Google Maps banned for military pictures

Pentagon bans Google from taking images and video of military installations. Services like Google Earth are viewed by many to be nothing more than an interesting curiosity. However, for the U.S. military and other world governments the satellite images and other footage Google offers on its Earth service represents a big security risk. BBC News reports that the Pentagon has banned Google from filming inside and making detailed studies of U.S. military bases. The ban comes after detailed footage from inside and outside of the U.S. military base at Fort Sam Houston in Texas turned on up Google Earth’s Street View service. Street View is a service of Google Earth that allows users of the application to travel down streets from the perspective of a car driver.

The problem the Pentagon had with these images was that they were shot with great detail and were found to represent a significant security risk. The defense department said in a statement quoted by BBC News, “Images include 360-degree views of the covered area to include access control points, barriers, headquarters, facilities and community areas.” The fear is that terrorists could use the detailed images to develop plans to attack the base. The U.S. military isn’t the only military force that has had problem with images shown on Google Earth. In July of 2007 that satellite imagery form Google Earth had shown a new Chinese ballistic missile sub in dock. Indian officials became irate when images of its new Sukhoi 30 MK1 aircraft turned up on Google Earth as well.

Source: Dailytech, BBC

13 Email Addresses That Can Be Useful

12. wav@koolwire.com – attach wav to get a mp3

11. mp3@koolwire.com – attach mp3 to get a wav

10. pdf@koolwire.com – You have an Office document or a picture on your computer or mobile phone that you wish to convert into a PDF file. Just email that file an email attachment to the above address and it will soon return to your Inbox as a PDF file. [koolwire review]

9. ..@photos.flickr.com – Flickr provides a unique email upload address here – you can send your photographs to this email address as attachments and they’ll show up in Flick Photo gallery almost instantly. The subject line of email becomes the photo’s title while the body of the email becomes the photo’s description.

8. e@xpenser.com – This is like filling data in a travel spreadsheet through email. You can use this address to gather and record your travel expenses while on the road.

7. go@blogger.com – You can use this address to post pictures on any Blogger hosted blog. Any picture that you send to this email address will appear as a new blog post in your mobile blog. You can also use this service to post regular text entries to your Blogspot blog. In that case, the “Send to Blogger” email address is available under Blogger Dashboard.

6. upload@upload.slideshare.net – If you have (one or more) PowerPoint Presentations and PDF documents that you quickly want to share with friends, just email the files to Slideshare and they’ll instantly turn them into a web slideshow.

5. …@mms.youtube.com – YouTube member can create an MMS profile here – if you have a video clip on your mobile phone or comptuer but no access to YouTube website, you can easily upload that video file to YouTube through that email address. [Details on Youtube Email upload]

4. pdf2txt@adobe.com – Send a PDF document to this email address as an attachment and it will come back as a plain text file. Handy when your don’t have a PDF viewer to open the PDF document. Alternatively, you can send the PDF file to pdf2html@adobe.com for conversion to HTML format. [Extract Text from PDF]

3. ..@prod.writely.com – Google Docs provides a unique email address here – you can upload your documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Google Docs through this address and read them on your mobile phone using the just launched Google Docs mobile at docs.google.com/m. [Google Docs Upload]

2. …@rmilk.com – When you signup for Remember The Milk, you are assigned a unique email address. Emails sent to this special address are automatically converted into tasks and appear in your Inbox. Click on Settings -> Info -> Inbox Email Address. Very handy for keeping a track of your unfinished tasks and getting things done while on the move.

1. wsmith@wordsmith.org – Get the dictionary definition and synonyms of any word by sending a blank email to this email address. Make the subject line as: define myword

And now the most useful email address that will help you read webpages through email without requiring a web connection:

0. www@web2mail.com – Send an email with the URL of the web page in the Subject field (e.g. www.cnn.com) and you’ll soon find a copy of that web page in your Inbox. A perfect option when there’s no Internet access in the area or access is restricted (for instance, you want to read the BBC homepage in China).

Google builds own undersea internet cable

A group of six international companies, including Google Inc. of the U.S., is building a $300 million underwater fiber-optic cable linking the United States and Japan. The 6,200-mile trans-Pacific broadband cable system called Unity will respond to the expected growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the U.S., the companies said in a statement Monday. A signing ceremony was held Feb. 23, they said. Besides U.S. Internet search company Google Inc., the Unity consortium includes Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s leading integrated telecom services provider, and Japanese telecommunications company KDDI Corp.The others are Malaysian Internet company Global Transit; Pacnet, a telecom company headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore; and SingTel, a leading Asian communications and mobile company. NEC Corp. and Tyco Telecommunications are suppliers for the project, set to be up and running in the first quarter of 2010. Construction begins immediately, according to the consortium. The cable is expected to initially increase trans-Pacific fiber-optic capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add additional bandwidth, the companies said. It will connect Chikura, near Tokyo, with Los Angeles and other U.S. West Coast points, and the system will connect to other Asian cable systems via Chikura, they said. I guess they simply had to do something like this as YouTube continues to grow and consume more and more bandwidth…

Source: AP

Yahoo And News Corp. Continue Marathon Discussions; Possible Bid To Counter Microsoft

At the start of the Microsoft/Yahoo saga we reported that News Corp. was scrambling to put together a bid to compete with Microsoft, but backed down because they were unable to find outside funding to make the deal lucrative enough (the sorry state of the debt markets contributed to the problem).

Yesterday Silicon Alley Insider reported that talks between the two were continuing. We’ve confirmed the rumor – Yahoo and News Corp. are in the middle of marathon discussions, and have more details.

According to our source, the deal structure would spin off Fox Interactive Media (the primary asset is MySpace, but IGN, Scout Media, Photobucket, Fox Sports, AmericanIdol.com, Flektor, Ksolo; plus investments in Hulu, Simply Hired and Snocap are also assets of FIM) into Yahoo, along with a big cash injection from News Corp. and an unnamed private equity fund. The total investment would be valued at around $15 billion.

Yahoo would be valued at somewhere around $50 billion before the transaction, north of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid. That would leave News Corp., plus the private equity group, with more than 20% of the combined entity. They’d be the largest single stockholder and effectively in control of the combined Yahoo/FIM entity and their nearly 150 billion monthly page views (which would be second only to Google).

The negotiating team is said to be trying to iron out the details in the next 48 hours, in time for Yahoo’s upcoming board meeting to review its options.

Microsoft is largely expected to increase their bid to the $35 range in the next couple of days based on Yahoo’s formal rejection of their first offer (effectively raising their bid to $50 billion). Any competing offer needs to be in that range or higher.

One major snag – it is widely believed that, even with a News Corp. deal, Yahoo would need to outsource search marketing to Google to make the numbers work. While Google is likely happy to do that deal, it’s unlikely U.S. regulatory agencies would approve it (we discuss this in detail here). Without the revenue boost and cost savings from outsourcing, the News Corp. bid may not pencil out.

Yahoo, of course, isn’t too worried about that right now. All they want is any kind of bona fide competing bid to at least get Microsoft to increase their offer. Yahoo execs are saying privately that they think a Microsoft acquisition is now fait accompli. Still, if News Corp. can somehow make a compelling offer (and getting a private equity group on board was a huge first step), Yahoo’s board may recommend the deal to stockholders.

Google’s Gmail now offers IMAP

Google is currently activating IMAP on Gmail accounts. IMAP, or Internet Message Access Protocol, lets you download messages from Gmail’s servers onto your computer so you can access your mail with a program like Microsoft Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird, even when you aren’t connected to the Internet. This is really a pretty big leap for Gmail and it leaves companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and other (free) webmail providers, something they need to be providing in the very near future.

Facebook and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance

Facebook News Release: Microsoft and Facebook Expand Their Alliance. Microsoft to take equity stake in Facebook; companies expand advertising deal to cover international markets.

This is really great news and it looks like Microsoft beat out Google in the negotiations to claim an ownership stake in Facebook!Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, and the companies will expand their existing advertising partnership. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock

announced that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.