Technology

Facebook Shuts Down Scrabulous

Posted by Shemuses from Bits.blogs.nytimes

Facebook has shut down Scrabulous, the Scrabble-like game on its site. If you try to pull up the popular game, you get the following message: "Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here." If you click, you get a form from the Scrabulous founders asking for your e-mail address so they can keep you posted on further developments.

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Free Association: Who Owns Your Privacy?

Posted by Shemuses

Viacom lawsuit with YouTube pits business interests against public interests. Last year, media giant Viacom sued Googe-owned YouTube over copyright infringement. At issue were the over 160,000 clips of Viacom-owned programs such as South Park and The Daily Show available on YouTube. Viacom argued that by failing to remove copyrighted clips or prevent them from being posted, YouTube was responsible for copyright infringement.

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China: Bloggers take stand against web activist’s arrest

Posted by theangryindian

Following his apprehension last month as he was pitching in with the earthquake relief in his native Sichuan province, web activist Huang Qi was this weekend formally arrested for "illegal possession of state secrets".

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A dash of lime -- a new twist that may cut CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels

Posted by garrettmoon from PhysOrg.com

Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, reports Cath O'Driscoll in SCI's Chemistry & Industry magazine published today.

Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater's ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again.

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Beware of social networking overload

Posted by Shemuses from MSNBC

There's a great scene from "The Brady Bunch" when Marcia - just turned high school freshman - is nervous about fitting in and making friends so she signs up for every club listed on the school bulletin board. This is sort of what I see happening with many of you and all the social networking sites out there.

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Advance brings low-cost, bright LED lighting closer to reality

Posted by garrettmoon

Researchers at Purdue University have figured out how to replace the expensive sapphire substrate of traditional LED lights with a low-cost metal-coated silicon wafer.

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Facebook's Beacon is Super Creepy

Posted by Jeff from Idealog.US

A couple of hours earlier, I had purchased tickets to see Dark Knight at the Fandango Web site - Fandango.com. Fandango - not associated with Facebook. Yet, Fandango shared the details of my credit card transaction with Facebook. They did this despite the fact that I gave Fandango my personal email address and I'm registered on Facebook with my work address. So, sure - Facebook was giving me a choice as to whether to publish my purchase to my 297 Facebook friends. But despite my awareness of Beacon - and my 13 year history developing Web applications, I was creeped out in a visceral way. But then, even when I thought I told Facebook not to publish the information, it published to my profile anyway.

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