Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, said Saturday that his wildly successful site will start sharing revenue with its millions of users.

Hurley said one of the major proposed innovations is a way to allow users to be paid for content. YouTube, which was sold to Google for $1.65 billion in November, has become an Internet phenomenon since it began to catch on in late 2005. Some 70 million videos are viewed on the site each day.

“We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,” Hurley said. “So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up.”

Hurley, who at 30 is one of the youngest Internet multimillionaires, gave no details of how much users might receive, or what mechanism would be used.

Source: AP

IBM has established an early release program for its Java 6 software development kit for Linux and AIX programmers, according to a notice that appeared this week on the company’s Web site.

IBM says the kit will allow programmers to take full advantage of a number of new features in Sun Microsystems’ latest update to the Java environment, including enhanced diagnostics information, improved data sharing between Java Virtual Machines, and enhanced operating system trace backs for fault control.

IBM has also established an online forum where users can share their experiences with the new SDK. Supported platforms for the early release Java 6 SDK include Linux on x86 and on AMD, Linux on 32- and 64-bit PowerPC, and AIX on 32- and 64-bit PowerPC.

Source: Yahoo

Internet search giant Google has said it has begun combining online books with its mapping software to guide readers to places described in print.

Google Books has started to “animate the static information” in written works by linking location references to its interactive Google Maps software.

Clicking on words pinpointing certain places in books will connect readers to maps of the spots, according to Google engineer David Petrou.

“Why not visualize places mentioned in books on a map?” Petrou asked rhetorically in a weblog on the company website.

Source: AFP

In dueling announcements, Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. separately say they have solved a puzzle perplexing the semiconductor industry about how to reduce energy loss in microchip transistors as the technology shrinks to the atomic scale.

Each company said it has devised a way to replace problematic but vital materials in the transistors of computer chips that have begun leaking too much electric current as the circuitry on those chips gets smaller.

Technology experts said it’s the most dramatic overhaul of transistor technology for computer chips since the 1960s and is crucial in allowing semiconductor companies to continue making ever-smaller devices that are also energy-efficient.

It also ratchets up the competition between Intel and rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which helped IBM develop the technology along with electronics makers Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

Semiconductor experts said Intel and IBM scientists have concocted a clever way to maintain the industry’s frenetic development pace.

Source: AP

Intel, armed with a custom-designed motherboard, has reclaimed Google as a server customer after a year watching the search powerhouse give its business to Advanced Micro Devices, CNET News.com has learned.

Google has begun buying Intel server components in high volume, said Pat Gelsinger, a co-general manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group, speaking about the Google relationship on an internal Intel blog entry Wednesday seen by CNET News.com. “We’re in business with the volume systems ramp under way,” he said.

AMD could well have a place alongside Intel. “We bought a small number of chips from Intel recently, but we continue to be supplied by more than one vendor,” Google said in a statement, but didn’t discuss motherboard purchases or other details. AMD and Intel declined to comment.

On his blog, Gelsinger said Intel had to create custom equipment to win back the business.

Source: News.com