Seal of the United States Federal Communications Commission. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Federal Communications Commission has fined Google $25,000, saying the online search leader impeded an investigation into how it collected data while taking photos for its “Street View” mapping feature.

The FCC said in a report from Friday that Google Inc. “deliberately impeded and delayed” the investigation for months. The agency said that the online search leader did this by not responding to requests for information and documents.

At the same time, the FCC said it will not take action against Google over its data collection. Part of the reason for that is that it still has “significant factual questions” about the Street View project that haven’t been answered. To get some answers, the FCC had subpoenaed a Google engineer who developed the software code that the company used to collect and store data. But the engineer, who is not named in the report, declined to testify, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against incriminating himself.

In a statement, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said it disagrees with the FCC’s characterization of its cooperation with the investigation and will be filing a response.

“As the FCC notes in their report, we provided all the materials the regulators felt they needed to conclude their investigation and we were not found to have violated any laws,” the company said in a prepared statement.

Google’s stock fell $17.79, or 2.9 percent, to $606.81 in midday trading Monday. The stock has traded in the 52-week range from $473.02 to $670.25.

Source :- huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• FCC fines Google $25,000 for unauthorized data collection and impeding investigation (bgr.com)

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There are numerous diverse apps and social networking apps and it’s tough to keep up with which ones are worth downloading and using. Meet Foursquare, it’s all about checking in at a certain location, whether that is a movie theater, restaurant or hospital. Here are a few reasons you should start checking in as soon as possible:

Fun for all:  For those who love games, there are ‘prizes’ to be earned: Mayorships, Badges and Points. This may not mean much, but once you start checking in, let the games begin.  Becoming a Foursquare mayor is the closest you will ever come to holding a political seat. The mayor is the user who has the most frequent check in’s at any given location. Don’t get too cocky just yet because you can lose that mayorship faster than you think! Badges are similar to Boy Scout badges; they are awarded for achieving check in milestones. Not only are receiving badges fun but the different badges are limitless and earn you bragging rights. Points are based on and granted for numerous reasons, example how often you check in or with whom you check in with.

I know what you’re doing:  You are able to keep an eye on your Foursquare friends 24/7 with push notifications. This makes it easier to meet up because you are able to see their location and then get the details of the location, like address and a map. You have the ability to write comments on your friends check ins and also leave a comment on your own check in.

Discounts:  Many different businesses offer some sort of coupon for their Foursquarer’s. You can earn these deals by being the Mayor or just simply showing up, either way this app really pays off.  For example check in at the nail salon and spend $10 then get $10 off your next purchase. Hungry? At some restaurants you can get a free appetizer when you become a Mayor. If that is not enough, search other deals that are nearby.

A few tips:  Not sure if the dry cleaners next door is good? Check out the Tips section to see what others have said. This is a great way to learn about what is good and what is not. Lots of people leave tips to give you an insider’s edge and you can also leave your tips on a location.

Fourqauare is the app that gives back, check in and score a deal or catch up with a friend. Foursquare is the app worth downloading, now start checking in!

Author Bio:

Kate Croston is a freelance writer, holds a bachelors degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She writes guest posts for different sites and loves contributing   internet service related topics. Questions or comments can be sent to:  katecroston.croston09 @ gmail.com.

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Cover of Britannica Encyclopedia (Encyclopaedia)

“The Encyclopaedia Britannica”, the world’s most famous print encyclopedia, has announced that after 244 years in print, it is no longer going to make new physical copies of its flagship publication. The 32-volume, $1,395 edition that the Chicago-based company put out in 2010 was its last; future versions will live entirely online.This is an announcement that had been coming - according to the Financial Times, only 8,500 copies of the most recent edition were printed. The first edition appeared in 1768, in Scotland.

Media Decoder, the New York Times blog, broke the story this afternoon, quoting Jorge Cauz, president of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., as saying “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The website is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

The Guardian states that individuals can now pay $70 per year for access to its constantly updated digital edition, while universities can sign up for about $1 per student. It quotes Cauz as saying, in a company announcement, that “Today our digital database is much larger than what we can fit in the print set. And it is up to date because we can revise it within minutes anytime we need to, and we do it many times each day.”

Author A.J. Jacobs, who spent a year reading the entire Britannica for his book “The Know-It-All”, told the Financial Times, “I am a bit heartbroken. There was something so wonderfully concrete about the print version, and I loved the idea that all the world’s knowledge could be contained in those pages.”

The article also cited the fact that Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton apparently took a volume of the encyclopedia with him on an expedition, and burned it to keep warm. “You can’t do that to the internet,” said Jacobs.

However, the Encyclopedia Britannica faces increased competition from the free, online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which has more than 3.7 million articles compared to Britannica’s approximate 100,000. As for which is more reliable… there’s a Wikipedia article about that.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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What’s Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales‘ one tip for success? Ans - Fail.

In a speech on Tuesday, Wales told the Hult International Business School that you have to be willing to make mistakes to build anything of value.

“The way I got here is through failure,” Wales said. “For a lot of my projects I should have quit a lot sooner.”

Wales also admitted that the Wikimedia organisation, which runs the collaborative encyclopaedia Wikipedia and other sites, had to become more diverse to survive.

“We do think we need more diversity in our community,” he said.

Wales told students that he was proud of Wikipedia’s decision to shut down its service for one day to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), which critics say would have imposed unhealthy restrictions on Internet freedom.

“Jimmy Wales is a true visionary and his success with Wikipedia has given him a well-deserved reputation as one of the Internet’s most influential people,” said Dr. Stephen Hodges, who is the president of Hult International Business School. “Exposing Hult students to current business issues and trends that are impacting our international community, allows them to experience live what it takes to be a successful business leader.”

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

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If you have a website, there is a very good chance that it is brought to the web by WordPress.  In fact, it is estimated that 14% of the web’s space is comprised of WordPress sites, with WordPress 3.2 having been downloaded over 12.5M times!  The highly anticipated 3.3 version is rumored to hit the web early next week.  A week too early to attribute to Santa, but here are a few updates we expect to find this holiday season.

•  Admin Bar:  There will be a new ‘My Sites’ menu in the Admin Bar that’ll grant you access to the Network Admin with all of the sites that you access.

• HTML5 Conversion: Going in this direction is going to keep things up to date and compatible for current trends and future developments.   It’s not a drastic change in features, it’s just going to make sure that WordPress is keeping up with the times and isn’t going to lag behind as the web develops.

• Media Uploader: Drag and Drop! Whoa! WordPress is finally going to have a drag and drop, just like with a Mac OS.  WordPress has talked about doing this before, but it actually calls for a pretty hefty rewrite.  By this time next month you could be dragging things to the ‘drop zone’ in WordPress all day long!

• Tumblr Importer: There is now a one-click plugin for moving Tumblrs into WordPress. It’s going to be so easy to use.

• jQuary UI: For WordPress 3.3, jQuery 1.7.1 will be backwards compatible with jQuary 1.6.1, and jQuary UI1.8.12 will be updated in WordPress 3.3 to jQuary 1.8.16.

• WordPress Editor: WP editor can be accessed from anywhere now. Even plugins can access links to upload files.

These are just a few of the tweaks expected with the new version.  If you’re like most people who use WordPress for their websites, you’ll find these new changes are responses to the needs of the users.  Make full use of the new technology and enjoy!

Author’s Bio:  Ryan is a staff writer with the Blog Content Guild.  He just got a new laptop with a Dell Coupon for the holidays.

Image via Wikipedia

 

The revamped Gmail for desktop is slowly rolling out to users, and like its Google Reader and Gmail app for iOS cousins,

it has a few problems.

Aside from aesthetic complaints about the fields of empty white space, the new Gmail has some functional problems, too: Some things are distracting; some are annoying; and some just don’t make sense.

Below are complaints about the new Gmail. 

• Icons Without Labels - In the old Gmail, there were five basic options above each email message: “Archive,” “Spam,” “Delete,” “Move To” or “Label.” Messages in the new Gmail have the same options, except they’ve been replaced by icons. Unless you have memorized the order and function of the buttons above Gmail messages, you have to mouse over each icon to find out what each one of them does. Each time I see those buttons, I think: “There’s no words on it!”

• Advertisement Between Message And Mystery Buttons- In between the “No Words On It” buttons and your email message, you can now expect to see an advertisement every time you open a piece of mail. Google has squeezed in a little ad bar between message and function buttons for maximum commercial exposure, and while this may help their bottom line, the pesky little thing is always distracting and seemingly out-of-place.This advertising bar also lives above your inbox. It’s a worthless gray cloud raining down skin cream discounts on your each and every message. Annoying.

• New Reply Field, Cursor-Less - The reply field on Gmail messages used to be super intuitive, with a text cursor appearing where you could click to enter text. Now, it stays as a pointer when you mouse over. It’s a small but annoying change that always leaves me concerned I’ve pushed an incorrect button whenever I’m replying, replying all or forwarding any message. Bring back the text cursor, Gmail!

• No Chat And Labels At The Same Time- When setting your Gmail into the new “Comfortable” mode, you’ve got to make an unfortunate compromise between chat and labels: You can either see your chat list, or you can see your labels. Wanna see both? Too bad.Now, you can move your chat list over to the right sidebar (which always made me uncomfortable) or you can change the spacing setting in your Gmail to “Compact” or “Cozy” (both of which give me a crick in my neck just thinking about). But if you want a view of your email labels and your online G-buddies, you’re out of luck for the time being. Why? Well…

• Disappearing Chat Bar- Pop quiz: Can you name the seven primary email folders in Gmail without looking?(Time’s up: Those would be Inbox, Buzz (R.I.P.), Important, Chats, Sent Mail, Drafts, All Mail, and Spam. How’d you do?)
  Anywho, whenever you put your cursor over any of those seven primary email folders in the new Gmail, the chat list disappears whether you want it to or not. If there’s an easy way to lock the chat sidebar so that it’s always visible, I’m not seeing it.

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• A New Look for Gmail (googlesystem.blogspot.com)
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You are out of school and ready to take on the world. While this is the time for freedom, make sure you don’t do anything to spoil the party. Watch out for these five traps for college students.

Please check the following  Five thing to avoid while in college :-

• Drugs – We are not saying that you are an addict, just that you are susceptible, any one is. Unless you keep a keen eye out and say a BIG no right at the first go. They may look like friendly advances or even friendly challenges, but could be a start of a deadly …

• Borrowing or lending money – Everyone comes from a different financial background and they need to live with it, including you yourself. We know these are new friends and you would like to help the needy, but watch out. Lending or borrowing money tends to become a habit and before …

• Bunking – Bunking college or school may seem to be the ultimate adventure. But watch out, you may do it like an adventure in the beginning and later it may completely alienate you from the class room. It will affect your studies, deplete your friends and leave you ..

• Show off gadgets or money or dresses – We know this is the first time you are out of the uniform and ready to take on the world with your ammunition of great dresses, super accessories and talked about gadgets. Pause, while dressing up well and being up to date is great, don’t let it become ..

• Inferiority – What gadget or bag they carried or the dress they wore will not make their future five years hence. The purpose of going to college is to study, to groom yourself and people interaction – make sure this is achieved. No need to feel deprived looking at …

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One of the topics I frequently get asked about by customers when they visit SophosLabs, is what do we do about the hoards of legitimate web sites that we see getting hit with malware? How do we go about alerting them to the problem? How can we help to get things cleaned up quickly thereby reducing risk for users?

Sophos customers can take advantage of our WebAlert service, but this is not relevant to non-customers.

Web security is a topic that affects us all. The web has become the predominant way in which malware is delivered nowadays. Thanks to techniques such as black hat search engine optimisation (SEO) or drive-by download attacks, failings in the security of a single site or hosting provider can expose many innocent users to malware. Improving the process by which the bad stuff gets reported and cleaned up is in all of our interests.

I am pleased to have been involved in a great initiative over the last few months, coordinated by the folks at StopBadware. They put together a working group in order to thrash out a process for reporting malicious URLs. I am happy to say that a few days ago the final version of Best Practices for Reporting Badware URLs was published.

Hopefully the initiative will facilitate communication between the parties that discover the bad stuff, and those in a position to do something about it, mitigating the effects of malicious URLs.

More information about the initiative can be found on the StopBadware blog, in their press release, or you can dive straight into the report here.

Source:- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Summer is coming to an end and that means students across the country are prepping for the trek back to school.

Pencils, notebooks, and binders are the basic necessities for any pupil, but students shouldn’t forget to gear-up with this year’s latest tech as well. From note-taking apps and noise-canceling headphones to soda-powered alarm clocks and digital textbooks, we’ve compiled a wide-ranging list of high-tech school supplies for students to help them ease the stress of a busy schedule, study for exams, write papers, take notes in class, and much more. The items in this guide are meant to be practical, affordable, and fun.

Whether you’re in college, high school, middle school or simply a caring parent, these tech accessories will help any student achieve high-marks in class–and unwind when the cramming is over.

Have a look below links :-

• Noise-Cancelling Headphones
• Spotify
• iRobot Mini Scooba 230
• GadgetTrak
• Netflix
• Dropbox
• iPhone Case/Charger
• Single-Serve Coffee Maker
• Note-Taking iPad Apps
• PowerShot Digital Camera
• Water Powered Alarm Clock
• Laptop Lock
• Solar Polar Backpack
• Laptop Case
• Kno iPad App
• USB Flash Drive
• Speakers
• Motion-Activated Closet Light
• Netbook
• Snoozerr Recordings
• Cooling Pad
• Kindle eReader
• Webcam

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Image via CrunchBase

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows anyone to edit its entries, says it is losing contributors.

Founder Jimmy Wales says administrators are scrambling to simplify what he called “convoluted” editing templates that may be discouraging people from writing and editing Wikipedia’s entries.

In another effort to encourage volunteers to stay active, Wales says the site has introduced a new feature called WikiLove that lets users post positive feedback.

He was speaking to the Associated Press on Thursday from the website’s annual conference, held this year in Haifa, Israel.

The nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia announced it is encouraging professors in India, Brazil and Europe to assign the editing and writing of Wikipedia entries to students.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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