Facebook's getting a face-lift soon

Social-networking site has a history of big modifications not going over too well with its user base, but it nevertheless will be redesigning profiles for a speedier experience.

Google: OpenSocial on Orkut is coming, we promise, pinky-swear

Google product manager Amar Gandhi announced in a blog post on Tuesday night that there have been "a couple of modifications" to the company's release of OpenSocial compatibility for its Orkut social network.

In other words, there appears to be some red tape. Instead of immediately rolling out the Orkut platform, which it was originally scheduled to do ...

Counting the chips in mobile computers

What do you want in a mobile computer?

How much performance do you want to give up for longer battery life? Would you buy a clunky mobile computer that can run anything you throw at it? If you're the envy of the digerati when you walk down the street ...

Opera mobile browsers swap Yahoo for Google

Opera Mobile is getting Google as its default search option.

(Credit: Opera)

Opera has switched out Yahoo and made Google the default search engine for its Opera Mobile and Opera Mini Web browsers designed for mobile devices.

In January 2007, Yahoo and Opera announced that Yahoo would be the default ...

Check It Out

If you haven’t added TheRoot.com to your regular reading of issues affecting black Americans, perhaps its time to start.
There’s some good stuff about Obama not attending Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union for the second time in a row; The Bush Family’s slave-holding past and the Blackness Diet.
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Photos: Jamming to an interactive beat

Playing music in bars has taken on a new meaning with Share, an open audio-video jam session that takes place weekly and is gaining volume from New York to Budapest.

Mobile photo-sharing company Tiny Pictures gets $7.2 million

Tiny Pictures, a company that operates a mobile media-sharing site called Radar, announced on Monday that it has pulled in $7.2 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by Valley stalwart Draper Fisher Jurvetson; previous investor Mohr Davidow Ventures also contributed.

Radar's service lets users ...

Apple seeks patent on MacBook trackpad power chords

Apple could be readying a notebook trackpad that lets you practice your Rock Band form while using your Mac.

A patent application unearthed by MacRumors.com seeks protection for multitouch technology similar to that introduced by Apple on the MacBook Air's trackpad. This time, however, MacBook users could use ...

Nokia demos bendable cell phone

Nokia and the University of Cambridge are showing off a new stretchable and flexible mobile device of the future called Morph.

(Credit: Nokia)

The new concept phone is part of an online display presented in conjunction with the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition underway through May 12 at the ...

A YBP Facebook Debate: Barack vs. Hillary pt. 1

(Reprinted and edited with the permission of Tahani Tompkins)
Tahani: What should I make of the whole “present” voting thing? Also why does Barack keep saying he didn’t vote for the war? It’s true that in 2002 he wasn’t in a position to vote for or against the war, right? Lastly, where can i go to [...]

House Democrats to Bush: No way on telecom immunity

The House of Representatives adjourns without approving a law granting telecommunications firms that violated federal privacy laws retroactive immunity from lawsuits.

Hitwise: Dating site visits up pre-Valentine's Day

Yeah, um, big surprise. The nauseating pink-and-red fever leading up to the holiday everyone loves to hate has resulted in higher traffic to dating sites, according to Web metrics firm Hitwise--and it's bigger than last year.

According to a Hitwise representative, dating site visits hit a peak shortly ...

Apple releases latest Leopard, 10.5.2

The latest update to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard dropped Monday afternoon, with fixes for several different issues.

Apple posted a support document on its Web site and began informing Leopard users through the Software Update mechanism that Mac OS X 10.5.2 is now ready for public ...

Apple plans 2GB iPod Shuffle, cuts price on 1GB player

Apple on Tuesday shuffled (har, har) its lineup of matchbook-size digital music players, announcing a new iPod Shuffle with double the storage space and slashing the price of its 1GB models to $49.

Apple dropped the price of its 1GB iPod Shuffle to $49 and said it'll start selling ...

Taking a Trip? How about The Road to Freedom

Man…I really wanted to post a rant about the foolishness of this ‘Black-Brown Divide’ mess that has consumed the nation with Barack’s campaign, but I didn’t want to immediately contribute to the negativity that has been spreading. The current primary of this country is a marvelous thing to witness, if not for the history it [...]

Net neutrality bill expected this week

A Democratic plan to give the FCC new Net neutrality authority over the Internet was rejected two years ago. Now it's back.

The mobile social: Not ready for prime time?

There's a reason why no mobile social-networking company has broken out yet. They haven't found themselves--on a map, that is.

Mobile networking, at least in the U.S., remains a limited extension of the social-media industry's biggest PC-based players: lighter, messaging-focused versions of Facebook and MySpace.com, ...

Nvidia dialing into mobile phones

Nvidia wants a piece of the exploding smartphone market, with its first major applications processor scheduled to arrive in phones next year.

The graphics chip company is showing off the fruits of its $357 million PortalPlayer acquisition with the APX 2500, its first attempt at building a true computing processor ...

Homeland Security seizes electronics and information at border

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus are suing the Department of Homeland Security over aggressive searches and seizures of travelers' property and information at U.S. borders.

As reported on BoingBoing:

ALC, a San Francisco-based civil rights organization, received more than 20 complaints from Northern California residents ...

Etiquette Tip of the Week: when I dip, you dip, we dip!

I have always balked at communal snacking . If I see a salsa sampling table at a grocery store, I pass. If there is a bowl of nuts on a bar, I scoff. Even if I host or am responsible for serving food, I try to provide individual serving options for things like dips, bread [...]

Recalling Rep. Lantos, who assailed Yahoo over China policies

Tom Lantos, a Democratic politician known in technology circles for calling Yahoo executives "moral pygmies" for their China policies, died Monday of esophageal cancer at 80.

Report: CNN citizen journalism site close to launch

CNN is close to expanding its "iReport" user-generated reporting initiative into a separate Web site, MediaWeek wrote Monday.

The new site, to be hosted at iReport.com, will be a repository for user-submitted news content--video, audio, and photos. Visitors can navigate through categories of news (like sports, weather, and politics), ...

Dell's Web site backing away from AMD chips

Dell has decided to stop selling most of its consumer notebooks that use Advanced Micro Device's chips on its Web site, promoting those systems instead through its new retail strategy.

There are still a handful of AMD notebooks available on Dell's site, but only one Insprion system targeted ...

Google releases new Android developers kit

(Credit: Google)

Google released on Wednesday a new version of the software development kit for its open mobile platform called Android.

The new SDK has a new user interface, a geocoder that lets developers search for businesses as well as translate an address into a coordinate and vice versa, support for new media codecs, and code that lets developers create layout animations.

One thing missing is change to the telephony package, laments one developer on the Android Developer discussion on Google Groups.

"This is very disappointing, especially because we were told in the Android coding day in Israel that the telephony package will be updated soon," the developer wrote. "We still cannot detect the ingoing/outgoing call number or send DTMF tones properly."

Prototypes of Android phones were shown at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. Google launched Android in November along with and the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 34 handset manufacturers, carriers and chipmakers that have said they plan to support Android products and services. Products are due out later this year.

Here are some screenshots, via the Hello Android blog:

...

Yes We Can

It’s Super Tuesday! Don’t forget to vote!



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Can Barry Diller tame the sprawl?

His plan to split IAC into five parts is the media industry's equivalent of buying a wedding dress and hoping to slim down to fit into it.

Guy in a mouse suit wins Super Bowl (ad, that is)

Doritos parent company Frito-Lay has been a proponent of the user-generated TV ad for some time now. Last year, it kicked off its "Crash the Super Bowl" advertising campaign, in which ordinary people (OK, ordinary people with nice cameras and video-editing skills) created ads for the cheesy chips and submitted ...

ARM plans Android demonstration at MWC

ARM plans to demonstrate prototype phones based on ARM processors and Google's Android operating system next week, possibly paving the way for the chip designer to join Google's Open Handset Alliance.

It won't be the first Android prototype to get a public airing, but this one will ...

Netflix picks Blu-ray, rattles HD DVD

If Warner Bros.' decision to go exclusively with Blu-ray Disc was an industry-rattling earthquake, Monday's news that Netflix would begin to phase out HD DVD rentals is an inevitable aftershock: much smaller impact, potentially damaging, and still leaves everyone feeling unsettled.

By the end of the year Netflix will ...

Of the Lovely Art of Arbitrage

Yahoo (YHOO) shares shot up 48 percent to $28.33 Friday morning on news of the $45 billion Microsoft Corp (MSFT) offer to buy the company. Microsoft’s bold move, many speculate, could create a combined entity better able to respond to the growing dominance of Google Inc. (GOOG) in web search and digital advertising.
Microsoft’s $45 billion [...]

Real ID could mean real travel headaches

A May deadline is just one flash point in a political showdown between Homeland Security and states that oppose Real ID demands.

Young, tech-savvy Obama supporters party in New York

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

NEW YORK--When it comes to a strategy for galvanizing young voters in the hours before the "Super Tuesday" primaries, a coalition of big-media outlets chose to throw an online and offline dialogue with candidates. A group of tech-friendly 20-somethings in New York decided the ...

Rumor: New MacBook Pros on the way?

With Apple's MacBook Air having reached store shelves, it might not be too much longer before the company updates the rest of its notebook lineup.

MacRumors notes fresh evidence--of sorts--that Apple is getting ready to launch revamped MacBook Pros in February. The site obtained screenshots reportedly from Best ...

GAO: Voting machines not to blame for Florida irregularities

With this year's presidential race in full swing, it's easy to forget about alleged electronic voting glitches that snarled at least one congressional contest in 2006.

But a report issued by government auditors this week is drawing new attention to what many computer scientists view as the perils ...

YBP Savings Tip

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The legislation behind a national ID

Federal regulations creating a uniform national ID card are looming. Read the full text of the relevant section of the law.

Tech issues a no-show at MTV-MySpace candidate event

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

NEW YORK--Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was the fourth and final presidential candidate to appear at the youth-focused "Closing Arguments" question-and-answer session, co-hosted by MySpace, MTV, and the Associated Press. And as with her predecessors--Republican candidates Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul and Democrat Barack ...

Lenovo, Fujitsu planning to use Intel's MacBook Air chip

The PC industry is wasting little time getting in line behind Apple to use Intel's spiffy new notebook chip.

Lenovo and Fujitsu plan to use the same Intel chip that helped the MacBook Air get so thin.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

CNET News.com has learned that Lenovo and Fujitsu ...

MPAA-opposed college piracy amendment vanishes

As the House of Representatives presses ahead with a sweeping higher-education bill that includes new antipiracy obligations for most universities, it now appears it won't be considering an amendment designed to clarify that schools can't lose federal financial aid for failing to fulfill those requirements.

By way of ...

“Dee”-lightful!

Last night Ruby Dee won the Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Female Actor in a Supporting role for her efforts in “American Gangster.” This might increase her odds of winning the Oscar later next month for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting role. Dee is the only African-American nominated for an Academy [...]

How Microsoft-Yahoo could shape social networking

Don't expect to see Microsoft-Yahoo trying to create the next MySpace. They're going to try to stake a claim to the ad market instead.

Inside MTV Studios, getting ready to 'Choose or Lose'

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

NEW YORK--There are red, white, and blue lights flashing everywhere and I think I might be the oldest person in the room; I'm in the Uptown Studio at MTV's Times Square headquarters for the "Closing Arguments" event co-hosted by MTV, MySpace, and ...

Report: iPhones piling up at AT&T stores

Is demand for the iPhone in America already starting to wane?

AT&T, the exclusive American carrier of the iPhone, activated just 900,000 iPhones during the fourth quarter, the company revealed during its earnings conference call Thursday. It wrapped up the year with "just at or slightly under ...

Rail gun uses kinetic energy to deliver Mach 5 wallop

(Credit: U.S. Navy)

The U.S. Navy is installing an electro-magnetic laboratory rail gun at its Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., bringing it one step closer to developing a ship-mounted version of this futuristic cannon.

The 32-megajoule weapon appears to be the largest rail gun ever built, according ...

Too White to Be Black

The story of Bluefield State College is an interesting one. For those of you who don’t know, the historically black college is also a predominantly white institution.
An employee recently sued the college saying that too many leadership positions are overwhelmingly white.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported,
“An employee of Bluefield State College has filed a [...]

Outside.in launches local-news discussion forums

As the demand for regional- and local-focused social-networking sites grows, the New York-based Outside.in introduces message boards for each "hyperlocal" community.

Crafty commerce site Etsy gets $27 million in funding

One of New York's most talked about tech start-ups these days is undoubtedly Etsy, the Brooklyn-based online marketplace for buying and selling handmade goods. And it's continuing to generate headlines: co-founder Robert Kalin announced in a blog post Wednesday that the company has picked up an impressive $27 ...

AMD's Q4 earnings improve, but not enough

While the raw numbers from AMD's latest earnings call are as gory as we've seen from the chipmaker this year, the bigger picture is more favorable.

AMD took steps toward--but fell just short of--profitability during its fourth quarter. On a net loss basis, the number is staggering: AMD ...

With Yahoo, Microsoft faces antitrust fight once again

File photo: Reporters set up microphones outside of the Microsoft antitrust trial in Washington, D.C.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/mccullagh.org)

Microsoft's proposed $44.6 billion purchase of Yahoo could subject the software giant to the kind of critical antitrust scrutiny from Washington it hasn't experienced in nearly ...

Healthy Eating

As we enter 2008, many of us are looking for ways to live healthier lifestyles. Along with exercise, a healthy diet is the key to controlling and maintaining our health.
But what do you do when you crave foods like pasta, bread and rice? How do you fit these items into your healthy diet? Try eating [...]