Yahoo! Gets A Face Lift - Nobody Seems To Care?

It's a slow news day when the biggest story seems to be Pee-wee Herman's press conference featuring his first tweet... so it surprised me to see that only one of the feeds I regularly check, BBC.co.uk, was reporting on the refresh of the Yahoo! portal and a $100 million global ad campaign to support it. Has Yahoo! fallen so far out of the public's attention that it can't even attract a little link love from the blogoshpere? Good luck with that ad campaign Yahoo!

BBC story here.

Video game fever

The BBC has an interesting article about researchers in the UK that have developed a video game that sends shocks into volunteers players who are being studied in an attempt to understand how the brain reacts to fear. "The forebrain is active during periods of anxiety, and helps coordinate escape strategies to avoid the threat.. .But when the computer game predator moved nearer, blood flow switched to the midbrain. The midbrain is a primitive area of the brain, and it controls gut-level reflexes such as the decision to fight or flee" said Dr Dean Mobbs of University College London. An MRI machine is used to follow the flow of blood in the brain as it reacts to danger and the prospect of getting shocked! I don't know why but I kept hearing "Pac-Man Fever" in my head while I was reading this article!

UN website hacked

The BBC is reporting that a group of hackers has defaced the United Nations (UN) website in what is being called a "cyberprotest". The group placed slogans on the site in a place reserved for statements from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. The slogans accused Israel and the United States of killing children and urged that they make peace not war. The site was taken down for repair.

Universal to test DRM free music sales

BBC is reporting that Universal Music will try DRM (digital rights management) free music sales from August to January "and analyze such factors as consumer demand, price sensitivity and piracy in regards to the availability of open MP3s." This is certainly an about face for the music industry and hopefully a step in the right direction. Perhaps the music industry is finally getting it! 50 Cent, the Black Eyed Peas, and Amy Winehouse are all artists signed to the Universal label. Google, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.com are said to be participating in the experiment.

Black Hatter demonstrates webmail - Wi-Fi vulnerability

Here is a story from the BBC that comes from the current Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. According to the report, Robert Graham of Errata Security has developed tools that allow hackers to sniff traffic on public Wi-Fi networks and intercept cookies that an unsuspecting web-mail user may be passing from their laptop to their web-mail host. The information contained in the cookies could allow the hacker access to the user's web-mail or social networking site's account but would not likely allow them the ability to change passwords, as this often requires knowledge of the current password. To quote an 80's TV classic, "Let's be careful out there!"

Debate raging in Britain over fight videos

The BBC News is reporting that the Association of Chief Police Officers in Britain is criticizing online video sharing sites for allowing content depicting young people engaged in violence. "We would question who is in a financially better position to police the likes of YouTube - those in the private sector, who are earning huge amounts of money, or police forces which are currently having to stretch budgets." said Deputy Chief Constable Brian Moore. YouTube said in it's defense said that it did not employ anyone to police what is posted, but relied on it's site visitors to decide what was questionable and report it. Further, they claimed pre-screening content is a form of censorship which is not the role of a private company. It's natural that nobody wants to openly take responsibility for this sort of thing and considering the shear number of video posted daily, is it reasonable to expect YouTube or any other video sharing site to filter content? This is the same argument that YouTube has had with the big TV networks over copyrighted materials, only in this case it's not money at stake but young lives. I agree that the police have their hands full, the real question is where are the parents of these kids?

Russian download site does shuffling act

Controversial Russian music downloading site allofmp3.com (404 error) has closed it's doors only to reappear as mp3Sparks.com. allofmp3 was subject of much debate especially during the World Trade Organizations talks regarding Russia's potential membership into the organization. The parent company of allofmp3, MediaServices, was subject of a number of lawsuits brought on by recording companies and their associations while the Russian government was being attacked for allowing it to operate. MediaServices has maintained that it pays royalties to a Russian licensing body and that it warns users from other countries to heed their local laws. The move to close down allofmp3 is being considered as a minor victory but one that holds little meaning if the service is able to resurface under a new name. BBC News story here.

Whistle blower draws filesharing investigation in Scotland

The BBC is reporting that a Honeywell plant in Motherwell, Scotland has been raided by police and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) after receiving an insider's tip that thousands of illegally copied music files where being housed on company equipment and shared by employees. BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said in a statement that failure to put an anti-piracy policy in place "could expose the company, and the employees concerned, to the risk of civil proceedings or a criminal investigation." Honeywell says it has a policy in place and is cooperating with the investigation. I wonder how many companies have even considered such policies? Universities certainly have addressed this, so are the music associations now turning their sites towards companies rather than individuals? If policies are in place, how many companies are really enforcing them?