Cody Taylor

Canonical is preparing to launch Ubuntu One, a new Web service that will offer cloud synchronization and collaboration features. Ars gives you a detailed hands-on look at the service and some of the underlying technology.

CWmike writes “Submitting to mounting legal pressure, Craigslist has announced that it will remove the Erotic Services category from its classified advertising Web site within seven days. The move comes just two and a half weeks after Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, told Computerworld that the company had no intention of removing the category. While it’s taking down the category, it will be launching a new category called Adult Services, for which each posting will be manually reviewed before it appears. ‘Unsurprisingly, but completely contrary to some of the sensationalistic journalism we’ve seen these past few weeks, the record is clear that use of Craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds, let alone rates of violent crime pertaining to American society as a whole,’ said Buckmaster in a blog post today. ‘We are optimistic that the new balance struck today will be an acceptable compromise from the perspective of the constituencies, and for the diverse US communities that value and rely upon Craigslist.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy recently spoke with Gamasutra about their efforts to move the games industry away from restrictive DRM. Despite the fact that both have had their own troubles with piracy, they contend that overall piracy rates aren’t significantly affected by DRM — and that most companies know it. Instead, the two suggest that most DRM solutions are still around to hamper a few more specific situations. Quoting: “‘Publishers aren’t stupid. They know that DRM doesn’t work against piracy,’ Carmel explains. ‘What they’re trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy games for , none of which goes into the publishers’ pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.’ … ‘I believe their argument is that while DRM doesn’t work perfectly,’ says Wardell, ‘it does make it more difficult for someone to get the game for free in the first five or six days of its release. That’s when a lot of the sales take place and that’s when the royalties from the retailers are determined. Publishers would be very happy for a first week without “warez” copies circulating on the Web.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mjasay writes “Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler points to some interesting long-term trends in browser market share, noting that ‘browser releases aren’t having any major impact on the macro trends,’ which suggests that a better IE will likely have little impact on its sliding market share. The most intriguing conclusion from the data, however, is that Firefox could surpass IE market share as early as January 2013 if Firefox continues to gain 5 percent every year, even as IE drops 5 percent each year. In the past, Microsoft might have fought back by tying IE to other products to block competition, but with the EU keeping a close antitrust eye on Microsoft and the US Obama administration keen to make an example of an antitrust bully, Microsoft may have few good options beyond good old fashioned competition, which doesn’t seem to be working very well for the Redmond giant, as the market share data suggests. Microsoft’s loss of IE market power, in turn, could have serious consequences for the company’s efforts to compete with Google on the Web.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike writes “Saying that its users are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Google has unveiled a list of new search technologies geared to help users ‘slice and dice’ their Google search results, along with a new tool to help them cull information instead of Web pages. Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google’s Search Products, said of Search Options in a blog post, ‘We have spent a lot of time looking at how we can better understand the wide range of information that’s on the Web and quickly connect people to just the nuggets they need at that moment.’ Google Squared, set to be released to users as part of its Google Labs program later this month, pulls up information from different sites and presents it in an organized manner.”

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Firefalcon writes “Intel has been fined a record 1.06 billion euros (.45 billion / £948 million) by the European Competition Commission after being found guilty of anti-competitive practices. This makes Microsoft’s 497 million euro fine in 2004 (which was a record at the time) seem like a slap on the hand. Reports had previously suggested that the fine would be similar to Microsoft’s. Intel was charged (among other things) with encouraging manufacturers and retailers to purchase fewer (or even not stock) AMD processors. More details of the ruling are on the European Commission’s Competition website. Intel said they will appeal the fine.”

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Over the last year, it’s become clear that Google has a bigger war on its hands in mobile than it had anticipated. It’s principal antagonist is sexy Apple iPhone, which has seriously disrupted Google’s ambitions to turn mobile industry into a Web-based …

Omomyid was among several readers writing in about the production of microscopic amounts of ultra-dense deuterium by scientists at the University of Gothenberg, in Sweden. A cubic centimeter of the stuff would weigh 287 lbs. (130 kg). UDD is 100,000 times more dense than water, and a million times more dense than deuterium ice, which is a common fuel in laser-ignited fusion projects. The researchers say that, if (big if) the material can be produced in large quantities, it would vastly improve the chances of starting a fusion reaction, as the atoms are much closer together. Such a D-D fusion reaction would be cleaner than one involving highly radioactive tritium. Many outlets have picked up the same press release that Science Daily printed pretty much verbatim (as is their wont); there doesn’t seem to be much else about this on the Web. Here’s the home page of one of the researchers. The press release gives no hint as to how the UDD was produced. Reader wisebabo asks: “I can easily imagine a material being compressed by some heavy duty diamond anvil to reach this density, the question is: what happens when you let the pressure off? Will it expand (explosively one would presume) back to its original volume?”

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Where do you get your news from? While there’s a lot of reasons to visit Twitter online, it’s essentially a place to learn about what’s going on in your world. For the first time last month, the site saw more unique visitors than the websites of both the New York Times and the Wall St. Journal.