Nonprofit “Digital Public Library Of America” To Launch In April 2013
The Google Books project (just today pared down a bit) always impressed me with its sheer scope. Offering modern e-books is all well and good, but that’s more of a business problem. It’s the scanning and free availability of thousands upon thousands of old books that struck me as a worthwhile endeavor.
But publishers and booksellers have been wary of the service, knowing that Google is a fan of free, and their scan-first, ask-permission-later strategy caused some consternation as well. And while access to all that knowledge is appreciated, it is lost on no one that the data is in the hands of a for-profit company. Read more...
Arianna Huffington No Longer Runs The Aol Tech Sites
You know every once in a while you come across news about your company and it turns out your boss is no longer your boss anymore. If you’re me this probably happens to you every three months.
Anyways this morning I read in the media that Arianna Huffington (who I think used to be my boss) gained more control within Aol and then subsequently read that actually she had been “demoted.” Okay truth please guys?!
Well, because no one ever tells us anything because we’ll publish it, I dug around and found out that we (TechCrunch) are no longer a part of Huffington Post Media Group, and neither is Engadget, Moviephone, Stylist, AOL Video, AOL.com and TUAW. Read more...
Complaints about iPad Wi-Fi problems continue to climb
Complaints from owners of Apple's newest iPad that their device has trouble connecting to wireless networks continue to mount.
One Apple support thread on the subject has collected over 770 messages, and has been viewed more than 65,000 times, both very large numbers by the support forum's standards.
Apple started selling the third-generation iPad on March 16, and gripes about its wireless performance appeared almost immediately.
Most complaints have been filed by Wi-Fi model owners, but some have been posted by people with the more expensive 4G-enabled iPad. Read more...
Google patches Chrome for second time in eight days
Google on Thursday patched 12 Chrome vulnerabilities, the second time in eight days that the search company has updated its browser.
Most of the vulnerabilities -- eight of the dozen -- were identified as "use-after-free" bugs, a common type of memory vulnerability that researchers have found in large numbers within Chrome using Google's own AddressSanitizer detection tool.
Seven of the 12 bugs were rated "high," the second-most-serious ranking in Google's scoring system. Four were marked "medium" and one was labeled "low."
Google paid $6,000 in bounties to three researchers for reporting seven of the vulnerabilities. The others were unearthed by Google's own security team or were ineligible for a finder's fee. Read more...