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Elinor Mills Year:October 30, 2006 1:27 PM PST Source Site:newsblog
Yahoo recently talked with Time Warner about the prospect of acquiring AOL, according to an article in Fortune.
"Fortune has learned from multiple sources that Yahoo recently approached Time Warner (parent of Fortunes publisher) about buying America Online--essentially trying to jump-start talks that broke down a year ago," the report says. "A source close to Yahoo disputes that Yahoo approached Time Warner and says that there are no active conversations between the two companies." A Yahoo-AOL merger would be a "face-saver" for Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who lost out on a deal with AOL last year. For $1 billion, Google got a 5 percent stake in AOL and became its exclusive Internet search provider.
Fortune quotes an unidentified Time Warner spokesman as saying, "Time Warner has a new strate...
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Elinor Mills Year:October 30, 2006 12:11 PM PST Source Site:newsblog
Internet-based ad agency Spot Runner, which helps companies advertise on TV, has received a $40 million equity investment. The investors are WPP, Interpublic Group, CBS Corporation, Allen Co., Tudor Investment, Capital Research and Management, media executive Lachlan Murdoch, financier Vivi Nevo, Index Ventures and Battery Ventures. The money will be used to help Spot Runner refine its core local TV advertising service, expand its services and accelerate the development of next-generation ad platforms, the company said. Read the full story here.
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Michael Kanellos Year:October 30, 2006 12:04 PM PST Source Site:newsblog
If its good enough for the army, it should be good enough for your phone, figures Motion DSP.
The company, which came out of research conducted at UC Santa Cruz, has created a system that enhances the resolution of grainy video, like those taken with a cell phone. The technology basically takes information from several low resolution frames and combines them intelligently to make a more viewable video.
Software and imaging chips for better video have been a growing business for the past few years. Video--both from consumers and security cameras-- is exploding, but a lot of it is blurry and finding something on video remains a primitive art. Some of the notable start-ups include NuCore (imaging chips for consumer SLR and video cameras), 3VR Security (a search engine for security camera ...
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Daniel Terdiman Year:October 30, 2006 12:01 PM PST Source Site:newsblog
For anyone scared of dropping $250 for a Nintendo Wii, $399 for an Xbox 360 or $599 for a PlayStation 3 this holiday season, fear not: Sony wants to remind you that a perfectly serviceable video game console is still available for a mere $129.
Sony Computer Entertainment of America--which, coincidentally, is also releasing the PS3 on Nov. 17--said Monday that it plans a holiday release of a "silver edition" PS2 that will retail in the U.S. for $129. Canadians will pay $139.
The company did not say precisely when the new PS2 package--which sounds like itll be almost exactly like a regular PS2 except that itll be in a silver color--would be available.
It did say the package will include a PS2 and a "limited edition" silver DualShock controller. No games are included.
Still, at the same...
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Stefanie Olsen Year:October 30, 2006 11:41 AM PST Source Site:newsblog
It may seem obvious, but computers on Earth are much faster than those in space.
Thats why researchers at the University of Florida and Honeywell Aerospace said this week that they are developing a new, speedier PC for space missions, up to 100 times faster than current computing systems sent into orbit. If delivered as promised, NASA will test the computer on an unmanned ST8 rocket mission in February 2009.
"To explore space and to support Earth and space science, there is a great need for much more processing power in space," Alan George, an engineering professor at University of Florida and lead on the project, said in a statement.
The challenge for engineers will be to develop a PC with a protective layer that can repel cosmic radiation outside Earths atmosphere, while not slowing...
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Stefanie Olsen Year:October 30, 2006 11:39 AM PST Source Site:newsblog
In time for Halloween, NASA has captured an image of a snake-like cloud formation that appears to be slithering through the galaxy. The space agency said that the image, take by the Spitzer Space Telescope, depicts "the core of a thick, sooty cloud large enough to swallow dozens of solar systems."
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This image was sent out as an
animated gif in NASAs e-card.
Such clouds are so filled with dust that theyre normally invisible to optical telescopes, but Spitzers heat-seeking infrared vision can "see" the formation, which is located about 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.
Scientists believe that by studying clouds like this they can better understand how massive stars form. For example, yellow and orange spots in the image illustra...
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Rafe Needleman Year:October 30, 2006 10:53 AM PST Source Site:newsblog
Whenever I have a meeting in Palo Alto, Calif., I try to block some time before or after so I can indulge myself with a trip to Frys Electronics. I do the same when I fly to LA; theres a Frys minutes from the Burbank airport. Unevenly distributed around the U.S., Frys are the megamarts of tech. CompUSAs and BestBuys are big too, but they have sanitized, edited product selections. Frys feels like it has everything.
I would not actually buy a PC at this or any computer store; more current and factory-customized models are available online. But when you want to browse cases and power supplies to build your own PC, or scope out soldering irons, handheld GPS receivers, and the like, Frys is a great place to eyeball the goods.
Youd think a geek mecca like Frys would also have an online prese...
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Jonathan Skillings Year:October 30, 2006 9:15 AM PST Source Site:newsblog
Its the environmental equivalent of balloon payments on a mortgage: Countries may be saving money now with low spending on RD to address global warming, but the costs down the line will be enormous.
Thats the gist of a new report from the British government, which warns that rising temperatures could devastate the global economy, shrinking it by 20 percent if governments dont spend now to address climate change. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday in unveiling the findings from economist Nicholas Stern. ""For every 1 pound invested now we can save 5 pounds, or possibly more."
Acting now would require a modest investment of just 1 percent of global gross domestic ...
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Caroline McCarthy Year:October 30, 2006 7:25 AM PST Source Site:newsblog
Election Day in the United States is still a week off, but already troubling allegations of voting-related skulduggery are beginning to pop up.
This weekend, the Chicago Tribune reported that hackers broke into the Web site for the Election Commission in DuPage County, Ill., and made some not-so-nice modifications to the list of voter qualifications.
According to the Tribune article (registration required), the DuPage County site code had been hacked to indicate that homosexuals were barred from voting.
Officials changed the text of the site back, but the site was subsequently hacked again to read, "Your grandfather must have voted"--a throwback to Jim Crow laws in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
As of now, the source of the hack remains unknown.
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David Carnoy Year:October 28, 2006 11:55 AM PDT Source Site:newsblog
commentary A few years back, I wrote a blatantly sexist column entitled "Taking the sting out of the whip," which addressed the then-relatively new phenomenon known as Wife-Acceptance Factor, or WAF for short. The idea for the column came to me when a couple of junior editors on the Electronics team commemorated my getting hitched by creating a mockup of Fully Equipped with the title changed to "Fully Whipped" and tacking it to my office door. As a headline, they wrote: "Honey, is it all right if I spend $50 at Best Buy?"
Today, WAF is one of those dirty little secrets of the electronics world, and its both openly discussed and rarely talked about, because its now integrated into the DNA of so many products. Its not always called WAF, because, after all, not everyone is married, but its...
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CNET News.com Staff Year:October 28, 2006 10:36 AM PDT Source Site:newsblog
Been missing the radio? Heres a good deal on an MP3 player that also features an FM tuner.
What: Samsung YP-F2JX 512MB portable MP3/WMA player with FM tuner
How much: $59.99
Shipping: $6.99
Where: Crutchfield.com (via CNETs Deal Exchange)
When: Through unknown date
Click here for product overview.
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