Internet & Media

You have to give Yahoo an A for effort, if perhaps the ultimate grade in its ongoing quest to buy hot mobile start-up Foursquare is an F.

While its founder Dennis Crowley--who controls a large chunk of the shares of the start-up--has so far turned down several $100 million-plus offers from Yahoo, sources said its new head of mergers and acquisitions Andrew Siegel is back in New York today still trying to convince him to sell.

So far, especially because the effort has dragged on for a while now and Yahoo has not made an overwhelming show of financial might, … Read more

Negotiators on Wednesday will publish the first officially released draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a new treaty designed to harmonize copyright enforcement around the world.

The decision to release the consolidated draft on April 21 was made at the eighth round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations, which took place this week in Wellington, New Zealand. So far, the only publicly available information on the negotiating countries' proposals and amendments have been leaked documents purporting to be drafts of the agreement.

"There was a general sense from this session that negotiations have now advanced to a point where … Read more

How does one print from a cloud-based OS like Google's Chrome when you can't install a local printer driver? Google is getting closer toward the answer.

The company is in the midst of developing a Google Cloud Print system that would allow Chrome OS users to send documents from any device to their own local printers or to other shared printers. Rather than depend on local print drivers, Cloud Print would receive and manage print jobs on Google's end and send them back to a printer.

Now it's making some resources available to developers. In a … Read more

Viacom says newly released documents in its copyright fight with Google over the search engine's YouTube subsidiary help prove its case.

We've heard these kinds of sweeping declarations from both sides throughout the legal standoff, which began when Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google in 2007, claiming YouTube encouraged users to commit intellectual property theft. A review of the documents filed with the court on Thursday shows that much of the material, such as Google employees making critical statements about YouTube's "rogue" business model before buying the video sharing site in October 2006 … Read more

I'm sure there are few people left in the world who have not, at one time or another, sent a picture of their most favorable body parts to someone they loved. Or at least coveted. Or at least knew. I am, therefore, moved to photograph the frothing in my brain caused by the controversy surrounding a video for Microsoft's new Kin phones aimed at young social-networking hipsters.

The film appears at Kin.com, a Microsoft promotional site that tells you the Kin is "impulsive" and that "the more you share, the more you get." … Read more

Looking for more folks to follow on Twitter? Google may be able to help.

The search giant unveiled on Wednesday a new feature dubbed Follow Finder, according to its blog. Revealed at Twitter's Chirp developers conference this week, Follow Finder tries to uncover more Twitter accounts, or tweeps, that you may want to follow based on the ones you have already accumulated.

To use the service, enter your Twitter username at the Follow Finder page. Google then looks at the people you already follow, finds other accounts who follow the same or similar people as you, and then conjures … Read more

A dozen broadcasters have joined forces to create a new service for delivering mobile TV.

With more and more people watching video on smartphones and other portable gadgets, the newly created venture will let member companies cook up digital TV content including live and on-demand video, news from both print and electronic outlets, and an array of sports and entertainment shows. Potentially, it could also provide U.S. mobile users with information on emergencies and natural disasters.

Content will be sent over existing broadcast airwaves instead of over the Internet. The partnership is made up of three national networks--Fox, NBC/… Read more

With music, there's no bright line between art and commerce. Ever since the dawn of mass media, when big-band radio shows were commercially sponsored, musicians have explicitly endorsed products or allowed their songs to be used in advertisements.

At the same time, there's a notion among some musicians and fans that rock 'n' roll is sacred, and that artists who sell their music to commercial sponsors are less talented or less deserving of fame and fortune. This notion ebbs and flows as the music industry changes and has been particularly strong in certain subcultures--particularly the original punks and … Read more

Put down that copy of Tiger Beat, Justin Bieber fans, for the teenage songster's Twitter musings soon will be a matter of public record. The Library of Congress announced today--via Twitter, no less--that is acquiring the Twitter's entire archive through donation. Now I feel a lot of pressure to make my tweets as witty as possible.

Exact details are to come, but the archive will include all public tweets since March, 2006. And with 55 million tweets per day from 105 million registered users, that's a lot of social blabbering to preserve. Just think, once Library … Read more