PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.
There’s something about Bing’s homepage that draws us to use their search– BUT not really. We wrote about Micrsoft’s search engine “Bing” a while back and thought it didn’t offer anything new and we still like using Google.
What Bing does have is aesthetics. The home page is so pleasing to the eyes with it’s high quality photos and breathtaking images that you just want to stay there. It is attention grabbing and that’s probably among their best strengths. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for search giant Google to catch on… Introducing, just went live a few days ago– Google’s new homepage with images and the ability to ‘personalize’ it with your own photo!
Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery they say. Indeed, in this case.
Microsoft deployed Bing, a new search decision experience, worldwide at http://www.Bing.com. Bing takes a new approach to helping customers use search to make better decisions, focusing initially on four key user tasks and related areas: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.
Any blogger would agree that Technorati is the leading blog search engine and an authority in everything and anything to do with the blogosphere. Long before Google blog search, there was Technorati- exclusive search engine for blogs. Further, almost all bloggers avail of its services by claiming their blogs for monitoring, placing buttons and widgets and these bloggers (including us!) do take notice on what Technorati has to say.
Time Magazine has this to say about Technorati: “If Google is the Web’s reference library, Technorati is becoming its coffee house.”
While its launching is unknown, it has been publishing the condition of the blogosphere annually since 2004. They have recently released their State of the Blogsophere report for 2008. Based on its analysis, research and survey of over a thousand bloggers, it gives a 5 part presentation of the current state of the blogsphere.
The results are starking. It shows consistent growth boom from tracking 4 million blogs in 2004 to almost 80 million blogs in 2008. It also shows trends and shifts of who are blogging, why and how. It further establishes how blogs have indeed arrived. It’s no longer exclusive to regular people putting out personal diaries online; major recognized brands around the world have put out company and corporate blogs. Journalists, movie actors and singers have one. TV stars maintain blogs. Major newspapers and internet media outlets now have their reporters blogging. Even the US Presidential candidates own blogs.
