Internet & Media

Perhaps Google CEO Eric Scmidt's tweet said it all.

"Can't wait to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said 'Hell has indeed frozen over')," he wrote Saturday.

This tweet appears to be a response to speculation by John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, that one of the world's most ad-diffident companies would be running a brand ad during the Big Game's third quarter. (Kickoff is just after 3:20 p.m. PST Sunday on CBS, publisher of CNET.)

Battelle believes that the ad … Read more

WASHINGTON, D.C.--A study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project found a decline of blogging among teens and younger adults, and a small increase in blogging among adults over 30.

The study, published Wednesday, also found that only 8 percent of teenagers are using Twitter, though among high-school girls, the number climbs to 13 percent. Not surprisingly, social networking continues to grow among all age groups. Seventy-three percent of online teens use social-networking sites, compared to 55 percent in 2006.

For a summary and analysis of the survey, I spoke with study director Amanda Lenhart after she … Read more

After a weeklong public dispute over e-book pricing, the paper and electronic titles of publisher Macmillan are returning to Amazon.com's virtual store shelves.

The online retailer, in reaction to Macmillan demanding that some of its e-books be priced higher than Amazon's $9.99 standard, had "expressed [its] strong disagreement and the seriousness of [its] disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles."

The title takedown was indeed temporary. According to a Friday afternoon post by Publishers Weekly, "sources said an agreement has been completed, and the e-tailer has begun putting back the … Read more

Hot on the heels of a visual face-lift, Facebook on Friday announced that the prototype version of its photo uploader, which was introduced in mid-November of last year, will soon be rolling out to all users.

Unlike the existing version of Facebook's photo uploader, the new uploader requires the installation of a browser plug-in. This inconvenience is rewarded with the option to leave Facebook entirely, while the photos continue to upload in the background. Previously, users would have had to leave that window or page running while the uploader did its magic.

Facebook also said the new uploader supports … Read more

Wow, it's been a busy month for major news events! I hope you didn't miss all CNET's great coverage of the 2010 trade show for electronic consumer goods and devices, held back in January.

And on Sunday, our publisher, CBS, will air a fabulous contest between two teams engaged in a (hopefully) thrilling game of gridiron football. And the opening festivities of the quadrennial snow season international athletic competition will have you glued to your seat on February 12!

Don't know what I'm talking about? That's the point. Welcome, friends, to the way the … Read more

I once went to a wedding in which a British High Court judge was the bride's godfather.

Having made a deeply insincere speech, he then proceeded to get blind drunk and attempt, for no clear reason, to remove his trousers. He left the proceedings with his pants around his ankles, his wife around his torso, and a deep hush around the marquee in which the wedding was being held.

People stared, so frozen at the lips that the wine enjoyed no sips. And this, I imagine, is a posture many have experienced upon viewing a campaign video made on … Read more

The Zune forums are alive with complaints that a bunch of music has suddenly disappeared from Zune devices. The reason: it appears that Microsoft has pulled a bunch of music from the Zune Marketplace. If users downloaded this music to their devices via the subscription-based Zune Pass service, then it apparently disappeared when they synced their device. (I'm talking about subscription-based "tethered" downloads, of which users get an unlimited number per month. The Zune Pass also offers 10 permanent MP3 downloads per month, and those downloads have not been affected.)

I'm not a Zune Pass subscriber, … Read more

The Authors Guild agreed to a controversial settlement with Google because it feared repeating the mistakes that the music industry has made in dealing with digital works, it said Friday.

Google and the Authors Guild have struggled to get final approval of a settlement granting Google the right to continue a six-year book-scanning project than has digitized 12 million titles. Objections to that settlement from authors and academics have been heated, and despite revisions, the U.S. Department of Justice continued to object in principle to the settlement on Thursday, saying "the (revised agreement) purports to grant legal rights … Read more

Facebook has gotten another face-lift.

The popular social-networking site has tweaked its home page yet again. This time around, the redesign puts more of Facebook's core features and settings right on the home page. The goal is to spare users from having to jump from one page to another to access their favorite features.

The redesign was rolled out to the first group of users on Thursday, Facebook's 6th birthday. As of Thursday evening, 80 million out of Facebook's 400 million customers should have received the new home page, according to Inside Facebook.

The top menu of … Read more