Webware

Though it's in hot water with the U.S. government, WikiLeaks is being supported by online activists fighting to keep the site alive.

WikiLeaks is being propped up by a barrage of mirror sites created by activists following moves by Amazon to stop hosting its site and Domain Name System provider EveryDNS.net to cut off its DNS services, according to The New York Times. Such mirrors can replicate an entire Web site, ensuring that all content and documents remain online and accessible even if WikiLeaks' own site is taken down.

But some of WikiLeaks supporters are adopting a … Read more

The Mac App Store could be launching as early as next week, a report from Apple enthusiast blog Appletell claims.

Citing an "inside source," Appletell is reporting that Apple plans a December 13 launch of its Mac App Store, which will allow people to download both paid and free applications to their Mac computers. The blog claims that developers were told by Apple to "have their software prepared for a launch as early as [today]." However, the publication's source said that Apple launching the marketplace today seemed unlikely.

It's important to note that Appletell'… Read more

Google is finally ready to get into the bookselling business, one Web browser at a time.

The Google eBookstore is set to launch in the U.S. this morning after months of planning on Google's part to be the latest entrant into the hot market for e-books. Google has cut deals with many top-tier publishers, including Random House, McGraw Hill, Simon & Schuster (a division of CBS, which also publishes CNET), Penguin Books, and MacMillan. And it will have "hundreds of thousands" of in-print e-books to sell today along with the huge number of public domain books … Read more

It probably wouldn't have helped WikiLeaks' struggle to stay on the Web last week, but Amazon.com has launched a new service for companies whose Internet operations need Domain Name Service.

DNS is technology that connects the Internet address that people use, such as www.flickr.com, to its numeric address, 68.142.214.24. It's that numeric Internet Protocol (IP) address that computers and network gear need to route data over the Internet. DNS functions not unlike a phone book, where you can find a phone number by looking up a person's name.

Now Amazon is … Read more

Two significant features are coming to Opera Mobile for Android, the Oslo company's higher-end smartphone browser: playing HTML5 video and accommodating Adobe Systems' Flash Player plug-in.

"New Web technologies aim to replace it, but Flash will be around for some time. If you have Flash player installed on your phone, Opera will support it," mobile team member Pavel Studeny said in a blog post on Saturday.

HTML5 video, one of those technologies that encroaches on Flash's turf, lets developers embed video directly into a Web page, as happens with images. It's also en route Studeny … Read more

Google's pursuit of red-hot social buying start-up Groupon may have come to an end.

Citing two sources familiar with the talks, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that Groupon, a fellow resident of Chicago, has decided to go it alone, passing up an offer to be acquired by Google for between $5 billion and $6 billion. The report suggested Groupon hasn't made a final decision about whether it wants to pursue an initial public offering but might go down that road next year.

Talks had been reportedly hot and heavy between Groupon and Google, always looking to boost its … Read more

eBay has bought a local-shopping service that it expects will help both buyers and sellers by uniting online and offline shopping.

The auction site said yesterday that it has acquired Milo, a Web site designed to help shoppers find products available at their local brick-and-mortar stores and compare prices with those from online retailers.

Though pointing buyers to products at local stores may seem at odds with eBay's online marketplace, the company believes the acquisition will open up new opportunities for buyers and sellers.

"Since eBay is an online marketplace and doesn't compete with brick-and-mortar stores, adding … Read more

One of the obstacles to Second Life popularity is the fact that people must install specific software to visit the site. One of the promises of a 3D technology called WebGL is that such worlds could be drawn directly in a browser.

Now a company called Katalabs, formed by a number of Stanford researchers, has done just that with a virtual world project called KataSpace. A version can be explored online with a browser such as Firefox 4 beta 7 (Windows | Mac | Linux) that has WebGL support.

KataSpace uses the Web technologies to create a user interface for the open-source … Read more

YouTube has launched a new format that lets people bypass ads or pick which ones they are willing to view.

In an attempt to benefit both consumers and advertisers, the new TrueView video ads will give viewers the option of skipping an ad after the first five seconds and will only charge advertisers if their ads play for their entirety or 30 seconds, whichever is shorter.

Further, viewers can select which ads they want to see, giving them the option to choose ones that might be more relevant to their interests. YouTube is promoting the format as a boon for … Read more