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The blogs of war

The internet has become a key battleground for public opinion as the Middle Eastern crisis deepens, but it is also providing a forum for discussion between people caught up in the crisis and those watching from afar.

In many cases, the language barrier complicates attempts to exchange information and share experiences, especially as both Hebrew and Arabic use an entirely different script from English, the likely lingua franca. For those who want to take part in the debate but who struggle to express themselves, help could be at hand from an automatic language correction and enrichment service.

The $200 billion apology

The 2001 merger of Time Warner and AOL is widely regarded as the most disastrous corporate tie-up of all time. The driving force behind the deal was Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL who finally left the combined company's board last year. This week, he apologised.

"Yes, I'm sorry I did it," he said of the deal which wiped out some $200 billion in shareholder value. "I'm disappointed and frustrated that it hasn't developed in the way that we all hoped at the time it could."

Monopoly makeover ditches cash for credit

How does a 71-year-old board game stay relevant in the digital age? For Monopoly fans, the answer may be unsettling. Parker Bros., makers of the game favoured by estate agents everywhere, is planning a radical makeover for its European versions that involves ditching the paper money in exchange for debit cards, and, giving new marketing partner Visa prime in-game product placement as the payment clearing system.The latest edition of the British, French and German board game now allows aspiring property barons to use a type of debit card and card reader that updates a players' balance as payments are made and rents collected.

Next from the pair that brought you Skype and KaZaA...

With a back-catalogue of creations including KaZaA and Skype, the future plans of Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are well worth following. According to BusinessWeek, the pair "are working on a new communications venture" and plan "to develop software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the web".

More details on The Venice Project here.

Microsoft's Zune: will you make the switch?

It's got a catchy name, wi-fi compatibility and, no doubt, massive marketing support, but can Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched Zune really improve upon the iPod experience? Already, the gadget sites and blogosphere are buzzing with the question: has Microsoft finally arrived at the right formula for a digital media hardware/software product launch capable of challenging Apple's dominance in the digital media market? In other words, will Zune be the "next iPod-killer" or the next Tablet PC?

Psst... video game addicts, help is on the way

Are you neglecting loved ones to sneak in a few extra rounds of Halo? Are you squandering the rent money on PSP games, and want help? Well, help may have arrived in the form of a video game addiction clinic in Amsterdam. Addiction specialists Smith & Jones reckon that 20 per cent of all gaming enthusiasts can develop a dependency on gaming. To hear them tell it, the hooked gamers need serious help.

Bloggers facing the chop

A blogger has been fired from her post as a secreatry depite never revealing her surname nor the name of her employer. The company, Dixon Wilson, claims that she made herself and the firm identifiable by publishing photographs of herself, and that she updated the blog on company time. The blogger is taking the case to a labour tribunal.

Should companies be able to fire employees for material published on personal blogs, or is the division between work and private life sacrosanct? Use the comment button or form below to add your opinion

Will iTunes include movie rentals?

The blogosphere is anxiously digesting the latest rumour from ThinkSecret, which claims that Steve Jobs will make the announcement on August 7 at the traditional geekfest that is Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference. ThinkSecret has scooped the Apple PR department before, most notably calling the Mac Mini prior to Mac World in 2005. And, a move by Apple to bring movies to the tiny-sized screen has long been suggested as the next evolution of Apple's digital media plans. Plus, movie studios are anxious to get its blockbusters to the iTunes generation and to do for Hollywood what it did for the music industry: introduce legal downloading to the masses.

Future imperfect: TV in 2020

Predicting the future isn’t easy. It’s hard to think of a single long-term prediction that has turned out to be right, although that may have more to do with schadenfreude than the hopelessness of futurologists. It’s just a lot more fun to remember the wayward forecasts, the ones which suggested that one day every city would have at least one telephone or that by 1995 we would all be clad in baking foil and living on the moon.

How to star as YouTube hits the big-time

YouTube continues to go from strength to strength. Yesterday, “the leader in internet video search … said viewers are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its ‘snack-size’,” Reuters reports.

“Since springing from out of nowhere late last year, YouTube has come to hold the leading position in online video with 29 percent of the US multimedia entertainment market, according to the latest weekly data from web measurement site Hitwise.”

No wonder the big guys want to get in on the act.

What do bloggers want?

With British bloggers threatening to claim what's left of John Prescott's scalp, this may be a good time to work out what these blogger types really want. John Battelle, founder of the blogging ad network Federated Media thinks he knows. In part, of course, they want to be famous, but more importantly they want to quit the day job and blog full time. His company aims to make this happen by taking the rising stars of the blogosphere and tricking out their websites with the kind of blue-chip advertisers who would normally be lavishing their ad spend on more traditional websites, such as this one. The good news for bloggers is that it just might work. The bad news is that it still takes a long time to be an overnight success…

Lacking proof, BPI antipiracy tactics falter

Just how accurate are the UK music industry's claims that certain net users are unlawfully swapping copyrighted music online? Evidently, not very. In an embarrassing turn of events, the British Phonographic Industry's controversial new campaign to shame internet service providers into cutting ties with those customers who trade pirated music online is backfiring. Why? Because the trade group has failed to provide sufficient evidence of misuse, says Tiscali, one of the accused ISPs. 

Google's "party plane"

Larry Page and Sergey Brin's customised Boeing 767 is making headlines - contrary to the Google founders' wishes. The pair had requested a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge to bar their aircraft designer from talking to the press (so much for Google's mission of making the world's information accessible, eh?).

Judge Joe Huber yesterday declined to issue an immediate ruling, the Mercury News reported. So another hearing has been scheduled for August 7 over allegations that Leslie Jennings spoke to newspaper reporters in violation of a confidentiality agreement he signed when he was hire to deck out the 767.

So, what's all the fuss about?

Odour on demand

News of a major technological breakthrough reaches us from Japan, where scientists have developed a digital nose that not only records smells but can replicate them too. The device has 15 sensors for analysing odours and producing a chemical recipe to store or transmit to other machines. When the time comes to recreate the smell, the device mixes 96 chemicals, vaporises the resulting blend and puffs it into the air.

UK ISPs demanded to pull plug on file sharers

The British music lobby has adopted a controversial new approach in its online anti-piracy campaign: shaming the internet service providers into closing the accounts of customers who trade copyrighted music files. On Monday, the British Phonographic Industry announced the new strategy, saying thatthe ISPs have a duty "to pull the plug on music cheats" before the courts get involved and force them to.

Everyday life in the Roman Empire

I'm a big fan of Michael Crichton's daft 1970s science-fiction movie Westworld, in which Yul Brynner stole the show as a sinister robot cowboy gone bad. He turns into an early Terminator, terrorising the residents of a high-tech entertainment resort called Delos, in which fat cats live out their fantasies in a theme park manned by beautiful (and sexually compliant) androids. It includes a variety of themed spaces: the cowboy-themed world of the title, a medieval world – and a Roman World. I thought of this when I heard that Roma Victor, an online world set in AD180, throws opens its virtual doors on July 16.

Politics of piracy goes global

The politics of piracy is on the march. What began in Sweden last January as a political statement by a few hundred BitTorrent advocates has now spread to the United States, France, Belgium and Italy. What does the party stand for? "The government should encourage, rather than smother, creativity and freedom."

The internet is not a truck

While defending his decision to vote in favour of creating a two-tier internet, US Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) attempted to explain how the internet works. This may have been unwise.

"The internet is not something you just dump something on," he said. "It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled. And if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

The new Windows anti-virus fix? Buy a Mac

Will switching from PCs to Macs minimise the malware problem? A new report by the antivirus company Sophos draws this controversial conclusion.

Success breeds failure at Google

"Rivals get the jitters when Google's non-search products grab headlines. But a close look shows that so far, there's not a market leader among them," BusinessWeek reports.

Of course, Times Online readers already knew that Google has been struggling to replicate its success in search as its makes its breakneck drive to diversify.

It is tempting to say that if Google involves itself with enough new products, some of them have got to be successful. Law of averages, innit? But then, there was a very similar argument doing the rounds on England and penalty kicks at around 4pm on Saturday.

Ahead of its time

Ever wondered where you would find the oldest registered internet domain still in operation? Wonder no more.