Group items tagged

Facebook is denying it illegally breached the privacy of its users in a proposed $9.5 million settlement to a class action challenging its program that monitored and published what users of the social-networking site were buying or renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other locations.

Explains strategic challenges faced by bc network news. NBC in strongest position, while ABC and CBS consider merger with CNN. Pressures toward cost cutting and consolidation in the industry. But where will growth come from?

Google responds to privacy concerns with new social-networking tool Buzz.

America's advanced cellphone network is already beginning to be bogged down by smartphones that double as computers, navigation devices and e-book readers. Cellphones are increasingly being used as TVs, which hog even more bandwidth. They can also transmit video, allowing for videoconferencing on cellphones.

Air America, the long-suffering progressive talk radio network, abruptly shut down on Thursday, bowing to what it called a "very difficult economic environment."

Television set-top box maker TiVo Inc. won an federal appeals court ruling expected to force Dish Network and EchoStar corporations to pay at least $300 million in damages for a patent violation.

FCC has created a mobile application that tests the speed and quality of broadband connection.

Op Ed Exploring the rates and speeds available in other countries, and the fact that the United States has among the slowest speeds and the highest prices of advanced economies. Also discusses the proposed FCC National Broadband Plan.

"Consumers who have been misled by advertisements into buying expensive products or services - or who are just plain irked to be confronted by yet another cheesy ad about working at home - might wonder where those ads are coming from, and why they appear on otherwise respectable websites. The answer is complicated, but becoming less so."

ABC News will make significant job cuts as part of a reorganization, the latest signal that broadcast networks must re-evaluate themselves in competition with cable and others.

"As part of the deep cuts announced this week at ABC News, the network plans to eventually close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington and halve the number of its domestic correspondents."

"Facebook's news feed from its 400 million users has helped the social network far surpass its competitors, which also supply similar digital streams of consciousness. But now, Facebook owns the patent on news feeds."

Many broadcast networks are pushing cable TV providers to pay for transmission fees for NFL games.

""The global potential for connected devices is huge - it's more than just mobile phones and laptop PCs. It can be anything that has a mobile connection embedded in it such as a camera, a music player, a car, a smart meter or a health monitor," said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at the GSMA. "Predictions around how many devices will be connected to mobile networks vary, but we expect to see up to 50 billion connected devices over the next 15 years, finally making the prospect of a truly connected lifestyle a reality. "

An analysis of Google Buzz, and a little perspective on Google's broad ambitions: "We will index all the world's information, upload all the books, deploy the fastest network and design the coolest phone, while simultaneously managing your e-mail, pictures, blogs and anything else you'd care to upload to our online repositories."

But the last thing savvy tech companies want is for a product to end up as a frequent mention in #fail on Twitter. Yet that is exactly where Google Buzz was frequently mentioned, just hours after many consumers started to play with the new tool. One of the complaints was that Buzz seemed to have a mind of its own, picking names in your email inbox , and selecting them randomly for you to follow in your "Buzz" network. "Thanks Google Buzz, I'm automatically following 3 ex-girlfriends. #fail," wrote Tony Pitluga of Pittsburgh in a tweet that was widely re-tweeted last week. Another problem users discovered is that Google makes public everything you do in Buzz in its search engine, unless you set the privacy settings ahead of time.

On Tuesday, Google introduced a new service called Google Buzz, a way for users of its Gmail service to share updates, photos and videos. The service will compete with sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are capturing an increasing percentage of the time people spend online.

NBC owns the U.S. rights to the Vancouver Olympics, and, for this Olympics, it has clamped down on online live streaming of events. Only hockey and curling will be shown live online, with all other events either shown live on television or held for tape-delay airing on prime time or late night television, says the industry publication Broadcasting & Cable in a story Monday. The Web site for CTV, the Canadian network with rights to the Olympics in that country, is live-streaming events, but NBC has made sure that computers with U.S. IP addresses can't log onto the CTV site.

"Twenty-five years ago, MTV was best known for music videos starring Michael Jackson and Madonna. These days, its reigning queen is not a recording star at all but rather Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, the rowdy party girl from the reality series "Jersey Shore. So maybe it's not surprising that this week the 29-year-old network bowed to the inevitable and finally scraped the legend Music Television" off its corporate logo."