Internet

Google has agreed to pay a penalty of $500 million for carrying advertising from Canadian pharmacies that illegally offer drugs to US customers. The fine will allow the company to avoid criminal charges over the issue. It is illegal to ship drugs ... into the US from outside the country as such medicines -- even when they are prescription drugs -- are not verified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the case of Canadian distributors, drugs shipped overseas also evade local regulation. In some cases such drugs may have been made outside of North America and have had no quality controls. ... (view more)

There have been numerous reports of children being bullied by classmates through online services. But now it appears that teachers are suffering similar treatment. New research by Professor Andy Phippen of Plymouth University in the United Kingdom ... found that 35 per cent of those questioned had suffered online abuse -- most notably in the form of online verbal attacks (also known as "cyber bullying"). Though the research noted that 60 per cent of the victims were female, around 70 per cent of all teachers are women, meaning the figures show men were slightly more likely to be ... (view more)

When an individual is incarcerated after committing a crime against another, their sentence is supposed to offer some peace of mind for the victims. However, in California jails, contraband smartphones are helping criminals keep tabs on their ... victims via social networking sites. This year, California corrections officials have reported receiving hundreds of complaints from victims who have been contacted by inmates from beyond prison walls. The most serious case concerns a convicted child offender who had viewed the Facebook and MySpace pages of his victim several times before mailing the ... (view more)

It might be the biggest retail company in the world, but Walmart has flat-out failed in its crusade to defeat digital music giants iTunes and Amazon.com. The company recently announced it will exit the market on August 29, 2011. Walmart opened its ... online doors to digital downloaders in beta form about eight years ago, not long after Apple first introduced its iTunes Music Store (a name since reduced to just iTunes). After some substantial testing, the final version of Walmart's digital store was unveiled in March 2004. Walmart's Low, Low Prices Not Enough Its main draw, unsurprisingly given ... (view more)

Internet Service Provider (ISP) Comcast has announced it plans to cut the price of its service for families that can demonstrate financial need. The company, which also offers cable TV and telephone service, is calling this new, cheap web plan ... 'Internet Essentials'. Comcast's new plan has a lot to do with its recent acquisition of NBC Universal, a deal that was completed earlier this year. In order to complete the agreement, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stipulated that Comcast would need to make broadband memberships available to 400,000 low-income households at a reasonable ... (view more)

After being banned by the newly-formed Google+ social networking platform, hacking group Anonymous have apparently established their own social media hub. The group rose to infamy last year with in support of the controversial whistle-blower website ... WikiLeaks. (Source: google.com) Rejected Hackers Start AnonPlus It's reported that developers from Anonymous attempted to build a profile on Google+, the search giant's new social networking platform. Their profile was later suspended, which then lead the group to build their own, similar service, called AnonPlus. (Source: pcworld.com ) At the ... (view more)

Online swindlers are hoping to cash-in from Facebook's recent integration with Skype by spamming those looking to use their social networking platform as a means to conduct video calling. Cyber scumbags are not only targeting individual users on ... Facebook, but all of their 'friends' as well. According to a report posted on Sophos' Naked Security blog, the latest scam makes the video chat feature appear as a safe application (called "video call") and comes in the form of a Facebook wall post, enticing users to click onto a link dubbed "enable video calls". As Sophos states, the format of the ... (view more)

Microsoft has signed a deal to provide English-language results to China's dominant search engine, Baidu. It's sure to re-ignite a debate about the country's attitude to online censorship. According to Baidu, around 10 million English-language ... searches are carried out on its site every day, and it admits it doesn't do a good job of handling them. Under the new deal, results for such searches will be powered by Microsoft's Bing engine. (Source: com.cn ) The precise details of the arrangement are being kept confidential, though at least one report states no money is changing hands. The most ... (view more)

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all reportedly bidding to buy out online video service, Hulu.com. But they all have different reasons for considering the move. For those who aren't aware of it, Hulu is one of the most popular legal video streaming ... services. It allows users in the US to see recent and archived programming from several major American networks and cable channels, with viewing available on computers, smartphones, tablets and directly on some TV sets. It had appeared Hulu was going to join several other tech companies over the next few years by cashing in through public share ... (view more)

According to reports, MySpace has been sold by News Corp to advertising network Specific Media for an estimated $35 million. The total sum is apparently a mix of stock and cash, with News Corp holding on to about 5 per cent of MySpace. Unfortunately ... for MySpace staff, the move won't be a happy one. The deal between News Corp and Specific Media is reportedly contingent on MySpace cutting half of its 400 staff members, meaning that layoffs should come down hard by the end of this week. It's likely MySpace management, like CEO Mike Jones, will stay on for an interim period to help with the ... (view more)