China has announced new rules to control the explosion of audio-visual content on the internet, in a move seen as an effort to transfer the government’s television- and radio-censorship model to websites. Only state-controlled entities will have the right to operate websites that post audio-visual material under the new regulations.
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/ 31 December 2007
The wife of a top sports anchor on Chinese state television has created a buzz in the blogosphere by crashing an Olympic media event — to publicly accuse her husband of adultery. A video clip of Zhang Bin’s wife, Hu Ziwei, commandeering a microphone at a presentation of its coverage plans was easily one of the most viewed items on a Chinese video site on Monday.
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/ 26 December 2007
Online social-networking websites saw their ranks swell and values soar in 2007 as everyone from moody teenagers and mellow music lovers to mate-seeking seniors joined online communities. Seven out of the 10 hottest topics that triggered Google internet queries during the year involved social networking.
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/ 18 December 2007
Social networking websites saw their ranks swell and values soar this year as everyone from moody teenagers and mellow music lovers to mate-seeking seniors joined online communities. Google’s freshly released <i>Zeitgeist 2007</i> reveals that seven out of the 10 hottest topics which triggered internet queries during the year involved social networking.
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/ 15 December 2007
Google is working on a new internet encyclopedia that will consist of material submitted by people who want to be identified as experts and possibly profit from their knowledge. The concept, outlined in a posting on Google’s website, poses a potential challenge to the non-profit Wikipedia, which has drawn upon the collective wisdom of unpaid, anonymous contributors.
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/ 5 December 2007
<i>News24</i>, the breaking news service in the 24.com stable, has become South Africa’s first website to record more than one million unique South African visitors in a month. But is <i>News24</i>’s achievement an indicator that South Africa is more digitally developed than previously believed?
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/ 5 December 2007
Technology and entertainment topped Google’s searches in 2007, with the iPhone grabbing the number one slot on a list of the fastest-rising search terms in the United States. ”iPhone, of course, is a word very few people typed in a search box in 2006,” said Marissa Mayer of Google. ”It didn’t exist.”
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/ 30 November 2007
Time spent watching television will rise faster than leisure time spent on the web until 2012, while a major audience for internet video could take even longer to develop, consultancy Bain & Co said on Thursday. The data could be sobering to TV networks and web media companies, which are investing heavily in internet video sites.
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/ 27 November 2007
The information superhighway could become clogged with data by 2010, forcing broadband users to revert to dial-up modems, according to a new study. The report predicts that unless more than -billion is invested in the global internet infrastructure, a level of gridlock will develop that will make it almost impossible to use rich-media sites.
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/ 24 November 2007
Video-sharing website YouTube is refusing to filter out threatening material, despite calls for more restrictions in the wake of the school shooting in Finland. Pekka-Eric Auvinen (18) used YouTube to publicise his plans to attack his high school in Tuusula, hours before he killed eight people and then shot himself.
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/ 24 November 2007
Australian Prime Minister John Howard cast his ballot in national elections on Saturday, hoping voters would reject a younger opposition leader offering generational change and return him for a fifth straight term. ”I hope we will win. I believe we will win. It is in the hands of my fellow Australians,” Howard told reporters.
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/ 21 November 2007
German authorities closed a secondary school in the west of the country on Tuesday after being warned of a plan to carry out a massacre, in the latest of a string of violent plots believed to have been hatched by students in internet chat rooms.
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/ 20 November 2007
No prizes for guessing the least popular and most hassled men at Camp Striker near Baghdad. That would be the staff at Magic Island Technologies, who last week switched off the camp’s free wi-fi internet access. It may surprise to some to know that there is any internet access at an army camp inside a warzone.
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/ 13 November 2007
The Finnish teenager responsible for a school massacre last week in which eight people were killed was in direct contact with an American pupil who has admitted planning a similar shooting spree near Philadelphia last month, a lawyer for the United States boy confirmed on Monday.
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/ 11 November 2007
He is a former governor of Arkansas from a town called Hope. He has a nice line in campaign humour and speaks like a Deep South preacher. He is also running for president. But this is not Bill Clinton of 1992. This is Mike Huckabee, a long-shot Republican contender for the 2008 White House who has burst into the leading pack of the race.
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/ 10 November 2007
Pekka-Eric Auvinen, a student in the year above, came strolling along the corridor. The teenagers glanced at the familiar figure and carried on chatting. ”He walked towards us calmly and slowly … He lifted his arm. He pointed the gun at me and started shooting. The dude just pointed it at me and fired.”
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/ 7 November 2007
At least seven people died when a gunman opened fire at a school in southern Finland on Wednesday, hours after a video was posted on YouTube predicting a school massacre. A teacher at Jokela High School said the gunman was one of its pupils. Three people were wounded in the shooting, according to early reports.
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/ 26 October 2007
It is interesting why so few of us use one of the breakthroughs of recent years: the ability to search the web from wherever we are with a cellphone. This ought to be hugely empowering. There are a number of reasons why this hasn’t happened and why it may be about to change.
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/ 23 October 2007
It’s the conundrum that faces all television personalities broadcasting live: how to deal with hecklers trying to disrupt the show. Do you try to reason with them? Or do you do what the American talk show host Bill Maher did — jump into the audience, threaten the hecklers with an ”ass kicking” and scream ”Get the fuck out of my building!”
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/ 20 October 2007
Philippine police confirmed on Saturday that military-grade explosives caused a powerful blast in an upscale Manila shopping mall and that they were reviewing security camera footage to look for suspects. The Glorietta mall blast at lunchtime on Friday killed nine people and wounded 120, although many of those wounded have been discharged after treatment.
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/ 17 October 2007
Like a gourmet chef who rarely eats out, Google feeds advertising services to hordes of other businesses while skimping on its own marketing. The recipe has been extremely fruitful. While the internet search leader has sold more than -billion in advertising since 2001, Google has become a household name without buying expensive ad campaigns.
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/ 16 October 2007
Google has introduced a long-promised video filtering system for its YouTube website. The system is designed to help owners of copyrighted videos crack down on pirated versions distributed over the video-sharing site. The tracking and identification system was developed in response to complaints by large media companies.
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/ 16 October 2007
Environmentalist lawyers are threatening to sue Apple in 60 days if the iconic United States company doesn’t make iPhones greener or warn buyers of toxins in the devices. The Centre for Environmental Health sent Apple notice on Monday after Greenpeace released a scientific analysis of how Earth-friendly iPhones are.
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/ 11 October 2007
Online video search service <i>blinkx</i> took on <i>Google</i> with the launch on Wednesday of a video advertising platform to challenge one released by the internet giant a day earlier. The <i>blinkx</i> AdHoc platform lets people embed ad-laced videos in their websites and then share in advertising revenues.
Lewis Hamilton’s bid to become Formula One’s first rookie world champion remained on track on Friday after stewards cleared him of blame for a collision in Japan last weekend. ”No penalty is imposed upon him,” they said in a statement. The 22-year-old McLaren driver met stewards at the Chinese Grand Prix to review video footage of a collision during the rain-soaked Fuji race.
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/ 21 September 2007
Born 10 years ago, the Google internet search engine has grown into the electronic centre of human knowledge by indexing billions of web pages as well as images, books and videos. On September 15 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two 24-year-old Stanford University students, registered the domain name of ”google.com”.
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/ 21 September 2007
Thailand is seeking to block clips on YouTube that accuse the chief royal adviser of masterminding last year’s bloodless coup. The government, which lifted a five-month ban on YouTube in August after it agreed to block clips deemed offensive to King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was seeking a court order to block two video clips.
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/ 20 September 2007
It seems one cannot, after all, do movies, gaming, education, business and music on Telkom’s broadband offering. The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled against Telkom’s "Do Broadband" advertising campaign in which it promises consumers that they can do all of the above internet activities using a one-gigabyte broadband package.
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/ 13 September 2007
YouTube, online job applications and homework help sites have boosted demand and contributed to lines for internet access at United States public libraries, yet a new survey finds the majority have no immediate plans to add computers. For many library systems, the buildings simply do not have enough room, for example.
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/ 5 September 2007
Japanese electronics maker Casio said on Wednesday it will launch a series of digital cameras specially designed for YouTube, the blockbuster video-sharing website. The new Exilim series has four models, all installed with a function to shoot and save videos in the best form to upload on YouTube, the company said.
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/ 3 September 2007
Australian Prime Minister John Howard used YouTube on Monday to sell an Asia-Pacific leaders summit in Sydney this week, ahead of expected protests against global warming and the Iraq war. Organisers anticipate violent demonstrations at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit, which will be attended by 21 leaders including United States President George Bush.
A new email urging recipients to watch a video of themselves on YouTube actually directs them to a fake site that infects their computers and turns them into spam machines, security experts have warned. A hacker group known as ”Storm Botnet” began dispersing the emails over the weekend.