Results tagged “google” from Birmingham Mail - Technobabble

Internet giant Google today won the latest round of a legal tussle over trademarks in which luxury goods retailer Louis Vuitton is fighting to prevent search engines using protected brand names.

Louis Vuitton has already won a French court action, successfully claiming that Google acted illegally by allowing other companies to use the Vuitton names as a key search words for adverts on Google.

But today, in an interim legal "opinion" in the EU's highest court, an Advocate-General said Google had not infringed trademark rights by allowing advertisers to buy keywords corresponding to registered trademarks.

Internet giant Google today announced it is developing a new operating system for laptop computers in a move seen as a strong challenge to Microsoft's dominance.

The new technology is being designed for those that "live on the web" and is initially aimed at netbooks, although it will eventually be used to power full sized desktops as well.

Google said the new operating system (OS) will run through its nine-month-old web browser, Chrome, and the company said it was going "back to basics" with the technology.

I've been having problems each time I try to log out of my hotmail account from my home computer.

On every occasion I was getting the following message:

"Signing out

You're signing out of the following sites:

MSN Account Services

https://ssl.facebook.com/accept_token.php

If we can sign you out of a site, appears next to its name. If we cannot sign you out of a site, appears next to its name.

If we couldn't sign you out of a site, click Try Again to try signing out again.

When you're done, click Done."

(I've posted both image and text in case people searching need help finding the solution)

I've discovered it's solved by deleting all private data from your internet browser (except saved passwords).

Does make you wonder what's causing it though - it seems lots of people are having the same issue, and as it was solved by deleting cookies etc, it seems to suggest it's something nasty which has been downloaded.

Given Facebook's obsession with giving access (see blog below) to all and sundry to ALL your private data, and given the hotmail error message specifies facebook, who's to say that popular social networking site isn't responsible?

I've raised it with the Hotmail technical bods and I'll report back if they come up with a reason why this is happening.

Privacy campaigners have made a formal complaint about Google's controversial new mapping service, it was disclosed today.

Privacy International has lodged the complaint with the Information Commissioner over claims that a number of people are identifiable through the Street View service.

The application allows users to access 360-degree views of roads and homes in 25 British towns and cities and includes photographs of millions of residential addresses, people and cars.

IT is the internet phenomenon that is sweeping the planet as satellites take a long, long look at our streets.

But one man was caught short by the spy cameras - as he took a leak at the side of a busy Birmingham road. He thought he was having a crafty pee away from prying eyes but now has a worldwide audience.

Google's new Street View cameras, mounted in roving cars, found him in full flow, and in broad daylight. The shot was taken close to the city's Aston Expressway, and has become an overnight internet sensation.

Our mystery man is just one of dozens captured in compromising situations by the camera cars trawling the streets.

Music fans are today no longer be able to watch their favourite videos on YouTube after Google blocked viewings during a dispute over licensing.

Google started to block UK viewers from watching "premium music videos" from last night (Mon) but said it will take several days until all professional music videos are covered by the restriction.

The internet giant described it as a "painful decision" which it knew would cause "significant disappointment".

PRS for Music licenses Google to make music videos available to UK users on YouTube but the firms are currently negotiating a new licensing deal.

PRS for Music said it was shocked by Google's "drastic action" which it said would "punish" music lovers and songwriters.

The collection society which issues licences and collects royalties on behalf of copyright holders, said Google wants to pay "significantly less than at present to the writers of the music" while Google said the deal it had been offered would result in it losing money every time a video was played.

Just to add to the post below - the beta version is now available and can be downloaded from here.

Feel free to post any feedback.

I was interested to read the latest issue of Computing Which? recently which took a look at internet search engines and the information they keep.

The thrust of the article was about how to protect your own information from use or exploitation by third parties.

This doesn't just amount to keeping secret passwords and so on - but also, for some people, it is important that their habits aren't used by third parties for personal gain.

Some people don't want to be recognised when they log onto the net, and have 'targeted' advertising thrust at them as a result.

One thing which was surprising was how much information the search engines keep.

Google, for example allows third parties to see which ads people clicked on. Yahoo and msn go slightly further to allow advertisers to track ads you click on across various sites.

All keep a record of searches undertaken, with most allowing law enforcement officials access as necessary.

I don't suppose I personally have a major problem with any of the above, although keeping the search data would allow third parties to see exactly who you are, if for example they can utilise usernames you use on sites, search for your own name and so on.

So if the information gets leaked or into the wrong hands, then your bank accounts etc could be at risk.

Which? also posted a list of ten top tips to protect your information which I'll boil down here:

1: Delete cookies regularly from your browser.

2: If you have an account with google mail, yahoo mail or hotmail don't do searches while logged in to these accounts. Results will be directly linked to your account. Also don't search using your isp's home page - AOL released the data from 650,000 users in 2006 for a research project which was leaked, each used was identified by a number and the searches could be used to find out who they were.

3: Make sure any social networking sites you use have the privacy settings turned on.

4: Don't enter information such as your National Insurance number of mother's maiden name into searches.

5: Consider using anonymising software eg www.anonymiser.com

6: Don't use the same username for every website.

7: Never post phone numbers or email addresses in forums.

8: Check if you've got a static IP address.

9: Always read a site's privacy policy to find out what happens to the data.

10: For more information visit the information commissioner's office at www.ico.gov.uk

Online web search engine colossus Google is being sued by Belgian newspapers who claim it is infringing copyright by publishing and archiving their articles.

This follows on from a similar case in the same contry by a French language group who won, forcing Google to take down cached versions of articles from its news service.

It's an interesting case - on the one hand papers and writers have a compelling argument that their copyrighted content is being used by another organisation to make profit for themselves.

After all Google, by providing 'news', although it generates no content whatsoever itself, gains hits, traffic and can sell advertising and other services, so making a profit by operating in a parasitic manner.

On the other hand newspapers are usually desperate to get their articles featured on Google News because it leads to a load of click throughs, increased traffic and so more revenue for them.

On balance most are more than happy to have their content used by search engines in this way, making the lawsuit all the more strange.

Of course they stand to gain from a big fine from Google - and perhaps it's no bad thing - after all why should an organisation effectively stealing content from someone else be allowed to make a profit on the back of it without asking for anyone's permission before publishing?

Well if nothing else, the above headline should please those giving out advice on search engine optimisation (as the below will show).

I've just come out of a lecture from Anton Grutzmacher, head of client services, from Hitwise, a web information and usage company.

There was loads of really interesting stuff about the regional media and how they are doing in terms of website traffic.

But there was one stunning statistic which I had never seen before in 'official' terms.

We all know that online porn, also known as 'bongo' and 'grumble' is somewhat popular. But in terms of actual cast iron information I didn't know how much.

After all, the popular searches through engines like google and yahoo are ranked - but 'purient content removed' is the rider.

So we know that people are searching for Britney Spears or Pamela Anderson and loads of other stuff like ipods, but are they really in the top ten?

Well hitwise can put it in perspective - they monitor the usage of more than eight million surfers using information from internet service providers.

And the results are that 'adult' content is as popular as all the internet search engines put together.

So for everyone logging on to google or whatever as their homepage or as a search tool, there's someone shiftily finding something rather more grubby.

As to how this fits in to the debate over the future of local journalism, I'm not sure - but perhaps executives might be tempted into taking more drastic action in terms of the online content they provide!