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Report: Complaints trigger rewrite of Photoshop Express terms

It appears Adobe is quickly responding to concerns about a surprising clause in its terms of service for Photoshop Express, the free Web-based software launched Wednesday that has otherwise been well-received.

Users were taken aback by a clause that basically gives Adobe the right to do anything it wants with their photos. As CNET's Lori Grunin first pointed out in her review on Webware, the clause in question goes like this:

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 691: The Babies Have Wi-Fi

In the future, we will love the cockroaches, because they bring the Wi-Fi. Sadly, autonomous deathbots will make life unliveable, and that's assuming the Large Hadron Collider hasn't turned us all into strangelets. In happier news, the music industry is floating a plan to tax everyone who uses the Internet so they can prop up the decaying corpse of their business plan! What a fun day. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 691

The music industry's new extortion scheme http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/27/the-music-industrys-new-extortion-scheme/ http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9905404-7.html

U.S. students, … Read more

Nokia Siemens speeds up 2.5G cell networks

Wireless equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks said Thursday that it has new software that will more than double the download speed on networks using 2.5G EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Environment) wireless technology.

This is good news for first generation iPhone users whose phones connect to the mobile Net via AT&T's EDGE network. On average iPhone users report that they can get download speeds of 210 kbps. Nokia Siemens says that with a simple software upgrade to the EDGE network equipment, operators, like AT&T, can offer their customers download speeds of 592 kilobits per … Read more

Amazon adds redundancy and geographical resiliency to EC2

Amazon is introducing what is definitely the "must-have" utility for it's EC2 cloud computing offering to become a reality. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service now has an application programming interface (API) that lets developers choose where its application physically runs.

As Martin LaMonica writes on News.blog:

This Availability Zones feature is important because people can now add redundancy to their application. Choosing multiple zones, people can have server instances with separate power, cooling, network access, and physical servers

This is an important move by Amazon and I would expect it to be echoed by … Read more

Happily ever after for Comcast and BitTorrent?

Update 7:57 AM PDT: Comcast and BitTorrent have made it official, announcing that they are working together "and with the broader Internet and ISP community" to address issues of rich media and network management. One specific result of the talks: Comcast says that, by the end of 2008, it will have adopted a "capacity management technique that is protocol agnostic."

Are Comcast and BitTorrent secretly an old married couple, prone to bickering over their peccadilloes and never quite comfortable together in public, but still joined tightly by an abiding sense of union and shared purpose?… Read more

Wired2Fire Diablo Ultima: Gaming demon

The demise of the desktop PC has long been foretold. The prophets say laptops will one day rule the Earth, feeding off the carcasses of old ATX boxes, belching Iomega Zip drives as they go. The doom-mongers are probably right, but let's be clear: as great as laptops are, nothing beats a desktop machine for sheer value.

Take, for example, the Wire2Fire Diablo Ultima. It's an exceptionally capable gaming PC, and it only costs 699 pounds Stirling. It uses an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 overclocked to 3.2 gigahertz, a BFG 8800GT 512MB graphics card, 2GB of … Read more

Where we're gonna hack the Gibson

EPISODE 64

Rick Astley weighs in on rickrolling: he finds it awesome! Plus, Motorola will be splitting into two companies, handset and set-top box. South Park episodes are online in their entirety now, which means more wasted productivity at work. All that and Erica Ogg from News.com joins us live!

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Make an R2-D2 mailbox out of paper

When the U.S. Postal Service launched several hundred R2-D2-skinned postal drop boxes around the country last year, it also quietly released a printable paper craft version for Star Wars fans who don't live near one of the limited edition mail receptacles. Being that I don't have good enough quality paper or glue stick skills to accomplish such a feat myself, I let the pros do the work then post their shots to Flickr.

Ron over at PaperKraft.net has put together a wonderful paper rendition of the lovable droid. While not as intricate as his Howl's Moving Castle … Read more

Has crowdsourcing jumped the shark?

Crowdsourcing has entered the mainstream big-time. It has become daunting to find a brand these days that does NOT have some crowdsourcing program in place.

My Starbucks Idea is just the latest example: Starbucks asks its consumers for advice, and besides certainly receiving a lot of good ideas, the troubled coffee chain makes consumers feel part of the brand remake.

It's the same template as usual: engage your community, harness its creativity, and let it create the content for you.

It works, sure, but it's getting stale. For some reason, marketing trends take two to three years before … Read more

Agree2 creates binding legal documents that won't hold up in court

Update: Agree2 CEO Pelle Braendgaard takes issue with my argument about the quality of the agreements on his service. Read his rebuttal here.

Agree2 is one part great service and one part really scary idea. It allows users to create, collaborate on, and digitally sign binding legal agreements. But it does nothing to ensure that the agreements are legally sound.

Good part first: with this service, you can either create a new agreement from scratch, or use a template on the service, and easily define the fields (such as the parties in the agreement or the monetary value of it) … Read more