Internet & Media

You and just about everyone else, it seems, are spending more and more time on Facebook and Twitter, updating statuses and checking friends' tweets. That's all well and good, of course, but the amount of personal information that all of you share in real time, and the level of trust implicit with the social networking sites, do pose particular security and privacy problems.

A recent study from Sophos found that Facebook users reveal a lot of personal information to new friends, including ones they really don't even know or have never met. Using fake profiles, Sophos sent out … Read more

How much time do you spend online each week? If you're an average Net user, a new poll shows, it's around 13 hours--excluding e-mail.

The Harris Interactive poll, released Wednesday, found that 80 percent of U.S. adults go online, whether at home, work, or elsewhere. Those who surf the Net spend an average of 13 hours per week online, but that figure varies widely. Twenty percent are online for two hours or less a week, while 14 percent are there for 24 hours or more.

The average number of hours that people spend online each week has … Read more

A decade after the rise of Napster and a year after promising a new antipiracy strategy, the Recording Industry Association of America appears to be floundering on the piracy front.

The plan adopted last year by the RIAA, the trade group for the four largest recording companies, in place of its controversial litigation campaign seems to have gone nowhere. The RIAA said at the time that it had struck partnerships with major Internet service providers, the Web's true gatekeepers, and that they would help choke off online piracy.

It was all supposed to be a done deal. The Wall … Read more

As we close the book on 2009 and ready for 2010, a legal settlement takes us back to 2007 and 2008, when Comcast got into trouble with customers and the feds for throttling peer-to-peer traffic on its network.

Comcast has agreed to pay $16 million to end to a class action lawsuit alleging the broadband provider promised and advertised certain download and upload speeds, but blocked peer-to-peer traffic on its high-speed Internet network.

"Comcast denies these claims, but has revised its management of P2P and is settling to avoid the burden and cost of further litigation," according to … Read more

Yesterday, I compiled my list of the five most welcome products for digital audio that came out in 2009. Today, I'm following it up with my list of the year's five biggest digital audio duds.

Zookz. The breathless pitch got me interested: a mysterious online service was getting ready to compete against subscription-based download service eMusic. But where eMusic limits users to a set number of downloads, this mystery service would offer unlimited music and movie downloads. How could this be? Wouldn't users just download all the material they wanted then cancel their subscriptions? How could content … Read more

I have often wondered if being a divorce lawyer makes you feel better about humanity or worse. Perhaps it merely keeps you in intimate contact with all the pitfalls of relationships on a daily, even hourly, basis.

Still, whose heart could possibly lose so much as a throb on hearing that almost one in five divorces in the UK are fueled by Facebook?

No, it's not that Facebook's employees are so irresistible that anyone who comes into contact with them, even in the UK, immediately leaves their spouse. Rather, it seems that the constant lack of trust in … Read more

Hulu's foray into music videos took another small step on Tuesday, when it struck a deal to offer some video content from Warner Music Group, one of the four largest recording companies.

The partnership calls for Hulu to offer concert footage and music videos from a handful of Warner acts, including Jason Mraz, the rock band Paramore, and alternative group Muse. CNET reported seeing Muse's content at Hulu earlier Tuesday.

To be sure, even with the addition of Warner's acts, Hulu's music video library is modest, at best. In addition to Muse, Hulu cut a deal … Read more

Six months ago, I had an exclusive First Look at Marvell's prototype plug-in computer, the SheevaPlug. Ever since, dozens of companies have contacted me about their applications. Most recently, CNET reviewed the Pogoplug from Cloud Engines.

That said, it didn't surprise me when Marvell announced Tuesday that 10,000 SheevaPlug units featuring Marvell CPU technology have shipped.

To celebrate this milestone, Marvell also announced Tuesday the launch of its worldwide Plug Computer developer competition, called "Free Your Imagination," to award the most innovative Plug Computing concept submitted.

You can participate or find out more about this … Read more

A blizzard that pelted much of the Eastern Seaboard with over a foot of snow also led to a spike in last-minute online holiday shopping last weekend, traffic firm ComScore said Tuesday.

Online shopping continues to eat up a bigger chunk of holiday retail each year, but this season, with roads snowbound and temperatures well below freezing in some of the most populous areas of the country at the tail end of the holiday season, it was even more than usual. (Several cities in the mid-Atlantic, like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pulled in more snow in a single snowfall … Read more