Technology news on Jan 31

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Taking Twitter Seriously (Mark Evans)

Twitter can be easily dismissed as IM-Lite or a tool for people with short attention spans but, interestingly enough, it is also starting to gain traction as a serious communications tool for people to communicate about serious stuff...like politics.

CSR and Motorola announce intention to form EGPS Forum to advan

CSR and Motorola today announced that they intend to create an open industry forum to evaluate and foster enhanced Global Positioning System (EGPS) technologies. When used on a mobile device, EGPS technologies augment GPS to provide timely and accurate position information in demanding environments. ...

Venture-Hedge Hybrid Closes Fund

IPO is only one day in the life of a company, says San Francisco-based Crosslink Capital.

Instapaper, A Beautifully Simple Bookmarking Tool (MG Siegler/ParisLemon)

Instapaper, a new site by Tumblr employee Marco Arment, simply put will easily be one of the websites I visit most this year. It may very well be the easiest and most beautifully minimal bookmarking site ever created.

Indian outsourcing sector hit by Internet disruption

BANGALORE, India (AFP) - India's vital outsourcing industry, which relies heavily on the Internet, struggled to overcome supply disruptions Thursday after damage to undersea cables in the Mediterranean. ... Internet connections may take up to 15 days to return to normal,...

EA Announces Facebreaker

Exclusive -- check out a new cartooney boxing franchise for PS3, 360 and Wii.

Battle Concussions Tied to Stress Disorder

The study is the military's first large-scale effort to gauge the effect of mild head injuries that some experts worry may be causing a host of undiagnosed neurological deficiencies. ... About one in six combat troops returning from Iraq have suffered at least one...

Amazon Earnings Call Details: Web Services Use Up More Bandwidth ... (Erick Schonfeld/TechCrunch)

Amazon earnings just came out. The company had a strong fourth quarter, with revenues up 42 percent to $5.7 billion, net income doubling to $207 million, and free cash flow doubling as well to $1.4 billion.

Rating Burner Debuts With RSS Feed Ranking, Growth Stats (louisgray.com)

There's precious little that bloggers like to do more than measure their own statistics, and gauge how they're doing, relative to the rest of the blogging community. And there's similarly precious little that smart Web developers …

Amazon Web Services: Bigger Than Amazon (Josh Catone/ReadWriteWeb)

Web retailer Amazon announced their fourth quarter earnings today and included some interesting figures on the state of their distributed computing products. Namely, web services bandwidth now accounts for more bandwidth than all of Amazon's global web sites combined.

'Spider' spotted on Mercury

Scientists puzzle over new image of crater, troughs Scientists poring over the first closeup pictures of Mercury in almost 33 years say they're rediscovering a "dynamic" planet brimming with features they've seen nowhere else in the solar system. ... Scientists puzzle...

Fresh from New York: Trends in online advertising (Julie Ruvolo/VentureBeat)

Silicon Alley technologists and Madison Avenue advertising executives have been meeting yesterday and today at the AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC conference. Here are some of the trends people were talking about:

Microsoft doesn't recommend creating Vista 'Lite' (Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

Frustrated with Vista's sluggishness, some people have been turning to a utility called vLite, that strips out components of the operating system deemed unessential. — Although the move does offer frustrated Vista users an option …

The Race for the Ultra-Lightest

The race to build the world's most portable laptop can get ridiculous. Companies will build computers that fit on one knee, with screens little bigger than an iPhone's -- all for the sake of having the "world's smallest laptop." ... Companies will build computers that fit...

Garmin announces the nuvifone (Joshua Topolsky/Engadget)

That's right folks — Garmin has just announced its new iPhone-like smartphone, the nüvifone. The device features full browsing, PIM, phone and of course, GPS functions. It's an HSDPA, quad-band phone, also equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth …

EBay's tweaks to feedback system aim to improve buyer experience but sellers worry about fraud

EBay Inc. says it's changing its user-feedback system to keep buyers from leaving, but the plan has sellers worried they'll no longer be able to weed out untrustworthy shoppers. ... Buyers and sellers have been able to rate each other at the online auctioneer since its...

Study: Mercury from vaccines disappears quickly from blood

Mercury from vaccines seems to disappear rapidly from the blood, returning to pre-vaccination levels in one month, according to a small study of children in Argentina. ... The findings bolster the argument that a mercury-based vaccine preservative does not cause autism...

Skype arrives on the PSP along with firmware update 3.90

As promised, Sony finally brought Skype onto its craved handheld but there's a slight problem: the installation procedure is quite complicated.[more]Announced at this year's CES, Skype's arrival onto the PSP platform is one of the major additions in ... As promised, Sony...

Astronauts improve space station's crippled power system; shuttle problem could delay flight

Two astronauts pulled off a riskier and trickier-than-usual spacewalk Wednesday, replacing a failed electric motor and giving the international space station a much-needed power boost. ... Shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said his team will review the problem again...

Dell plans to close mall kiosks in U.S., keeping focus on stores

Dell Inc., which has been pushing its computers into more retail stores, said Wednesday it will close its 140 shopping mall kiosks in the United States. ... Dell now sells computers and other devices in more than 10,000 stores around the world, including Wal-Mart Stores...

PSP Finalizes Relocation Plan and Revises Guidance for Fiscal Y

PSP is an established industry leader in the production, distribution and sale of high-performance and high-quality safety products for the defence and security market. The Company today issued a revised forecast for its fiscal year 2008 ending June 30, 2008. These statements are not guarantees of future ...

First Quarter ended December 31, 20

0175 per share which will be paid March 31, 2008 to shareholders of record on March 14, 2008. Earnings in the Casting and Extrusion segment were down as a result of slow sales in the large mould business and lower margins in our extrusion die businesses. Such forward-looking information and statements ...

Mediterranean Cables Cut, Disrupting Communications (Camilla Hall/Bloomberg)

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — Internet and telephone communications across the Middle East and India were disrupted after two submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean Sea were cut. — Six ships were diverted from Alexandria port …

comScore Releases 2007 U.S. Internet Year in Review (comScore)

Google and Facebook among Biggest Winners in 2007 — comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report highlighting the major trends in U.S. Internet activity in 2007 …

Copy a CD, owe $1.5 million under "gluttonous" PRO-IP Act (Nate Anderson/Ars Technica)

Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work.

News flash to reporters and analysts: Apple doesn't do loss leader products (Carl Howe/Blackfriars' Marketing)

I read two articles this morning from mainstream news sources that made me realize most people writing about Apple don't really understand its marketing and how it sells its products.

Mercury is shrinking, volcanic

WASHINGTON -- The first pictures from the unseen side of Mercury reveal the wrinkles of a shrinking, aging planet with scars from volcanic eruptions and a birthmark shaped like a spider. ... By SETH BORENSTEIN AP SCIENCE WRITER This image provided by NASA shows: "The...

Flight Makes Emergency Landing After Co-Pilot Has Breakdown

An Air Canada flight en route to London had to make an emergency landing after its co-pilot apparently suffered a nervous breakdown, according to the Daily Mail.

Google Universal Search: 2008 Edition (Danny Sullivan/Search Engine Land)

It's just over a half-year since Google launched Universal Search, its method of blending results from its own various topically-focused or “vertical” search engines. Since that time, the system has evolved. In particular, Google Universal Search …