Microsoft, Yahoo Reach Instant Messaging Deal – Yahoo! News
A Yahoo-Microsoft partnership, allowing users of the competing services to exchange messages seamlessly, would give the two companies nearly as many users combined as AOL has in total.
Vertical Search Engines Making Comeback
Vertical Search Engines Rising Again?
Healthline specializes in helping people get access to sophisticated medical information. It uses cutting-edge semantic search techniques to let someone with limited medical knowledge mine sophisticated medical data from a Web site. By way of example, the company says searching for “Blackberry thumb” yields useful results.
Microsoft, RealNetworks Reach Agreement
VOD + DVD = Killer App?
I would go for this. I would also go for the opportunity to buy a DVD of the movie I just saw in the theater on my way out the door. I’d probably own a lot more DVDs if I could do that.
Slashdot | Pay-Per-View to Provide DVD After Viewing?
Comcast is entertaining an idea that would allow digital cable customers to purchase a pay-per-view movie for roughly $17 that would also include a hard copy in the mail a few days later. From the article: “The only snafu in the entire idea is the fact that only 40% of Comcast cable subscribers have the required digital box at this point in time. But still, that is 40% of 21 million customers which is not too bad. DirecTV and Dish, are you listening?”
eBay Buys Verisign Online Payment Gateway
Verisign’s payment gateway will become part of PayPal.
eBay, VeriSign Strike Online Payment Deal
Online auctioneer eBay Inc. announced Monday that it plans to buy VeriSign Inc.’s payment gateway business for $370 million, as it looks to further secure transactions by eBay users.
Novell Releases Linux Usability Research
The research including videos, results, and some analysis is available at http://www.betterdesktop.org/ and is provides some insight into the usability of the OpenSuse. Developers and those lookng to migrate users to Linux desktops will find this data useful.
Novell Shares Linux Usability Research Videos
Novell Inc. released a large amount of primary desktop-usage research—including more than 200 video clips of users bumbling their way through unfamiliar computer interfaces—to the software development community Monday, as part of a new program aimed at making Linux desktops a more comfortable fit for users.
Oracle Scoops Up InnoDB
Oracle Scores Open-Source InnoDB Storage Engine
Oracle on Friday purchased InnoDB, the Finnish open-source database company whose add-on table storage engine for MySQL rivals MySQL’s own MyISAM in popularity.InnoDB Oy Inc.’s database engine isn’t stand-alone. It is distributed as part of the MySQL database. Moreover, InnoDB’s contractual relationship with MySQL is up for renewal next year.
DIY GPS Tracking on Nextel Phones
MAKE: Blog: DIY GPS tracking
Mod a GPS enabled Nextel and fauxjack yourself…or your car, or your kid, or a big dog, or an elephant. We really, really want to track an elephant. Mologogo is a free service that will track a “friends” GPS enabled cell phone from another phone(gps not required) or on the web. It currently works on pretty much any Nextel phone with Java and GPS – even a $60 no-contract Boost Mobile phone.
FreeCast: P2P Streaming Media
freshmeat.net: Project details for FreeCast
Freecast is a peer-to-peer streaming system that makes it possible to stream Ogg audio or video to a large number of listeners from a DSL connection. The client can be customized graphically, doesn’t require a user configuration step, and is updated at startup when needed.
PfP Studio: RAD for PHP-based web apps
freshmeat.net: Project details for PfP Studio
PfP Studio is a visual programming system for rapid application development of DHTML-based applications using PHP and Javascript. The front-end runs in a Web browser. It is intended to complement the skills of the developer rather than to mask out the base languages. Its objective is to implement reusable widgets in an easy-to-use front end.