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Internet

Google Street View WiFi Data To Be Deleted – But Was It Really An Issue?

When Google Street View went live in the UK it was hailed as many things when it was released ranging from a ‘thief’s dream’ to a ‘flagship for user-friendly technology’ but the service was eventually cleared of privacy concerns after some people set up privacy blockades.

Regardless of your thoughts it is hard to escape the controversy, but finally it was announced that the latest saga in the Street View ‘epic’ has ended: Google’s WiFi data is to be deleted.

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Acer Clear.fi Content Sharing System Announced – How Well Will It Be Adopted?

Sharing of content has long been the crux when it comes to producers whinging about copyright infringement, but Acer looks to make it all legal with it’s cloud-based media sharing system.

The system is designed to host multi-format media which is playable on a variety of devices, which I believe will be in line with the latest range of the company’s tablets and PC’s.

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Apple’s ‘Find My iPhone’ & ‘Find My iPad’ Services Are Now Free! Will You Remote Wipe?

There has been a lot of speculation lately as to whether Apple will make it’s MobileMe service free to its customers and perhaps extend the scope of their online/cloud services given the large data centre that Apple have built. Well today we have perhaps seen the first step towards that reality.

The albeit more insignificant side of MobileMe, Find My Phone and Find My iPad, is now rid of the subscription service and free to all iPhone and iPad owners.

The service is only free to those with an Apple iPad or iPhone 4, as well as those with a fourth-gen iPod Touch running OS 4.2.1 specifically.

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Get Safe Online Week – Learn How To Use The Internet Safely & Securely

I don’t know if you can remember that far back but in April 2009 we brought you news of a Government initiative to boost the online safety of youngsters across the country, and now the campaign is back with ‘Get Safe Online’ week which was officially launched this past week.

Here at Zath we like to do our bit to promote the best bits that the internet has to offer so we thought that one and half years on we’d have another look at what ‘Get Safe Online’ is, what it’s got to offer and why you should take a look!

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Google Docs Now Editable From Android 2.2 And iOS Devices

Google Docs has become incredibly popular since its release; not only is it a free alternative to Microsoft Office, but it also allows users to access their content wherever they are via the net.

The one short fall to this service before now, though, has been the inability to edit your Google Docs from your phone or iPad. Until now. Google has announced that as of today, you can edit any of your Google documents not only from your Android based phone, but also your iOS based devices, too.

The update will be rolling out over the next few days, so if you’re using an iOS or Android device, you will be able to edit your documents on the fly, without having to wait until you have access to a desktop machine.

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Apple’s Big Announcement. The Beatles. Now on iTunes.

Remember all that hype over a particular Apple announcement scheduled for today?

It turns out that after years and years of holding out, the Beatles have now arrived on iTunes! No more, no less, just the Beatles.

If you’re a Beatles fan, then you can eat your heart out, with the box set available for £125 on the UK iTunes store.

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iTunes’ Ping and Twitter Get At Least Some Degree of Integration

Remember when Steve Jobs brought us the iTunes 10 update with Ping functionality at Apple’s music event this year? Well during the keynote the shots clearly showed us Facebook integration of some sort and basically sharing your friends across the two social networks. Well, once it actually launched it was nowhere to be seen and to be honest, it annoyed a lot of people.

So, who’s come along, but Twitter, and stolen the whole social network partnership thing from right under Zuckerberg’s nose, providing he was actually sniffing it out in the first place.

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Apollo HQ Review (Project and Contact Management)

If you’ve ever had to manage lots of tasks at once, or do any team management, you’ll be able to appreciate how difficult it is to stay organised with so many things happening at the same time.

In the past, I’ve tried out project management tools such as Basecamp, but I never fully appreciated the features it had on offer, and found the interface frustrating at the best of times.

Given the chance to look at a brand new project management system on offer, called Apollo HQ, I jumped at the chance, and hoped that my problems were finally solved. After a quick look at some of the features and the interface, I had high expectations. Did it disappoint, or live up to everything it promised? Let’s take a look!

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How To Delete Your Facebook Account… Permanently… Forever!

Deleting your Facebook account is not as easy as it may sound, and since many of us might want to due to recent privacy issues, or their habit to opt people into new public-facing features, or perhaps people might start migrating to another social network in future.

Who knows what might happen if the rumoured Google Me appears in a few months time, permanently deleting your facebook account ‘forever’ may become a fairly common thing that people might want to start doing?

So how exactly do you ‘permanently’ delete your Facebook account ‘forever’ and not just in a temporary way?

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Jane McGonigal, Games Researcher Speaking At ‘The School Of Life’ On 24th October

The outstanding creator of Halo 2 promo game ilovebees and games researcher Jane McGonigal is coming to London in October to talk at The School of Life about productivity. Here at Zath we’re always interested in making things better so we’ll be checking it out. In the meantime, we thought we’d have a look at her TED talk from earlier this year.

McGonigal has some really interesting ideas on how to harness gameplay for the greater good. Did you know that by February 2010 the human race had spent 5.93 million years playing World of Warcraft? Or that by the age of 21 the average person growing up in a country with a strong gaming culture has amassed 10,000 hours of online gaming experience? That’s the equivalent to 8 years of formal schooling. McGonigal proposes that we use the gaming staples of positive feedback and something she calls “blissful productivity” to harness that time and put it to good use.

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Zune Integration In MSN Music, UK Users Can Get Their Zune Pass Subscription Now

MSN Music has always been a great place to go to when you want to find a host of great music related content. I mean, just this minute I have discovered a great new artist thanks to MSN and the great catalogue of news and reviews of artists and songs.

No matter how popular they are, and it is currently the largest news and entertainment site in the UK, attracting 25m unique users a month, it’s probably not got the recognition of say iTunes.

However, Microsoft would probably not enjoy hearing this, but their Zune MP3 player and music store brand is hardly a threatening competitor to the iPod and iTunes.

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Google Street View Now Available On All Seven Continents, Updated With Brazil, Ireland & Antarctica!

I don’t know about anyone else, but the first thing that I did when Google Street View came to England was take a look at my house – although I could quite clearly step outside and get a much better view, but let’s face it, Street View is pretty awesome.

Unfortunately, if you happen to be an penguin living in the Antarctic, logging on to Street View to find your own little iceberg, it would have been impossible. Until now!

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Project Canvas Becomes YouView – New IPTV Name, New TV-On-Demand Hardware, Same Critics

The hotly anticipated, much-discussed and sort of exciting Project Canvas is now on it’s way to market under a new name. The new set-top box offering the best the UK has to offer in Internet TV has now been confirmed and is to be named YouView.

The necessity for an extra set-top box may be a little off putting to some, with many calling for it to be integrated fully into your TV set, however the functionality it brings is much greater than that of a standard or HD Freeview set top box alone.

So what is YouView? Well, we haven’t really covered much on the topic of Project Canvas before here on Zath, mostly because there was nothing concrete to report, however now we have the full story I feel it’s now time to share the love of IPTV on a set top box.

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Nikita & Other US TV Shows To Be Sold On iTunes (UK) The Day After Broadcast – Does This Beat Piracy?

Illegally downloading TV shows is a growing trade here in the UK, particularly US TV shows which may take months to arrive in the UK, if ever. However, a new show to hit the US, called Nikita, is looking to change the increasing theme of TV piracy.

So how is it going to achieve this feat? Because with thousands of UK pirates regularly downloading their favourite shows for free from various sites around the web, it is going to be some feat persuading them to pay for content, isn’t it? Well, perhaps the attraction of downloading shows in an easy way just a single day after the initial airing on US TV, exclusively on iTunes will change at least some minds.

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BBC iPlayer Added To Sony BRAVIA TVs – UK Internet Streaming TV, Who Needs Google TV?

There has been a lot of development of late surrounding Internet connected TV’s, with more and more services such as Google TV tipped as the next big thing in home entertainment.

Unfortunately, most of the progress being made in the industry, including Google TV, are US only for now, so it’s about time someone on this humble island nation of ours grasped the opportunity and provided consumers with some serious functionality on our IPTV’s.

Enter Sony, who have long been a pioneer in the television industry and once again have come to our rescue with the introduction of BBC’s iPlayer to their range of Internet connected Sony BRAVIA TV’s. Clearly they felt that the World Cup streaming to Sony BRAVIA TVs and Blu-Ray players went well during the summer – perhaps that helped them develop this service implementation.

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YouTube Live Streaming Tests Start – Do You Want To Watch/Broadcast In Real-Time?

As the biggest provider of videos on the internet you’d expect live streaming to be something that YouTube were already very much involved in, but aside from brief tests with professionally shot one-off events (such as the Indian Cricket Premier League, a U2 concert and the recent Google Instant Search press event) we have yet to see this really hit off on the site.

However this week YouTube will be trialling the new live-streaming service, but not only will it be for more professional means, it will also be opened up for all standard users who will be able to use the live streaming feature for the first time.

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Google ‘Instant Search’ Launched – Billions of Lives/Search Queries Changed Forever?

With nigh on 1 billion visitors per month, and over a billion searches per day, Google is still the big name player in search engines, despite the best efforts of Microsoft and Yahoo down the years.

Well now the Mountain View-based company has taken search to the next level of innovation with ‘instant search’, which will hopefully dramatically speed up the way we search.

So What Is Google Instant Search? Well, it is a simple concept, but in reality is an astounding achievement by Google.

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New & Improved BBC iPlayer Goes Live – Lots Of New Features

In June, I checked out the latest Beta version of BBC’s iPlayer, taking a look at the new features it offered, as well as a new design to go with it.

The Beta version that I’ve been using ever since has now officially gone live on the BBC website, much of the improvements are based on the feedback that the BBC got from Beta users. In case you missed it before, let me recap on some of what’s new in iPlayer…

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Sony Bring Online Music Streaming/Movie Rentals To Europe – Powered By Qriocity

Sony has had its IFA press conference today where it has unveiled no shortage of new ideas to the European market; the first of which being the transition of Qriocity into Europe, as well as plans to develop the service even further.

Qriocity, has been in development by Sony since November 2009 and the basic principle behind it is the streaming and distribution of its various forms of media. Formerly called Sony Online Services, but recently rebranded to Qriocity, the service allows consumers to enjoy high quality media across a multitude of devices.

So What Does It Include?

Well, the idea is that Qriocity will power the distribution of videos, music, games and even e-books in time, in conjunction with various devices, such as the PlayStation 3, Sony E-Reader and I imagine eventually the Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile phones.

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Search Engine Blind Taste Test Using BlindSearch.com

When it comes to search engines we probably all have our allegiances. Most of us probably still use Google Search, however an increasing number, it seems, are beginning to use the quite impressive Bing’s “decision engine” to find their search results.

But what about Yahoo? Still a reasonably popular method of searching in spite of the soaring success of Google – although of course, Yahoo is currently in the process of switching to being powered by Bing. But which is best?

Most of us would probably argue in favour of the one we use, but conduct a “search engine blind taste test”, take away the branding, and indication of which search results belong to which search engine and the results may beg to differ.

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