Author: Rahsheen on Black Web 2.0

Amazon has dropped Wikileaks like a hot potato after reports that staffers from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee questioned their relationship. Shortly thereafter, Senator Lieberman issued the following statement:

This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks’ previous publication of classified material. The company’s decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks’ illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials. I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with Wikileaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information.

Wikileaks posted the following update on Twitter in response to this chain of events:

WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free–fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.

For Amazon’s part, there are many reason’s why they would want to disentangle themselves from Wikileaks, both technical and political. The terms of service for the Amazon Web Service clearly states that they have the right to refuse service at will. ReadWriteWeb offers the most obvious reasons for Wikileaks getting let go.

A DOS attack on Wikileaks could affect other sites hosted on the same servers, so it’s possible Amazon.com dropped Wikileaks for this reason. But since the site has drawn the ire of the United States government, and congressional Republicans are calling on Wikileaks figurehead Julian Assange to be be prosecuted for espionage, it’s possible that Amazon.com dropped the site out of concern for its content.

via ReadWriteWeb, Talking Points Memo

Bill Clinton, with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), has teamed up with HP to help infants with HIV. Today is World AIDS Day. Yesterday, HP announced an initiative that would help these infants by building five data centers in Kenya. These data centers would be instrumental in speeding up diagnosis response times from several months to just a few days.

“Almost 10% of women in Kenya have HIV,” Gabi Zedlmayer, HP’s Vice President of its Office of Global Social Innovation, tells Fast Company, adding that that means 120,000 Kenyan infants are exposed to HIV annually either by contracting it from their mother or breastfeeding. Timely and appropriate medical attention is crucial for infants infected with HIV: “If they don’t get treatment in time,” says Zedlmayer, “half of HIV patients will not see their second birthday.”

HP’s goal is to reach 70,000 of the infants infected within the first year of the program. Foursquare is also working to help raise awareness today. They’ve teamed up with (RED) to help “turn the world red with awareness.” Today, your Foursquare check-ins can me much more than a mayorship.

This campaign is even more important because we’re so close: with current treatments, we can virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV within five years, creating the world’s first AIDS free generation. When you shout #turnRED with your check-in and broadcast it to Twitter, it’ll turn your section of the (RED) map a bit more red (and you’ll earn a (RED) badge to help spread awareness further). Hopefully, all together, we can raise awareness for a healthier future.

via Foursquare Blog

Alicia Keys and a host of other celebs are also working to raise awareness today by not saying anything, at least online. As we previously reported, “celebrity social networkers such as Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Janelle Monae and Serena Williams will sign off of their social networking accounts until the charity raises $1 million. To express the gravity of the situation, many celebrities have joined an ad campaign where they’re being photographed in coffins.”

The long-delayed venture—Google executives had said they hoped to launch this summer—recently has cleared several technical and legal hurdles, people close to the company say. It is set to debut in the U.S. by the end of the year and internationally in the first quarter of next year, said Scott Dougall, a Google product management director.

“Google is going to turn every Internet space that talks about a book into a place where you can buy that book,” says Dominique Raccah, publisher and owner of Sourcebooks Inc., an independent publisher based in Naperville, Ill. “The Google model is going to drive a lot of sales. We think they could get 20% of the e-book market very fast.”

Rosa Parks sparked our freedom movement when, on this day 55 years ago, she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. Tired of giving in, the then secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) started a chain of events leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She became an “international icon of resistance to racial segregation” and collaborated with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, which help launch him to prominence in the civil rights movement.

To commemorate this event, Google has a fresh new doodle up on their homepage. It features what appears to be a city bus with kids of various races exiting the bus and skipping away while holding hands. This doodle is not animated, so you’ll have to use your imagination a little.

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Her death in 2005 was a major story in the United States’ leading newspapers. She was granted the posthumous honor of lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda. via Wikipedia

This past October, Google used their homepage to say Happy Birthday to Dizzy Gillespie, a pioneer in bebop and jazz music with a distinctive horn and super-human cheeks.

According to those close to the matter, Google is looking to make a deal on Groupon. We first caught wind of this potential acquisition about 10 days ago. Now, the rumor is that Google is offering Groupon around $5.3 billion with a $700 million earn out. These sources say the deal is more than likely going to succeed and could be complete within a week, possibly even tomorrow.

This could be Google’s biggest acquisition to date. It’s not as if Google can’t afford it, sitting on “more than $33 billion in cash and strong stock.” The deal isn’t just about Google owning a successful local commerce service which dominates the social shopping scene, but about the data they would gain in the acquisition. It always boils down to the data, doesn’t it?

But, if done, it will move the search giant instantly to the top spot in local commerce online and give it huge troves of data about consumer buying habits and merchant information across the globe.

The deal could definitely benefit both sides, especially with Facebook launching their own deals platform.

via All Things D

Verizon has taken advantage of Twitter’s Promoted Trends feature by purchasing the #CyberMonday trending topic. Target made a similar move when they purchased #BlackFriday this past weekend. These trending topics are a great way to get some online traffic from users hitting the web hard looking for the best Cyber Monday deals and search engines like Google and Bing have deep integration with Twitter in their search results.

As with any purchased Promoted Trend on Twitter, when users click on CyberMonday, they will be see a sponsored Tweet from Verizon, which states “Starting today, Verizon’s giving you 24 days of Seasonal Surprises! Unwrap an exclusive deal now!” The Tweet contains a link to the company’s “Seasonal Surprises” campaign, which encourages users to Tweet Verizon’s message or post the message on Facebook to unlock an exclusive deal.

via TechCrunch

For the first time ever, 12 O readers will win a selection of gifts from Oprah’s “Favorite Things” show, which aired on Monday, November 22nd. Oprah’s magazine will launch the second-annual “12-Day Holiday Give-O-Way” sweepstakes, which runs from Nov. 29th to Dec. 10th.

Instructions: Once a day, from November 29 through December 10, you can enter for a chance to win by clicking the link on this page and typing in the appropriate code for that day’on the entry form. Entering each day will increase your chances of winning.

When you visit the official Give-O-Way site (oprah.com/12days), you will see a grid of Foursquare-like badges. Each badge represents one of the 12 days and clicking the badge of the day allows you to enter the code. The codes can be found in the December issue of O Magazine.

Will you be checking in with Oprah?

While Black Friday is still one of the hottest shopping days of the year, online shopping is steadily gaining. On Tuesday, comScore reported an exected 11 percent rise over the 2009 Cyber Monday holiday. Most major retailers are taking advantage of Black Friday momentum and extending it over the entire weekend. Amazon even went as far as starting Black Friday almost a week early. The question is, where do you find the best Cyber Monday deals?

Amazon is still going strong, with limited supply Cyber Monday deals. Apple is also getting into the holiday spirit with Merry Monday deals on iPad, iPod, iPhone, and Mac accessories among other things. Crunchgear reports that Ashford.com is offering five special watch discounts on a some name brand high-end watches via aBlogtoRead.com.

The Next Web has a list of 10 hot gadgets for Cyber Monday shoppers, including the HTC HD7 at Best Buy and the Kodak EasyShare digital camera you’ve seen in the hands of Trey Songz and Drake. Switched brings us a few eye-catching items from the likes of Target, Staples, and Walmart.

Where will you be doing your Cyber Monday shopping?

At a press event yesterday, Acer unveiled the Acer Iconia. The Iconia is unlike most laptops you’ve seen because it features a touch screen where the keyboard is supposed to go. Engadget got hands on with the flashy new tablet/laptop and, while the “screen is clear and the touch functionality is pretty clever,” it looks like the touch keyboard is almost impossible to use. While the laptop looks slick, it took several tries just to pull up a simple website.

The laptop also includes Clear.fi media sharing. It’s a cloud-based system designed to multiple media types over multi-platform devices. This basically means it lets all your gadgets share media with each other. It only works in your home via your router at the moment. Check Engadget for more photos and a video.

Apple has announced a special sale for this coming Black Friday, November 26th.

The special one-day Apple shopping event. November 26.

Come back to the Apple Online Store the day after Thanksgiving for a special one-day-only holiday shopping event. You’ll find dozens of great iPad, iPod, and Mac gifts for everyone on your list.

Mark your calendars now. And until then, get started by browsing the Apple Online Store for great ideas.

In a similar sale last year, Apple dropped prices by around $100 on big ticket items. Not much compared to what you may find elsewhere, but this is Apple we’re talking about.

On a related note, even though iOS 4.2 just came out, the Dev-Team Blog was just updated with a new redsn0w version 0.9.6b4 jailbreak. This update isn’t as easy as visiting a website and you have to be tethered to a computer to re-activate the jailbreak any time your device powers off or reboots. Probably not the best setup for anyone trying to get anything important done.

via Apple – Shopping Event, Engadget

Opera goes to 11 with their latest beta release, now available for download. It includes updates to the mouse gestures feature to add better visual feedback. The extensions introduced in the alpha version of Opera 11 are now included, giving you access to a library of 160 add-ons.

Tab Stacking is the most interesting new feature. We’re all familiar with tabbed browsing by now, but Opera 11 beta is adding a slight twist. In addition to having tabs going across your browser, you can now drop them on top of each other to create a tab stack. This allows you to group tabs together and treat them as one. Check out the video for the details.

via Opera

Google has announced a free software plugin for Microsoft Office that will tie your Google Docs account to Microsoft Office. This gives you access to the power of the cloud while letting you stick with the software you’re used to. The plugin is called Cloud Connect and goes into live preview (sign-up) for Apps for Business customers today. Everyone else should get it soon.

Editing a document in Word? It’ll automatically sync to your Google Docs account each time you hit ‘Save’. Want to share a preview of your document without worrying about what file format your coworkers can open? Just send them a link to the Google Docs file. The plugin supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and it’s a big deal for Google’s strategy with Docs.

You may recall that the latest versions of Microsoft Office do embrace the cloud, but that’s only for those on the cutting edge of Office products. For everyone else, Google’s Cloud Connect provides a practical solution as it supports Office 2003, 2007, and 2010. It’s also simpler as there is no SharePoint configuration required. Google also supports Excel, which Microsoft does not yet.

There are a few oddities. For instance, multiple people can edit the same document, but you can’t see the changes in real-time in Office, so there is a possibility for conflict. In any case, it seems like Google will always find a way to get in where they fit in.

What do you think about Google Cloud Connect?

via TechCrunch

Amazon has extended Black Friday into a week-long sale starting today. Instead of waiting until Friday to get trampled at your local retail store, you can jump on Amazon.com right now and find some hot deals. Click fast or you will miss out.

You shouldn’t have to stand in a long line to get a great deal. We’re searching for the best Black Friday deals everywhere–including deals other stores are planning–so we can meet or beat their prices and bring them to you even earlier. These limited-supply offers will go quickly, but we’ll add new ones throughout the day, every day this week, so you can skip the long lines and still save a bundle.

Reviews are mixed. Many customers who were patiently waiting for Black Friday are upset that Amazon has opened the floodgates and started such a deal frenzy. Others are upset because the deals are disappearing so quickly.

In any case, you need to get clicking now before you miss out. New deals will appear throughout the week and Amazon is offering free subscriptions to Amazon Prime for students and parents. This gets you 2-day shipping for free on any order.

via Amazon.com, ReadWriteWeb,ZDNet

Apple’s iOS 4.2 is finally here for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It packs all the features that we’ve covered previously, including: Multitasking, Folders, Unified Inbox, Game Center, AirPlay, and AirPrint. According to the official press release, iOS 4.2 brings over 100 new features to the iPad.

One feature that nobody anticipated in this release is a free Find My Phone service. Previously, this feature was part of Apple’s $99-per-year MobileMe service. Now, all users of iOS 4.2 devices can take advantage of it.

This means that you can now keep tabs on your phone if it gets stolen, or figure out why your significant other isn’t home for dinner yet. To get started, you will need to sign up for a free MobileMe account. Apple may be giving this service away to get more paying MobileMe users, using the Find My Phone service as a gateway.

For Android users, the Lookout application provides a similar service for free.

via Apple’s iOS 4.2 Available Today for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch.

OnLive Cloud Gaming System Coming to Your TV

Remember Web TV? Yeah, me neither, but founder Steve Perlman has moved on to bigger and better things. His startup OnLive Inc. has an online game service that will be available for your TV for the holidays. OnLive will be selling a tiny device called a “micro-console” that hooks up to your TV. It’s tiny because the games are stored remotely and run directly from OnLive’s servers. The controllers look like anything else you might find on an Xbox 360 or PS3 and the system will run you $99 for the holidays.

Anyone who has played games online knows that even a tiny delay can ruin a gaming experience. With the games being stored remotely and the processing done on remote servers, it seems like this service might be even more prone to lag. The concept of a gaming system without having to worry about physical games sounds cool, but it will be interesting to see if this will take off.

via WSJ, OnLive

AOL Mail Gets an Update

This past Sunday, at 12pm Eastern, AOL posted a press release detailing new features for AOL Mail. Who knows why they chose such an odd time for a launch, but they could have been trying to get ahead of the Facebook Social Inbox launch. Why? Because it looks like they’ve launched something similar:

Quick Bar – makes it easy to quickly send emails, instant or text messages and even update Facebook and Twitter via Lifestream directly from the inbox. Smart View – prominently displays important information like maps, attached photos and files, and conversation threads on the right hand side of the inbox so users can see relevant details and files before they even open a message. Email aggregation – makes it is easy to receive and send messages from almost any provider, including GMail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail, right inside your AOL inbox.

Tumblr and 4Chan Go At It

I can only imagine how Tumblr and 4Chan started beefin’ but, on the 14th and 15th of November, they went in on each other. 4Chan’s attack was scheduled for the 14th and Tumblr was scheduled to retaliate on the 15th, but moved it up to counteract the 4Chan attack. Neither site really went down, but there were reports of intermittent outages. As one commentator put it, ” it’s like a drunken slapfight with novelty foam hands.”

via TechCrunch

Apple’s Big iTunes Announcement

After posting a teaser on their website, Apple eventually announced the availability of the Beatles catalog in the iTunes Store. For many, this was a huge let-down. Not because nobody likes the Beatles, but because most people who would have been interested in MP3′s of their music have probably already bought the CD’s and digitized them. The real importance of the announcement really has nothing to do with the music itself, though. Here is why you should care:

Being that the Beatles MP3 holdout is emblematic of the recording industry’s resistance against modern distribution methods, the way in which the Beatles discography will be made available should be telling. Here was a situation in which the labels and distributors have millions of sales at stake, and though to be fair Beatles records have been selling just fine without the benefit of legal downloads over the last decade. The powers that be must know that by agreeing to MP3 distribution, they are shifting the fulcrum. But how far?

The last barriers between old and new distribution are beginning to be dissolved, and the staunchest objectors (in this case, those in charge of the Beatles discography) are being forced to act.

via CrunchGear

Need a Job? Google is Hiring

After just giving every employee a raise, Google is now looking for over 2,000 new employees. This comes after 20 acquisitions which have brought Google up to around 23,000 employees. About half of the positions are in the US and most seem to be full-time positions. They are listed on Google’s website.

The world’s largest Internet search engine, whose finance chief told investors in September that the Internet industry was waging a “war for talent,” has job openings listed for 2,076 positions on its website, according to a Reuters tally on Thursday.

via Reuters