Consumer content

Search start-up Kosmix announced Tuesday that it had raised $20 million in a funding round led by Time Warner.

Among the funding round's participants was former Motorola CEO Ed Zander, who will serve as an adviser to the company. The round, which also included existing investors Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Dag Ventures, brings the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's total funding to $55 million.

The company also announced the beta launch of its search site, which presents specialized topic-centric search results in a "dashboard-style page."

"The site offers a 360-degree view of any … Read more

Google has added a to-do list to Gmail to help users be more productive.

When the new Tasks feature is enabled, a box shows up on top of the Gmail window. In it, users can add, reorder, and delete tasks. It's also possible to assign a due date to each action and even convert e-mails into tasks.

The feature--announced Monday on a company blog--will also run outside of the e-mail program. Adding items is as simple as clicking on a vacant part of the box and typing.

This may sound like a rehash of the many Post-It Note-like … Read more

Rumors coming out of Europe that claim Apple will begin offering unprotected music files from the three largest recording companies on Tuesday are bogus, according to my music-industry sources.

Yes, Apple is in negotiations with the three biggest music labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group about acquiring licenses to sell music free of digital rights management software.

No, none of the deals is final as of Monday afternoon and one source told me it's unlikely Apple will have anything to announce regarding DRM-free music from the top labels before the end of the year. According … Read more

The Pulitzer Prize Board is finally recognizing the obvious: if newsprint's highest journalism award wants to stay relevant it had better welcome the Web.

The Pulitzer board announced Monday that it will consider entries from online-only publications in addition to print outlets for the 14 journalism categories that once were prestigious but now few care about.

Any organization interested in submitting stories for Pulitzer consideration must publish at least once a week, be U.S.-based, and feature original reporting. Online or print magazines need not apply. The Pulitzers are for daily or weekly news organizations.

Why the change … Read more

Google's instant-messaging service suffered intermittent outages Monday, behaving inconsistently for several hours.

The issue began about 10:30 a.m. PST and affected a subset of users of both the Web page-based Gmail Chat and the installed Google Talk software, spokesman Andrew Kovacs said. Because of the problem, sometimes when people sent a message they'd get an error message it wasn't sent and the recipient didn't receive it, but often resending the message worked, he said.

"This issue has been resolved for most users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next … Read more

Web video-rental store Netflix has laid off 50 technical specialists, the people who typically do most of the trouble-shooting for customers with tech issues, such as struggling to connect the service to their laptop or set-top boxes.

Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, said 15 of the company's 65 technical specialists will join the 300-person Customer Service group. According to Swasey, Netflix also plans to add 50 more people to its customer service unit sometime after the New Year.

Swasey said there just wasn't as much need to keep so many tech specialists. He credited Microsoft's Silverlight with … Read more

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

News gathering and job hunting during a down economy aren't unalike, says longtime technology industry reporter Robert Mullins. They both require spending inordinate amounts of time trying to get people on the phone, trolling the Web for leads and swallowing lots and lots of rejection.

For most of the past decade, Mullins covered Silicon Valley, writing about servers and open-source software at publications like Software Development Times and NetworkWorld. Like most seasoned reporters covering the tech sector, it meant … Read more

Internet leaders Facebook and Google made big headlines this week by officially rolling out, within minutes of one another, their universal log-in systems--Facebook Connect and Friend Connect, respectively.

Both promising users an easy way to sign in to multiple Web sites using just a single name and password, the news came amid the backdrop of better-than-expected Cyber Monday sales results and yet continual layoff announcements as the now officially declared recession deepens.

The week kicked off with lots of buzz about Facebook Connect, which was announced last spring, but wasn't officially rolled out until Thursday. It lets members connect … Read more

UPDATE: 3:29 p.m. PT: To include Roku's statement.

Netflix, the Web's top video rental store, has corrected a glitch that has plagued some customers of the company's streaming-video service for several weeks, Netflix said Friday.

Beginning in mid-November, owners of Roku's Netflix Player and Microsoft's Xbox 360 began complaining on Web forums about seeing dramatic drop-off in video quality and long buffering delays, which prevented them watching films.

This was the first setback for Netflix's streaming service, which has won accolades since last spring when the Roku box made its debut and … Read more