Internet & Media

With more people keen to watch finger-chomping siblings, evolving dance moves, and chuckling babies on their TVs, Cablevision is trying out a service that could help.

The cable company announced a new service on Wednesday called PC to TV Media Relay that will let customers view content from their computers on their TVs. Similar to a remote desktop program, the service will wirelessly share whatever is on your PC with your TV screen, including e-mail, applications, and of course Web content.

"With our PC to TV Media Relay service, we are putting an end to the need for families … Read more

NEW YORK--Hans Pandeya, the Swedish businessman whose attempts to acquire The Pirate Bay last year collapsed amid controversy, is giving digital media another try.

Pandeya, who attended this week's Digital Music East Forum here, said Thursday he's busy creating a base in Boston for his U.S. operations. Asked whether he was still interested in The Pirate Bay, Pandeya said, "I have a lot of secret plans I'm working on."

As for why he was at a digital music conference, Pandeya would only say that his plans include digital media. Last year, Pandeya, CEO of … Read more

The European Commission has pledged to make sure a global treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement will not force countries to disconnect people for unlawfully downloading copyrighted music, movies, and other material.

The statement from the office of trade commissioner Karel de Gucht is the strongest comment on the treaty since the reorganized European Commission emerged in February.

"We are not supporting and will not accept that an eventual...agreement creates an obligation to disconnect people from the Internet because of illegal downloads," John Clancy, de Gucht's spokesman, told ZDNet UK on Thursday.

Read more of &… Read more

Google is in hot water in Europe once again over Street View map photos.

In a letter sent to the search giant this week, the European Union's privacy watchdog told Google that it should warn towns and cities before it snaps photos for its online Street View maps. The EU also told the company that it should cut the time it keeps the original photos online from a year to six months.

In response, Google said it already posts updates on its Web site about the itinerary of its Street View cameras. The company also addressed privacy concerns, noting … Read more

Evidently, Baidu isn't nearly as effective an academic research tool as Google, because the latter's threatened withdrawal from China has got the country's scientists pretty worried.

A survey of 784 Chinese scientists by the journal Nature (PDF), found that many feel the search engine is indispensable to their work, particularly if it requires English-language searches for material outside China.

Of those surveyed, 80 percent said they regularly use Google to find academic papers and nearly 60 percent said they use it to keep abreast of new research. Why Google and not Baidu, which is used as a … Read more

Some e-mails are not suitable for opening in the workplace, and then there are e-mails not suitable for sending from the workplace.

This must be the difficult lesson for Steven Payne, a vice president (at last word) of Evergreen Entertainment. Payne's company operates a chain of movie theaters, including the St. Croix Falls Cinema 8, in St. Croix Falls, Wis. Recently, a patron of the movie theater wrote a letter to the company complaining about the experience she and her husband and another couple had during a showing of "Shutter Island."

Sarah Kohl-Leaf of Taylors Falls, Minn., … Read more

A recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 73 percent of online teens use social-networking sites. Updating their Facebook or MySpace page has become a regular activity for teens as is using these services to catch up on what their peers are doing. But, for the most part, teens are using social networking while they are away from school. Many schools actually ban access to services like Facebook and Twitter and often configure filtering programs to block students from accessing them.

While I can understand why it might not be educationally relevant for schools to … Read more

NEW YORK--YouTube has begun testing a new music feature designed to entice users to stay on the site longer.

YouTube Disco enables people to key an artist name or song title into a search field, and then it creates a playlist for them. Each clip will play automatically, one after the other, with no prompting from the user.

Users can also mix and match songs in their playlists. This is the kind of thing that people can fire up and let play for hours of free music listening. YouTube now sees hundreds of millions of visitors a month, but the … Read more

It seems all the talk of a product's environmental friendliness is falling on deaf ears for many gadget buyers, at least according to one new study.

According to the Gadgetology Report released Thursday by Retrevo, 42 percent of consumers don't care if the gadget they buy is green or not. And when asked if they felt guilty for not buying environmentally friendly gadgets, nearly 60 percent of respondents answered no. Sixteen percent of the respondents indicated that for them, price would trump the green factor in their buying decisions.

However, the report also shows that nearly 40 percent … Read more