New Gmail for the iPhone

Posted by Alex Kennberg, Google mobile team
We've just released a new look and feel for the mobile version of Gmail on your iPhone. Our goal: make Gmail fit nicely as part of the latest Google on your iPhone experience. This means that we had to make Gmail faster and more fluid.
To do that, we decided to use AJAX--a powerful set of web development techniques that make web pages more responsive. We also implemented two of the coolest and most requested features for this release: pre-fetching and auto-complete. Now when you use Google on your iPhone, Gmail will automatically pre-load all your most recent messages for you. So when you decide to read a message it will be on your screen in a snap.

Address auto-complete is my favorite new feature--and one of the most requested. I wanted to be able to type a full email address in under two seconds on the iPhone. With auto-complete you can often get the right email address on your screen within 2-3 key strokes.

Finally, our user experience designer worked hard to develop a very fluid interface that fits the whole Google experience on the iPhone. These changes take into account that you have to tap the virtual buttons with your finger, so we made sure to size everything appropriately.

Via Gmail

Etology BAN All BitTorrent Sites From Their Ad Network

In the email sent by Etology to their BitTorrent site customers they write: “Due to the legal implications involved with sponsoring torrent sites, our management team has made the decision to remove from our network torrent sites that promote copyrighted content.”

They probably mean “promote sharing of copyrighted content”, but that’s a minor detail. According to Etology this move is needed in order to to minimize risk for their advertisers. It is not sure what the risk is, but apparently some of their bigger clients don’t what their ads to appear on BitTorrent sites. At this point it is not clear if only BitTorrent sites are affected, or also the huge list of warez sites in their ad network.

Most companies don’t want to be associated with sites that offer links to copyrighted material. Others see it as a great outlet to advertise their products, last year Wal-Mart placed targeted ads for DVDs of popular TV-shows such as “The Sopranos”, “Smallville”, “Desperate Housewives” on The Pirate Bay during the holiday season. The ads appeared on pages that linked to corresponding torrents.

Etology served ads for Demonoid, Torrent-Finder, TorrentReactor, TorrentPond, BTScene and several other sites. There are still some options for BitTorrent site owners to monetize their websites, with Adbrite as the leading ad provider. Other alternatives are CPX Interactive, AuctionAds, ShoppingAds and unfortunately plenty of adult and gambling related programs.

[via TorrentFreak]

Finalmente la GPLv3!

Dopo anni di dibattito e 18 mesi di limature e rielaborazioni del testo provvisorio, la Free Software Foundation (FSF) ha finalmente ufficializzato, oggi pomeriggio, la terza versione della GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), la licenza free software più popolare al mondo.

«Da quando abbiamo fondato il movimento free software, più di 23 anni fa, la comunità del software libero ha sviluppato migliaia di programmi utili e rispettosi della libertà degli utenti. Molti di questi programmi, la maggior parte, utilizzano le licenze GNU GPL per garantire a ogni utente la libertà di utilizzare, studiare, adattare, migliorare e redistribuire il programma», ha detto Richard Stallman, fondatore e presidente di FSF.


La GPLv3 migliora e rafforza questa garanzia, assicurando agli utenti la possibilità di modificare il software libero sui propri elaboratori personali, e offendo licenze di brevetto a tutti gli utenti. Migliorata anche la compatibilità con altre licenze free software (in particolare, con la Apache Software License 2.0) e promossa l'uniformità internazionale dell'applicazione della licenza.

Il testo completo della nuova licenza è disponibile sul sito della FSF, a questo link.

Tra le novità più rilevanti, l'inclusione di un paragrafo sul cross-licensing, che chiarisce i termini entro i quali è consentito stringere accordi di distribuzione con terze parti interessate allo sfruttamento economico delle licenze (il riferimento principale è l'accordo Microsoft-Novell del novembre scorso).

A tal proposito, la GPLv3 stabilisce che le aziende di software che «fanno accordi discriminatori (...) non possono licenziare il software sotto GPLv3». Alla Novell non è proibito distribuire software sotto GPLv3 «perché l'accordo sulla protezione della licenza stretto con Microsoft può essere volto contro la Microsoft stessa, a beneficio della comunità».

È proibito, inoltre, l'uso di software sotto licenza GPLv3 su dispositivi personali che vietino all'utente di scegliere liberamente il modo di utilizzo del software e del dispositivo stesso (apparecchi con implementazioni trusted computing o sistemi di tivoization)

LinuxWorld.com Fonti dal: Free Software Foundation

Mother Superior: MySpace or school, your choice

The principal at St Hugo of the Hills Catholic School in Bloomfield Hills has banned her students from having MySpace pages.

According to reports, Sister Margaret Van Velzen has sent out an edict instructing students to take down their pages or face suspension from school. Families are expected to support the school's policy, which it says is aimed at keeping the students safe.MySpace has been linked to a number of assaults, some of them sexual, some less so. It does have a minimum age limit - no one younger than 14 is supposed to join- but verifying the ages of everyone on a social network as large as MySpace is next to impossible and, some would argue, not even desirable.

Nevertheless, Sister Margaret has asked various staff members to keep an eye on the MySpace network for anyone transgressing the new rule.

While the move will surely seem draconian and intrusive to the average Register reader, it does have the backing of local police. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard says it removes peer pressure, which he described as "the biggest factor" in encouraging kids to have pages.
However, not everyone is convinced. Jerry Herron, Wayne State University professor of American Studies argues the move will just give everyone a sense of false security. "A predator who wants to violate children will find a way, electronically or otherwise," he added.
This is to say nothing of setting up a MySpace page under a nickname. But we wouldn't want to suggest anyone actually do that, of course.

The Register's resident grumpy old man, who we consult on occasions such as these, was heard to mumble into his pint: "Too right. Burning CDs? Burning in hell more like. In my day..." at which point we stopped listening
c by register.com

Skype to offer money-transfer system via PayPal

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Web telephone calling service Skype will shortly begin allowing users to send money to other Skype users via the PayPal online payments system, Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom said on Tuesday.Speaking at a technology conference in Silicon Valley, Skype Chief Executive Zennstrom said the company is working with PayPal, but declined to say exactly when the service would be made available to Skype's tens of millions of global users.

Both Skype and PayPal are units of online auction leader eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - news). PayPal is already the most popular way that Skype users pay for long-distance Skype phone calls to other phones.
"You can send money over Skype," Zennstrom said of the upcoming service plan. "This is basically connecting the Skype community over PayPal. All the user needs is a PayPal account."

A Skype spokesman said following Zennstrom's remarks that the service should be formally unveiled within a month.
Skype had 171 million registered users worldwide at the end of 2006. A year ago, PayPal began limited experiments allowing users to send money to other cell phone users via text messages, but has done little to promote that service so far.

Skype-PayPal can function as a money transfer service for transactions as simple as sending a friend money to split a restaurant bill.

"A lot of people using Skype are people who have friends and family on the other side of the world," Zennstrom said.