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MySpace renews ad deal with Google

The News Corp.-owned MySpace, which this year underwent a complete overhaul to swap identities from flagging social network to pop-culture media sharing hub, announced today that it's renewed its advertising deal with Google. The existing $900 million ad contract expired this fall.

This summer, a report surfaced that MySpace had been talking to Microsoft and Yahoo as well as Google regarding the formation of a new contract. Google had been vocally dissatisfied with the existing contract, saying that its ads on social networks simply didn't pay. Meanwhile, MySpace's traffic was plummeting as social-networking users flocked to … Read more

It's all text to us

Personal Web sites, blogs, and wikis have dramatically increased even casual surfers' opportunities to edit text, but the site-based editors often fall short. If you've ever wanted to edit text in a Web site using your own text editor, you need Doctor What's It's All Text. We like this free Firefox add-on; once you set it up, It's All Text will open a selected page's text content in the text editor of your choice, in the format of your choice, and post your changes to the site.

We downloaded and installed It's All Text, … Read more

Kensington ClickSafe: Does anyone lock a laptop?

I remember 1997. I always brought my Kensington cable lock with me to tie down my PowerBook at the grad school library. Honestly, I don't think I've used a laptop lock since.

I'm not alone, apparently. Kensington's new ClickSafe locking system aims to somehow make the process easier. Well, at least half of the process: the new ClickSafe lock automatically snaps onto your laptop without a key, but it still requires a key to unlock--not a surprise, since a lock that could be unlocked without a key doesn't sound very safe at all.

The Kensington … Read more

Bing-Yahoo set to shake up paid search, report says

Google still owns the market for paid search results, but the newly formed Bing-Yahoo team could "capture significant market share in the near term," according to a new report from SearchIgnite.

Among all search engines, Google's third-quarter share of the pay-per-click search market stood at 80.2 percent. That represented a gain of 7.9 percent in ad spending from the year-ago quarter and Google's "most dominant" market share since SearchIgnite started tracking companies three years ago, according to the market researcher's report released today.

In the same quarter, Bing's market share … Read more

iPod Nano click wheel to go way of the dodo?

September 1 has become a circled date on every Mac nerd's calendar following Apple's announcement of a music-related media event to be held in San Francisco. One of the big announcements, according to analysts, could be an overhauled iPod Nano, sans click wheel.

The click wheel has been one of the most iconic pieces of industrial engineering in technology since its release, but may be relegated to science museums sooner than later. Kaufman analyst Shawn Wu claims via sources that a "significant redesign" of the iPod Nano may also be part of Apple's media event … Read more

Advanced plug-in blocking appears in Chrome dev

A new method for blocking approved plug-ins from third-party sources appeared in the developer's version of Google's Chrome browser. Available on Friday for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Google Chrome dev 6.0.490.1 includes numerous bug fixes and introduces the Click-to-Play feature for more finely tuned plug-in control.

Click-to-Play adds a small but useful level of functionality to Chrome's native plug-in blocking. It allows Chrome users to activate a plug-in on a per-page basis. Without it, users can only toggle plug-in activation on a per-site basis.

To see how it works, first, you're required to … Read more

Remote viewing tool

Parents, business owners, and anyone concerned about keeping the worst of the Internet at bay will appreciate Remote Authority. It's a compact, inexpensive, easy-to-use tool that takes a screenshot every minute of whatever is being viewed on the host machine (i.e., by your kids) and displays it on a secure Web site so that you can monitor it anywhere there's an Internet connection, which is pretty much anywhere these days. Just to be clear, it shows you what someone else is looking at on whatever computer it's monitoring, so none of the usual excuses will fly. … Read more

Lumbering list maker

Technology has done a lot to improve efficiency and make tedious chores more tolerable. Every now and then, however, some misguided soul creates a cure that's worse than the disease. So it goes with Click Shopping Organizer. The program attempts to make the process of compiling a shopping list easier, but it ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

Even installing Click Shopping Organizer was a pain. The program requires the installation of the Microsoft SQL Server, which must be downloaded separately. We spent at least 20 minutes just getting everything downloaded and installed. For the most … Read more

Microsoft sues over 'click laundering' fraud

Microsoft filed a lawsuit this week accusing a Web site of engaging in a new type of click fraud called "click laundering" by getting credit for clicks on ads that were made by botnets or unsuspecting users on a site set up for that purpose.

The lawsuit names RedOrbit, a science news aggregator, as defendant, while a second suit names John Does to cover multiple unknown defendants who allegedly participated in click laundering on Microsoft's AdCenter network, Microsoft said in a statement.

To get around click fraud detection technologies, fraudsters are using so-called "parked" Web … Read more