theodp writes "When it unveiled a beta of Plogs (personalized blogs), a nonpublication request Amazon had in effect prevented the USPTO from disclosing that Plogs were patent-pending. But now you can check out Amazon's patent application for the Personalized selection and display of user-supplied content to enhance browsing of electronic catalogs, which describes how 'blurbs' can be made available in a blog format for viewing by others."

gpmac writes "AOL has responded to the recent slashdot attention. America Online Inc. plans to make three small but significant modifications to the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging product to head off a firestorm of privacy-related criticisms. The tweaks to the terms of service will be made in the section titled "Content You Post" and will explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL."

The Llama King writes "America Online tells the Houston Chronicle's TechBlog that, despite a recent Slashdot posting to the contrary, AOL Instant Messenger's terms of service do not imply that the company has the right to use private IM communications, and the section quoted in the Slashdot article applies only to posts in public forums -- a common provision in most online publishers' terms of service. AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein says flatly: 'AOL does not read person-to-person communications.' He also says AIM communiques are never stored on AOL's hard drives. The original Slashdot item was linked throughout the blogosphere -- it will be interesting to see if AOL can extinguish this fire." (Read more below.)

theodp writes "Can't get enough pictures of dogs' noses? Circular objects framed within squares? Newsweek reports on photo-sharing sites and picture blogs, where amateur shutterbugs looking to share their passions with the world happily blast their photos out to millions of people. Fotolog CEO Adam Seifer, who posts a picture of every meal he eats on Get In My Belly!, calls the Fotolog-Flickr-HeyPix-Smugmug phenomenon 'a million reality TV shows, only without the pain and humiliation.'" Update: 03/14 07:09 GMT by T : Reader onethumb points out an important aspect of such sites: "The new breed of photo-sharing services expose their APIs for geeks everywhere to enjoy. Both Flickr and Smugmug have growing APIs with thriving communities around them. Write your own photo-sharing application, sister web service, or software toy today!" (Here's a link to Flicker's API, and one to smugmug's.)

heyitsjustme wants to know how you deal with old email. "I delete most of what I get but keep the stuff from friends and relations as an archive. Unfortunately I have these email archives from the late 80's through today in the form of macintosh, linux and windows mailboxes including AOL 1.0 mailboxes. What does everyone use to archive email across multiple platforms and non-standard mailbox formats? Is there an easy solution out there? Does anyone archive IM?"

acaben writes "AOL has posted new terms of service for AIM, that include the right for AOL to use anything and everything you send through AIM in any way they see fit, without informing you. A sample passage: '...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy.'"

csaila writes "Some of the world's big media outlets (including CBC, CNN, Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Reuters, and -- as well as Amazon, AOL, Google and Yahoo) are appealing a Canadian court ruling threatening both free speech and the Net. The ruling stems from a former UN employee who successfully sued the Washington Post in Ontario for libel, arguing that because the Post's Web site carried the story. his reputation had been "damaged" in that province."

tipsymonkey writes "Cnet is running an article on how the Utah governor is considering signing a law that forces ISPs to filter content deemed harmful to minors. This would apply to large scale ISPs like AOL as well. They have until March 22 to decide whether or not to sign this into law."

theodp writes "Might be more interesting as a Who's-My-Baby's-Daddy? segment on Maury, but a Court has been asked to decide the parentage of MS-DOS. Tim Paterson, whose operating system 86-DOS (aka QDOS) was sold to Microsoft in 1980, is suing author Harold Evans and Time Warner for defamation. In his book They Made America, Evans devoted a chapter to the late, great Gary Kildall, founder of Digital Research, describing Paterson's software as a 'rip-off' and 'a slapdash clone' of Kildall's CP/M."

MailtoDelete asks: "I have most of my electronic gear plugged into a couple power strips hanging off a UPS. Most of these devices have big block-type transformers which, besides being bulky, are a bit of an eyesore. I have been trying to find a product out there somewhere that would allow me to have one central transformer that would distribute DC power at variable voltages, depending on what devices I wish to plug into it (think one AC input and 9 or so DC outputs individually adjustable). I found this device that resembles what I have in mind, but it does not have sufficient output for my router, switches, and various other devices. Is there a product on the market already that would do this? Can I build one with my marginally above average soldering and electrical schematic skills? Have any of you found a better way to eliminate these blocky plug-hogs?"

DaffyD writes "Refocusing its vision for AOL Instant Messenger, America Online is endeavoring to revitalize the service by opening up its community and presence to third parties. In addition to partners such as CareerBuilder, AOL is seeking to enlist independent developers to build extended AIM services and hopes to offer a plug-in architecture by the end of the year. ICQ recently added such functionality through its open XML-based Xtras feature. Maybe AOL is feeling the heat from alternatives such as Gaim and Adium."

Mark Stone writes with a thoughtful look back at the year 2004 in open source, pointing out both major gains and inevitable uncertainties. He writes "2004 stands out as a year in which open source consolidated its position as a valuable and accepted approach to business and technology policy. A less obvious but significant trend underlies all of this: even as open source business models join the mainstream, the open source development model remains a mysterious process on which large technology companies struggle to capitalize. Key issues and developments have played out in four areas: legal, policy, business, and technology." Read on for the rest.

justinarthur writes "It looks like the content from Netscape's DevEdge site will going back on the air following months of downtime after AOL pulled the plug on the popular web development resource. The website contained what was considered to be the authoritive JavaScript documentation as well as nifty resources for web developers including the popular "Multibar" sidebar for Gecko-based browsers. According to MozillaZine, the newly reached agreement with AOL allows the Mozilla Foundation to "post, modify, and create new documents based on the former Netscape DevEdge materials." In response to this agreement, the Mozilla Foundation is starting a new project named "DevMo" that will be managed by Deb Richardson of LinuxCare, LinuxChix, and the Open Source Writers Group." Exciting, as the DevEdge program has effectively been out of the loop since July of 2003.

Philipp Lenssen writes "Heise reports the German search engines Google.de, Lycos Europe, MSN Germany, AOL Germany, Yahoo.de, T-Online and T-Info today in Berlin announced the forming of a self-regulating organization (Babelfish version) under the hood of the German FSM (the "Voluntary Self-Control for Multimedia Service Providers"). Their combined goal is to streamline the process of censoring content ruled illegal under German law, so that a user's search results are stripped from such items."

theodp writes "While Google pooh-poohed any comparison of its controversial AutoLink feature to Microsoft's SmartTag technology, Google's generation of dynamic links to maps and use of ISBN numbers to trigger links to booksellers cover the same territory as Microsoft's 2000 patent application for Providing electronic commerce actions based on semantically labeled strings, whose sole inventor - Jeff Reynar - was the lead SmartTag Program Manager while at MS and is reportedly now a Google Product Manager who's being credited as AutoLink's creator. Reynar's patent applications that have been assigned to Microsoft, including one for Smart Links and Tags, describe a world of 'recognizer' plug-ins that automatically look at every document a user creates, receives or views, transmitting messages to 'action' plug-ins - and even to the plug-ins' authors - that can be used to decide what info you'll be presented with, what options you'll be given, what price you'll pay for goods, and even who you'll be permitted to buy from."

theodp writes "The USPTO has published Amazon.com's patent application for Persistently storing and serving event data, which describes a9.com's personal search history feature and lists a9.com CEO Udi Manber as an inventor. Interestingly, claim 48 describes a user interface that responds to a user's request to "delete" his search history by rendering it "undisplayable" to him, but still leaving it accessible for other uses. When filed back in 2003, Amazon asked the USPTO not to publish the application, but rescinded that request last May, presumably in anticipation of its filing for an international patent."

theodp writes "Slate's Paul Boutin reports on the sordid history of the oldest scam on the Internet. For almost as long as the Web has existed, there's been a thriving economy of sites, services, and software vying to grab you as soon as your mistype a URL. Studies estimate that 10-20% of all hand-entered URLs are mistyped, adding up to at least 20 million wrong numbers per day, helping to enrich the likes of porn purveyors, ISP's, Paxfire, Microsoft and VeriSign."

Eric writes "In the face of increasing pressure from the likes of Google and MSN, America Online has opened beta testing for its standalone AOL Browser and Desktop Search to anyone with an AOL or AIM screen name. The AOL Browser beta utilizes Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine (not Firefox's, like Netscape) and integrates the company's Desktop Search client. Unlike Netscape it looks decent from the screenshots and also includes some nifty features like tear-off tabs and zooming." And prostoalex writes "In what could be the biggest VOIP push into US households, AOL will start offering VOIP services, as reported by Light Reading. 28% of online Americans subscribe to dial-up or broadband version of AOL, AOL has 4 million broadband users, and beta testers in the Light Reading article seemed to be pretty happy with the service."

HarryCaul writes "The Georgia Legislature has a bill proposing the restriction of sales of video games to minors. This bill is independent of the voluntary ratings in that it would prohibit the sale of "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel" games to children. Another bill from the same legislator would take the more reasonable step of requiring stores to post a sign explaining the video game rating system. From the article: "The video game proposal is one of several like it being introduced across the country. Lawmakers in North Carolina, Illinois and Michigan are among those considering similar measures."

theodp writes "Q. What does Microsoft feel is unpatentable? A. Apparently nothing! On Thursday, the USPTO published Microsoft's patent application for the Compact text encoding of latitude/longitude coordinates, in which the software giant explains how a floating-point number can also be represented as a less-precise integer that's displayed in base-30 notation!" If ever I have seen a silly patent, this is it.