Google's YouTube has begun testing a dramatic departure in content and advertising, adding 15 50-minute TV episodes from Star Trek, Beverly Hills 90210, and MacGyver and with prominent new ads.

"We are starting to test full-length programming on YouTube, beginning with some fan favorites requested by you," Google said on its YouTube blog on Friday.

It's an experiment in video display and advertising, too, with ads for Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Intel's Centrino chip technology showing prominently on the videos I watched. The TV shows are preceded by a 15-second pre-roll ad, and … Read more

Apple and eBay were two notable stocks to swim against the tide Friday, staying in positive territory throughout the mid-morning through the market's close. Meanwhile investors watched the Dow Jones Industrial Average take one of its most harrowing rides ever.

As the Dow whiplashed investors with its swings that ranged more than 1,000 points during the day, Apple and eBay took investors on an upward path.

Apple closed up 9.08 percent from Thursday, ending the day at $96.80 a share. It gained most of its traction in the final hour of the trading session and was … Read more

Edwin Aoki is a technology fellow at AOL, and an alumnus of Apple and of Netscape, where he worked on enterprise products as well as the Communicator browser.

On Thursday, Aoki spoke at the Future Of Web Apps conference in London, alongside figures such as Digg's Kevin Rose and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. He urged developers to create applications out of passion and for the community, rather than just doing it for money.

ZDNet.co.uk spoke to Aoki just after his speech, to talk about the impact Web applications have had in the enterprise and what trends are … Read more

Updated on 10/10/08 at 11:35 a.m. PST with more details about beginning a voice search on Nokia devices.

Voice-responsive search has been available from Yahoo's OneSearch 2.0 application for select BlackBerry phones since this last April, but until this week only a few of you could to try it out.

On Thursday, Yahoo slipped voice recognition into the OneSearch 2.0 home-screen shortcut--available for a smattering of Nokia Series 60 phones--and in the Yahoo! Go 3.0 files for select BlackBerry, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia Series 60 models, such as the … Read more

The masses have spoken.

And Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest retailing chain, retreated from a misdirected and unfair policy. Last month, the company informed customers who bought its DRM-wrapped music that it would no longer issue keys to unlock songs. That meant music buyers would no longer be able to move their libraries to new computers or players. On Thursday, the company reversed that decision and said it would continue to issue keys for "the present time," according to Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart.com spokesman.

OK, let's tally these up. By my count this makes the … Read more

Maybe it's advice he heard from a career counselor at Harvard and took to heart: Do what you love, and the money will follow. For now, what Mark Zuckerberg wants most for Facebook is to see it grow and grow and grow some more, without too much fretting over the bottom line.

In an interview with a blogger for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Facebook's co-founder and CEO minced no words on the matter: "Growth is primary, revenue is secondary."

Of course, it could be less a philosophical matter than a practical one for a … Read more

Some people Yahoo selected to test a revamp of its home page aren't happy with their involuntary guinea pig status.

On the blog post from Tapan Bhat announcing the new Yahoo front page, the commentary begins with a number of favorable comments and several requests by people who want to try it out, but soon, the complaints start bubbling up too.

A common complaint is that it's harder for a user to get to e-mail.

"I do not like this. I did not ask for it to be changed. It scares me that you have control over … Read more

Ask and ye shall receive.

At least if the supplicant is the Net's most prominent techie cartoonist and Google is in a position to fulfill the request.

In late September, I chuckled at Randall Munroe's XKCD cartoon about living to regret YouTube comments. The cartoon suggested a virus that would read people's YouTube comments back to them before they posted. The result was the mass realization that we're all a bunch of morons, which, judging by the average YouTube comment I see, doesn't seem too far off the mark.

Well, lo and behold, such a … Read more

When Googlies are clever enough to name their latest, most wonderful brainchild "Goggles," you wonder why it is they have no idea what to call their human children.

Jason Morrison, whose LinkedIn page describes him as a search quality strategist at Google, has begun to conduct a worldwide Internet search for a high-quality name to adorn his and his wife's unborn child.

Please, yes, I know I like a joke or two when the world's winds are against me, but this is serious.

On his own personal, very personal Web site, Jason declares: "We've … Read more