commentators as a wave of verbal assaults on foreign media raised concerns over coverage at this summer’s Beijing Olympics. CNN’s explanation that a commentator was referring to China’s leaders — not the people — as a ”bunch of goons and thugs”.
Yahoo! will begin showing homemade videos on its online photo-sharing site, Flickr, in a long-anticipated move that may be too late to lure most people away from the internet’s dominant video channel, Google’s YouTube. Flickr’s video technology is the latest example of Yahoo! trying to catch up to Google in a crucial battleground.
The National Civil Rights Museum sits in what was the Lorraine Motel, just beyond the shadows of Memphis’s skyscrapers and the garish neon glow of Beale Street — the main drag made famous by the likes of BB King and James Baldwin. The first words of the first exhibit state: ”Protest against injustice is deeply rooted in the African-American experience.”
Paintings and sculptures long stored away are finding a new audience as museums strive for mass appeal with high-tech websites packed with video, podcasts and interactive elements. Moreover, these institutions are finding that rather than diminishing the number of museum visits, the web is actually boosting in-person attendance.
Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday admitted to being ”shaken” by a controversy over racial politics ignited by his pastor’s incendiary sermons. Obama, who gave a landmark speech about race in America on Tuesday, admitted in an interview with CNN that the matter had affected him personally.
As the internet goes mobile and companies such as Apple and Google find cool ways to embrace the trend, mobile market leader Nokia is rewriting its product development rulebook. Instead of working in secrecy and isolation, it wants to start sharing.
News Corporation and NBC Universal has begun offering free online television to the United States public through internet joint venture Hulu.com. The much-anticipated online service boasts a rich library of shows and films people can view old-fashioned television style — supported by advertising.
When rumours of a ”gay wedding” spread through the town of Ksar el Kebir, the only evidence produced was a video on YouTube of a man dancing in women’s clothes. Four people are now in prison accused of homosexual acts, Islamists are decrying a decline in morals and liberals are warning that the kingdom risks sleep-walking into extremism.
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/ 28 February 2008
Two University of the Free State students apologised on Thursday for their involvement in a racist video which has sparked a national outcry. RC Malherbe and Schalk van der Merwe said they acted without malicious intent, and expressed sorrow for the embarrassment they might have caused any individual or group.
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/ 26 February 2008
Pakistani internet service providers may have inadvertently blocked the popular YouTube website across the world on the weekend when they restricted local access to the site, a telecommunications official said. YouTube said on Monday that many users around the world could not access the site for about two hours.
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/ 24 February 2008
A 26-year-old engineer has been sentenced to three years in prison for creating a fake profile of the younger brother of Moroccan King Mohammed VI on the popular internet networking site Facebook. A court in Casablanca on Friday convicted Fouad Mourtada of ”usurping the identity of HRH Prince Moulay Rachid”.
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/ 2 February 2008
With a market value of -billion, Google’s power has become awe-inspiring. Its profits rocketed by 40% to ,2-billion last year and it swallowed the popular video-sharing website YouTube. Through Microsoft’s ,6-billion takeover bid for Yahoo!, the technology establishment hit back at Google’s seemingly unstoppable rise.
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/ 28 January 2008
YouTube on Thursday began making all of its videos available on the latest-generation cellphones as people increasingly shift to accessing the internet on the go. YouTube for Mobile lets people view any of the popular website’s videos, provided their cellphones can stream the data and are linked to a high-speed 3G network.
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/ 20 January 2008
The presidential primaries have thrown up almost constant shocks and surprises. But there is one thing that stunned everyone in politics: the unexpected impact of Chuck Norris. Of course, as many TV villains can testify, no one ever sees Chuck Norris coming. Or at least not until it’s too late. Then he kicks you in the face.
It may be a far cry from the millions of blogs active in the West, but Morocco’s blogosphere has taken off as the liveliest free-speech zone in largely conservative Muslim North Africa. The Moroccan "Blogoma", as it is called, is home to at least 30 000 sites.
An internet video accusing Australians of opposing Japanese whaling because of racism while brutally killing animals such as kangaroos and dingoes drew sharp government criticism on Monday. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith announced that Australia would deploy a ship to gather evidence for possible legal action.