olip - Slashdot User

A new search engine for audio and video 0

Submitted by on Wednesday November 28 2007, @03:47AM

An anonymous reader writes "There's a new search engine called SeeqPod oriented to audio and video. According to its website, "SeeqPod is the home for playable search results."

The interface is clean and the search is pretty effective (I've tried Sergio Mendes and Santana Smooth so far). The music and videos come from crawling the web and from submissions.

It looks pretty nice indeed and legal, according to the FAQ. Let's hope that the freedom of linking to resources prevails (RIAA, I'm looking at you.)"

EU convicts Miscrosoft of Abusing its Monopoly-> 0

Submitted by

KevinColyer

on Monday September 17 2007, @03:39AM

KevinColyer writes "The BBC is reporting that 'Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (£343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute.' Following a probe in 2004 that Microsoft had pushed out rivals in server software and media player software. Today 'The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position'. Microsoft have 2 months to appeal the verdict.

Is the EU finally showing it has teeth?"
Link to Original Source

HSI to reconsider its vote on OOXML-> 0

Submitted by

ens0niq

on Thursday August 30 2007, @05:39AM

ens0niq writes "Mr János Kóka, Minister of Economy and Transport, has sent a mail to György Pónyai, General Director of Hungarian Standards Institution (HSI), about its the Hungarian vote on OOXML issue. In this mail the minister informed the director, that the IBM Magyarországi Kft (the Hungarian subsidiary of IBM) signed concerns about the way how the Hungarian vote was decided on the OOXML issue (draft of ISO/IEC DIS 25900 standard) on the meeting of the Committee on 25th June 2007. As known, the meeting was organized breaking the internal rules of HSI on decisive meetings. The invitations for the meeting were not sent to the parties in time, then the voting rules were changed by the secretary of the Committee so that only the 50% of the votes is enough for a decision instead of the 2/3 lied down in the original rules. Because of these circumstances, the counterinterested parties were not able to vote on the meeting, therefore the official Hungarian opinion on the issue is "yes" for OOXML as ISO standard. However because of these anomalies, the minister has ordered HSI to restore the juridical situation, and repeat the vote on 31th August 2007. Since then, new members have been inaugurated to the committee of the HSI, where the only requirement of membership is a fee of 100-200 euros. Many of the new members seem to have tight relationships with Microsoft."
Link to Original Source

Microsoft admits buying Swedish OOXML votes-> 0

Submitted by ath on Thursday August 30 2007, @02:58AM

ath writes "In an interview with the swedish magazine NyTeknik , a Microsoft representative admits to "recommending" business partners to vote on OOXML.
Translated quotes from the article:
-We have been informing our business partners about the process at SIS. What is going on, what the time plan is and that Microsoft thinks it is good if OOXML becomes a standard
-In a letter from Microsoft, our business partners were informed that they were 'expected' to participate in the SIS meeting and vote yes. As a compensation they would get 'market benefits' and extra support in terms of microsoft resources.
-This was a mistake and the letter was sent by a single employee on his own initiative without sanctions from Microsoft. He also quickly realised his mistake and tried to recall the letter
-I can understand the critique about coup like voting. But I claim the voters knew the issue well and had their own interest in OOXML becoming an ISO standard
(Interviewer) -Has this harmed Microsoft?
-Time will tell. But almost all customers we have been talking to thinks it would be good if OOXML became an ISO standard."
Link to Original Source

WD Scorpio Drive, 250 Gigs For Notebooks-> 0

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Wednesday August 29 2007, @07:24PM

MojoKid writes "2.5" mobile hard drives don't get nearly as much coverage as their more common 3.5" counterparts, but there have been significant advances made in this space that warrant some attention. Western Digital, for example, has released a high-capacity 250GB 2.5" SATA hard drive, the Scorpio WD2500BEVS, that sports a few proprietary technologies dubbed WhisperDrive, ShockGuard, and SecurePark, that improve the drive's acoustic profile, power consumption, and durability. And despite being a 5400RPM drive, its performance characteristics put it well ahead of most other 2.5" drives with similar spindle speeds and just behind a full-sized desktop hard drive running at 7200RPM. With hard drive speeds being the limiting performance factor in many instances, a drive like this could make for a worthwhile notebook upgrade."
Link to Original Source

Free the fonts! 0

Submitted by on Wednesday August 29 2007, @02:04AM

An anonymous reader writes "Web pages are limited to using a few fonts issued by Microsoft a decade ago — this is Microsoft's forgotten monopoly. CSS describes how to link to font files from web pages, but no browser support this for common TrueType files. In an article on Alistapart Håkon Wium Lie, the father of CSS, argues that the time is right for web fonts. Truetype files are freely available, the TrueType format is universally supported, and the first implemenatation (Prince) has arrived. Demos provided."

AOL bids for TradeDoubler, the biggest European af

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2007, @10:27AM

An anonymous reader writes "Time Warner's AOL has offered to buy TradeDoubler, a Swedish online marketing company, for about $900 million in cash. AOL announced the bid in a press release early Monday.
However, AOL likely will have to raise its offer after Alecta, a Swedish pension-fund manager and TradeDoubler's largest shareholder, rejected it, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
TradeDoubler's board supports the deal, and holders of about 20% of TradeDoubler's stock have already pledged their shares, the press release from AOL said.

And here is an interview with Martin Lorentzon, TradDoubler co-founder. Her is an extract: The Internet has survived dotcom booms and dotcom bubbles and is now on the verge of a second boom while at the same time been threatened by a net neutrality bill in the USA. Where do you think the Internet is headed?
I think there will not be a second bubble. The major difference compared with the year 2000 is that the business models now are very solid, companies earn real money, the revenue/cost structure is under control and the people in the world want to spend a lot of time on the Internet."

Skype founders develop media streaming technology.

Submitted by

[RnP]Venom

on Tuesday January 16 2007, @10:10AM

[RnP]Venom writes "It appears that after selling Skype to Ebay for a billion-plus dollars, Janus and Niklas, who founded Skype, haven't been resting on their laurels. As reported by ZDNet, and the International Herald Tribune", they have been hard at work developing a new TV streaming application called Joost. With as little as 6,000 people currently testing the project details are a bit scarce, but if it does remotely as well as their Phone/IM success, it could be a real treat."

10 advanded RSS tricks

Submitted by

Stan Schroeder

on Tuesday January 16 2007, @09:18AM

Stan Schroeder writes "By using so called "RSS Mixers", applications that let you blend several RSS feeds into one, it's possible to achieve some interesting results. These ten RSS tricks include creating your own self-maintained community site, tracking new versions of your favourite software, and monitoring the results of a Google or Yahoo search."