Internet & Media

Apple is kicking off its Worldwide Developers Conference next week with the unveiling of its cloud-based service, iCloud.

On June 6, a keynote address will reveal the details before a packed house at the WWDC in San Francisco. In addition to iCloud, Apple said it will detail its next-generation desktop operating system, Mac OS X Lion, as well as iOS 5, the next version of the mobile operating system running on its iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

The company also indicated in today's press release that CEO Steve Jobs, who is on an indefinite medical leave, will be on … Read more

It looks like Twitter's recent app expansion effort might just be getting started.

The microblogging site is getting ready to announce its own photo-sharing service this week, according to a TechCrunch report that cited multiple anonymous sources.

Twitter users can already share photos on their Twitter streams via Twitpic and Yfrog, but as the report noted, a built-in service would have a significant advantage over competing apps.

The site is also close to acquiring AdGrok, a platform for bidding on keywords on Google AdWords, for less than $10 million, according to a separate TechCrunch report citing multiple sources.

Twitter'… Read more

For a while, Tupac Shakur lived in Marin City, Calif. It so happens that I buy my coffee there every morning.

So I wandered down on this Memorial Day to tell Marie and Kurshina at Starbucks that the great rapper is still alive and has made a home in New Zealand.

They weren't buying it. "Nah, he's dead," said Kurshina.

It seems she might be right, for I had been relying on the very vulnerable source that is PBS, which offered that both Tupac and Biggie Smalls had settled for a life in a small town … Read more

How would you feel if a male politician sent you a photograph of boxer briefs that were, um, well filled?

Perhaps, these days, an appropriate answer might be: "Not in the least bit surprised."

However, in the case of New York City Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, he reportedly says that a nefarious hacker infiltrated his social network's undercarriage.

Politico, encouraged by a report from BigGovernment.com offered that Rep. Weiner's Twitter and yfrog handles may have been used to send a somewhat boastful image of a male package in boxer briefs to a female student in … Read more

One of the fun aspects of Twitter is that you can pretend to be someone else--or just make a name up for yourself--and express your true feelings about so very many things.

However, if your feelings happen to be seen as libelous, you might now have a problem.

For the Guardian reports that Twitter has revealed the name, e-mail address, and telephone number of a person who tweeted some rather critical notions about a local council in the U.K.

The council of South Tyneside, in the rather chilly north of England, decided to petition a court in California in … Read more

Who says the old broadsheet newspaper is dead?

To celebrate its 190th anniversary, the U.K.'s Guardian (known at its 1821 founding as The Manchester Guardian) has concocted a very-old-school version of the front--er, home--page of today's edition.

The page uses serifed and black-letter Web fonts; copious vertical and horizontal rules; vintage engravings; and a background image of a pulpy, papery texture to re-create the thrill that awaited one who clapped a copper into a newsboy's palm and flapped open a newly purchased copy of the Latest Edition.

In explaining the project, the page's developers also have some fun with Georgian/Victorian-era prose stylings:

"This new edition is available in the following establishments: the Flaming Fox public house; the Verdi & Traviatta at the Royal Opera House; the African Expedition outfitters and the recently-constructed Silver V8 engine foundry," they write in a blog post. When readers click the included links, the rather exotic appellations become clear:… Read more

When PayPal filed its lawsuit against Google yesterday for poaching a key executive for its mobile-payment business, it got us thinking about the growing list of enemies Google has made over the years.

Sometimes Google takes heat for doing the right thing, as it did in China. After wrestling with censorship, the company chose to shut down its Google.cn site and redirected users to the uncensored Chinese-language Google.com.hk domain in Hong Kong.

But Google has also managed to alienate regulators, both in the United States and abroad. And as the company pushes into new markets, it's … Read more

Google threw large sums of money at the four major record labels during negotiations for cloud-music rights, according to a published report.

BusinessWeek magazine is reporting that Google offered the labels $100 million to obtain licenses for a cloud music service. After negotiating for more than a year, talks broke down. Google launched an unlicensed service two weeks ago that enables users to upload their songs to the company's servers but isn't as fully equipped as it might be with licenses.

This is the latest and perhaps most dramatic sign of how important antipiracy efforts are to the … Read more

Twitter is rolling out a new feature that lets you click on someone's "following" page and see the latest tweets from the folks that individual is following.

The update to Twitter's following pages is a major departure from the former functionality. Previously, when people would click on someone's following tab, they would see the usernames and biographical information of the people being followed. To satisfy those who prefer that functionality, the new following page has two tabs: the new, default "tweets" tab and a "people" tab. The latter will show only … Read more