Google is floating a trial balloon of a service that pairs advertisements with blog feeds.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based search company is testing a new variation of its AdSense program for publishers that allows sites to display text or image ads related to their content and get paid by the click.

This week, Google spawned a version of AdSense that allows publishers to send a text or banner advertisement alongside syndicated content using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Atom, Google’s adopted format.

Source: News.com

An unpatched flaw in some versions of the Netscape browser could let an attacker into vulnerable systems, security company Secunia has warned.

The vulnerability is “highly critical,” according to an advisory released by the Danish company late Tuesday. Version 6.2.3 and 7.2 of Netscape are affected and other versions may also be susceptible, the company said.

The flaw could allow a hacker to launch a buffer overflow attack, which could crash the browser or enable the attacker to execute code on the compromised system. A patch has not been created, according to Secunia.

Netscape representatives did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Secunia’s advice for dealing with the issue is to “use another product.”

Source: News.com

A French appeals court has ruled that movie companies must remove the copy protection from DVDs, and castigated them for inadequately labeling copy-protected movies.

The Paris court reversed an earlier ruling in favor of Le Studio Canal and Films Alain Sarde against consumer group UFC-Que Chosir, reports Afterdawn. The lobby group took up the case of a DVD owner who discovered he was unable to make a copy of the David Lynch movie Mulholland Drive to play on a video recorder. This violated the basic rights the DVD owner had to make copies in a family context, the court ruled.

Source: The Register

In a move that could rankle privacy advocates, Microsoft said Monday that it is adding the PC equivalent of a flight data recorder to the next version of Windows, in an effort to better understand and prevent computer crashes.

The tool will build on the existing Watson error-reporting tool in Windows but will provide Microsoft with much deeper information, including what programs were running at the time of the error and even the contents of documents that were being created. Businesses will also choose whether they want their own technology managers to receive such data when an employee’s machine crashes.

Source: News.com

RealNetworks Inc. plans to unveil on Tuesday a new portable music service for digital music players as part of its subscription service portfolio, a source familiar with the plans said on Monday.

The Seattle-based company, which operates the Rhapsody subscription music service, will now let listeners rent music on a monthly basis that can be stored on a range of supported digital music players.

RealNetworks declined to comment.

The company plans to debut the service at a splashy New York press conference on Tuesday, followed later in the evening with a performance by Sony BMG artist Good Charlotte.

The company also plans to license digital rights management software from Microsoft Corp. the source said. Microsoft’s software, code-named Janus, will disable songs from playing on devices after a customer stops paying.

Only several devices on the market current support the software. They include some models made by Creative Technology Ltd. (CREA.SI: Quote, Profile, Research), Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research) and iriver.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft finally told Web developers what they’ve wanted to hear for years, promising support for graphics and style sheet standards.

In a blog entry posted Friday, a member of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer development team said the company plans to support key elements of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendations Portable Network Graphics (PNG), an image format, and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), a Web page styling standard.

“We have certainly heard the clear feedback from the Web design community,” Chris Wilson, lead program manager for the Web platform in IE, said in reference to support for the PNG standard. “Our first and most important goal with our Cascading Style Sheet support is to remove the major inconsistencies so that Web developers have a consistent set of functionality on which they can rely.”

While Microsoft and critics of its Web browser have focused most of their attention on IE’s security liabilities, the issue of standards support remains crucial to Web developers.

Glitches in IE’s standards support mean that developers have to code separately for IE and for browsers that hew more closely to the standards. IE enjoys about 90 percent browser market share despite losing some points to the Mozilla Foundation’s open-source Firefox browser.

Source: News.com

Netscape pioneers Mike Homer and Marc Andreessen are back on the start-up scene, launching a TiVo-like online network for distributing and viewing public TV, radio and grassroots media.

The free service, called the Open Media Network, is aimed initially at letting traditional public broadcasters and independent filmmakers distribute their work on the Net. But it will also allow ordinary computer users to publish their files.

Part TiVo, part BitTorrent file swapping, the network puts publishers’ content into a peer-to-peer distribution network that could help lower bandwidth costs substantially. The service then creates a TV-like program directory that potential viewers can use to find and subscribe to automatic downloads of individual shows.

Source: News.com

Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner has begun his cross-Atlantic swim after the browser beat its download target.

Tetzchner said last week that he would swim from Norway to the United States if Opera 8 was downloaded a million times in its first four days of release. Because this target was exceeded over the weekend, the executive has agreed to keep to his promise.

“Although I blatantly admit that my promise was based more on joy and enthusiasm than my swimming abilities and physical health, I will do my very best to keep it,” he said in a statement.

Swimming to America (Source)

Tetzchner entered the “freezing Oslo fjord” on Monday and started swimming toward the United States, the company said. Opera’s public relations manager, Eskil Sivertsen, is rowing an inflatable boat alongside Tetzchner “as an act of guilt after making the CEO’s statement public,” according to the Opera Web site.

It remains to be seen whether the CEO will actually complete the ambitious journey.

Source: News.com

After revving the engine for quite a while, Microsoft is hoping to take 64-bit computing into the fast lane.

The software maker, which has been tooling around with the 64-bit version of Windows for the better part of two years, is announcing the general availability of the long-awaited product later on Monday. The company will start selling 64-bit editions of both Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional.

The new Windows won’t be showing up on retail shelves, though. Customers who buy a desktop or server with a 64-bit chip will have the option of getting the new operating system, while people who own an existing 64-bit machine will have the option of trading in their old 32-bit Windows for the 64-bit upgrade.

Source: News.com

Google is taking a big step toward becoming an online banner-advertising network as the market for brand ads heats up.

Beginning Monday, the search giant will start allowing advertisers to display animated image ads on third-party partner sites–a first for Google and a departure from company co-founders’ early stance against such Web advertising. (Google itself still shows only text ads on its site.)

Google will also allow advertisers to designate on which third-party Web sites their ads will appear, whether it’s large partner sites like The New York Times or smaller pages.

Finally, to take advantage of the program, advertisers must bid for placement on a cost per impression (CPM) basis, as opposed to Google’s stock in trade cost-per-click (CPC) search ads. CPMs are modeled more closely to brand advertising like TV commercials in which marketers pay based on the number of people who see the ad. In contrast, marketers pay only for CPC ads when people click.

Source: News.com

Forgent Networks has added Microsoft to the list of companies it has sued alleging infringement of a patent for a data compression technique it claims is used in the JPEG digital image standard.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, comes after Forgent was unable to negotiate a licensing agreement with the Redmond, Washington-based software maker, says Michael Noonan, director of investor relations at Forgent.

Forgent sued 31 companies in April 2004 and several other companies after that. The company has reached licensing agreements with more than 35 companies and received more than $100 million in licensing revenue to this point, it says. Licensees include Sony, Adobe Systems, Macromedia, and Onkyo, Noonan says.

Companies that have been sued include Apple Computer, Dell, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Xerox.

Source: PCWorld

Librarians around the world are probably breathing a bit easier now that a vintage copy of Electronics Magazine has been found.

An engineer in England turned up a copy of the magazine under his floorboards and bagged a $10,000 reward from Intel, according to the BBC.

The California chipmaker had posted the bounty on eBay last week on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Moore’s Law. In a 1965 article in the now defunct magazine, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore had first posited his thoughts on how silicon technology would evolve. As it turned out, neither Moore nor Intel had saved a copy of the publication.

Source: News.com