The crew of the No One’s Listening podcast. L to R: Irene McGee, Mandy Brown, Chris Cornell, Skye Ladybug
Podcasting use is rising and now reaches 18% of the US population, up from 13% a year ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnq3V8XB_0Q

The sinking of the HMS Scylla
Europe’s first artificial reef has been brought to life back on dry land in virtual reality, thanks to a Birmingham University project. Second video after the jump.
 

eBay is at the center of the controversy
Stolen and sensitive U.S. military equipment, including fighter jet parts wanted by Iran and nuclear biological protective gear, has been available to the highest bidder on popular Internet sales sites, according to congressional investigators.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t52gkAwJq8

Here are some experiments at Kapor Enterprises using 3D cameras to control movement in Second Life.
Mitch Kapor and Philippe Bossut designed a prototypical interface that demonstrates the possibilities for operating Second Life “hands free” without a mouse or keyboard. To make this work, they modified the open source Second Life client to support the camera […]

Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks, presented his survey at the RSA Conference, which opened Monday in San Francisco. The survey ranked the top 11 botnets that send spam; by extrapolating their size, Stewart estimated the bots on his list control just over a million machines and are capable of flooding the Internet […]

The good people at Buffalo Technology have created a massive amount of storage that fits in the palm of your hand - 1TB to be specific. To put this into perspective, the U.S. Library of Congress Web Capture team has claimed that as of May 2007, the Library has collected 70 terabytes of data.

 
Sometime in the next two years, if Hearst Corp.’s plans work out, a handful of Seattle Post-Intelligencer readers will begin getting their morning news not from the paper on the front stoop or by dropping change in a corner newsbox — or even on their laptop — but from a new electronic newspaper that’s displayed […]

 Tricy Nicole Predki, a University of Colorado student,
in a sensor suit that controls her dance music.
Plants that send thank you notes, player pianos that follow the dancer’s movements, and umbrellas that warn you of upcoming rain are just a few of the uses of embedded computers described in this article from the NY […]

There is no question that online video advertising is generating plenty of excitement, and also a great deal of confusion.
In-stream, in-banner, in-text, linear, non-linear, pre-roll, post-roll, layovers; when it comes to online video ads the jargon piles up faster than e-mail messages. But what exactly does it all mean?

Cracking a power company network and gaining access that could shut down the grid is simple, a security expert says, and he has done so in less than a day.
Ira Winkler, a penetration-testing consultant, says he and a team of other experts took a day to set up attack tools they […]

During the first three months of the year, only five companies backed by venture capital investors went public on Wall Street, the National Venture Capital Association said last week. That is down from 31 in the fourth quarter of last year, and is roughly the same level as at the nadir of the dot-com bust.

A recent PiperJaffray survey of 200 US Internet users has found mixed responses to the question of how a slowing economy might affect e-commerce spending.
When asked how their discretionary e-commerce spending would change in 2008 versus 2007, 33% plan to purchase less online, while only 12% will purchase more and 55% will purchase the same […]

Have you had problems receiving e-mail from Gmail users recently? If so, you’re one of thousands. Over the past month, major anti-spam vendors have had to apply scrutiny to Gmail in a way they haven’t had to before, and the result is reduced delivery performance and sometimes outright blocking of Gmail. Some messaging hosts […]

Virginia is the first state to mandate that public schools offer Internet safety classes for all grade levels — and it’s one of many measures being taken nationally to protect young Web users.

 
From the Times Online comes this article about the next generation Internet with lightning-fast download speed, and a whole new perspective on future capabilities.

In a few years’ time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to Gartner; even though IT managers may be unaware of it, and prefer to talk about fashions such as software as a service.
Open-source promoters have welcomed the endorsement by what is seen as a conservative commentator, but predict the changes will go […]

Chris Clark, 43, accepted the offer from an anonymous bidder after a week-long online auction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKm4uZLhG5I

The Sensisphere is a really cool multi-touch display that takes the shape of half a sphere sticking out of the wall. Reminiscent of the fancy displays seen in the movie Minority Report, it lets you rotate and move objects and sort through information using your hands.
 

 
Alright, this obsession with using the USB ports on your computer has just gone too far. I’m sorry, but when did plugging something that was just urinated on into your computer ever sound like a good idea?

 
It used to be common for people to flash their headlights to warn other motorists of police speed traps ahead.  Now you can now warn fellow drivers with a cell phone or personal digital assistant about speed traps, red-light cameras and other police threats.

 
Video gaming drives the online experiences of children ages 2 to 14, according to a new survey conducted by The NPD Group for the Toy Industry Association. According to the survey, 76% of US online kids used social networks and gaming Web sites.

Female US Internet users are now leading males in the use of social networking, DVRs, online network TV shows, and PC gaming, according to Solutions Research Group.
Based on surveys conducted in February 2008 and between October 2006 and November 2007, more women than men—42% of online women versus 41% of online men—had visited a social […]

Our friends at the Telegraph in London have come up with their list of the top 101 websites on the Internet. We are pretty sure they have overlooked a ton of great sites, and its skewed towards British thinking. But its worth a look.

Bookish people may not be known for their social skills, but a crop of social-networking Web sites aimed at bibliophiles are allowing readers to connect with the page — and with each other — in a brand new “virtual” environment.

The NY Times has an article about how a younger generation of news readers now focus on sharing the news, rather than just consuming it. Mathew Ingram highlights the key sentence in the article, from a college student: “If the news is that important, it will find me.” Very few mainstream publications have grasped […]