Google Operating System Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:32:41 +0100 Browse Newspapers in Google News Archive You can now browse all the issues digitized by Google for newspapers like The Montreal Gazette, The Sydney Morning Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and more. The digitized newspapers are searchable in the Google News Archive and they're also included in Google's regular search results. "The News Archive Partner Program provides a way for Google and publishers and repositories to partner together and make historical newspaper archives discoverable online. As part of Google News, the News archive search function provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. For articles already in digital format, we've worked with the hosts of these archives to crawl and index their materials. When materials aren't easily available in digital format, we have partnered with the copyright holder to scan and present the newspaper in a way that is full-text searchable, fast and easy to navigate," explains Google. Google also digitizes books, magazines, photos and videos. { via Search Engine Roundtable } Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:22:13 +0100 MusicBee, a Web-Centric Music Manager I rarely post about topics that don't have too much to do with Google, but there's a little-known music player that deserves some recognition. MusicBee is a powerful music player and music organizer for Windows that helps you auto-tag your songs, find lyrics and album pictures, create smart playlists with related songs from Last.fm, convert songs and much more. MusicBee manages to combine the best features from applications like iTunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp, while adding a lot of useful features that aren't available in those popular media players. For example, you can automatically fix the tags for all the songs from your music library with just a few clicks. MusicBee has a great Last.fm integration: it automatically scrobbles the tracks you play, it lets you import your loved tracks and your playlists, it has a cool feature that imports Last.fm tags and there's also an option to sync play counts with Last.fm. The application supports tabs and it includes a Mozilla Gecko-based browser that lets you read information about the songs you're currently listening and download songs from music blogs. Besides the extensive support for music formats (MP3, WMA, Vorbis, AAC, FLAC), the application converts music files from one format to another and synchronizes your files with many portable devices, including iPod and iPhone. MusicBee is probably the media player that integrates with the most popular music-related web services and the nice thing is that it's constantly improving. Steven, MusicBee's only developer, is open to feedback, sometimes implementing user suggestions and fixing bugs in less than a day after they're posted. It's amazing to see that the first version of the player has been released in December 2008. The downside of including a lot of features is that the application might look cluttered and some features are difficult to find, but that's a small price to pay. Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:33:38 +0100 Google's Command for Posting Buzz Messages Google Mobile Blog has a cool tip for those who post Google Buzz messages from an iPhone or an Android phone: "You can post your public buzz simply by speaking it. From the Google Mobile App for iPhone or Quick Search Box on Android, select the voice search icon, say "post buzz" followed by the text you'd like to post, and watch your words appear. Before your post is sent, you'll be able to edit it or change its tagged location." It's probably the first time when Google's voice search feature can be used for other things than searching. In fact, you don't even have to use the voice search feature: go to google.com on your mobile phone's browser, type post buzz, followed by your message and Google Buzz will open. Maybe Google will add similar shortcuts for creating Google Calendar events, composing Gmail messages or finding Google Docs files. Yahoo's open shortcuts are an interesting approach to adding command-line features to the search box, but they're less powerful than YubNub's commands. Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:55:43 +0100 How to Install Google Quick Search Box Google has recently discontinued Quick Search Box for Windows, which was included in Google Toolbar. If you liked the application, there's a way to use it, even if it's no longer available in Google Toolbar. 1. Install an older version of Google Toolbar for IE. If you already have Google Toolbar for IE, it's likely that the toolbar has been updated to the latest version and you need to first uninstall it. 2. After installing Google Toolbar, go to "c:\program files\google\" and copy the folder Quick Search Box to "c:\program files\". The folder "c:\program files\quick search box\" won't be deleted by Google Toolbar. 3. Now you can uninstall Google Toolbar or install the latest version from toolbar.google.com. 4. Open Quick Search Box's folder, go to "bin\1.2.1150.158\" and copy the file qsb.dll to "c:\program files\quick search box\". You can delete all the files from the folder except GoogleQuickSearchBox.exe and qsb.dll. 5. You can add a shortcut to GoogleQuickSearchBox.exe on your desktop, but it's probably a good idea to launch the application at startup. Go to the Start Menu, click on Run and copy this command: reg.exe add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v "Quick Search Box" /t REG_SZ /d "C:\Program Files\Quick Search Box\GoogleQuickSearchBox.exe /autorun" When you want to remove the application, just delete Quick Search Box's folder and disable the startup entry using msconfig. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:09:24 +0100 Quick Search Box for Windows, Discontinued Quick Search Box, a small Google application bundled with Google Toolbar, is no longer available for Windows. The software was both a program launcher and a Google search box instantly available even if your browser is closed. "At Google, we like to launch early and often, and iterate on our products. We often experiment with new features in Toolbar and sometimes we have to decide how best to focus our efforts on features we expect will yield the most benefit to users in the long run. Along these lines, the Quick Search Box feature will no longer be available in Google Toolbar. At this time we have no plans to release it separately, but I'll keep the community informed if these plans change. Thanks to all the users who helped us test and improve the feature," says Brian Rose, from Google. Quick Search Box is still available for Mac, iPhone and Android, but each flavor of the application has different features. I think it would be a good idea to add all the features from QSB for Mac to the Windows version and release it as a standalone application. It could be a lightweight alternative to Google Desktop, an extensible open source application that lets you search the files from your computer and your online data from services like Gmail or Google Docs. { Thanks, Marcus. } Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:00:40 +0100

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Domainopedia | All About Domains Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:21:46 +0100 Domain names in Indian languages in three months Domain names in Indian languages in three months Domain names on the worldwide web in Indian languages could be a reality within three months, bringing the world of web closer to the masses. Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), which were so far available in Latin characters, will be available in all 22 scheduled Indian languages in a phased manner, with the first domain names in Indian script to roll out by another three months. ''A policy document for IDNs in Indian languages is being evolved and a certain number of scripts and languages have also been identified in the initial stage,'' Shaikhar Sharma of the Language Technology Development project, department of computer science, Gauhati University, informed. The department is responsible for evolving the policy document for Assamese language. An awareness raising national workshop on IDNs for Indian languages was organized here today by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), under the aegis of department of IT, ministry of communications and IT. Similar workshops were held at Pune and Hyderabad and will culminate in an international conference to be held at Delhi later this month. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:20:00 +0000 The Single Letter .com Trademark Claims The "Single Letter .com" Trademark Claims A recurring discussion within certain circles over the years has been the potential assignment of single character domain names in the generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Prior to the formation of ICANN, and despite assignment of a few single character domain names (q.com, x.com, z.com, i.net, q.net, and x.org), single character domain names had been reserved and rendered unregistrable. The historical reasons for this reservation are sometimes debated, but it is universally recognized that there is no valid technical reason for them to remain unregistrable. The subject of allocating single character domain names has captured the attention of the ICANN community to varying degrees from time to time, primarily depending on the interested efforts of Overstock.com and its advocates. For example, just prior to the December 2005 ICANN meeting in Vancouver, a press release was circulated, and its authors managed to pimp their claim that ICANN was weighing the release of single character domain names to a variety of media outlets (e.g. ICANN weighs single-letter Web addresses USA Today, November 28, 2005). During the 2005 Vancouver meeting, one of the more interesting exhibit tables was run by Overstock.com, for the purpose of distributing baseball caps embroidered with the letter "O", apparently for the purpose of impressing on the minds of the ICANN community that Overstock.com claims a pre-eminent interest in the letter "O" - and apparently oblivious to the fact that Oakley has longstanding rights in the mark "O" for sportswear. Hence, while rumors spread that Oprah was coming to visit ICANN, the presence of blatant trademark infringement at an ICANN meeting by a member of the Business Constituency was, at least, entertaining. In October 2007, ICANN initiated a public comment process on the allocation of these domain names, in which a number of commentators suggested the use of auctions as an allocation method. On January 18, 2008, ICANN announced that it was seeking "Expressions of Interest from Auction Design Experts" (http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-18jan08.htm) for, among other things, "allocation of single-character second-level domain names". Accordingly, it appears that ICANN is moving toward an auction model for the allocation of these domain names. Among the various auction proposals submitted during the public comment period was one by, surprise, Overstock.com which contained the curious caveat that ."The names should be allocated via a process that respects established/prior use, with an established set of criteria." "Respects established/prior use"? Of domain names that have never been allocated? Whatever could that mean? Well, as ICANN lurches toward collecting fistfuls of cash from the sale of domain names, it's probably about time that someone explain the game that has been going on during the discussion of single-character domain names. We are all familiar with the concept of cybersquatting - i.e. the abusive and intentional registration of domain names for the purpose of exploiting trademark rights known to belong to another party. What has become significant in the last several years, largely due to the solicitous treatment of trademark claims in domain policy development is the notion that a claim of trademark rights operates as an automatic entitlement to a domain name. For example, prior to the launch of new top-level domain names, various sorts of pre-emptive procedures for conferring a registration preference upon trademark owners have become common. This general practice has given rise to strategic gaming of various trademark systems. One of my favorite examples of this sort of gaming was the filing, in the US, of a trademark application for the term "PAINT.BIZ" by a large paint company prior to the launch of .biz. During the subsequent trademark dispute procedure that was applied to the .biz TLD, and because some of the retired judges used to decide these disputes have no basic understanding of the difference between a pending application and an enforcible trademark right, this paint company leveraged their pending trademark application into a claim of entitlement to the domain name paint.biz, and prevailed. Never mind that the underlying application was refused by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and then subsequently abandoned. The application served its purpose. Not inclined to wait for the preferred treatment offered to trademark owners, Sun Microsystems had its attorney pre-emptively threaten the .biz registry with litigation if it so much as thought of registering "Sun.biz" to any other party (presumably including any of the other trademark claimants to "SUN"). Similarly, prior to the launch of the European ".eu" top-level domain name, quite a number of folks, including domain speculators, learned the apparent lesson taught by misguided and oversimplified trademark protection policies applied to domain names. By the thousands, astute observers rushed into the Benelux trademark office, which was identified as being the most rapid route to obtaining an entry pass into the preferred round of domain registrations run for trademark claimants by the .eu registry. The result - by the time the registry was opened for general public registration, there was not a valuable dictionary word to be had. So, what does this have to do with ICANN proposing to auction single character domain names, and Overstock.com / Marilyn Cade's urgings that such a process respect "established/prior use". The answer is - everything. The discussion of single character domain names has proceeded for several years now, with nary a nod to the fun and games that have been transpiring in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and, likely indeed, various other trademark registration authorities around the world. Whether or not ICANN decides to auction the allocation of single letter domain names, there is going to be a line of trademark claimants doing what trademark claimants do best - shouting "me first" and threatening litigation because, yes, they believe they "own" individual letters of the alphabet concatenated with ".com". And, I promise you this - because domain policy makers have historically been absolutely ignorant to the manner in which trademarks function as identifiers in connection with specific goods and services, and are not "monopolies in words", those shouts will be heard. Assembled in Table 1 below, are the currently pending or registered applications for registration of trade or service marks consisting of single character ".com" domain name strings. I have listed the filing dates of these applications in the table, because it is absolutely remarkable how many people discovered, and then swore to a government agency, that they had a bona fide intention to use such marks, all within a few days of one another, and all within days of the USA Today article inspired by the press release circulated in 2005 by those who have been trying to shake the tree for these domain names to be released. Table 1 - Pending And Registered US TM Applications As of Jan. 27, 2008 Mark Filed Owner App # / Reg # Claimed Use A.com Dec. 2, 2005 A-dotcom LLC 78/765287 Dec. 1, 2005 A.com Jul. 14, 2005 GQXZP2 LLC 78/670644 ITU B.com Nov. 30, 2005 Bangki Pty. 78/763561 ITU B.com Nov. 28, 2005 Adkisson, M. 78/761514 ITU C.com Nov. 30, 2005 Clearwire Corp. 78/763544 ITU D.com Nov. 28, 2005 Carlucci, J. 78/761556 ITU D.com Nov. 30, 2005 DVJ1 LLC 78/763821 ITU F.com Dec. 6, 2005 Coinbank Ltd 78/767646 ITU G.com Dec. 2, 2005 G-dotcom LLC 78/765291 ITU G.com Jul. 14, 2005 GQXZP2 LLC 78/670745 ITU I.com Jul. 14, 2005 GQXZP2 LLC 78/670697 ITU J.com Dec. 2, 2005 Lost Reality Studios Inc. 78/765909 ITU K.com Dec. 17, 2005 Freeman, G. 78/775658 ITU L.com Dec. 2, 2005 Lost Reality Studios Inc. 3203694 Dec. 2, 2005 L.com Nov. 30, 2005 The Original Cast Lighting Inc. 3192525 Dec. 6, 2005 L.com Nov. 30, 2005 L.com Corp. 78/763094 ITU M.com Dec. 2, 2005 M-dotcom LLC 78/765305 Dec. 1, 2005 O.com Sep. 21, 2007 Overstock.com 77/286256 ITU O.com Sep. 21, 2007 Overstock.com 77/286252 Sep. 24, 2007 O.com Oct. 10, 2003 Overstock.com 3042536 Aug. 5, 2005 P.com Dec. 5, 2005 P.com Inc. 3295359 Jan. 1, 2007 R.com Nov. 28, 2005 Ripley, J. 78/761686 Nov. 29, 2005 R.com Dec. 2, 2005 Morris, R. 78/765180 Dec. 1, 2005 S.com Jul. 18, 2000 S.com Inc. 78/017287 Nov. 1, 1999 T.com Feb. 16, 2006 Deutsche Telekom 3260399 (multiple) U.com Dec. 2, 2005 U Inc. 78/765903 Dec. 2, 2005 W.com Dec. 2, 2005 W-dotcom LLC 3158607 Dec. 2, 2005 X.com Apr. 29, 1999 Paypal Inc. 75/694096 ITU Y.com Aug. 22, 2005 Yahoo! Inc. 78697698 ITU Z.com Jul. 14, 2005 GQXZP2 LLC 78/670681 ITU Those entries highlighted in red have proceeded to registration. The others remain in various conditions of pendency as of this writing. I have not included in this table the dozens of applications, also filed during the same few days in 2005, which have since been finally refused and abandoned by their applicants. Also not included in this compilation are the numerous compound marks and figurative marks which, to one degree or another have a single-character domain name as a central component. The complete picture, including the abandoned applications, demonstrates the effectiveness of the shotgun approach taken by attorney Richard Morris on behalf of a set of entities named "A-dotcom LLC", "B-dotcom LLC", etc. in addition to his personal application for R.com. Also of worthy note is the memorably-named GQXZP2 LLC and Lost Reality Studios which also found themselves possessed of multiple bona fide intentions within the same period. At this point, there are those who are no doubt asking, "But if they didn't have these domain names, how are they claiming a trademark?" The answer is fairly simple. In order to demonstrate a trademark for EXAMPLE.COM, you do not have to actually have and/or use the domain name "EXAMPLE.COM". You can, if you want to, sell goods with "EXAMPLE.COM" imprinted on them, and then claim that as your mark, in just the same manner as you would claim anything else you have imprinted on your goods as a mark. Quite a number of companies and their attorneys have figured this out, and have obtained trademark registrations for no other purpose than attempting to unseat a prior domain registrant. This is why, for example, Equifax actually obtained a US trademark registration for "EFX.COM" claiming first use all the way back to 1975 - ten years before .com existed - in an application they filed and swore to in 2001. So, let's not kid ourselves about the proposed auctions of single letter domain names. At the appropriate time, those who have been nurturing these trademark documents for quite some time are not going to sit around and watch their efforts come to naught. While most of the relevant applications were filed within a few days of the USA Today article, some folks did get the memo sooner. For example, Yahoo.com's "y.com" application was filed two months earlier (which is unsurprising in view of the fact that the attorney listed on the application was then an official of the ICANN Intellectual Property Constituency), and some were filed as far back as the earliest discussions within ICANN of providing special pre-emptive rights to anyone who could wave an official document of some kind - regardless of its relevance - in the direction of a domain registry. We have reached the point - actually we reached it some time ago - where those familiar with formal trademark registration mechanisms have proven themselves to be as equally adept, and equally principled, as the abusive domain registrants who inspired domain policy makers to have the trademark tail wag the domain name dog. The notion that anyone who has been playing the game of token trademark use, or uses of phony ".com marks" solely for the purpose of establishing a position is not an "established / prior use" that is worthy of any respect whatsoever in the process of allocating single letter domain names. The use of a well-intentioned system for protecting consumers, and for registration of existing claims of right, for the concoction of phony, token claims, does not deserve any "respect" - it deserves our contempt. This type of gamesmanship should be penalized during the allocation of single character domain names. Rewarding this behavior will have consequences that also reach into the assignment of new top-level domains, as the identical sort of game is being played in that arena as well, which is a story for another day. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:15:00 +0000 Yahoo Goes After Y.COM Trademark Yahoo Goes After Y.COM Trademark On 12 January 2010, Yahoo applied for a trademark on Y.COM, a filing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office reveals. And this isn’t exactly the first time they’ve tried to secure that particular character mark: the company actually filed an initial application for Y.COM to the USPTO back in August 2005. The only difference between both applications that I can tell is that the most recent one is a bit more limited in scope, as the ‘Goods & Services’ description in the application is for one specific category only, whereas in the 2005 application there were three. In the new filing, Yahoo seems to focus more on its search business (or what’s left of it): IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Creating indexes of information, sites, and other resources available on computer networks for others; searching and retrieving information, sites, and other resources available on computer networks for others; computer services, namely, providing search engines for obtaining data on a global computer network; design, creation, hosting, and maintenance of websites for others; providing temporary use of online non-downloadable software for use in designing, creating, hosting, maintaining, and operating personal web pages; hosting computer software applications of others; providing customized online web pages featuring user-defined information, which includes search engines and online web links to other websites; domain name registration services for identification of users on a global computer network; online computer mapping services; mapping services, namely, providing a website and website links to geographic information, map images, and trip routing; computer services, namely, providing spam filtering, firewall, and parental control online filtering services; providing temporary use of online non-downloadable software in the field of employment information. The irony is that even when Yahoo succeeds at securing the trademark, the domain name y.com does not belong to the company and conceivably never will. The reason for that is that virtually all single-letter and single-digit .com domain names have been reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) ever since the early nineties. The only single-letter .com domains that are in use today were registered prior to the 1st of December 1993, when IANA moved to make them unavailable for registration. They are: q.com (Qwest Communications), x.com (PayPal) and z.com (Nissan). Back in 2005, when Yahoo first filed an application for the Y.COM trademark, an announcement was made that the reserved single-letter domain names might be put up for sale by ICANN after all, which is probably the reasoning behind the initial application in the first place. But as far as I can tell, there’s no indication that ICANN intends to move ahead with the auctioning of reserved single-letter domain names this year, so the question remains why Yahoo is going after the Y.COM trademark for the second time. Note that the above doesn’t necessarily mean it makes zero sense for Yahoo to register Y.COM as a trademark. The company could simply be covering its bases in the event that the domain name y.com should ever be available for registration in the future and someone else secures it before they can (or wins the auction). It’s also perfectly plausible that Yahoo has plans to use Y.COM as part of its branding campaigns without necessarily owning or using the domain name. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:12:00 +0000 DotMobi Registry Sells .Mobi Domain Name Operator DotMobi Registry Sells .Mobi Domain Operator Mobile data usage is booming, but the rising tide has not lifted all boats. mTLD Top-Level Domain Ltd., the Irish company that sponsored the .mobi domain name, has been sold to Afilias, an Ireland-based provider of internet infrastructure services that has been administering the .info TLD. Afilias says it intends to continue running dotMobi, the commercial operating name for mTLD, as a wholly owned subsidiary. Financial records for mTLD filed at Ireland’s Companies Registration Office indicated that in 2009 mTLD had a loss of €3.5 million on a turnover of €6.4 million, compared to a loss of €324,000 the year before on turnover of €9 million. Total assets less liabilities (eg money owed to creditors) in 2009 was €1.7 million. Although the .mobi domain name has been around since 2006, it hasn’t gained much momentum. Afilias says there are around one million registered .mobi domains, compared to the 187 million that have been registered to date across the internet as a whole. (The latter number comes from the VeriSign Domain Name Report published in December 2009.) Active .mobi sites may have been significantly lower. Although a separate domain name for mobile sites might have seemed like a good idea to Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and the other big-name companies that were behind dotMobi in its early days, clearly things have played out much more differently than expected: Many internet sites—when they even bother to create specific mobile versions of their pages—simply use their regular domains. And apps and other widget-based services have made direct links that render even those .com URLs a little unfashionable. Afilias had also provided admin services around the .mobi TLD since it was first launched. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:10:00 +0000 UAE will become one of the first countries to launch domain names in non-Latin characters UAE will become one of the first countries to launch domain names in non-Latin characters Domain names – the internet addresses that end in “.com” and other suffixes – are the most common monikers behind every website, e-mail address and Twitter post. But until now they have been limited to 26 characters in the Latin alphabet, 10 Roman numerals and the hyphen. “We have been allowed to go for international domain names for Arabic,” said Mohammed al Ghanim, the director general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA). Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also been approved to provide domain names in Arabic, he added, while Russia had been selected to manage domains with Cyrillic characters. Mr al Ghanim said the new domain names would be aimed at driving regional users to produce and access Arabic content online. It is estimated that only 1 per cent of all online content is in Arabic, the fifth-largest language in the world. “When you do a search for the Arabic content, when you do a search for the UAE, you will get English websites,” Mr al Ghanim said. “But when you do it in Arabic, it will show you a list of all the websites that have got the Arabic domain names.” In their respective non-Latin scripts, the UAE plans on using the “.Emarat” suffix, while Saudi Arabia will use “.AlSaudiah”, Egypt will use “.Egypt” and Russia will use “.rf”. Mr al Ghanim said the TRA was working with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to allocate the “.Emarat” domain name within the organisation’s global databases and finalise the necessary protocols for its release. The four new domain names are set to be finally approved and launched on the Web by the middle of this year, said the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit body that oversees internet addresses. “These international names will now allow people to type entire domain names in their own language,” said Rod Beckstrom, the chief executive and president of ICANN. “This marks a pivotal moment in the history of internet domain names.” The four countries were the first to be approved by ICANN following a successful technical test last month that checked whether there would be any confusion with other domain names. ICANN said it had received a total of 16 requests, representing eight languages, for new internationalised domain names. Munir Badr, the owner of AEserver, a domain-name registrar based in Dubai, said the introduction of a new domain name in the UAE would create competition with the “.ae” country code address. “It’s a good idea for national pride, but I don’t think it’s exactly the right time,” Mr Badr said. “Maybe a few years after the ‘.ae’ market picks up.” More than 200,000 “.ae” domain names have been registered with the TRA as of last December, Mr Badr said. “The most important thing is that the domain is in Arabic letters and opens a brand new window for those people who are computer illiterate and do not speak English,” he said. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:08:00 +0000