DuoFertility assures baby or money back

Folks who are looking to conceive and have plenty of trouble doing so can always check out the DuoFertility gizmo that comes with a money-back guarantee, which is pretty surprising since not many people/parties are willing to include a guarantee in their products these days. The guarantee is good for a year, where they claim that you can always get your money back if you and your partner do not end up with a bundle of joy within that period of time. The entire package will comprise of ovulation detectors made from rubberized plastic which are then stuck below a woman’s arm near her bra strap. This is made possible thanks to an adhesive patch that covers the entire sensor. The sensor will hold a temperature probe and memory chip which will then keep track of essential data every few seconds. The wireless data reader will break down what it has gathered, translating them to a user-friendly piece of information that includes temperature readings as well as an ovulation diary so that one can always do the horizontal hokey-pokey where chance of conceiving is at its highest.

Source: Gizmodiva

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Top 6 Corrupt IT CEO's

You thought B Ramalinga Raju, Bernie Madoff and Enron's Kenneth Lay & Jeffrey Skilling are the only high-profile names in the world of corporate fraud? Other than Raju, corporate world has more technology CEOs who duped their shareholders and employees. These white collar criminals are the men behind some of the biggest corporate frauds who swindled millions from their company's resources and wrecked financial systems.

Time magazine recently came out with a list of Top 10 Crooked CEOs, and the list has as many as 5 CEOs from the technology world, that is 50% of the list. Here's over to the `Tech Crooks' list.

Ramalinga Raju, Chairman, Satyam

He's not there in the Time's Crooked CEO list. But few (if any), will disagree that Ramalinga Raju is a sureshot in Crooked CEO's list.

In a shocking revelation, Chairman of India's fourth-largest IT company Satyam Computers, Ramalinga Raju, stepped down following financial wrong-doings to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees. Raju founded Satyam in 1987.

The confessions shocked India Inc and sent stock markets' into a tizzy. The revelations eroded Satyam 80% of its market cap in a single day.

Only in October 2008, Raju told PTI that Satyam had a cash pile of Rs 4,000 crore and could leverage it to muster another Rs 15,000-20,000 crore to aggressively pursue acquisitions -- his cherubic innocence hiding the mess his company was in.

The balance sheet as of September 30 carries "inflated (non-existent) cash and bank balances of Rs 5,040 crore (as against Rs 5,361 crore reflected in the books)," the Harvard Business School alumnus told in a letter to employees on January 7.

While he is credited with designing simple, yet effective models to create value, these models did not always work for Raju, the reason why he went about designing an elaborate plan to make up for the lack of real assets with fictitious ones.

The former entrepreneur icon's plans started falling apart when he tried to acquire two companies promoted by his family for $1.6 billion. Investors' dissent forced him to go back on the deal and then there was no way forward or sideways -- so he called quits.

To perpetrate the fraud, the accused also created an identity and code that not only bypassed all other accounting systems, but also managed to hide the fraudulent invoices from other departments.

Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco International Ltd

Leo Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco International, was convicted of misappropriating of more than $400 million of the company's funds to support his lavish lifestyle in 2005.

Kozlowski was found guilty of -- in effect -- using Tyco's huge financial resources for what the prosecution described as his "own personal piggy bank."

This included buying $6,000 shower curtain, and stealing over $100 million from the company. Kozlowski was charged alongwith another Tyco executive Mark H Swartz. They were convicted in June 2005 on first-degree grand larceny and other charges related to accusations they stole $180 million outright and improperly made about $430 million by manipulating Tyco's stock value.

They were convicted of securities fraud, grand larceny and other charges related to accusations they stole $180 million outright and improperly made about $430 million by manipulating Tyco's stock value.

John Rigas, Adelphia Communications Corporation

Another big fraud that shook the corporate world was planned by founder and CEO of Adelphia Communications Corporation, John Rigas. Adelphia was once the fifth-largest US cable-television company. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2002.

Adelphia Communications Corp founder Rigas and his son Timothy were convicted of securities fraud and bank fraud, as well as conspiring to commit securities fraud, bank fraud, falsify books and records and make false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission and for hiding $2.3 billion in liabilities from Adelphia investors.

Rigas reportedly misused company funds to support his lavish lifestyle. He allegedly ordered two Christmas trees, worth $6,000 for his daughter. Rigas also bought as many as 17 cars and 3,600 acres of timberland to preserve the pristine view outside his Coudersport home from company funds.

In 2004, Rigas was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Joe Nacchio, Qwest International

In one of the biggest scandals in telecom history, former CEO of Denver-based telecommunications company Qwest International was convicted of insider trading.

The SEC lawsuit, filed in 2005, alleges that actions by Nacchio and other former Qwest Communications International Inc. executives allowed the Denver-based company to improperly report revenue.

However, Nacchio appealed saying that the company's stock plunge was the result of a telecommunications industry meltdown, not financial fraud.

In addition to his federal prison term, he was fined $19 million and ordered to forfeit the entire $52 million cash hoard he made from the insider sales. He continues to faces a lawsuit by the SEC that accuses him and others of financial fraud.

Gregory Reyes, Brocade Communications Systems

A stock option backdating scandal hit the storage networking company Brocade Communications Systems in 2005. Its CEO Gregory Reyes was sentenced to 21 months in prison for tampering with the financial records of stock options the company offered its employees.

Reyes maintained throughout his trial that he never knowingly violated accounting laws and that the stock option compensation program at Brocade -- including the backdating practices -- was handled with the knowledge and endorsement of Brocade’s finance department and the company’s outside advisers, including its accountants.

However, emphatically rejecting his assertion, US District Court Judge said that to the argument that the accounting and reporting were too complicated, Gregory Reyes never gave the auditors a chance because he lied to them. To the argument that the public would not care, the answer is simple. A jury in this court (rendered) it. The offense is about honesty. Every time Gregory Reyes falsified a document, repeatedly over three years, he was lying. That is the core of the criminal conduct.

Reyes was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay $15 million in fines.

Bernie Ebbers, WorldCom

Bernie Ebbers, the co-founder of the telecommunications company WorldCom, is the man behind the biggest corporate fraud in the US history. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison for executing an $11 billion accounting fraud. Legal experts said the sentence was the longest ever for a CEO found guilty of committing corporate crimes while running a Fortune 500 company.

Rated by Forbes in 1999 as one of the 200 richest Americans, the magazine described Ebbers as, "The ultimate corporate shopaholic, who bought an obscure telephone carrier in the 1980s and went on a 17-year acquisition binge that turned it into the world's largest telecom company."

However, "his passion for deal making didn't translate into the savvy necessary for running the complex business. When telecom stocks went south in 2000, the company's massive debt was exposed. Ebbers tried to disguise it through fraudulent accounting," writes the magazine.

In 2005, three years after WorldCom filed for bankruptcy, Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison for leading the largest corporate fraud in US history.

Mississippi-based WorldCom filed for bankruptcy - also the largest in US history - in 2002. It later re-emerged under the name MCI Inc.

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Why deal may disappoint Yahoo users

Is Microsoft's Bing really a better search engine? Since it debuted last month, it has earned praise for the smart way it presents results and how it lets users preview Web sites without clicking through to them.

Yet a closer look at its results reveals why loyal Yahoo users may not end up happy with the deal the company announced on Wednesday, which calls for Bing to replace Yahoo Search.

ComScore Inc says 19.6 per cent of Web users go to Yahoo for their searches. Microsoft draws fewer, at 8.4 percent. That's up just slightly from the 8 percent it captured before Bing launched at the start of June. It didn't make a dent in Google's commanding 65 percent market share.

I think I can see why. Not only is using Google such an ingrained habit that we talk of "googling" something, but also its technology is better in some key ways. I found Bing to be less comprehensive than Google and, surprisingly, Yahoo Search. It simply returns fewer results for a lot of search terms.

With common terms like "cars," all the search engines return oodles of results. Yahoo reports 2.56 billion pages with that term. It doesn't matter so much how many pages they report, as long as they give relevant results, and all do.

Then I tried to hunt for something purposely obscure, like background on the country manor that my sister is interested in buying. Google gave me 46 links, Yahoo 15. Bing supplied just six.

Of course, even in this kind of query you might not have time to look through every link. So if Bing has six and they're good, that's fine.

Yet in the country manor search and other cases, often at the fringes of what you'd expect the Internet to know, I found the most relevant results in Google and Yahoo only. Years ago, search engines competed by citing their "index size" -- basically, how many pages they had collected in their database. Google played this game too.

But as Google grew to dominate the scene by presenting better results, Web users lost interest in the statistics. Google doesn't make a big point of them anymore either, though it did say last year that it had more than 1 trillion Web pages catalogued.

Looking at results from Bing, it may be time to care about search index size again. That's especially the case because in other respects, the top three engines are so similar as to be nearly indistinguishable.

Nos. 2 and 3 have basically copied Google. All of them present neat and clean search pages and advertising that's placed through an auction process (advertisers bid for the right to show their ads alongside certain search terms, and pay the search engines when a user clicks on an ad). Search for a common term like "diapers," and they yield nearly identical results.

They do have other little things that set them apart. Google injects a helpful little map when it finds a location among the top results. Yahoo
has (or soon we might say "had") a Search Pad application that lets you annotate your results, a useful aid in an extended research or shopping project.

Bing has earned praise for the smart way it presents certain search results. For instance it breaks down some results by category, giving you an easy way to quickly hone a search for "swine flu" with information on "symptoms" or "causes." It will also helpfully show previous searches you've made in a column to the left of the results.

Bing also presents a preview of each search result if you hover your mouse cursor over it. Hover the cursor over a video, and a preview starts playing right on the results page. Microsoft has said that it put special attention in Bing to presenting authoritative results in a few areas, like health information, but the effort seems a little superficial.

When you search for "swine flu," the Mayo Clinic's presumably more reliable page will appear above Wikipedia's on Bing. But if you search for "toddler fever," the results look indistinguishable from those on the other two engines.

Bing is young. It's possible Microsoft can make its index catch up to Yahoo's and even Google's, but doing so won't happen overnight. More likely, it will take years.

That's plenty of time for Yahoo users to discover that Bing -- for all of its niceties in presentation -- lacks depth. If they do, they'll know where to go, and Google would end up being the winner on this deal.

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Microsoft-Yahoo deal: How it will work

Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc sealed a 10-year Web search deal to better compete against market leader Google Inc. The long-expected deal means Microsoft's new Bing search engine will be combined with Yahoo's experience attracting advertisers in the first serious threat to Google Inc -- if the companies get regulatory approval and can make the partnership work.

Here’s how the Yahoo-Microsoft deal will work out: Financial details, search, advertising, risks, obstacles and more...


Financial details

* Microsoft will guarantee the revenue per search for Yahoo's owned and operated sites in each country for the first 18 months after initial implementation in that country.

* Yahoo expects the agreement to boost annual GAAP operating income by about $500 million within two years and help capital expenditure savings by about $200 million. Yahoo also expects the partnership to add about $275 million to annual operating cash flow.

* Microsoft will pay Yahoo through a revenue-sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo's network of both owned and operated and affiliate sites.

* Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs to Yahoo at an initial rate of 88 percent of search revenue generated on Yahoo's owned and operated sites for the first five years.

Advertising

* Yahoo will act as the global sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

* Microsoft's AdCenter platform will fulfill self-serve advertising for both companies.

* AdCenter's automated auction process will set prices for all search ads.

* Each company will keep its own separate display advertising business and sales force.

* Yahoo will act as the global sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

* Microsoft's AdCenter platform will fulfill self-serve advertising for both companies.

* AdCenter's automated auction process will set prices for all search ads.

* Each company will keep its own separate display advertising business and sales force.

Search

* Under a 10-year license, Microsoft will be able to integrate Yahoo's core search technologies into its current Web search platforms.

* Microsoft's Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites. Yahoo will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business, including display advertising technology.

* Yahoo will innovate and "own" the user experience on its own properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.

* The agreement restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. To protect consumer privacy, it will limit the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform.

* Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its current search affiliate partnerships.

* The companies will continue to compete in other areas as the agreement does not cover each company's Web properties and products, email, instant messaging or display advertising.

Job cuts at Yahoo

Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo, said the deal will result in "redundancies" in Yahoo's staff, although she declined to be specific. She stressed any changes would not occur until after full implementation of the partnership.

Also, many Yahoo search engineers will be asked to take jobs at Microsoft, whose Redmond, Washington headquarters is far removed from Yahoo's California homebase.

Risks

"There are risks on both sides. Big deals like this tend not to work out. It's a long-term deal that's going to take a long time to implement," said Ryan Jacob, chief investment officer of Jacob Asset Management, the $40 million fund holds some Yahoo shares. "It's better than no deal."

And unlike previous discussions which involved an outright acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft, this deal will create a number of uncertainties for both companies as they fuse disparate technologies, cultures and business priorities.

Yankee analyst Carl Howe said integrating two separate search engines is an inherently thorny process that requires merging vast and often incompatible indices of Web data.

Anti-trust obstacle

Microsoft and Yahoo still face antitrust and privacy issues. Google dropped a planned search partnership with Yahoo last year under pressure from the US Justice Department.

The partnership poses only a theoretical challenge to Google at present. It could take two-and-a-half years to get approval and be fully implemented, according to Yahoo CEO Bartz, which would mean the partnership would not be fully effective until early 2012.

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Review: USB Battery Recharger

We recently received a USB Battery Charger to take a look at. This version is different to the USB Cell that we wrote about a few years back in that it’s a charging unit that you put batteries in rather then the batteries themselves housing a USB connector.

The USB charger only takes 1 type of battery that is a 1500mAh capacity 1.2V NiMH (Nickel-Metal Hydride). 2 of these batteries come supplied with the unit and when using the charger, both batteries must be inserted in the charging unit.

The charging unit is compact measuring about an inch longer then a regular AA battery making it very easy to carry around in a laptop bag for example. A full charge can be achieved in about 4 – 6 hours. An LED indicator is included on the USB charging unit. When lit solid it shows the batteries are charged. When flashing it shows the batteries are being charged and when off, it shows the batteries need connecting to a USB port for power.

Overall, a fairly simple and basic battery charger that clearly does it’s job as a battery charger. For battery performance, they are about what you would expect for NiMH 1500mAh batteries. Thanks to Useful Things for shipping them over for review and the charging unit will be given away in an upcoming GadgetVenue competition, so keep your eyes pealed. If you want to pick one up now then they are available at the above URL for $19.95.

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OnStar Pushing 'Car Chase' Avoidance

Call it factory LoJack: OnStar has unveiled OnStar Ignition Block, a feature that lets law enforcement disable a car's ignition once it has been stolen. The idea is to avoid dangerous car chases that could put the public, the police, or the thief at risk.

In addition, OnStar claims it already works with law enforcement to attempt recovery of about 600 stolen vehicles per month using the service's embedded GPS chip. OnStar also helps slow down cars that are involved in chases--against the will of the thief.

The new Ignition Block capability is available on selected 2009 and 2010 GM vehicles equipped with OnStar, and will build on the company's Stolen Vehicle Assistance services already in effect.

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Windows vs. Linux

Where's your comfort zone? Windows, Mac, Linux? An unintellectual, emotional attachment to an operating environment often determines what consumers buy and may determine whether Google Chrome can ultimately compete with Windows.

In the consumer laptop space, specifically Netbooks, there isn't much hope for a Linux-based operating system like Google Chrome in the near term. So, first the bad news.

Market researcher iSuppli released a report Friday that I agree with. It begins with the usual, saying that Google's Linux-based Chrome operating system sets the stage for a battle of the Titans (Google versus Microsoft). But what it said after that affirmed my own convictions (and echoed comments I had heard before from other analysts).

"The small penetration of Linux in Netbooks is not due to any technical shortcomings," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms research for iSuppli. "Because the vast majority of people who buy Netbooks are consumers, who do not have a high degree of knowledge of the key players in the OS market, they are going with the names that they know. And in PCs, that name is Microsoft."

The report continues: "For Google to be successful, it needs to promote and position its brand so that non-tech-savvy consumers will be comfortable buying a Netbook running its operating system rather than one from Microsoft. This will be a major challenge."

In other words, it's hard to move people out of their comfort zone, particularly if the alternative is fractured like Linux. But there's a silver lining for Google's OS. The comfort zone is shifting. If consumers spend more time on a social-networking site (Facebook, Twitter) or a Web-based productivity environment (Google search, Gmail, Google docs) that becomes their comfort zone (the so-called "cloud") rather than the Windows, or Apple, desktop.

Of course, that's all just theory unless something else happens. What's that extra something? Give consumers a high-profile, respected brand like Google packaged with a slick Netbook and more than a few more could break their ties with Windows (because it becomes irrelevant). Particularly if the price is right.

It's been done before. A charismatic device like the iPhone proves that. In that case, consumers left the tenuous comfort zone of their interface-challenged cell phones in droves and embraced the iPhone.

But this doesn't happen often. And you need a very big, truly innovative company like Apple or Google to pull it off.

Conversations I had this week with both Texas Instruments and Qualcomm executives offer hope in the long term. TI and Qualcomm are building the chips that Chrome will run on and both have been working with Google. (TI told me that they have the Chrome OS running in some form already on their silicon.) Though Intel also says it is working with Google, I suspect Chrome is more of an ARM processor play than an Intel play.

Whatever happens in the next 12 months or so will be interesting and, at the very least, can only add to growing momentum behind mobile devices using ARM processors and non-Windows operating environments.

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USB chainsaw is Fake

So that fake USB Chainsaw from the other day is indeed fake. Hence the fakeness. It’s instead an eye-opening ad campaign aimed at educating the public about the wastefulness of printers.

Instead of buying a USB chainsaw, you can download a little program that plays the sound of a chainsaw whenever you print something.

That’s supposed to remind you that paper is made from trees — trees that have to be cut down in order to make paper to go in your printer.

I’m all for going paperless, but I’d rather have an actual USB chainsaw than a program that makes a chainsaw noise the five times per year that I print something. I know it’s wasteful, you know it’s wasteful, and the fact that toner cartridges cost more than what I paid for my laser printer is enough to keep it sitting on my desk doing nothing for the next ten years.

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Mobile with a Transparent Screen

Previously we covered the LG GD900, a cellular phone with a transparent keypad. So how can I not report on Sony Ericsson’s Kiki, a phone with a transparent screen?

The answer is that I can’t, so here it is. The problem is that I don’t really have much information about this product, other than it’s got a transparent screen. I do know that the information can be seen on both sides, but I’m not certain if the print, when viewed on the other side, is reversed. You may notice the lack of keypad buttons on the Kiki, but they will show up if the phone is on.

So, since that is all we have, let’s go to speculation. For example, can the user watch video footage on this thing? I mean, I didn’t realize that we can watch TV on a clear plate of glass now, but hey, technology gets better all the time.

Also, is the clear glass screen a touchscreen? I see three buttons that correspond to the balloon, mail, and clock icons on the screen, but that is about it.

So, now it is the time on Coolest Gadgets where we add comments. For example, is it possible that the transparent screen could become a standard for cellular phones? Chime in if you agree or disagree.

Source

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Get a netbook for $1

On the surface, this sounds like an okay deal: buy a Compaq Mini 110c-1040 DX netbook for $1.00, and sign up for mobile broadband with Sprint on a two year contract. Just make sure you don’t go over the limit on your data plan. Where exactly can you get this screaming deal?

It’s a bundle deal from Best Buy. And it varies, depending on what carrier you actually prefer. You can choose Verizon or AT&T instead of Sprint, but expect the cost to go up to $199.99 if you go with one of them. You can also just buy the thing outright for $389.99, which is a better deal if you look at the total price of basic purchase vs. 24 months at $60 for a data plan.

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Use Your iPhone as a Metal Detector

On the beach with your family, or just walking around town? You probably could use some extra cash. Whip out that iPhone 3GS and see if you can track down some metal.

With this handy little app released by GP Imports, 3GS owners can use the phone's internal compass to sense strong magnetic fields (other than the north pole), thus pointing to metals. The app allows you to see how strong a magnetic field actually is and adjust the sensitivity of your detector, so you won't get stuck digging for mere chump change.

The app costs $0.99 and is available for download at the iTunes Store.

Also if you're looking to enhance the experience check out these Metal Detecting Sandals.

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Doppelganger Robots

Take a look at the photo to the left. These are not twin brothers, or some sort of photo trickery. As it so happens, one of these men is a robot.

Yeah, I don’t know which one is fake either. However, I think you should know that this technology is available. Just so you can be free of your Stepford Wives nightmares, this robot cannot walk and talk, or be some evil version of you who will go about doing bad while you take the blame.

No, what you are looking at is one of those animatronics like you would see at Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but a bit more realistic. The best you could hope for is a figure that would sit there and move its head and eyes in a realistic fashion. The might be enough to fool a boring college professor.

This technology has been developed by the Xian Chaoren, a model company by the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Arts. It specializes in simulated silica gel figures, otherwise known as super-realistic sculptures, which is good for museums, or any other related design and production industries.

My source doesn’t list how much it would cost to duplicate yourself, but you don’t really think that something like this could come cheap, do you? Neither do I. I suppose that if someone were willing to make a museum for me, I would probably want a robot version of me, rather than be immortalized in wax.

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Worst web scandals

Wonder which are the hottest celebrity videos online? Lots, but the biggest hits are the ones which catch them in not-so-accepted public behaviour: yelling in public, using racist abuses, or engaging in raunchy sex acts.

Here are ten celebrity videos which went on to become Web scandals. These videos though became huge hits online also created outrage among fans and in many cases forced the celebrity to offer public apology.

Britney Spears

A video that became a major hit on web was that of pop princess Britney Spears being wheeled out of her home on a stretcher by paramedics.

In 2008, the singer had to be wheeled out of her Beverly Hills mansion and taken to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on a "medical hold" after police found her under the influence of an "unknown substance". The video showed her surrounded by six police cars and a fire engine.

Spears was suffering due to "mental stress and anguish" over the custody battle for her two children with ex-husband Kevin Federline. Reports suggested that Spears refused to hand over her boys to Federline’s bodyguard as scheduled after their visit at her Studio City Los Angeles home. The cops were called an hour later to mediate the dispute.

Paris Hilton and Rick Solomon

Internet was abuzz when Paris Hilton and her ex-boyfriend Rick Solomon's private home video mysteriously went public in 2004.

Socialite Paris Hilton is shown engaging in sexual relations with her ex-buea. Later, Red Light District Video said that it acquired the rights from Hilton's ex-boyfriend to distribute the full 45-minute video under the title "One Night In Paris."

Later, Hilton is said to have sued her ex-lover for releasing the tape and demanded $400,000. However, she later claimed that she never took the money, "I never received a dime from (the video). It's just dirty money and (Salomon) should give it all to some charity for the sexually abused or something."

Prince Harry

A racist controversy surrounding Prince Harry landed him in trouble when he was caught calling an Asian squaddie 'our little Paki friend'.

The prince, who is third in line to the British throne, made the comments in footage shot while training as an officer at the Sandhurst military academy in 2006, a year after being forced to make a public apology for wearing a Nazi swastika at a fancy dress party.

In the video, prince calls an officer from the Pakistani army, who was on the course with him, "our little Paki friend" and, when he sees another officer cadet wearing a camouflage veil, he says: "F*** me, you look like a raghead."

He also mocks the Queen, the commander-in-chief of the British army, during a pretend mobile phone call to the late Queen Mother. Later Prince Harry apologised for the act.

Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse faced ruin after being caught on camera revelling in sex in a public place, and singing a racist chant. The scenes were filmed by the troubled singing star's husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

In a sequence shot around May 2007, weeks after the couple eloped to wed in Miami, they are in a dingy crack den with Delboy-style bamboo patterned wallpaper. Amy and a friend Sarah giggle as they sing a string of racist lines set to the tune of kiddies' favourite ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes'. However they replaced the words with 'Blacks, pakis, gooks and nips' followed by: 'And deaf and dumb and blind and gay'.

In another clip Blake, asks Amy to perform a sex act on him in the public stairwell of a hotel. This is followed by a confused sequence showing shots of the steps and carpet.

Christian Bale

The Batman Begins star Christian Bale's outburst during shooting for the action movie sequel in July 08 was caught on tape. The four-minute long audio, in which he uses the F-word 35 times, leaked onto the Internet in early February this year. The video became an instant online hit, getting more than 10 million plays.

In the video, Bale can be heard angrily reprimanding and hurling abuse at a director of photography who distracted him during a scene. The recording attracted much criticism and the actor was forced to apologise for his behaviour.

The actor admits he still feels bad about the incident and hopes his fans won't punish him by deserting his films. A film magazine quoted Bale saying, "I did what I did. I'm not hiding that. I went overboard. You'll often try things and they're abysmal, sometimes they're embarrassing beyond belief but you've got to be able to try them and trust that it's not going to be put out there and mocked."

Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand

Last October, BBC Talk show hosts Jonathan Ross and comedian Russell Brand were at the center of a row after they attempted to contact comedy actor Andrew Sachs for an interview on Brand's weekend Radio 2 show. They left obscene messages on the answering machine of the veteran actor. During the series of phone calls, the duo also joked that Sachs might kill himself on hearing the news.

Later Brand resigned taking complete responsibility of his actions. Ross was suspended from all broadcasting for 12 weeks after BBC Trust, the sovereign body of the organization, met to discuss the calls. The suspension costed Ross $2.43 million.

David Hasselhoff

Former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff was caught on camera by his 16-year-old daughter drunk, slurring his words and stuffing his face with a hamburger.

According to reports his daughter leaked the tape to media. The footage shows him lying on the floor of a hotel room, shirtless and with nothing else on than just a pair of blue jeans.

David's daughter, Taylor, can be heard telling her father: 'Dad, look what this is doing to you. You have to stop drinking alcohol, promise me you won't drink anymore.


Vinnie Jones

Soccer player turned Hollywood star Vinnie Jones was at the centre of a punching controversy after he was caught on CCTV brawling in a pub throwing punches at his hapless victim.

The footage starts looking down a corridor, with the victim, the 26-year-old Juan Barrera, walking away from the camera towards the door at the top of the picture. Jones enters with a couple of guys behind him, before launching fist first at his target and landing with a punch.

Jones' victim, dazed, manages to regain composure, and uses his size to throw the movie star to the floor. However, the accompanies goons get better of Barrera, throwing him out of the door, with Jones seen stumbling to his feet with blood down his face.

Kerry Katona

Reality TV star Kerry Katona was caught in a controversy as she slurred her way through a TV interview. The former Atomic Kitten star, who had a highly-publicised battle with drugs, repeatedly stumbled over her words as she was quizzed by This Morning hosts Fern Briton and Philip Schofield.

The video shows her under some influence of alcohol or drugs and the star got angry with the show’s presenters when they asked her about her drinking habits. Her husband Mark Croft later said that the only drinks she had consumed before the programme were "cups of tea".



Heather Mills

Heather Mills was ditched by her divorce lawyers after ranting and weeping her way through bizarre TV interviews.










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Michael Jackson's death affected internet's performance

News of Michael Jackson’s death caused a huge surge in online traffic last night, dominating Twitter’s trending topics and Google's search terms. How did the internet fare under the strain?

After the unexpected death of legendary pop star Michael Jackson, there has been much talk of the internet buckling under the strain of web users searching for the latest information. Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook bore the brunt of people’s reactions and news sharing as more details became public knowledge.

Celebrity news websites which were first with the news such as TMZ, the American celebrity gossip site which originally broke the story, and infamous celebrity blogs like Perez Hilton, also suffered periods of down time or slowness.

Even Google News felt the pressure. A Google spokesperson confirmed: “Some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson.” This difficulty occurred between 10.40pm and 11.15pm UK time.

During this period Google News did not go down, but users searching for Michael Jackson related information were asked to verify they were indeed a human and not a computer attempting to launch a spam attack.

However, despite the issue of individual sites going down and experiencing slowness, experts say that at no time was the internet in danger of ‘breaking’.

The last time there was such strain put on the web was in the aftermath of 9/11. However, despite certain individual sites being unable to cope with the pressure in 2001, most notably the BBC which went blank for a period, people could still surf the rest of the web.

A spokesperson from Virgin Media, one of the major internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, said: “Virgin’s core network of internet usage increased by 10.8% on Thursday night (June 25), the evening when the news broke, in comparison to the previous evening. However, we experienced no problems in providing the internet to homes.

“In situations like these where there is a surge in demand for specific information, the problem is rarely with the internet as a whole, or with ISPs or networks, which serve the information. The problem is usually with individual sites being unable to cope with demand. Whenever there is a rapid rise in the demand for a single or a few particular websites, those sites might not have enough bandwidth to cope and could go down.”

James Blessing, managing director of Garou, an ISP consultancy, explained: “When we design ISP networks, there is always spare capacity worked into the plan. It will only ever be 60-70 per cent full in order to be prepared for situations like this.

“Michael Jackson’s death came nowhere near close to crashing the internet. A few individual sites with limited bandwidth will have experienced problems, but the internet is set up with spare capacity to cope with surges of usage.”

Experts say there was the fear last year that the Olympics could have caused internet meltdown. However, no such problem occurred because the event was spaced out over a period of time, and there was no single event which galvanised the interest of the whole world at one point, so the web could cope with demand.

“Although you never say never, it's very hard to envisage a time when the internet would truly break,” said Simon Barlow, internet manager at Interoute, which owns and operates Europe's largest next-generation internet network. “Individual websites may suffer downtime from increased traffic, but the core internet infrastructure should remain stable.”

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Microsoft's Free Antivirus Software available from June 23rd

Software giant Microsoft Corp is launching a free PC security service next week in what could be the biggest challenge to date for anti-virus companies with billions of dollars in annual revenue.

Industry analysts who previewed the service, Microsoft Security Essentials, said its features and quality are on par with anti-virus products from Symantec Corp, McAfee Inc and Trend Micro Inc that cost about $40 per year.

"This is good news for consumers. It's bad news for competitors," said Roger Kay, a PC industry analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates.

The product offers protection from several types of malicious software, including viruses, spyware, trojans and rootkits. If its scanner detects a suspicious file that is not yet registered as malware, the program alerts Microsoft researchers for further investigation.

Security companies have minimized the threat from Microsoft. Executives with Symantec and McAfee dismiss it as a lightweight alternative to full protection that they offer in their top-selling security suites.

Microsoft's offering only fights malicious software. The best-selling products from security rivals bundle in other features such as encryption, firewalls, data backup and parental controls.

Rob Enderle, an analyst with Enderle Group who closely follows the industry, said consumers do not need all those bells and whistles.

"If what is 'good enough' is free, how do you justify paying more?" he said.

Microsoft said on Thursday that a beta version of the product will be available for download on its website on June 23. The company plans to offer a final version by this fall.

The free service comes after a botched attempt to sell a suite of security software dubbed Live OneCare that Microsoft launched three years ago. It announced plans to kill that product in November.

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Report: Internet Connection Speed: The Top 10 Countries

At the end of 2008, approximately 19 per cent Internet connections around the world were at speeds greater than 5 Mbps — a 21 per cent increase over the average global connection speed at the end of 2007.

This is according to the State of the Internet report, a quarterly study by Akamai Technologies, the US-based Internet content distribution giant. The State of the Internet report tracks average connection speeds for countries around the world.

Check out the top 10 nations in terms of average Internet connection speed.

1. South Korea

South Korea rules supreme when it comes to Internet connection speed and broadband connectivity. It is the world’s No.1 with average connection speed of 15 Mbps, ten times the global average!

During 2008, South Korea’s rate of quarterly change appeared to be locked into a cyclical pattern, with quarterly decreases being recorded in the first and third quarters, and increases seen in the second and fourth quarters.

For the whole year, South Korea saw a modest 7 per cent rise in their levels of high broadband adoption. South Korea is also ranked first in terms of high broadband connectivity with 69 per cent connections above 5 Mpbs.

2. Japan

Japan ranks 2nd in terms of Internet connection and high broadband connectivity. Japan ranks 2nd in terms of high broadband connectivity. About 54 per cent of the connections in Japan are above 7 Mbps.

3. Hong Kong

Hong Kong ranks third with an Internet connection speed of 6.9 Mbps. The country ranks fifth in terms of high broadband connectivity with 38 per cent of the connection above 5 Mbps.

4. Romania

Romania is at the fourth position with a Internet connection speed of 5.7 Mbps. The country ranks third in terms of high broadband connectivity with 45% of the connection above 5 Mbps.

5. Sweden

Sweden is at the fifth position with a Internet connection speed of 5.6 Mbps. Sweden ranks fourth in terms of high broadband connectivity with 39 per cent of the connection above 5Mbps.

6. Switzerland

Switzerland has bagged the sixth position with an Internet connection speed of over 5 Mbps. The country however does not figure in the top ten list of countries with high broadband connectivity.

7. Netherlands

Netherlands ranks 7th with an Internet connection speed of 4.9 Mbps. The country ranks 7th in terms of high broadband connectivity with 28 per cent of the connections above 5 Mbps.

8. Belgium

Belgium is at the 8th position with an Internet connection speed of 4.7 Mbps. The country ranks sixth in terms of high broadband connectivity with 31 per cent of the connection above 5 Mbps.

9. Slovakia

Slovakia bags the ninth position with an Internet connection speed of 4.5 Mbps. The country does not figure among the top ten in terms of high broadband connectivity.

10. Norway

Norway ranks tenth with an Internet connection speed of 4.5 Mbps. The country ranks fifth in terms of high broadband connectivity with 38 per cent of the connection above 5 Mbps.

United States is at the 17th position with an Internet connection speed of 3.9 Mbps, up approximately 8 per cent from the average connection speed for the first quarter of 2008.

In terms of Internet connection speed, China is way behind leading economies with an average Internet connection speed of 833 kbps.

India has been ranked at a dismal 115th among 223 countries in terms of average Internet connection speeds. India has an average Internet connection speed of just 772 Kbps compared with the global average of 1.5 Mbps.

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'Spam king' faces criminal charges

In a move that could land Sanford Wallace in jail if convicted, a federal judge on Friday referred a lawsuit Facebook filed against the "spam king" to the U.S. Attorney's office for possible criminal proceedings.

A written ruling from Judge Jeremy Fogel in U.S. District in San Jose, Calif., is expected early next week, a court clerk said. The action came at a hearing on a Facebook motion that Wallace be found in criminal contempt for allegedly continuing to send spam on Facebook.

Facebook sued Sanford and two others in February alleging they used phishing sites or other means to fraudulently gain access to Facebook accounts and used them to distribute phishing spam throughout the network.

The judge had earlier entered a preliminary injunction against Wallace for failing to appear in court for the original proceedings, said Sam O'Rourke, Facebook's lead counsel for litigation and intellectual property. Wallace appeared in court on Friday in what is believed to be his first court appearance in any of the cases filed against him, according to O'Rourke.

Facebook also had asked for a default judgment in the case, but the judge was prevented from taking action on that since Wallace filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday and civil actions seeking monetary sanctions are automatically stayed when a defendant files for bankruptcy, O'Rourke said. Facebook believes Wallace filed for bankruptcy to avoid a default judgment and criminal contempt order, he said.

Facebook plans to ask the bankruptcy court to lift the stay so a ruling can be made on the default judgment to become a creditor, O'Rourke said.

"We're very pleased Judge Jeremy Fogel agreed that there were grounds for criminal contempt and that the U.S. Attorney's office should investigate Wallace," Facebook said in an e-mail statement. "Wallace filed for bankruptcy, which is not unexpected and only delays our judgment temporarily. We will continue to pursue the judgment and will be reviewing his filing very closely."

The order should serve as a strong deterrent against spammers, Facebook said. "Fogel's ruling demonstrates that judges will enforce restraining orders and spammers who violate them face criminal prosecution" the statement said.

A year ago, Wallace and another defendant were ordered to pay MySpace.com $234 million following a trial at which Wallace repeatedly failed to turn over documents or even show up in court.

In the largest judgment in history for a case brought under the Can-Spam Act, the federal court in San Jose awarded Facebook $873 million in damages late last year against a Canadian man accused of spamming users of the site.

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Fixing a cracked iPod Touch screen

The iPod Touch is one of the sleekest, most advanced portable media players on the planet. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most fragile. With one side covered entirely by a thin pane of glass, a single careless drop is enough to turn the iPod Touch into nothing more than an expensive paperweight.

To protect your investment, Apple offers a one-year, limited warranty on its iPods, with the option to buy an extended Apple Care warranty. But on the day CNET Associate Editor Antuan Goodwin dropped his first-generation iPod Touch face-down in a parking lot, he was out of warranty and out of luck.

A cracked iPod or iPhone screen is really a lose-lose proposition: you either pay someone upwards of $100 to repair it, or shell out for a new one. To Antuan's relief, I offered a third, less expensive option: DIY repair.


I had some experience replacing iPod batteries and messing with electronics, so I offered to do the iPod repair myself, so long as Antuan understood there was a good chance I would irreparably mangle his iPod. I found the replacement glass on iFixit.com for $50, along with detailed, step-by-step instructions on the repair.

I won't lie to you: the repair wasn't easy. iFixit correctly cautions that the repair is "Very Difficult," involving lots of delicate parts, and, at one stage, requiring a hair dryer and an oven mitt to remove adhesive from the iPod's metal frame. What iFixit doesn't tell you is how fascinating it is to crack open this remarkable and densely packed little gadget, or the satisfaction of repairing your own stuff.

To inspire others who may be considering a similar repair, I've put together a video featuring some highlights of the repair.

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Google's digital book future Uncertain

Google, the company best equipped and most motivated to digitize the world's books, wants to offer the world an online Library of Alexandria. The decisions of the Justice Department, authors, book publishers, a federal judge, and Google itself likely will determine whether the company actually does.

Nobody in recent years has accused Google of lacking ambition, but its Google Book Search project is certainly among the company's top projects when it comes to chutzpah. That's not just because of the technical and financial hurdles of scanning, indexing, and displaying online millions of books, it's also because of the tangled intellectual property and legal concerns involved in the controversial project.

After revealing the book-search project in 2003, Google drew copyright infringement lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005, but an October 2008 proposed settlement, now under review by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, has converted those groups from adversaries to allies.

The settlement, if approved, could neatly cut a Gordian knot of copyright entanglements though setting Google back $125 million. That's because it would enable Google not only to display books that are out of copyright and those that are in print by cooperating publishers, as it does today, but also those from the vast collection of in-copyright brooks that are out of print--even when those holding rights to those books didn't specifically agree to Google's plan.

The complicated proposed settlement invoked the wrath of some authors concerned it would grant Google monopolistic power over online publishing, and the court extended the deadline for authors to choose whether to opt out of the settlement from May to September. Then the other shoe dropped this month: the Justice Department signaled serious antitrust scrutiny by issuing subpoena-like civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to check into the matter.

AIG and General Motors apparently are too big to fail. But the way the opposition to Google Book Search is shaping up, it looks like some believe Google is too big to succeed.

Why doesn't Google just scrap it?

Google Book Search isn't just another Google project. It's a link from Google's current Internet-based view of humanity's collective knowledge to the broad and deep information contained in the world's books. If the company succeeds in its ambition, the world's books will emerge from dusty library stacks to be reborn on the Web, and Google already has a 7-million book start.

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," the company tells us. And conveniently, the company has found a way to make money presenting that information: sell ads next to search results based on the search terms people type in. To foster business growth and to meet rising expectations, Google must collect more data on its servers and improve the algorithm that selects search results from that data.

The beauty of Google's approach is that it picks winners in search results based on the collective judgment of humans on the Internet rather than its own assessment of the content's quality. Adding data from books to search opens up a new pool of data, potentially leading to relevant search results for more search queries.

"We've always said that the perfect 'I'm feeling lucky' experience is when we get that answer right for you every single time. Maybe it comes from a Web page, maybe from a video, sometimes from a book," spokesman Gabriel Stricker said. "Our ability to have the most comprehensive search engine improves our ability to deliver on core search, which is the core of our business and one that's proven itself to be really profitable."

Though search is Google's primary business, the company also stands to make money directly from book search. Under the proposed settlement, Google could share revenue with authors and publishers from sales of PDF copies of books, from fees from institutional subscriptions granting access to its online library, and from advertising.

When Google began its project, it showed only short "snippets" of text from books it had scanned, just as it does today with excerpts from Web sites it shows in search results. The company argues that such snippets may be shown under the "fair use" provision of copyright law that use of copyrighted information under some circumstances without licensing it first.

The book-search lawsuits challenged whether such use was permissible. But by the time the proposed settlement arrived, though, Google got much more for its $125 million.

How does the proposed settlement work?

It took months to hammer out the proposed settlement, which runs to 320 pages including 15 appendices. Among its key features is the establishment of a Book Rights Registry, run by authors and publishers to keep track of who owns rights to which books and to collect money from Google's online sale of those books, either through individual use or through institutional subscriptions. For orphaned works, the registry would keep money from online sales for later distribution to rightsholders that turn up later.

Google, seeing lemons in the form of the Authors Guild's a class-action lawsuit, ended up with lemonade in the settlement. Class-action settlements apply to a class of potential plaintiffs, and in the case of Google Book Search, those with rights to books must opt out of the settlement if they don't want to be a party to it. That means essentially that Google would be permitted to show content from in-copyright, out-of-print books and sell online copies of those books even without an explicit agreement with the books' rightsholders.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard estimates this latter category accounts for 70 percent of Google Book Search books, and it's a key factor for so-called orphan works--books or other materials whose authors can't be located. The settlement would grant Google rights to use those works, but competitors--Microsoft, Amazon, or the Internet Archive are all real possibilities--without their own handy class-action settlement would be have to try to seek such permission in advance from each rightsholder or risk copyright infringement litigation.

Access to these orphan works is the first thing Google could get beyond its original book-search project. The second is the ability to show more material than just snippets, which means that Google users get much more useful search results and that much more of a scanned book might be shown online.

Authors might be afraid to give some content away for free online that they're accustomed to charging for, but showing more can help sales, Google said, basing its judgment on data from book-search results involving content from the more than 10,000 publishers and authors that participate in the current program that can be used to show specified portions of a book.

"Our data show really conclusively a direct correlation between the more pages people view and the likelihood people click 'buy the book,'" Stricker said, referring to present arrangements with in-copyright, in-print books, for which Google Book Search offers purchasing links.

Google keeps 37 percent of revenue from online book sales, advertising, and subscriptions; the not-for-profit registry would take a portion of the remainder for operating costs and distribute the rest to the rights holders. Although Google has an algorithm to set pricing for book downloads, rights holders can set prices through the registry if they want to override Google's decision.

Settlement resistance

What's not to like for authors? Google Book Search gives them a way to sell books that are out of print, which today for them make money only for used booksellers. And through other provisions, students and other researchers would get access to vast online libraries at institutions that pay for subscriptions, and the public would get a Google-funded computer with free access to the same in every U.S. library.

But the idea of being a cog in the Google machine doesn't sit well with some--including the fact that authors must figure out whether they want to participate in the settlement and the Book Rights Registry.

"Under the actual law, it is Google's burden and not yours to ask you for permission and then fairly negotiate terms of contract acceptable to you personally, not jam some monstrosity down your throat," said Lynn Chu, a literary agent with Writers' Reps who also called the proposed settlement a "ripoff for authors" in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

"The settlement creates a fundamental change in the digital world by consolidating power in the hands of one company," Harvard professor and author Robert Darnton concluded in a New York Review of Books opinion.

Concerns about the settlement and its complexity led the judge to extend the opt-out deadline by four months to September 4, giving rightsholders more time to considering whether they really wanted to join the settlement agreement and giving Google more time to conduct its worldwide campaign to try to inform as many authors as possible of the proposed settlement--an important activity since the company must convince the court it fulfilled its obligations to inform members of the class of their involvement in the suit.

Another organization that raised objections is the Internet Archive, which operates the Wayback Machine to catalog snapshots of the Web in earlier days and offers out-of-copyright books online.

"If the settlement were approved, it would be really difficult for the Internet Archive to work with the same group of books--those with no known rightsholders," said Peter Brantley, an Internet Archive director. If it tried to offering orphaned works online, "we could be faced with significant claims of infringement out of the blue."

Instead, Brantley would prefer to see the issue addressed through legislation that could define what a digital library, for example, had to do in trying to locate an author before being able to use an orphaned work. Such legislation also could set up a mechanism similar to the Book Rights Registry that could hold money in escrow for later distribution to rightsholders once they're located.

"The best way of doing this is not through the court creating a private monopoly through a commercial actor, it's crafting legislation through Congress," Brantley said. That idea is within the realm of possibility: orphaned-works legislation made significant headway through Congress before faltering last year.

Monopoly power?

The Justice Department's scrutiny is a new wrinkle for the settlement. It's lost on no one that the Justice Department torpedoed a Google-Yahoo search-ad partnership last year by threatening a lawsuit. But Google argues Google Book Search isn't anticompetitive.

"The agreement as structured in a way to encourage competition. It's nonexclusive," Google's Stricker said. "The charter of Book Rights Registry explicitly says the registry will be able to work with other third parties to represent rightsholders who come forward."

And Mike Boni, attorney for the author's subclass, points out that participating in the Book Rights Registry or Google Book Search doesn't preclude an author from other licensing moves. In fact, thinks the registry could help other online book efforts.

"If anything, it's a positive," he said. "If over time the Book Rights Registry locates authors of out-of-print books, it winnows down to a small number the number of books that have been difficult to find. And it can assist competitors of Google to reach licensing arrangements," by facilitating contact with authors. And Google putting books online well help locate the "parents" of orphan works. "As Google digitizes books, information about the books will become more and more known. It will be easier and easier to locate the rightsholders of these books," he said.

Nonetheless, even supporters have qualms.

"The project will be immensely good for society, and the proposed deal is a fair one for Google, for authors, and for publishers. The public interest demands, however, that the settlement be modified first," said New York Law School's James Grimmelman. "It creates two new entities--the Books Rights Registry Leviathan and the Google Book Search Behemoth--with dangerously concentrated power over the publishing industry. Left unchecked, they could trample on consumers in any number of ways."

Randal Picker, a University of Chicago Law School professor who's scrutinized the books project, believes that the rights that Google alone gets through the class-action suit are pertinent.

"What I think the judge needs to think about is whether we think the Authors' Guild would on its own grant a similar license to competitors to Google. If answer is no, and there is good reason to think they would say no, this license will by its terms create monopoly power," Picker said. "There is a chance this is the only orphan-works license that will created. No one else like the Internet Archive would be in a position to compete with Google with respect to the orphan works."

Who else but Google?

Before siding with opponents or supporters of the agreement, try stepping back to look at the big picture. Chu asserts that scanning is neither rocket science nor expensive. But is it that true when viewed at the scale of all books published?

Google has patented technology to scan books that can correct for the 3D shape of a page. It's scanned millions of books already. It has technology to search those books fast and to show those books online. It has a functioning business model that can subsidize the expense, and a will to actually take on the monumental challenge.

The music industry, whose CD-based music was unencrypted, still has yet to come to full terms with the digital era. Those with video content tentatively embracing online distribution, but also are struggling with the forces of the Internet. Google Book Search, in contrast, could help an analog publishing industry move to the digital era more gracefully, even possibly with some money to be made.

The physical incarnation of books have a solidity that the fleeting, impermanent Internet can't match, but making books available online gives them new life by exposing them to people who might not have found them otherwise--even if they happened to be near a library that held that book and saw its title in a card catalog. Google has the most powerful engine today to help people discover exactly what's in those books, and it has the servers, storage, and network capacity to deliver that information to the world. It even has increasingly sophisticated translation technology that could bulldoze literary language barriers, and digitization could make countless books more easily available to blind people.

Indeed, who else but Google has the capability to transport centuries of accumulated text into the digital future? Microsoft dropped its book-scanning project, and Amazon appears more interested in commercial transactions. The Internet Archive has hundreds of thousands of books available, but it doesn't operate on Google's scale, and the nonprofit group hasn't pushed hard enough to try to break the copyright logjam the way Google has.

Then, too, think of the consequences of Google controlling the content of the world's books. Do you want the act of browsing the library to leave fingerprints in a server log, to become a transaction whose details can be revealed through a subpoena? Google has the best search engine, the most complete online maps, the most popular video site, and it wants to house your e-mail, spreadsheets, blogs, photos, and health data. Do you want Google to keep the keys to the world's library as well?

"It's not beyond the realm of possibility to digitize every book ever been printed. That's a boldness the national libraries had not imagined was in the realm of reach. We all owe Google credit for saying, 'Go for it.' That is a huge benefit to global society--to digitize the information that humans over hundreds of years have garnered into these things we call books. That has benefited everyone," Brantley said. "What doesn't benefit us that...Google alone will be able to provide access to that information in ways that cause us deep concern for privacy, pricing, and innovation."

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