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Frenchman sues over Google Views urination photo

NANTES, France (Reuters) - A Frenchman took Google to court Thursday over a photo published online by its Street View application showing him urinating in his front yard which he believes has made him the laughing stock of his village in rural northwest France.

The man, who is aged around 50 and lives in a village of some 3,000 people in the Maine-et-Loire region, is demanding the removal of the photo, in which locals have recognized him despite his face being blurred out.

He also wants 10,000 euros ($13,300) in damages.

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Google’s New Privacy Policy Are You Freaked Out

We’ve known for a while that Google was consolidating its privacy policies into one main one (with a few product exceptions), and today is the day that this goes into effect. What it all boils down to is that Google can share the data it has about you from Google service to Google service. It’s not sharing anything new with outside parties, just among its numerous services. The way Google presents it is that it will allow the company to make its products better and more personally relevant to the user.

The whole thing has blown up in the media since Google first announced the changes. I haven’t heard too many people talking about it in casual conversation, but there’s no question that some are concerned, though I suspect the majority clicked to “dismiss” the little notification that Google has been showing users with little thought or concern. People have, however, been pretty vocal about it on Twitter.

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MSN-Owned Site Allegedly Sells Pirated eBooks

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Microsoft-owned website Cudo, was selling a 4GB ebook reader this week for $99 (Australian) – The Chinese-made device came with a CD preloaded with 4,000 books, most of which were pirated. Some of the pirated titles were the entire Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series. The Cudo e-reader deal has ended, after 2,317 of the devices were sold.

 

Cudo claims the none of the devices sold were actually shipped with the pirated books, all of which were initially listed on Cudo’s site. Cudo took this list down, but it can still be viewed in Google’s cache.

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YouTube Channels Get New Look March 7th

Time is ticking to update your new YouTube channel. YouTube unveiled its new channels look in December, but are trying to have everyone caught up by March 7th. The update includes new templates for channels and new features across the site to connect users with their favorite channels.

YouTube recommends the following checklist to get you up to speed

Featured Tab

Do you want a featured tab If so enable it by clicking “edit channel” on your channel page.
Choose the right publisher template for your featured tab. If you have upcoming Live events we recommend the Live template.
Do you want to include a video player on the feature tab

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iPad's Dirty Little Secret

In Round 1, starting two years ago, IT admins girded themselves to fend off security vulnerabilities along with possible data leaks that iOS devices were feared to be bringing into the enterprise. The reality is, in most large companies, worries outsized the realities as slick mobile management policies and procedures have done a lot to limit the damage iOS does.

Enter Round 2, however, and iOS devices, coupled with all manner of mainly Android tablets and smartphones, may be bringing the network to its knees.

"The iPad is a serious enterprise network issue -- it's just that most enterprises don't know it yet," said Perry Correll, senior technologist at wireless networking company Xirrus. "IT admins have been focused on device management. They have ignored the connection issues.

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Microsoft Google Bypasses Privacy Settings On Internet Explorer

Lately you have to imagine that Larry Page and the rest of the Google leadership wake up every morning and, before the grogginess of the morning has even flaked off, make a wish that there will be no more privacy controversies concerning the search engine company that day.

Well, hate to break it to you Google, but today will not be one of those days because the people at Microsoft have sniffed you out and now it’s starting to look like a Google pile-on.

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Eastern Europeans fuel fight for Internet freedoms

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Eastern Europe's tradition of political revolt has met the digital age. This time it's not communists or food shortages fueling fury, but an international copyright treaty that opponents say threatens freedom on the Internet.

A grassroots protest movement erupted last month in Poland and spread quickly across the former Eastern Bloc and beyond. The growing opposition against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, has raised questions about the fate of the treaty, which is important to the governments of the United States and other industrialized economies.

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Apple Sold More iOS devices in 2011 Than It Sold Macs in 28 Years

According to Asymco, Apple has sold 122 million Macs in the 28 years since they first hit the market. By comparison, Apple sold 156 million iPhones and iPads in 2011 along. In the last four years, the company has sold a total of 316 million iOS devices.

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Man Doesn’t Like Facebook Photo Tags, Sues

Mineapolis resident Aaron Olson really didn’t like the photos his uncle Randall posted on his Facebook Timeline. So, he sued for harrassment. Then lost. Then tried for an appeal. And lost again.

Randall Labrie posted reportedly embarrassing photos of Olson in front of a Christmas tree, and added snarky comments to the images. Olson didn’t take this too well, and filed a complaint, according to Newser. Olsen initially lost his case in a Minnesotan district court, and then moved on to the State Court of Appeals. There, Judge Natalie E. Hudson had this to say:

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Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - This week's revelations that Google Inc, Twitter and other popular Internet companies have been taking liberties with customer data have prompted criticism from privacy advocates and lawmakers, along with apologies from the companies.

They are the latest in a long line of missteps by large Internet companies that have faced little punishment for pushing privacy boundaries, which are already more expansive than most consumers understand.

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Plenty find love online.

(Reuters) - Half of American adults know someone who found love online, and while the Internet plays a more important role than before in starting relationships it is also a forum for cheating and lies that ends them, according to a survey released on Monday.

Released on the eve of Valentine's Day, the survey of 1,000 people commissioned by marketing consultant Euro RSCG Worldwide found one in five said they have had a romantic or sexual relationship start online. Forty-nine percent knew someone whose relationship began that way.

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iPad 3 debut once again rumored for March

Got a calendar and hopes for a new iPad? If so, you might want to pencil in Wednesday, March 7.

That's according to iMore (formerly Tipb), which citing "sources who have been reliable in the past," says that's the day Apple will be holding a special event to take the wraps off the iPad 3.

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Could Google Wallet be Google's next failure

Two-thousand and twelve was so supposed to be the year of the digital wallet. And Google was supposed to lead the way. But it looks like the Google Wallet app has gotten off to a bumpy start.

Six months after Google introduced Google Wallet, the app, enabled by near-field communications, or NFC technology, is still struggling to find carrier and device partners, as well as, retailers willing to support the new technology. And last week, the company temporarily took part of the Google Wallet application offline while the company figured out how to fix a security issue.


Could Google Wallet soon go the way of other interesting Google pet-projects like Google Labs, Google Health and Google PowerMeter? Those programs were all canceled after Google's CEO Larry Page said the company needed to focus on its core business and "put more wood behind fewer arrows."

"Google often jumps head-first into new projects, paddles around, and then decides whether it's worth staying in," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst covering mobile for Gartner. "I don't think Google would pull the plug on Google Wallet entirely, but they may be slowing down and regrouping."

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Chile social network shatters shyness barrier

You're madly in love but you just can't work up the nerve to let him or her know? Chile's social network Huntcha is out to blast through that great wall of shyness and hook people up.

It's been around for just a few months and already some 45,000 people have signed up -- perhaps some of them eyeing the celebrations for St. Valentine's Day on February 14.

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Apple seeks U.S. ban on Galaxy Nexus

Apple has requested a ban on sales in the U.S. of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, claiming that the showcase for Google's heavily touted Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Android operating system violates four Apple patents.

According to Florian Mueller at Foss Patents, Apple brought a motion for a preliminary injunction against the device on Thursday with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. A public, redacted version of the filing was made available late Friday, and the motion was filed simultaneously with a new federal lawsuit, Mueller reports.

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Google Records Revenue Record

It's still too early to tell whether Google's new Google+ social networking play will be a financial success, but the company itself didn't need it anyway as it broke revenue records in its second quarter of 2011.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) reported today that it brought in $9.03 billion in GAAP revenues in the quarter ended June 30, a gain of 32 percent from the same period in 2010, and a new record.

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Google Dominated U.S. Searches in January

According to new data from comScore, Google increased its share of the search market to 66.2 percent in January, up from 65.9 percent in December. Those gains came at Yahoo's expense; the struggling Internet company fell from 14.5 percent to 14.1 percent market share. Yahoo's piece of the market has been steadily falling for more than a year. Microsoft's Bing increased its market share slightly, climbing from 15.1 percent to 15.2 percent.

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Want a Job Learn Linux

A new study set to be released by career website Dice.com and the Linux Foundation paints a very rosy picture of the Linux job market.

Now the fact that the Linux Foundation is involved in this study means that it could potentially be seen as self-serving (but hey what PR isn't), but the trends are unmistakable. The survey found that the vast majority (81%) of companies were going to making hiring Linux people a priority for 2012.

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Facebook Enables Apps To Post Historical Actions To Users’ Timelines.

Facebook announced that Open Graph apps can now enable the posting of historical actions to users’ timelines.

In Facebook’s latest Operation Developer Love post on the company’s developer blog, Justin Moore writes, “Apps can post historical actions to help people fill out their timelines and/or queue up activity from an offline state. For example, a photo app can let people add photos from their past vacations to their timeline.”

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Apple launches new legal attack on Samsung phones

Apple Inc has asked a federal court in California to block Samsung Electronics Co Ltd from selling its new Galaxy Nexus smartphones, alleging patent violations.

In a suit filed last week in San Jose, Apple said the Galaxy Nexus infringes on patents underlying features customers expect from its products. Those include the ability to unlock phones by sliding an image and to search for information by voice.

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Google Mobile, social, cloud changing the way we work

As part of our Future of Work series running throughout February, we asked some experts to give us their take on how the way we work is going to change.

Google's Sebastien Marotte is responsible for leading sales teams across EMEA, developing business strategy and identifying new growth opportunities for Google Enterprise in the region.

He joined Google from Oracle where he was senior vice president of technology for the Asia Pacific region. Prior to that, he spent 15 years in sales management at Hyperion Solutions, subsequently acquired by Oracle.

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Facebook looks to mobile devices for revenue report

LONDON (Reuters) - Facebook, the social network giant, is set to begin showing advertisements to users on mobile devices before its $5 billion initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

Facebook has already discussed proposals with unidentified advertising agencies for displaying what it calls "featured stories" in the news feed seen by users on the site in an effort to tap a new source of revenue, the newspaper cited several people familiar with the plans as saying.

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Europe says aims to double e-commerce by 2015

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - European Union competition ministers supported plans on Friday to remove barriers to electronic trade in a bid to spur economic growth and jobs by expanding the single market to the digital world, officials said.

The European Commission has proposed a dozen initiatives to remove barriers and create a well-functioning digital single market, and the ministers gathered in the Danish capital responded positively to those plans, officials said.

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Can Verizon and Redbox bring down Netflix?

Telecommunications giant Verizon has announced it is teaming up with Coinstar’s Redbox DVD kiosk service to launch a new Internet-based streaming video service in the second half of the year. The move highlights the increasing importance of streaming video operations in the mainstream media marketplace, and at first glance a team-up between Verizon and Redbox would seem to have a lot going for it: both are widely recognized brands with strong customer bases, both are leaders in their industries, and they both have cash to sink into launching a major new service.

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Amazon Preparing To Launch A Retail Store

Amazon may be preparing to launch its very own retail store, according to a recent report. The company is apparently planning to launch a single store in Seattle, Washington, where Amazon is headquartered, sometime in the next few months. Amazon would use the store as a test case to determine whether a larger retail chain could be profitable.

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Twitter to restrict user content in some countries

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East.

"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter wrote in a blog post published Thursday.

It said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able to coexist with some countries. "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," it said.

Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with "certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content."

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Abusive working conditions at Apple exposed

LOS ANGELES - The New York Times published on Wednesday its second bombshell of a story on inhumane working conditions at Apple's Chinese manufacturers. So how will the world's most valuable company, notorious for its secrecy, respond?

So far, with silence.

The Times profiled Apple's extensive use of overseas manufacturers on Sunday, but after Apple's astonishing earnings report on Tuesday, the Times returned with a follow-up report far more damning than its previous one.

Reporters Chares Duhigg and David Barboza spoke with several former Apple executives, employees and other individuals who have worked with the company, many of whom detail, in the Times' words, the "human cost" of making products like the iPad.

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Facebook to file $5 billion IPO Wednesday

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook is expected to submit paperwork to regulators on Wednesday morning for a $5 billion initial public offering and has selected Morgan Stanley and four other bookrunners to handle the mega-IPO, sources close to the deal told IFR.

The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 picked Morgan Stanley to take the coveted "lead left" role in what is expected to be the largest IPO ever to emerge from Silicon Valley.

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Apple hires Dixons chief to drive global retail

LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc has hired Dixons Chief Executive John Browett, who revived the British electronics retailer by emphasizing customer service, to lead the iPad maker's global retail expansion.

Apple chief Tim Cook, making his first high-profile hire since taking the helm of the world's largest technology company, lured the well-regarded industry executive to fill a critical post once held by Ron Johnson, another outsider who left Target Corp to join Apple in 2000.

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Amazon announces lower profits and warns of loss

Online retail giant Amazon has announced a sharp fall in profits and warned about worse than expected results this year.

Net income for the three months to the end of December was $177m (£114m), down from $416m in 2010.

The fall came despite an increase in revenues during the period to $17.43bn, up 35%

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Steve Jobs Had Grand Plans For iPhone Camera

Steve Jobs believed that people should “Think different.” His vision for Apple has changed the way the world works. But, Jobs had plans just prior to his death to make a leap forward in one particular area.

Jobs didn’t just want to improve the camera on the iPhone, he wanted a completely new kind of camera altogether. To that end, he contacted photography company Lytro about the very different technology they were building into their products.

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New Yahoo! CEO promises action after poor quarter

Yahoo!'s brand new chief executive Scott Thompson promised urgent action to turn the company around on Tuesday after it reported another quarter and year of falling income and profits.

Thompson, named Yahoo! CEO only on January 4, said the web giant needed to move quickly to exploit its huge bank of user data to regain market share, especially in display ads where it has lost ground.

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Facebook Timeline: You’re Getting It, Like It Or Not

Facebook announced today that they will begin shoving the timeline down users’ throats. It’s being pushed to everyone over the next few weeks, and once you get it you have a week to make it presentable.

From the Facebook blog:

Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story. Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you’ll have 7 days to preview what’s there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else see’s it.

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Are Google’s Results Better Or Worse With Google+ Integration?

Earlier this month, Google launched “Search Plus Your World”. We’ll refer to it as “SPYW” to save time. The set of personalization features essentially equates to Google injecting a whole lot of Google+ into Google search results. This has been met with widespread criticism that continues two weeks later. According to a lot of the chatter going on, Google has lost the respect of a lot of users, and even some of its alumni.

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Apple Q1 Earnings Released, Biggest Quarter Ever

Apple just posted its earnings for its fiscal year 2012 first quarter.

Last quarter, Apple didn’t live up to analysts’ expectations, but the company still had a record September quarter. This quarter, they had the holidays, and this quarter, they blew estimates out of the water.

The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion. Expectations were closer to $38 billion in the revenue category.

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Pupils without internet 'disadvantaged in education'

An increasing amount of homework requires use of the internet

More than half of teachers believe that children with no internet access are seriously disadvantaged in their education, a survey has suggested. A fifth of the 585 teachers surveyed for the Times Educational Supplement and charity E-Learning Foundation said internet access was essential for pupil's homework. The charity also warned it was seeing support from the government cut. It is estimated two million children live in homes without internet access. An increasing amount of schoolwork, especially at secondary school, is dependent on computer use.

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Facebook surpasses Orkut as the most popular social network in Brazil

Brazil’s Facebook audience has close to tripled in the past year and engagement on the site has soared. The huge growth spurt has helped the site overtake Google-operated social network Orkut for the first time within the country.

In December 2011 Facebook attracted 36.1 million Brazilian-based visitors, an increase of 192% year-on-year. Orkut grew by just 5% over the same period, reaching a total of 34.4 million unique visitors in December 2011.

“Facebook’s rapid ascent in the Brazilian market has certainly been one of the most interesting stories to develop during the course of 2011,” said Alex Banks, comScore managing director for Brazil in a January 17 statement. “Brazil has always been a particularly social market and currently owns the fifth largest social networking population in the world. But despite the cultural affinity for

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Ebay report jump in its profits

eBay offices, San Jose, California eBay stressed the importance of its applications for mobile phones

The internet auction site eBay has reported a big jump in its quarterly profits. Net income for the last three months of 2011 came in at $1.98bn (£1.28bn), up from $559m in the same period last year. "We had a strong fourth quarter finish to an excellent year," eBay president John Donahoe said in a statement. EBay said its earnings growth was partly driven by a gain from the sale of its remaining stake in Skype.

 

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In 2011 there were 2.1 billion internet users

In 2011 there were 2.1 billion internet users around the globe surfing an estimated 555 million websites -- 300 million of which were created in 2011.

Asia’s massive internet population grew from 825.1 million internet users in June 2010 to 922.2 million in March 2011. Internet populations in Europe (476.2 million users), North America (271.1 million users), Latin America/Caribbean (215.9 million internet users), Africa (118.6 million internet users) and the Middle East (68.6 million users) saw comparatively modest growth.

Each internet user had on average just under 1.5 email accounts, amounting to a total of 3.146 billion accounts worldwide.

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Apple to Give a Lesson About Textbooks


Apple Inc. fans should have something new to cheer this week, but it's not likely to be the latest iPad or a TV.

While the notoriously secretive Apple remains mum about its education announcement Thursday at New York's Guggenheim museum, observers aren't expecting a new gadget. Instead, the company is expected to unveil textbooks optimized for the iPad and that feature ways to interact with the content, as well as partnerships with publishers.

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Facebook Open Graph Apps And Actions Finally Launch


Facebook finally announced the full launch of its new Open Graph, initially announced at f8 last year.

“The Open Graph has already had a significant impact on music, news, and video, but this was just the beginning,” explains Facebook’s Eddie O’Neil. “Starting today, developers can build apps that let people add anything they love to their Timelines – whether it is eating, traveling, shopping, running or taking pictures.”

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Twitter Activity At Work Up 700% In Past 14 Months


Take one guess what you’re coworker next to you is doing right now. If you guessed that they’re putzing around on Twitter, you’re probably right.

New research conducted by Palo Alto Networks, the network security company, reveals tremendous growth in use of social networks on corporate networks (i.e., at work) over the past year and a half. In fact, there has been a 300% increase in active social networking (this includes posting updates, app use, etc.) compared with the activity during the same period of time back in the latter half of 2010.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Out Against SOPA / PIPA


Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a message about SOPA and PIPA on Facebook today. He said:

The internet is the most powerful tool we have for creating a more open and connected world. We can’t let poorly thought out laws get in the way of the internet’s development. Facebook opposes SOPA and PIPA, and we will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the internet.

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Google Workers Caught ‘Vandalizing’ Open Source Maps


High-ranking members of the OpenStreetMap project — an open source mapping project that competes with Google Maps — have claimed that user accounts attached to a range of Google internet addresses in India have been maliciously tampering with its data.

Google said that two people behind the accounts were contractors using machines on Google’s network, but a spokesperson for the search giant added that these contractors were “acting on their own behalf.” The spokesperson also said that the contractors are “no longer working on Google projects.”

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Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance - Advertise on Yahoo! Search, Bing & adCenter

 
Google Getting Rid of Old Version of AdSense for Search

Google is retiring the old version of AdSense for Search and telling users to switch to the new version powered by Google Custom Search, which has been offered for a while.

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Report: Google Has Twice the Malware of Bing, Yahoo, and Twitter Put Together
Daily Malware by Source - Barracuda

According to a report released by Barracuda Labs, Google has twice as much malware than Bing, Yahoo, and Twitter put together. The study was conducted across these web properties over a two-month period.

Barracuda says it reviewed over 25,000 trending topics and nearly 5.5 million search results, analyzing them to identify the types of topics used by malware distributors.

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Google Launches New Product Search Ad Format with Product Extensions

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1bncLPxI3rU/TFCVYAD70HI/AAAAAAAAADY/96urxJ0v2zo/s1600/hammers.pngGoogle has announced a new advertising format for Google Merchant Center users. The format is based on the product extensions AdWords format that lets advertisers add specific product listings.

There is a difference with this new format, however. The format, which runs on Google Product Search, will show users products and prices without them having to click on a "plusbox" to expand the ad.

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Google's incredible dominance of the search market
To a person with poor eyesight, Yahoo, Bing, and just about every other organization trying to compete in the mobile search market might as well not exist.  New stats indicate that Google has an overwhelming lead, allowing it to dwarf competitors by comparison.

The graph below, which was constructed by Pingdom's bloggers using data from StatCounter, pretty much speaks for itself.  The bars corresponding to the mobile market shares of "Yahoo," "Bing," and "Other" just peek above the x-axis, and would be almost impossible to discern if not for the orange-on-black color scheme.

A post on the Royal Pingdom blog concluded, "If Google firmly believes that mobile is the future (which is the opinion of CEO Eric Schmidt), they are making all the right moves."

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Email Still Beats Social Networks for E-Commerce

A new report from Econsultancy suggests that email still beats social networks when it comes to marketing for e-commerce. The report says that over a third (37%) of consumers don't use a social networking site, and that those who have become a "fan" or "friend" of a company or brand online are still in the minority.

The report is based on a survey of over 1,400 U.S. consumers, which the firm calls "nationally representative."

While Facebook may think email is "probably going away," marketers are still having a great deal of success with it. And just as increased mobile adoption continues to fuel social media use, it's not exactly hurting email.
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10 Free Online Books for Web Designers

There’s a never ending supply of information out there for us web designers. If there’s something we need to learn, we can find it in one form or another. Sometimes it may be on a blog or it could be in a book. While you may have to shell our some money for a good web design book, there are a number of them out that have online versions that are totally free. Here are 10 you should find very useful.

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web

web design books

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web aims to teach you techniques for designing your website using the principles of graphic design. Featuring five sections, each covering a core aspect of graphic design: Getting Started, Research, Typography, Colour, and Layout.

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WordPress CMS Tree Page View

CMS Tree Page View is a plugin for WordPress that adds a CMS-like tree overview of all your pages, like the view often found in a page-focused CMS. It's  a very useful WordPress plugin that adds AJAX tree overview of all your pages in WordPress administration area.

Within this page tree you can edit pages, view pages, add pages, search pages, and drag and drop pages to rearrange the order. You can also choose to display tree on the dashboard through plugin’s settings page.

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52FrameWork Free HTML5-CSS3 Template

52framework is a complete tool to help you start building with HTML5 and CSS3 with the use of new tags, input fields, rounded-corner, text-shadows, etc. It includes a grid system and CSS reset (that is modified for HTML5).

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20 Best WordPress Ecommerce Themes

WordPress is a great platform for setting up an online store, and there is a wide range of themes available to help sellers reach target customers. This post presents 20 of the best ecommerce themes, including both free and premium examples, covering storefront templates aimed at a variety of niche markets.

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Is This Google Algorithm Update Costing You?

High rankings in Google search results are coveted by nearly all webmasters, but Google is constantly making changes to keep them on their toes. Actually, Google is said to make roughly one change per day.

One recent change in particular, however, has gotten some webmasters riled up. It's being referred to as "Mayday," and some claim it is costing them money.

Do you think the update has affected your revnue? Comment here.

Ex-Googler Vanessa Fox, who spoke on a panel with current Googler Matt Cutts at Google I/O last week, quotes Cutts as saying, "this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back."

She also says Google told her that it was a rankings change, as opposed to a crawling/indexing change. This, she says, "seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before."

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Yahoo Updates Image, Video Search With Visual Trends

If Carol Bartz's remarks about "pretty search" (made during the Yahoo Investor Day event) left you scratching your head, her company's acted quickly to clear up the confusion.  Today, Yahoo updated its image and video search homepages so that trending terms are represented with rows of pictures.

Five pages of images representing trending topics have been made available in each case, and it's possible to either click through the pages one by one or let them scroll automatically.  Then, by hovering over an individual image, a user can see what site it came from.  Current top sources include the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New York Daily News, YouTube, Yahoo Video, and Metacafe.

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Google Makes Buzz Available From More Mobile Devices

We'll let you judge whether this is a good or bad thing, but Google is not giving up on its Buzz service.  Today, in addition to introducing a "reshare" feature, the company decided to make Buzz available to people using many more types of smartphones.

You may recall that Buzz only worked with iPhones and newer Android devices when it launched.  Obviously, that left a lot of folks out in the cold.

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Joomla 1.6 Beta Now Available

1.6 Beta LogoThe Joomla Project is proud to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6 beta (download). IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a beta version and is not intended to run any type of production site. It is intended to be used for evaluation purposes only.

The following is the press release.

Joomla! 1.6 Beta Released – Download the World’s Leading PHP-based Content Management System and Easily Build Websites and Online Application

Click here to see our online training articles.

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How Relevant Are Homepages to the Web's Future?

Yahoo has a new advertising campaign going, which takes aim at Google. Will it help the company's market share? Bing has been taking a similar approach since its launch. While its share has done pretty well considering how new the "decision engine" still is, it's barely put a dent in Google's.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo is dropping $75 million to $85 million on the new campaign. A representative for Yahoo tells WebProNews,  "the $75-$85M spend range is a subset of the $100M Yahoo! announced last year."  The campaign is kind of an extension of that "It's Y!ou" campaign they launched last fall. "You" are still the focus. Take a look at Yahoo's new ad:

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Google Latitude Privacy Concerns

We're living in an increasingly open and revealing world where people are eager to tell you where they are, where they've been, and where they're going. Not everyone is so eager, but location-sharing is a rising trend that is not to be ignored. Naturally, the phenomenon will have a growing impact on search.

There is still plenty of room for conversation about what location means to search. Tell us what you think.

Remember when the industry was still trying to make sense of how social media and search fit together? It's now fitting together in a variety of ways, and now we're at a similar point with location and search.

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Google SERP - More Traffic for You

Now that the masses have access to Google's newly redesigned results pages, it's time to consider this in an SEO light if you have not already been considering it.

How do Google's New SERPs Affect SEO? Comment here.

Google has had its search options available for about a year, but they have not been in the face of the user like the newly redesigned SERP is. With this new design, users don't have any choice but to notice the options that are available. It's not too different from Bing or Yahoo in that respect (Danny Sullivan notes that Ask pioneered this design). The difference is that way more people search with Google on a regular basis (in fact, last month Google reportedly dominated the search market by even more than usual).

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Introducing Google Places

"Today (20 April 2010) the Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. Why? Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages — the way that businesses are being found today — with the tool that enables business owners to manage their presence on Google."

URL: Google.com/places

YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/GooglePlaces

Four million businesses have already claimed their Place Page on Google through the Local Business Center, which enables them to verify and supplement their business information to include hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons, product offerings and more. It also lets them communicate with customers and get insights that help them make smart business decisions.

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Joomla! 1.5.17 Released

The Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.17 [Wojmamni ama woobusani]. This is a priority release to correct two issues in version 1.5.16. Although there are no security issues fixed in this release, we consider it a security release because a security-related bug has been fixed and because many sites may be upgraded directly from 1.5.15 to 1.5.17.

The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community.

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Joomla! 1.5.16 Released

The Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.16 [Wojmamni ama busani]. It has been about six months since Joomla 1.5.15 was released on November 4, 2009.

The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community.

Click here to download Joomla 1.5.16 Full package

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Twitter Beating Yahoo & Bing

Twitter Does 19 Billion Searches Per Month, Beating Yahoo & Bing (Sort Of)

How many searches does Twitter handle per month? We’ve finally got a figure: 19 billion. That has Twitter doing over nearly five times the queries that Bing handles and about 20% of those that mega search star Google processes. But hang on. Even Twitter cofounder Ev Williams says the figures aren’t all apple to apples.

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Google Clickthrough Data

Google Showing Clickthrough Data In Webmaster Tools

We don’t know yet know if it’s a test or a permanent addition, but at least some webmasters are seeing clickthrough statistics in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts. We assume this is strictly organic clickthrough data. This appears to have been noticed first by Dutch search marketer, Karel Geenen.

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Google’s First Quarter 2010 Results

23% Revenue Increase

Google announced earnings, showing a 23% increase in revenue from the first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010. Google earned $6.77 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2010. Google’s operating income was $2.49 billion, or 37% of revenues and net income was $1.96 billion up from $1.42 billion the year prior.

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