Thomas Dart, the Illinois sheriff who took Craigslist to court over erotic advertisements that appeared on the popular classifieds site, is unhappy with this week’s decision of a federal judge to toss the lawsuit (full ruling embedded below).
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dart (pictured) said he was disappointed with the verdict and is now considering an appeal.
Microsoft is out with its latest earnings report, and while Wall Street seems to be responding favorably to the news, the company continues to struggle financially in the area we focus most on – the Web.
Specifically, the company’s online division reported a loss of $480 million in the quarter on revenue of $490 million. That’s less revenue than last year, when it pulled in $520 million, and a bigger loss as well versus the $321 shortfall in the first quarter of 2008.
Microsoft’s primary plan to reverse this trend is Bing, which it’s in the midst of spending $100 million to promote. There are a few reasons to be optimistic:
Within the next year or so, Bing will become Yahoo’s search engine, giving Microsoft a larger chunk of the search market to monetize.
Within the next couple months, Bing is adding both Twitter and Facebook status updates into search results, giving it a slight edge over Google (who has a deal with Twitter, but not Facebook).
Bing is the default search engine in IE8, which ships with the just released Windows 7. Don’t underestimate the power of bundling.
Beyond that, CEO Steve Ballmer has said he’s willing to spend 5-10% of his company’s income over the next five years to make search a success for Microsoft. Will all of that add up to success for Microsoft? Perhaps, but as this latest report shows, the company still has a very long way to go.
Reviews: Bing, Facebook, Google, Twitter
Nokia has filed a lawsuit against Apple in Delaware District Court. The Finnish cellular giant claims that Apple is infringing on its wireless technologies patents.
Nokia holds patents on GSM, UMTS and WLAN standards and licenses that technology to more than forty other companies. Nokia claims that Apple never paid to license this technology.
From Nokia’s press release:
The ten patents in suit relate to technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA), and wireless LAN standards. The patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
“The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President, Legal & Intellectual Property at Nokia. “Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”
Apple has not issued a statement responding to the lawsuit at this time. We’ll post an update when they do.
Tags: apple, iphone, Nokia, patent infringement
Yesterday, Microsoft released Windows 7 to crowds of adoring fans. Although similar to Vista, Windows 7 has a look and feel all its own, and Microsoft has set up a new Windows 7 Personalization Gallery, featuring themes, backgrounds and desktop gadgets you can add to your system to personalize it further.
That means that just because you’re using Windows 7, doesn’t mean it has to continue to look like Windows 7. Microsoft’s latest is a fine-looking OS, but because creating your own Windows 7 theme by customizing the background, the icons, and even your mouse pointers is so easy, you can make it look even better by customizing it to pay homage to anything you want — like, perhaps, Mac OS X.
Interested in making your own Windows 7/Mac OS X mashup theme? Just follow these instructions!
Pick your Wallpaper and Window Color
The first step in creating your theme is to find the right wallpaper. Since we’re going for a Mac feel, I decided to grab one of the wallpaper images form Mac OS X Snow Leopard. If you want something a little less on-the-nose, but with a distinct Apple style, there are literally hundreds of choices out there. This blog post has some gorgeous options.
To begin actually creating your theme, first right click on your desktop and choose “Personalization.” From here, you can modify an existing theme or create a new theme. After clicking on the “Desktop Background” button, you can choose an image from your library to use.
If you see an image on the web that is large enough for your desktop, you can right click on it in Internet Explorer (or Firefox) and choose “Set As Background” right from the Internet.
The Window color (which offers the option for transparency if your graphics card supports Aero) section can be any color of your choosing. Since I wanted to match the overall “feel” of Mac OS X, I chose a shade of white and enabled transparency.
Choosing your Icons and Pointers
To make your Windows desktop icons more Mac-like, you can alter the default desktop set directly in your theme. Click on the “Change Desktop Icons” item on the left hand side of the Personalization window.
You’ll see the default Windows 7 icons for My Computer, User, Network and Recycle Bin Empty and Recycle Bin Full. Click on any icon and press the “Change Icon” button and select an icon (in the *.ICO format) you want to use in its place.
There are a ton of places to get cool icons: Iconfactory, DeviantArt and Iconpaper all have a large selection of icons for Mac and Windows.
However, if you want to use the actual Mac OS X icons, as I did, you can download the Vista/Windows 7-ready versions from this DeviantArt user.
Once you’ve chosen the icons you want, it’s time to make your mouse pointers and hourglass animations look more like Mac OS X.
Select “Change Mouse Pointer” from the Personalization menu and bring up your default mouse pointer icons. Again, numerous sites across the web offer other options, but if you want to get that Mac OS X look, check out this set, which mimics Mac OS X pointers, including the color wheel.
Save Your Theme and Share With Others
Once you have your theme the way you like it, you can click on the “Save Theme” option and name your theme so that you can keep it around. You can always edit it later if you decide you want to tweak something.
If you want to share your theme with others, just right click on the theme in your theme list and choose “Save Theme for Sharing,” then choose a name for your theme. By default it will be stored in the My Documents folder.
Final Results
In under five minutes (once you choose your wallpaper and icons) you can make Windows 7 look something like this:
Yes, it’s not the most dramatic makeover, but in a very short amount of time, we’ve taken Windows 7 and given it enough subtle Mac-like touches that it will feel just a bit homier to Mac fans.
Of course, if you’re a little more adventurous and really want to transform Windows 7, you can check out this complete Mac OS X skin made for Windows 7! (Note that the skin was made for an older build of Windows 7 and may not work with newer versions out of the box — so, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.)
What other places do you go to find wallpaper and icons? Share your favorites in the comments.
Reviews: Firefox, Internet Explorer, deviantART
Tags: apple, desktop customization, mac, Windows 7, windows 7 themes
Managing billions of small files effectively requires a clear understanding of data flows and a system based on common Lego-like building blocks that provide services to application owners.
This was the message at the September 29th, 2009 Peer Incite Research Meeting, where an industry practitioner, Eugene Hacopians, Senior Systems Engineer at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), addressed the Wikibon community. Visit the following link to read articles and listen to podcasts related to this post: http://www.nexsan.com/news/articles.php. Post provided by www.nexsan.com
If you have spent any time online using social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook, you know they can be difficult to grow your network and add contacts. But even harder is the ability to extract your contacts once you have built up a reasonably sized network. None of the social networks makes it very easy to get this information.
Currensee Inc., the first Forex trading social network that connects traders from around the world based on real-time trades, has opened up its private beta to the public. Currensee brings trust and transparency to Forex trading collaboration by enabling members of its trader network to see each other’s actual trading strategies and performance to make more informed trade decisions. Currensee gives back to the trader network by aggregating real-time data on the trades its members are making and serving that information back to the entire network in the form of innovative Social Indicators. Currensee has raised $6 Million in funding from North Bridge Venture Partners.