Newswatch 8.16.07: Skype outage could mean the end of P2P VOIP
Cooling chips with the ion wind
[Ars Technica] Researchers at Purdue University, in a study funded by Intel, have demonstrated a prototype cooling engine that increased the heat-transfer coefficient of a microprocessor by 250 percent.
Lennon catalog on iTunes
[BBC] "John would have loved the fact that his music will now be available in a format suited to a new generation of listeners," Ono said.
Facebook Secrets gets takedown notice
The blogspot site is gone, but, hmm, there's a new site: facebooksecretsagain.blogspot.com
Does Skype outage expose P2P's limitations?
[GigaOM] Folks at Joost, Babelgum and other P2P companies should be concerned about their business prospects going forward. Venture capitalists who have been funding P2P-based services should take this as an early warning on the fragility of the whole P2P ecosystem, where a small glitch can cause widespread problems.
Wikipedia Scanner reveals who's editing now
[InfoWorld] Virgil Griffith, who will be a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology starting in September, has developed Wikipedia Scanner, a search tool that traces the IP (Internet Protocol) address of people who make edits to the online encyclopedia.
iPod lies have Taiwanese execs staring at prison
[InfoWorld] Nine executives at Inventec Appliances could face jail time for failing to reveal plans by Apple to reduce iPod orders to the company in a timely manner. he executives have been indicted by Taiwanese prosecutors over allegations of insider stock trading, the company said Thursday.
Netflix hopes to beat out Blockbuster with customer service
[NYT] Netflix’s decision to greet anxious consumers with a human voice, not an e-mail, is also unusual in corporate customer service. “It’s very interesting and counter to everything anybody else is doing,” said Tom Adams, the president of Adams Media Research, a market research firm in Carmel, Calif. “Everyone else is making it almost impossible to find a human.”
MTV to invest $500m in games
[Reuters] MTV Networks plans to invest well over $500 million in video games, seeing the red-hot entertainment category as a major pillar of growth in its goal to reach consumers wherever they spend time.
Social networking not paying off for USAToday
[TechCrunch] Compete.com data shows monthly visitors down from 14 million in March to about 10 million today, a 29% drop in unique visitors. The New York Times and Washington Post are both at about even levels with March.