pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/features/" rel="tag"Features/a/pfont color="gray"emEach week Mark Methenitis contributes a href="http://joystiq.com/tag/law-of-the-game/"Law of the Game on Joystiq/a ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games/em:/fontbr /br / div align="center"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/10/proiplotgoj.jpg" alt="" /br //div Congress has a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10053294-38.html"recently passed/a the a href="http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:4:./temp/~c110gEiXRx::"Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act/a (the "PRO-IP Act"). While it has not been signed by the President yet, it seems as it's only a matter of time before the Act has the force of law. The PRO-IP Act does three things, generally: 1) it increases the penalties for infringement by expanding what is considered a 'work;' 2) it broadens the ability of the government to permanently seize goods; and 3) it creates an Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, a new cabinet position whose sole job is to increase intellectual property enforcement. In short, it's a load of bad news for consumers, but really, it's not that much good news for many intellectual property owners either, as I'll explain. Because this act is so broad and will be applied in so many ways, I'm actually writing two articles about it. Here on Joystiq, I will be covering the PRO-IP Act as it relates to gaming while onspan style="font-style: italic;" Law of the Game/span, my blog, I've (emshameless plug/em) posted an a href="http://lawofthegame.blogspot.com/2008/10/pro-ip-act-and-movies-and-music.html"article/a discussing the act as it applies to other media. br /br /I consider myself to be in a pretty neutral position with respect to weighing the pros and cons of various IP regulations. I'm a consumer, I represent producers, and as a writer, I'm a producer myself. Being in that position, I've always admired the game industry for typically not being in favor of or enforcing the most draconian regulations to their fullest extent. In that respect, many game companies and gamers seem to understand that their relationship is symbiotic. Without one, the other would not be able to function. And with that understanding, the majority of gamers and game producers see the need for some intellectual property protection but also see the need for reasonable protection to balance the interests of the producer and consumer. And in that respect, the PRO-IP Act starts to shift the balance in ways that aren't necessarily desirable for either, but are certainly not desirable to the consumer.pa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/lgj-the-pro-ip-act-and-gaming/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emLGJ: The PRO-IP Act and Gaming/em/a/pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/lgj-the-pro-ip-act-and-gaming/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1336493/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=amp;fc=1amp;url=http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/lgj-the-pro-ip-act-and-gaming/" title="Linking Blogs"Linkingnbsp;Blogs/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/10/lgj-the-pro-ip-act-and-gaming/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=VARMm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=VARMm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=gizrm"img src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=gizrm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/416737595" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/finetuna_cropped.jpg" width="183" height="140" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" align="right"/Free image notation service Finetuna isn't a robust photo editor in the mold of a href="http://picnik.com"Picnik/a, but it does make it easy to share notes on images, photos, and other graphics files. Without sign-up or log-in, the site asks you to either upload a file or point to one online. You can add sticky-type notes, highlight sections, draw lines or underline text, and note that text should be added somewhere. Sending it out for review is as easy as entering an email address. Great for choosing logos, helping a photographer friend out with style points, and other types of editing help. Finetuna is a free service, and there's a Firefox extension available for right-click image choosing. div class="related"a href="http://www.finetuna.com/"Finetuna/a [via a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10062742-2.html"CNET/a]/div/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=e183988be64f6bc5678addb67e58d6b4" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=e183988be64f6bc5678addb67e58d6b4" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/lifehacker/full?a=U1ns8h"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/lifehacker/full?i=U1ns8h" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=SWq3M"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=SWq3M" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=BLeeM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=BLeeM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=7RaCm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=7RaCm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=1JOem"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=1JOem" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/416815748" height="1" width="1"/

Ils sont beaux, les nouveaux a href="http://clk.tradedoubler.com/click?p=2701a=1306247g=0url=http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/francestore?iPodStore=yes" target="_blank"iPod/a nano, mais que cachent-ils donc sous leur robe chatoyante "nanochromatique" ? C'est à un strip-tease de geek que vous convie CNET, un démontage en règle d'une de ces bestioles. En avant la musique ! Sourceimg width='1' height='1' src='http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/690/f/8936/s/2164a5b/mf.gif' border='0'/div class='mf-viral'table border='0'trtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/sendemail2_fr.html?title=Strip tease de Nanolink=http://www.mac4ever.com/news/39827/strip_tease_de_nano/" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/partagez.gif" border="0" //a/tdtd valign='middle'a href="http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark_fr.cfm?title=Strip tease de Nanolink=http://www.mac4ever.com/news/39827/strip_tease_de_nano/" target="_blank"img src="http://rss.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif" border="0" //a/td/tr/table/divbr/br/a href="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/21182800474/f/8936/c/690/s/35015259/a2.htm"img src="http://da.feedsportal.com/r/21182800474/f/8936/c/690/s/35015259/a2.img" border="0"//a

pFiled under: a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/internet/" rel="tag"Internet/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/microsoft/" rel="tag"Microsoft/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/web/" rel="tag"Web/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://socialstreams.livelabs.com/politics/"img hspace="4" height="299" width="440" vspace="4" border="0" align="top" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.downloadsquad.com/media/2008/10/political-streams.jpg" alt="Political Streams" //abr //div Micorosft has launched a new web site that tracks popular political news stories and blog posts. a href="http://socialstreams.livelabs.com/politics/"Political Streams /aworks a bit like a news aggregation service like a href="http://www.techmeme.com"Techmeme/a. But the layout is unique.br /br /Items are listed either in the News or Blogs category based on the source. Scrolling over those colorful bars brings up the number of blogs or news sites writing about the main item. There's also information about related people and places. And if you click a headline you'll be taken to a sub-page with an excerpt from the article and links to related sources.br /br /Each item also has a graph that shows how much "attention" a person or place has received in the last month. Political Streams draws its information from the links between blog post and news articles and from information found in a href="http://www.freebase.com/"Freebase/a, a community-driven information database.br /br /It's not clear whether Political Streams uses a white list of selected blogs and news sites or if the headlines are drawn from Microsoft Live Search results. While I wouldn't recommend using Political Streams as your primary source of news just yet, the web service does offer a glimpse at some of the hot political topics in the US right now. br /br /[via a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10062419-2.html"CNET/a]br /h6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://socialstreams.livelabs.com/politics/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/10/political-streams-microsoft-live-labs-web-site-tracks-political/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/forward/1338067/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/10/political-streams-microsoft-live-labs-web-site-tracks-political/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/abr /br /pmap name="google_ad_map_53-1338067"area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/53-1338067?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28" /area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23" //mapimg usemap="#google_ad_map_53-1338067" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-aol_weblogs_xmlamp;channel=Download_Squad_07_RSSamp;output=pngamp;cuid=53-1338067amp;url=http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/10/political-streams-microsoft-live-labs-web-site-tracks-political/" //p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=3i79jo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=3i79jo" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=GC6im"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=GC6im" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=cFDwm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=cFDwm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~4/416777832" height="1" width="1"/

Google just rolled out a new set of ads, making the total number of ad-based revenue streams roughly equal to the number of petabytes they search daily. This one appears at the bottom of the map when you search for a fairly generic topic. After I saw it written up on CNet, I gave it a try, and as you can see from my image above, the ads pop up even if you're searching for things you'd really not want broadcast to to the world, a stark reminder that the thing called privacy is just a memory from a time before electrons and radio waves joined us all.
In this example, I chose "erectile dysfunction" as the search term, and you can see what comes up. On the left there is a single ad followed by presumably helpful resources. But below the map, there are three ads, which you can navigate through with the arrow buttons. The first was Viagra, the second Cialis, and the third was the rather shadier sounding one you see above.
The funny thing is, not all embarrassing searches will serve up an ad. ED was actually my second choice after "escort." While the Google search itself naturally turned up plenty of services in the Seattle area (gotta be something to keeping all them highly paid Microsoft software engineers happy), there was no ad. So get scramblin', Sweet Cherries Escort Service—there's a vacant ad space on Google that could proudly bear your name! [CNet]


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pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/10/Google_Map_Ads.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="800" height="461" style="display:block;float:none;" /Google just rolled out a new set of ads, making the total number of ad-based revenue streams roughly equal to the number of petabytes they search daily. This one appears at the bottom of the map when you search for a fairly generic topic. After I saw it a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10062439-93.html"written up on CNet/a, I gave it a try, and as you can see from my image above, the ads pop up even if you're searching for things you'd ireally/i not want broadcast to to the world, a stark reminder that the thing called privacy is just a memory from a time before electrons and radio waves joined us all./p pIn this example, I chose "erectile dysfunction" as the search term, and you can see what comes up. On the left there is a single ad followed by presumably helpful resources. But below the map, there are three ads, which you can navigate through with the arrow buttons. The first was Viagra, the second Cialis, and the third was the rather shadier sounding one you see above./p pThe funny thing is, not iall/i embarrassing searches will serve up an ad. ED was actually my second choice after "escort." While the Google search itself naturally turned up plenty of services in the Seattle area (gotta be something to keeping all them highly paid Microsoft software engineers happy), there was no ad. So get scramblin', Sweet Cherries Escort Servicemdash;there's a vacant ad space on Google that could proudly bear your name! [a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10062439-93.html"CNet/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:7f6ce04f26f9f57ba0ac075bcc4d6633:HFq7jIMnUldLm%2B%2FLs8eyjoiXUeOTpiLVPDkk8Q73wpN1yQUmq18tsIFy0Ai%2F0hs89euLnYRE76aSRA%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Poll' alt='Poll' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/poll_securityslow.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=bafc2abddad580409237bf89a352c171" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=bafc2abddad580409237bf89a352c171" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/gizmodo/full?a=lqZuSd"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/gizmodo/full?i=lqZuSd" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=CO5VM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=CO5VM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=9ZdxM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=9ZdxM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=G1XDm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=G1XDm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=mPAtm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=mPAtm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/416215056" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/politicalstreams.png" width="222" height="170" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" align="right" / Microsoft Live Labs launches a href="http://socialstreams.livelabs.com/politics/"Political Streams/a, a constantly-updating page of hot stories in politics right now in the news and on blogs. Similar to a href="http://election.twitter.com/"Twitter's Election site/a in that it gives you up-to-the-minute updates on what folks are talking about, unlike Twitter the items are more than 140 characters in length and they're also ranked by popularity with trending information so you can see what's getting more chatter and what's getting less. [a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10062419-2.html?part=rss"via/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=2f814ca1366bc8445560ff011eb4f3bb" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2f814ca1366bc8445560ff011eb4f3bb" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/lifehacker/full?a=DbUwWD"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/lifehacker/full?i=DbUwWD" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=2phHM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=2phHM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=tnnLM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=tnnLM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=fnoIm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=fnoIm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=OZROm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=OZROm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/416118205" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/desktops/" rel="tag"Desktops/a, a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/laptops/" rel="tag"Laptops/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://geekswithblogs.net/kit/archive/2008/10/08/125702.aspx"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="Windows Cloud becoming Windows Strata?" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/10/windows-strata-pdc-sessions-600.jpg" //abr //div When Ballmer dropped a few a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/01/ballmer-says-windows-cloud-os-will-debut-this-month/"sprinkles/a of information about Vista's successor, he dubbed it "Windows Cloud," but said the real moniker would be unveiled at the a href="http://www.engadget.com/tag/pdc"Professional Developers Conference/a later this month in LA. That show's agenda was recently posted, and interestingly contained a number of sessions under the header "Windows Strata," leading many to believe that it's the emtrue /emname of Redmond's next offering. That the section was quickly changed to "Windows 7" makes things all the more suspicious, but don't go cyber-squatting WindowsStrata.com just yet (oops, too late). Strata -- a term that can apply to the layers of the atmosphere -- might be more of a general classification for numerous cloud computing-related offerings destined for all manner of devices. But if so, why rename the sessions, and why the secrecy? And, most importantly, why are we so intrigued?br /br /[Via a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10061111-56.html?part=rssamp;subj=newsamp;tag=2547-1_3-0-20"CNET/a]h6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://geekswithblogs.net/kit/archive/2008/10/08/125702.aspxRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/09/clouds-on-vistas-horizon-to-be-dubbed-strata/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1337410/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/09/clouds-on-vistas-horizon-to-be-dubbed-strata/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feeds.engadget.com/~a/weblogsinc/engadget?a=fDKmrV"img src="http://feeds.engadget.com/~a/weblogsinc/engadget?i=fDKmrV" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.engadget.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=mnBrm"img src="http://feeds.engadget.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=mnBrm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.engadget.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=ycPRm"img src="http://feeds.engadget.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=ycPRm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/416065740" height="1" width="1"/

The economic downturn is likely to hit every sector of the U.S. economy, including the formerly frothy Silicon Valley tech industry. Rafe Needleman stops by to talk about what we can expect from Web companies.

Economic downturn is likely to hit every sector of the U.S. economy, including the formerly frothy Silicon Valley tech industry. Rafe Needleman stops by to talk about what we can expect from Web companies.

Five months ago, Seagate's CEO revealed that his company would start selling enterprise solid-state drives in 2009. Seagate will likely have no trouble seducing corporate IT managers with demonstrations of SSD performance, but as CNet News reports, the company might have a harder time convincing those folks...

a href="http://www.blogandbuzz.com/Blog-de-Sylvain/Blog/Entr%C3%A9es/2008/10/9_Top_Lecture_files/172025981_affe11fff6.jpg"img src="http://www.blogandbuzz.com/Blog-de-Sylvain/Blog/Media/172025981_affe11fff6_1.jpg" style="float:left; padding-right:10px; padding-bottom:10px; width:104px; height:78px;"//aDepuis quelques semaines je n’ai plus trop le temps de bloguer, je vois de plus en plus l’intérêt du microblogging... Voici ici un Reader Digest de mes parcours du Web.br/br/br/Yahoo lance son concurrent de Google Analytic. Un article intéressant à lire sur a href="http://mashable.com/2008/04/09/yahoo-indextools/"Mashable/a.br/AdScriptor nous apprend que la France est au a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%257Er/Adscriptor/%257E3/401801548/france-premier-rang-mondial-en-nombre.html"premier rend mondial du blogging/a.br/Manu nous présente une façon dea href="http://www.emmanuelvivier.com/2008/09/comment-crer-un.html" bien faire du viral/a.br/On apprend que ça bouge dans la a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/03/facebook-co-founder-departs-to-build-extensible-enterprise-productivity-suite/"haute sphère de Facebook/a.br/La moitié des campagnes social média a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10058509-36.html"ne fonctionneraient pas/a.br/Fred nous parle des a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/%257Er/InterfacesRiches/%257E3/415600666/"règlettes/a (j’appelle cela des Slider...)br/Les règles du a href="http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2008/10/the-4-kinds-of.html"gratuit/a.br/Entre identité numérique et réseaux sociaux : a href="http://www.identitesactives.net/%253Fq%253Dreve-d-identite-18-mon-reseau-social-c-est-le-web"finalement il y a le web/a !br/br/br/Et vous quels sont les articles que vous avez lu et que vous me conseillez ? pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/Webmarketing?a=uTJ09L"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/Webmarketing?i=uTJ09L" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Webmarketing?a=a9WwM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Webmarketing?i=a9WwM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Webmarketing?a=LN2bm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Webmarketing?i=LN2bm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Webmarketing?a=zfhRM"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/Webmarketing?i=zfhRM" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Webmarketing/~4/416073806" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/video/" rel="tag"Video/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/windows/" rel="tag"Windows/a, a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/commercial/" rel="tag"Commercial/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://realdvd.com/"img hspace="4" height="146" width="440" vspace="4" border="0" align="top" alt="RealDVD" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.downloadsquad.com/media/2008/10/realdvd-on-hold.jpg" //abr //div RealNetworks executivies may have thought that the company was releasing a lawsuit-proof DVD ripper when it decided to add mandatory DRM to its a href="http://realdvd.com/"RealDVD/a application launched last month. After all, while the software lets you rip DVD movies and save the video on your hard drive, it makes it extraordinarily difficult to share the media with other users, or even to watch it on a portable device or another computer you own. br /br /The movie studios apparently saw things differently because they a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/04/us-court-temporarily-prohibits-realdvd-sales/"filed a lawsuit last week/a and received a temporary injuction against RealNetworks that prevents the company from selling the software. During a hearing on Tuesday, a US district court judge a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10060481-93.html"made that injunction indefinite/a. The next hearing won't be scheduled until November 17th or later, which means that RealDVD will be unavailable for at least a month.br /br /Honestly, I'm still not sure why anyone would pay $30 for a DVD ripper when there are so many free, (and DRM-free) a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/08/realnetworks-to-launch-dvd-ripper-complete-with-drm/"options available/a. But the case is interesting, because RealNetworks is insisiting that by leaving the CSS encryption intact it is not violating anyone's copyrights. br /br /If this argument is upheld in court, it could be seen as both a win and a loss for supporters of DRM. On the one hand, it would help bolster the argument that DRM prevents piracy and that utilizing DRM is a valid option for studios that want to abide by the law. On the other hand, it would mean that companies like RealNetworks can create software that uses DRM to get around exactly what the movie studios wanted to use it for in the first place - to keep people from making copies of DVDs.br /br /Either way, it would be yet another instance of companies and courts telling users how they can and can't enjoy the media they've legally purchased. But it's not at all clear how the courts will rule on this case yet.br /br /[viah6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10060481-93.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/09/realdvd-sales-on-hold-indefinitely/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/forward/1337695/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/09/realdvd-sales-on-hold-indefinitely/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=XKlzxO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=XKlzxO" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=b45im"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=b45im" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?a=XHhjm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/downloadsquad?i=XHhjm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~4/415999580" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="mixx_birthday_logo.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/mixx_birthday_logo.png" /a href="http://mixx.com"Mixx/a, the social news site that competes directly with a href="http://digg.com"Digg/a, just celebrated its first birthday by a href="http://blog.mixx.com/2008/10/09/happy-birthday-mixxers/"announcing/a that traffic to its site has grown rapidly over the last few months and that it now attracts more than 4 million unique visitors a month. These numbers are even more impressive if you consider that Mixx only had about 1 million unique in May./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12120amp;cb=12120' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12120amp;n=12120' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pThis June, we a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mixx_still_tiny.php"criticized Mixx/a for apparently not being able to convert its partnerships with large sites like CNN, the New York Times, NPR, Slate, Reuters, and USAToday into real usage numbers. /p pSince then, Mixx has added a number of new features, including a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mixx_wants_you_to_built_a_comm.php"Mixx Communities/a, but most importantly, it seems the size of the Mixx community itself has reached a tipping point. In its anniversary blog post, Mixx diplomatically attributes its growth to all the "fabulous, intelligent and wonderful Mixxers," but it is also clear that Mixx's strategy of partnering with large content providers is finally starting to pay dividends for the company./p pimg alt="mixx_stats_sep08.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/mixx_stats_sep08.png" //p pOur a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mixx_latimes.php"initial impression/a of Mixx was very positive and the new features the company has added since then have only solidified our opinion of Mixx as a very useful social news site for mainstream users. /p pAt the same time, though, it is also worth pointing out that Digg now gets about 30 million unique visitors a month. Digg's Kevin Rose has a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10062167-36.html"admitted/a, however, that the site needs to become more relevant to mainstream users if it wants to keep growing. As Mixx is already geared towards mainstream users, we think that is should be able to continue its rapid growth for the foreseeable future. /p pimg alt="mixx_sshot_large_sep08.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/mixx_sshot_large_sep08.png" //p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mixx_turns_one_sees_rapid_growth.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/TlVP8G8bvgNsb8_KIVXLgcPD6zo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/TlVP8G8bvgNsb8_KIVXLgcPD6zo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=h17HJ3Vg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=h17HJ3Vg" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=xMvFxX6V"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=TRCU1V5z"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=TRCU1V5z" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=52Bbr3b8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=52Bbr3b8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=cpb9uMaI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=cpb9uMaI" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/cqpV4aTqplA" height="1" width="1"/

Dawn Kawamoto / CNET News:
Wall Street gives Net titans price cut, sector caution  —  A number of Internet titans received an across-the-board stock target haircut on Thursday from UBS Securities analyst Ben Schachter, who said a weakening economic outlook is expected to take a toll on display advertising and, to a lesser degree, search advertising.

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/shoeboxed_logo.png" height="37" width="150" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" align="right"/Previously a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/shopping/organize-your-receipts-at-shoeboxedcom-291543.php"mentioned/a receipt organizer a href="http://shoeboxed.com"Shoeboxed/a now auto-scans your mailed or e-mailed receipts and categorizes themmdash;"Clothes," "Food," "Retail," and so onmdash;based on the merchant or product names, similar to Mint.com. Still no export function, but Shoeboxed is looking pretty nice set-and-forget option for anyone who gets a bit frantic come tax time. [a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10061168-2.html"via/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=e39d9e2f8e783e322ed28daae17d66fb" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=e39d9e2f8e783e322ed28daae17d66fb" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/lifehacker/full?a=bWYy0A"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~a/lifehacker/full?i=bWYy0A" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=10OsM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=10OsM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=kIhiM"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=kIhiM" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=gQTSm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=gQTSm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=6Fodm"img src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=6Fodm" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/415866248" height="1" width="1"/