A deal between Google Inc. and CBS Corp. that would let YouTube users watch clips from CBS shows such as “The Late Show with David Letterman,” has unraveled, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The two companies had been closing in on a multi-year deal, the paper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies also discussed ways to peddle CBS Radio advertising spots to Google advertisers, the paper said.

But the media company and the Internet search company could not agree on issues such as how long the deal would run, the paper said, citing a person knowledgeable about the talks.

Although the talks could be revived at some later date, the paper said, for now Google and CBS intend to work together only on more modest initiatives.

Source: Reuters

One of the most prestigious prizes in computing, the $100,000 Turing Award, went to a woman Wednesday for the first time in the award’s 40-year history.

Frances E. Allen, 75, was honored for her work at IBM Corp. on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers, the programs that translate one computer language into another. This process is required to turn programming code into the binary zeros and ones actually read by a computer’s colossal array of minuscule switches.

Allen joined IBM in 1957 after completing a master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan. At the time, IBM recruited women by circulating a brochure on campuses that was titled “My Fair Ladies.”

Source: AP

Cracking down on college students, the music industry is sending thousands more complaints to top universities this school year than it did last year as it targets music illegally downloaded over campus computer networks.

A few schools, including Ohio and Purdue universities, already have received more than 1,000 complaints accusing individual students since last fall — significant increases over the past school year. For students who are caught, punishments vary from e-mail warnings to semester-long suspensions from classes.

Source: AP

Google Maps has made things a little spicier for users who are looking up information on cities like New York, London, and San Francisco: outlines to show the footprints of buildings, and subway stops. Public transportation map mashups have been around for a while–take subway stop site Hopstop, which uses Yahoo Maps, for example–but this is the first time that Google has incorporated that data into its standard map search.

Source: News.com