Internet & Media

Alright now, you know-it-alls, show-it-alls, and tell-it-alls. It's time you people learned a little discipline, a little social decorum, a little good old fashioned discretion.

So here are the rules. No more Twittering. No more friending. And definitely no more updating people on your latest moods, feelings, lovers, and hangnails.

Yes, in what seems like a concerted effort on the part of traditional culture, two highly similar organizations, the Marines and the NFL, have decided to fight back against all the careless talk.

They have each reportedly begun to ban Twitter and Facebook.

Let's start with the Marines. … Read more

Popular genealogy site Ancestry.com is going public, hoping to raise around $75 million, according to its SEC filing for an initial public offering submitted Monday.

As a genealogy site, Ancestry.com enables people to research their family history to find out who their ancestors were and how their family tree blossomed. The company started life in 1983 as a book publisher and then jumped online in 1997.

Ancestry.com is run by a firm previously known as The Generations Network, which changed its own name in early July to Ancestry.com to capitalize on the brand name. The majority … Read more

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issued an "office action" Monday rejecting two claims in TiVo's Multimedia Timewarping System (better known as the DVR) patent, the centerpiece of its legal battle with EchoStar.

According to the PTO, its preliminary finding rejects TiVo's patent Claims 31 and 61.

Claim 31 describes "a process for the simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data." The claim discusses how TiVo's DVR captures video from a broadcast source, stores it in its hard drive, and allows users to play it back at their convenience.

Claim 61 is similar to Claim 31. It describes "an apparatus for the simultaneous storage and play back of multimedia data." The claim discusses how the TiVo handles stored shows and gives users the ability to control them on the device.

The patent itself, which features more than 60 claims, is a blueprint for how TiVo's DVR works. It discusses an "invention (that) allows the user to store selected television broadcast programs while the user is simultaneously watching or reviewing another program. A preferred embodiment of the invention accepts television (TV) input streams in a multitude of forms, for example, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) or PAL broadcast, and digital forms such as Digital Satellite System (DSS), Digital Broadcast Services (DBS), or Advanced Television Standards Committee (ATSC)."

The patent goes on to explain how TiVo streams content through MPEG video. It gives users the option to put the video into "reverse, fast forward, play, pause, index, fast/slow reverse play, and fast/slow play."

The PTO's preliminary finding is important for EchoStar. It gives it some breathing room as it moves forward after a series of missteps.… Read more

Hackers launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack that sporadically downed popular blog network Gawker Media over the weekend and on Monday, the company confirmed in a blog post early Tuesday morning.

When CNET News spoke to Gawker Media representatives on Monday, they were not yet sure what was causing the outages but had not ruled out malicious behavior.

The attacks appear to have been launched at Consumerist, a blog that Gawker sold to Consumer Reports last year but which is still hosted on the same servers. The motivation behind them is not yet clear.

The New York-based Gawker Media has … Read more

Music service iLike, best known for third-party applications on platforms like Facebook, made its big iPhone app launch today. The company has rolled out an app for alerts about local concerts, and also launched its previously announced program for bands and artists to create custom fan applications.

Apple still has to approve the "Local Concerts" app, according to a release, but iLike is excited about its potential impact regardless.

"It's something that we really felt was a good idea on paper as we started developing it," iLike CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News, "but … Read more

Verizon Communications is about to open up its new Widget Bazaar to third-party developers to create an "app store" for its Fios TV service in a move that could forever change how people watch TV.

Verizon first announced the Widget Bazaar just a couple of weeks ago. Initially, the company described it as a storefront for new widgets or applications developed by Verizon partners for its Fios TV customers. At the time, Verizon executives downplayed the possibility of a sprawling Widget Bazaar teeming with thousands of applications developed by third parties.

But now Verizon is making it clear … Read more

Can't donate your personal time to a good cause? Intel is providing what may be the next best option.

Intel teamed up with GridRepublic on Monday to launch a Facebook application that allows the spare processing power in a PC to be used to fight diseases and study climate change.

The massive amount of data crunching necessary for high level research is often extremely expensive or not readily available--or both. Intel's solution is Progress Thru Processors, a computing application built on the Facebook platform that allows people to donate their PC's available data processing capacity to research … Read more

PayPal suffered a global outage and slow performance Monday, but eBay said its online payment system is mostly back in working order.

"About an hour ago, PayPal started experiencing site issues that affected the ability to send and receive money. We have all hands on deck to get this fixed," said PayPal spokesman Anuj Nayar in a blog post about noon PDT. "We're really sorry for the inconvenience."

An update at 12:40 p.m. said the site was working again for most users.

Nayar said in an interview the outage was global and the … Read more

Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of the three founders of The Pirate Bay, has stepped down as the site's spokesman and has said he is moving on to new projects.

"I have decided to not be the spokesperson for The Pirate Bay anymore," Sunde Kolmisoppi wrote in a blog post Monday. "The reasons are many, but most importantly it takes too much of my time. I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and … Read more