Yahoo Comes Full Circle With Retreat From Search

"Yahoo Inc. invested billions of dollars in its Internet search engine during the past six years before realizing it made more sense to entrust the job to an outsider — hearkening back to a conclusion the company's co-founders reached shortly after they started their Web directory in the mid-1990s."

Firefox Hits 1 Billion Downloads

"The popular Firefox browser from Mozilla has just past its billionth download."

Third-Party Ads Give Facebook an 'Image' Problem

"An untold number of Facebook's more than 200 million users have been feverishly forwarding instructions in the past week on how to opt out of being the social networking Web site's corporate pitchman, following warnings that third-party advertisers were creating advertisements with users' profile photos without permission."

Web Use Flattens As Behaviors Change

"The amount of time people spend online has not increased since last year, according to a report released by Forrester on Monday. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the reason for the trend: people's online behavior has changed. . .The report, titled 'Consumer Behavior Online: A 2009 Deep Dive,' shows that overall time spent on the Internet has remained at 12 hours per week. This bucks the trend from 2004 to 2007, when Internet use grew significantly."

Berkeley Gets Grants to Develop Open-Source Software for Online Lectures

"The University of California at Berkeley is moving forward with its plan to create open-source software that would let colleges around the world easily post lectures from their most popular professors."

Sony Plugs Google's Library Into E-Readers

"Sony Corp said on Wednesday it has made available over 1 million public domain books on its electronic readers via Google Inc's Books project, which digitizes classic titles not protected by copyright. . .Sony said the addition of Google's library gives it the largest, most comprehensive array of electronic books available in the market."

Twitter Redesign Focuses on Search

Twitter.com unveiled a new design for its homepage today that brings search functionality to Twitts and non-Twitts alike. The new homepage design features a prominent search field that can be accessed without logging in to Twitter. Public tweets that match your query are cleanly rendered below the search area.

Microsoft and Yahoo: Search Partners

"Microsoft and Yahoo reached a long-awaited partnership Wednesday in a bid to challenge Google's dominance in online search. Under the 10-year deal, Yahoo.com and Bing.com will maintain their own branding but search results on Yahoo.com will say 'powered by Bing.' Yahoo, in turn, will be responsible for attracting premium advertisers."

AdViews: A Digital Archive of Vintage Television Commercials

"Now, more than 1,500 historic TV commercials from the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in the Duke University Special Collections Library are available on iTunes U in a collection called "AdViews," viewable at library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adviews. The first 1,500 digitized television commercials, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, are part of the Hartman Center's D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency archive. It includes 12,000 commercials total, some produced as recently as the late 1980s. Duke Libraries plans to make the remaining commercials available by the end of 2009."

Niche Social Sites Seek Growth Under Facebook's Shadow

"What do you do when you're a small online social network trying to compete against a behemoth like Facebook? The answer may be to try to carve out a separate path by becoming a niche website for a specific audience base that advertisers, hopefully, want to target."

Orwell's '1984' and 'Animal Farm' Deleted From Kindles

"Users of Amazon.com's e-reader device were surprised and unsettled over the past day to receive notice that George Orwell works they had purchased, including '1984' and 'Animal Farm,' had been removed from their Kindle and their money refunded. It was conspiracy time on the Internet. Big Brother's revenge? Pressure from the publisher? No, says an Amazon spokesman — the deletion of pirated copies that had been posted to the Kindle store."

Yahoo Set to Unveil New Homepage

"Yahoo Inc said it plans to introduce a major overhaul of its Internet home page on Tuesday, as the company strives to make itself more relevant to Web surfers and create new ways to sell advertising."

Barnes & Noble Unveils Online Bookstore to Compete Directly With Amazon

"Top U.S. bookseller Barnes & Noble (BKS) announced Monday the launch of the world's largest online bookstore, with over 700,000 titles that can be read on a range of platforms from Apple's iPhone to personal computers. Sounding a challenge to online retailer Amazon, the company said its selection would grow to over 1 million titles within the next year and include every available e-book from every book publisher."

Students May Not Be as Software-Savvy as They Think, Study Says

"When it comes to basic computer applications, even members of the millennial generation may not know as much as they think they do. A study by North Carolina Central University found that most students overestimated their skill levels when they were asked how they perceived their ability to complete certain tasks and then tested on those tasks."

Translation Resources on the Web

This is a very helpful article from C&RL News, June 2009, Vol. 70, No. 6. It was posted on Resource Shelf.

New AASL Site: Best Websites for Teaching and Learning

"The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning honors websites, tools, and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning as embodied in the American Association of School Librarians' Standards for the 21st-Century Learner."

New Online: Research and Statistics on Libraries and Librarianship in 2008

"This report on library research and statistics will focus again this year on four
key topics: library usage, the library work force, digital repositories and their
impact on libraries, and general research methods used by the profession."

WorldWideScience.org Adds New Tools

"This free online science gateway to global databases now offers clustering of results by publication and author, as well as by topic and date. This enhancement allows you to quickly narrow a results list from the databases of approximately 60 countries to the research you are seeking."

Yahoo Search Pad

"Search Pad is a note-taking application that automatically tracks and organizes sites you find on Yahoo! Search to help you complete important tasks such as buying a car or planning a trip."

Bing & Twitter Mesh With BingTweets

"BingTweets enables you to see deeper, real-time information about the hottest topics on Twitter by fusing Bing search results with the latest tweets."

Digital -- and Financially Viable

"Scholars increasingly rely on digital resources, but who will pay for them? A new report released today by Ithaka -- an organization that promotes scholarly digitization -- aims to critically assess the sustainability of business models for non-profit digitization."

With new Google Voice, 1 Number Rings All Your Phones

"Google Voice is Google's attempt to remake how we think of the phone. It lets you use one new phone number to tie together your various numbers: cellphone, home phone, business line. Friends call your Google number, and all the other phones ring — you choose which one to answer. Voice mail flows to all of the phones, along with a free transcription by Google."

Microsoft Releases 'Trident' Software to Help Scientists Organize Research

A new data-management tool unveiled today by Microsoft Research at its annual Faculty Summit will be available to colleges and universities free. Project Trident: A Scientific Workflow Workbench is designed to help scientists in data-intensive fields such as medical research, astronomy, environmental science, and oceanography make sense of data more quickly in real time, using a better visual interface.

New Study Shows Decrease in Illegal Music Downloading

"While many colleges across the country have begun thinking of new ways to prevent students' pirating of music files, a new study out of England suggests that colleges may have less download activity to police. Survey results released Monday by the British research companies Music Ally and the Leading Question show that more people are listening to music online legally instead of downloading it illegally."

The Next Open Source Movement

"Last week, in a move that could lead to a shake-up of the industry, Colorado State University and San Joaquin Delta College both went live with the first large-scale installations of full financial systems produced by the Kuali Foundation, a consortium of colleges that have pooled resources to create open source systems that could compete with corporate offerings. The University of Arizona is well on its way to following, as is Michigan State University. Cornell University is planning for a likely conversion. Indiana University has been involved from the beginning and has tested many modules, which are expected to expand. The University of British Columbia is also expected to be using Kuali soon."

Texas A&M Takes an Active Approach to Social Media Marketing

"Multitudes of potential students are found online these days--tweeting, blogging, MySpacing, and Facebooking--but marketing to these prospects in their native environments isn't as simple and straightforward as it might seem at first. Diane McDonald, associate director of marketing at Texas A&M University, explained that reaching these prospects via social media takes more than a static institutional Facebook page; it takes an active approach to engage them."

Nielsen: Kids Spending More Time Online

"Young kids are getting online at a faster rate than their parents and older siblings. A new study from Nielsen Online found that nearly 16 million U.S. children ages 2 to 11 were online in May. They made up about 9.5 percent of Internet users."

Digital Textbooks Call for New Business Models

"When it comes to curriculum materials like textbooks, practice exercises, instructional videos,
and online simulations, our universities ask students to pay for them again and again, year after year. . ."

Microsoft Warns of Serious Computer Security Hole

"Microsoft warned users Monday about yet another serious security flaw related to its Internet Explorer browser for which there is no fix."

Amazon drops Kindle 2 price to $299

"Attention, e-book fans -- Amazon just lowered the price of the Kindle 2 to $299. The e-book reader used to be $359."

Study Says Facebook Attracting Older Users

"A new study by online marketing firm iStrategyLabs says people ages 35 to 54 now make up the biggest group using Facebook, accounting for 28.2% of all U.S. users."

Google takes on Windows with Chrome OS

"Google is jumping into Microsoft Windows territory -- and threatening to change the way personal computers work -- with its own version of a computer operating system."

Better search for the Twitter age

"Search engines are cropping up to sift through constantly updated sites like Twitter, Flickr, and blogs, but they still have a long way to go."

A Digital Age Victim: The Phone Directory

"The digital age may soon lay waste to another victim of modernization: The telephone directory, which is no longer in demand in many U.S. homes. The Missouri Public Service Commission is conducting hearings on the idea of relieving AT&T of the mandate to deliver the White Pages to every customer."

Google vs. Bing: Bing Holds its Own in Search-Off

"Google's is the search box affixed near the top of the Web browsers I use. And way more often than not, Google delivers the thorough search results I'm seeking and does so with expediency: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But give Microsoft props. Bing, launched about a month ago, is really impressive, in another league compared with the Live Search engine it replaces. Bing bests Google on aesthetics. The Google home page is clean and sparse with the familiar Google Search button and links at the top for images, video, maps, news, shopping, Gmail and more."

$4 Billion to be Released Soon for Broadband

"The U.S. government will soon release $4 billion in loans and grants aimed at expanding broadband access across the United States, officials said on Wednesday. The funds are part of a $7.2 billion program to build an affordable high-speed Internet structure in rural areas. The project is being pushed by President Barack Obama seeking to shore up the U.S. economy with job creation in the telecommunications sector."

Report: Worst May Be Over for U.S. Tech Market

"As bad as the technology market fared in the first quarter of this year, the worst may be over, at least in the United States, Forest Research said in a report Tuesday. The research firm nonetheless revised its forecast for 2009. It now expects the U.S. technology market to shrink by 5% this year. In March, Forrester had predicted a smaller 3% decline in spending on technology products and services."