Home / mashable.com rss archive / October-03-2007


Yahoo Upgrades Spam Filters to Completely Block eBay Frauds
Yahoo Mail will very soon be rolling out an upgrade in its email system to help block out spam email from those posing as eBay and PayPal. With the new technology, nicknamed “DomainKeys,” Yahoo will be able to verify the domain of the sender of the emails, which allows for ISPs to block those [...]

Veoh Search Now Powered by Pixsy
Veoh has signed a deal with Pixsy, which will now power its search for video and images on the video-sharing network. Real-time search results will now be available for Veoh users, and as Veoh has received quite a bit of funding this year and have seen a significant amount of growth, this is [...]

National Geographic Widgets Launch Soon
National Geographic has just launched a widget that can be placed on your blog or personal website. It brings you the incoming top news stories from National Geographic, including video footage and images. This widget was developed by Clearspring, and offers one-click submission to your various social networks, like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and [...]

Email Scam Crackdown Leads to Worldwide Arrests
A major crackdown on Internet financial scams has resulted in $2.1 billion in seized fake checks. This was an International effort, with aid from multiple English-speaking countries, including the US, the Netherlands, UK and Nigeria, where most of the scams actually take place. These scams entice people with spam email messages that offer [...]

The Boss Takes Over MySpace Music for Magic
Bruce Springsteen Tour RehearsalThe Boss himself has taken over MySpace music videos for an entire week to celebrate the launch of his official MySpace profile page. Bruce Springsteen has a MySpaceTV channel that’s playing some of his best music videos, and also features exclusive tour footage of the E-Street Band. But we all [...]

Amazon, Penguin & HP Search for Next Top Author
Amazon, Penguin Group and Hewlett-Packard have teamed up to bring us the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Starting November 5th, authors with an unpublished, English-language novel manuscript can enter their work for consideration. Submissions can be sent through CreateSpace, the self-publishing service which is part of the Amazon online family of properties. [...]

Geezeo Adds Motely Fool & More to Personal Finance Tools
Geezeo, the social site for keeping track of your personal finance, ad added automated aggregation of investment accounts from lots and lots (2,000 +) of brokerage firms, mutual funds and insurance companies. This makes Geezeo the first social finance site to offer account integration and aggregation for checking and savings, investments, credit cards, student [...]

Microsofts .Net Source Code: Look but Dont Touch
Microsoft is offering a look at its .Net source code to developers. There will be read access available through a stand-alone install, enabling developers to use a text reader of their choice, but no edits can be made to the code. The revelation of the .Net source code is primarily to offer developers [...]

Google Labs Graduates Public Transportation Feature
The public transit feature previously available only as a Google Labs offering is now completely integrated into Google Maps. Driving directions will remain the default setting for Google Maps but a new option entitled “Take Public Transit” will help users navigate via public transportation in select areas. Look at a sample route here.Google [...]

Verizon to Launch Rival to iPhone
Verizon has unveiled a new phone it thinks will kill the iPhone according to one of their executives. Dubbed The Voyager, the new device will debut in-time for the holiday season and offer a more traditional keypad, a 2-megapixel camera, 8GB of memory, and of course work on Verizons network, which is widely regarded [...]

O2 Partners with MySpace & Facebook for Mobile Access in the UK
O2, the UK mobile operator, is going to announce partnerships with MySpace and Facebook, giving its users access to these social networks from their mobile devices. O2 will also be launching a broadband service under its parent company Telefonica. This broadband service will launch October 15, 2007. The offering of multiple points of [...]

Sony Says: Copying Your Own CD is Stealing
More on the RIAA case of Capitol Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas: today’s portion of the hearing consisted largely of the continued testimony from Sony BMG head of litigation, Jennifer Pariser. As we saw yesterday, Pariser’s interests lie in the preservation of copyright holders’ protection, including Sony itself. She noted the [...]

Apple Offers Fix for QuckTime Malware
Apple has released security updates for the Windows version of Quicktime. You may remember that this particular Quicktime security flaw allowed for the handling of URLs in the qtnext field in files with QTL content. If these files were to be opened by a Quicktime user, an attack on the user’s computer would [...]

eBay Exec Warns Against Internet Taxes
An Internet tax ban, which was initiated in 1998 and has since been twice extended, is set to expire on November 1, 2007. eBay executive Brian Bieron warns that the imposition of taxes for Internet access will hinder e-commerce and affect many small businesses that operate online. The current Internet tax ban keeps [...]

Yahoo Gets Approval for BlueLithium; Is Googclick Next?
The Federal Trade Commission has given the green light to Yahoo’s purchase of advertising network BlueLithium. That’s a quick turnaround for regulatory approval - the $300 million deal was only announced about a month ago. Meanwhile, Google still awaits word on regulatory approval of its DoubleClick purchase, which was first announced back in [...]

Fake Steve Jobs Goes On Tour
Remember the guy that got called out for his Fake Steve Jobs blog? Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes, was revealed as the true author behind the popular satire blog, and now that we all know his real identity, he can go on tour to promote his upcoming book “oPtion$ : The Secret [...]

23andMe Adds Another $9 Million in Funding
23andMe, a company that makes tools for learning about your genetic information, has raised an additional $9 million in funding. The company is best known to Mashable readers as being founded by the wife of Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder. Google drew some scrutiny earlier this year when they used $3.6 million of company [...]

Google Challenges Kids to Build a Mobile Robot to the Moon
The X-Prize Foundation and Google want to send a mobile robot to the moon. The robot should be able to rove for at least 500 meters and send visuals back to Earth. With that criteria, they unveiled a $20 million contest dubbed as Google Lunar X Prize a few weeks ago. Now, the contest [...]

Amie St Facebook App for Your Fantasy Record Label
Amie St has launched a Facebook application, called Fantasy Record Label, that nicely ties in with existing Amie St accounts and gives you a good amount of functionality within the Facebook app. Using the same popularity system as you see on Amie St, songs that are lesser known are cheaper in price and will [...]

UC Berkeleys YouTube Channel Offers Full-Course Lectures
UC Berkeley is making full course lectures available online starting today. These courses will be distributed on YouTube and can be accessed here. Berkeley has over 300 hours of videotaped courses that can be found on the university’s branded YouTube channel on a variety of subjects, including chemistry, physics, biology, and search-engine technology, [...]

Competitive Bidding Lawsuit Against AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo
Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo…oh my! Each of these companies were recently sued for patent infringement concerning their respective “competitive bidding” platforms. Performance Pricing filed the suit for violation of a 1999 patent entitled “Systems and methods for transacting business over a global communications network such as the Internet.”The patent clearly illustrates a [...]

Amazons Dynamo Breaks New Ground
Amazon has just made available the documentation for Dynamo, the somewhat new key-storage system it’s using internally for the support of its online e-commerce solution. It’s been using Dynamo since early on this year, and will be presenting a paper on its technology at SOSP, the biannual Operating Systems conference. So why [...]

NBC Exec Heats Up Battle Against Piracy
NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker has made quite a statement regarding the issue of piracy today. As do all industry execs, Zucker wants piracy to stop. And for Zucker, a full-fledged, all-out war sounds like the best route to take. He’s calling for all industry execs, the government, Internet Service providers, search [...]

Competitive Bidding Lawsuit Against AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo
Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo…oh my! Each of these companies were recently sued for patent infringement concerning their respective “competitive bidding” platforms. Performance Pricing filed the suit for violation of a 1999 patent entitled “Systems and methods for transacting business over a global communications network such as the Internet.”The patent clearly illustrates a [...]

Slifeshare Relaunches Sharing Network
Atlanta based Slifeshare announced the release of additional features to their real-time sharing platform. The relaunch includes the ability to post notes through blogging, share various media from across the web, and also follow what applications your friends are currently using. Follow a screenshot tour of Slifeshare offerings here.Slifeshare is operating in [...]

SportBuzz Adds $3.2 Million in Funding
SportBuzz, which owns and operates Sportingo, has raised $3.2 million. The site features a heavy focus on popular international sports like soccer, formula one, and rugby, with much of the content produced by users. Sportingo also provides a detailed events calendar for sporting events around the world.This round of funding comes from Ingenious [...]

Threadless Gets Its Own Place
Threadless is one of those highly successful online ventures that took advantage of the power of online communities. It is a t-shirt site that solicits designs that are rated by its members. The winner gets a cash prize and bragging rights when it sees print. Their business is so successful for founders Jacob DeHart and [...]

Radar Offers New Content Notifications through AIM
Radar, the picture and video sharing service, has hooked up with AIM to offer users notifications of new content via instant message. By adding the user RadarNotifier to your buddy list, users can receive a real-time message whenever their friends add a new picture or video to their Radar account.With so many social networks [...]

Cosmpolitan Magazine Launches Mobile Version
Cosmopolitan Magazine is set to launch Cosmo Mobile to give its readers a quick fix of Cosmo wherever they are. Cosmo Mobile offers fun features like “Dude Decoder” for deciphering a guy’s actions or subtle non-verbal messages he’s sending. You can also use Cosmo Fake Call, a service that calls you and provides perfect [...]

The Internet IPO is Back: Constant Contact Soars in Wall St. Debut
Constant Contact, a provider of services for creating and managing email newsletters, debuted on the NASDAQ today. At the moment, shares are trading up an impressive 65% at more than $26 per share. The company is raising more than $100 million in the IPO.It might not be “Web 2.0,” but Constant Contact is [...]

More Previews of Adobes Online Photoshop Express
Adobe product manager Geoff Baum provided another peek of the company’s flash based Photoshop Express - an online offering initially announced in February 2007. Attendees of Max 2007 developer conference in Chicago were introduced to several unique functions of the consumer centric editing platform.Baum demonstrated the ability to quickly alter images within the program. [...]

Gmail Reaches 25GB of Storage; For Corporate Users
Google has doubled the storage on the corporate edition of GMail to 25GB. The company has also added enhanced security and spam filtering features from Postini, which Google acquired for $625 million in July. The corporate edition of GMail comes as part of Google Apps Premier Edition, the companys software suite for enterprise [...]

AIM 6.5 Goes Social; Is AIMPages Dead?
AOL has released version 6.5 of their popular instant messaging service, with a heavy focus on social features. The biggest new feature in AIM 6.5 is the Tunes Plugin, which allows you to stream music that your buddies have added to their playlist. It takes a similar idea to services like last.fm and [...]

Orkut Pulls All Advertising
Perhaps this is proof that social networking ads aren’t big earners: Google has pulled all AdSense ads from Orkut. They’re now calling the deployment of ads on the search engine’s popular social network a “test” run, and the decision to pull all ads suggests that the test didn’t deliver high returns.But lack of revenue [...]

Netvibes Universe - Now Available For Corporations, Too
Netvibes, one of the most popular personalized portals around (with strong competition from Pageflakes, iGoogle and others), has decided to expand one of their latest products, Netvibes Universe, enabling companies to use their technology to create a Netvibes Premium Universe and integrate it with their own website. Netvibes personalized portal is a place where you [...]

Zoho DB Launches, Beats Google Docs to the Punch
Author note: Apologies to Zoho for breaking the 6AM embargo on this one, but others have already done so.When the big G creates a product that competes with yours - in this case, a suite of online office applications - how do you compete? You either a) whimper in the corner and give up, b) [...]

SQL TOOLBOX: 20+ Tools and Lessons About SQL
SQL is all around us, but not everyone really knows its inner workings. We’ve gathered 20+ tools and lessons to help you learn all about it.Recommended: Piczo Stuff at Mashcodes!Share This

25+ Productivity Modules For iGoogle
We already know we can turn Netvibes into our personal office. Why not do the same with iGoogle, which is gaining popularity (and hundreds of new modules) very fast? We’ve assembled a list of over 25 productivity modules for iGoogle; take notes, send e-mail and SMS and review your daily schedule directly from your favorite [...]

Magnifys Custom Options Increase for Video-Sharing Channels
Magnify.net is launching its latest release, which lets you “curate” content for its video aggregating and sharing platform. What this amounts to is the ability to better control the content that’s shown on your Magnify network. There’s a new browser plug-in lets you grab videos as you surf the web, and currently [...]