07
February
2008
|
06:09 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Newswatch 2.7.08: AOL to be split up

Time Warner to split up AOL

[NYT] Time Warner, seeking to cut costs and streamline operations, plans to split off AOL’s Internet access business from its Web site and online advertising business and cut 100 jobs at its corporate unit, the company’s new chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, said Wednesday.

Never plug in a cell phone again

[Reuters] Scientists in the United States and Canada said on Thursday they have developed a unique device that can be strapped on the knee that exploits the mechanics of human walking to generate a usable supply of electricity. It generates enough power to charge up 10 cell phones at once, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Google tries to sneak past IT guards

[Ars] According to Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth, "Google Apps has been, by definition, an IT project, and now we want to let people use it without IT involvement."

Grrr! Biofuels actually worse for climate change

[WSJ] A study published in the latest issue of Science finds that corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by a hoped-for 20%, will nearly double the output of CO2 and other gases that trap the sun's heat. A separate paper in Science concludes that the clearing of native habitats around the world to grow more biofuel crops will lead to more carbon emissions, not less.

Big guys sign on to OpenID

[NYT] IBM, Google, Microsoft, Verisign and Yahoo have joined the corporate board of the OpenID Foundation, giving a boost to the group's efforts to simplify the process of signing into Web sites.

Is Google out of spectrum auction?

[PCMag] Recent bidding patterns suggest that Google has pulled back now that c-block open access requirements have been met, so that rivals like Verizon and AT&T can duke it out – and fund the inevitably pricey build outs.

GOOG makes news local

[Google] Today we're releasing a new feature to find your local news by simply typing in a city name or zip code. While we’re not the first news site to aggregate local news, we’re doing it a bit differently -- we're able to create a local section for any city, state or country in the world and include thousands of sources. We’re not simply looking at the byline or the source, but instead we analyze every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.