Carriers Eye Pay-As-You-Go Internet

• OCTOBER 21, 2009

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS And NIRAJ SHETH

( See Correction & Amplification below. )

In the early years of the Internet, the more time people spent online, the more they paid a provider like AOL for their connection. But as customers have shifted to always-on broadband services, many Web surfers have enjoyed all-you-can-eat Internet for a flat rate.

Some cable and telecommunications providers are trying to turn back the clock and return to usage-based pricing for Internet connections. Carriers including AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Cable Inc. say they may have to switch amid a surge in Internet traffic as more people go online to watch videos and download movies.

Recent efforts to introduce usage-based, or metered, broadband services have met stiff resistance from consumers. But a new push by the federal government to adopt rules that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, no matter how much bandwidth they take up, could give ammunition to the broadband providers that want to change how they charge for Web access, Internet experts and consumer advocates say.

"This could come down to carriers saying, 'If you don't allow us to manage our networks the way we see fit, then we will just have to cap everything,' " says Phillip Dampier, a consumer advocate focusing on technology issues in Rochester, N.Y. "They'll make it an either/or thing: give them more control over their network or expect metered broadband."

Mr. Dampier was among those who forced>>>

Bosh’s Win Over Cybersquatter Frees 800 Domain Names

By HOWARD BECK

Published: October 14, 2009

Chris Bosh went to court to reclaim his online identity, and in the process liberated the Internet domain names of 800 other athletes, celebrities and would-be celebrities.

A federal judge in California has ordered a cybersquatter to surrender chrisbosh .com to Bosh, the Toronto Raptors forward, settling a lawsuit filed last year. But the court went a step further — or several hundred steps.

Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of United States District Court ordered Luis Zavala and his company, Hoopology .com, to release some 800 illegally registered domain names to Bosh.

“We are notifying the world >>>

When Old Flames Beckon Online

• OCTOBER 6, 2009

By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

Is it really a good idea to "friend" our old flames and crushes online?

Ask Joy Moore, who recently went searching for her first love on the Internet. In 1974, he was captain of the high-school football team—tall, handsome, with mutton-chop sideburns that Ms. Moore says were "all the rage at the time." He took her to church events and taught her how to kiss. Then he moved away.

Flash ahead 30-odd years. When Ms. Moore saw her old love's name on Facebook, she says she felt "that little flutter" in her chest.

Until she saw his picture. "He had a beard down to his belly and looked just like one of the members of ZZ Top," says Ms. Moore, 49 years old, an executive coach in Albuquerque, N.M. "His accomplishment for the year was being the local darts champ."

Think about it. We went years without reconnecting, and everything was fine. But now, thanks to social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, our old lovers are essentially popping up in our own homes. It's like having a secret stash of ice cream in the freezer. Even if it's a little stale, it can be hard to resist.

After all, we're talking about the first person we had a crush on, or kissed, or cried over, or had sex with, or took home to Mom, or maybe even married. No wonder we're curious.

Perhaps we want to ponder the road not taken. Or maybe we're searching for forgiveness—or vindication. If we are single, or unhappy in a current relationship, we might be looking for someone who was attracted to us at one time because, so the theory goes, they could be attracted to us again.

Or we may be looking for closure. "My ex-husband found me on Facebook, and I said sure, what the heck, and friended him," says Lisa Bakken, a 45-year-old business manager in Grand Lake, Colo., who was married for five years. "When the wall posted 'Lisa and Oddvar are now friends,' I thought it was hysterical. It's about time!"

Many of us are simply nostalgic. Contacting an old flame allows you to "look back fondly on that innocent time in your life when you didn't have any significant responsibilities," says Georgi Chase, 45, of Novato, Calif., who works at a consulting firm and looked up an old boyfriend through a networking site. "You can go back and rediscover your 19-year-old self and wonder what she would think of the 45-year-old you."

That's all fine and dandy. But I warn you: You are playing with fire.>>>

Online Casinos Elite Explain Gambling and Its Types

Jeff Grant, seo expert, freelancer in the gambling industry from 1987 and actual manager of the directory "online casinos elite," explain gambling and its types to give a more clear concept to this terminology.

Genova, Italy, October 15, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Jeff Grant, seo expert, freelancer in the gambling industry from 1987 and actual manager of the directory "online casinos elite", explain gambling and its types to give a more clear concept to this terminology.

Gambling is staking money or some material value at a particular event with a vague outcome and a chief intention of winning extra money or goods. Basically, the result of stake is clear in a certain period of time.

The term Gambling particularly in this context implies to examples in which it is legally permitted by law. Gambling is combination of two different words gaming and legal. Gambling is mainly chosen by people as a recreational activity. Most of the people play this game for fun and earn extra money. It is very difficult to overcome addiction to gambling. Gambling is often seen as a medium of escape from worldly tensions and worries by many people who are going through a difficult phase.

Today there are several forms of>>>

Online gamblers are more likely to have a gambling addiction

Publish Date: 2009-10-15

Gambling is one the most addictive games around, providing people with entertainment and adrenaline which can have the effect of a drug on some people. This is why many people are against the prospect of gambling as a whole as they don’t want themselves, or other people, to become addicted. If you have a gambling problem then you are likely to lose a lot of money, which can lead to further problems with loans for example and users may become ill from the addiction, as with any other drug.

People with gambling addictions >>>

Why Email No Longer Rules… …And what that means for the way we communicate

• OCTOBER 12, 2009

By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO

Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.

In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.

We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.

Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them. You don't need to ask a friend whether she has left work, if she has updated her public "status" on the site telling the world so. Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave, currently in test phase, which allows users to share photos by dragging and dropping them from a desktop into a Wave, and to enter comments in near real time.

Little wonder that while email continues to grow, other types of communication services are growing far faster. In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

"The whole idea of this email service isn't really quite as significant anymore when you can have many, many different types of messages and files and when you have this all on the same type of networks," says Alex Bochannek, curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

So, how will these new tools change the way we communicate? Let's start with the most obvious: They make our interactions that much faster.

Into the River>>>

October 7, 2009
by Walter S. Mossberg

A Windows to Help You Forget

October 7, 2009
by Walter S. Mossberg

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In just two weeks, on Oct. 22, Microsoft’s long operating-system nightmare will be over. The company will release Windows 7, a faster and much better operating system than the little-loved Windows Vista, which did a lot to harm both the company’s reputation, and the productivity and blood pressure of its users. PC makers will rush to flood physical and online stores with new computers pre-loaded with Windows 7, and to offer the software to Vista owners who wish to upgrade.

With Windows 7, PC users will at last have a strong, modern successor to the sturdy and familiar, but aged, Windows XP, which is still the most popular version of Windows, despite having come out in 2001. In the high-tech world, an eight-year-old operating system is the equivalent of a 20-year-old car. While XP works well for many people, it is relatively weak in areas such as security, networking and other features more important today than when XP was designed around 1999.

After using pre-release versions of Windows 7 for nine months, and intensively testing the final version for the past month on many different machines, I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft (MSFT) has produced. It’s a boost to productivity and a pleasure to use. Despite a few drawbacks, I can heartily recommend Windows 7 to mainstream consumers.

Like the new Snow Leopard operating system released in August by Microsoft’s archrival, Apple (AAPL), Windows 7 is much more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary product. Its main goal was to fix the flaws in Vista and to finally give Microsoft customers a reason to move up from XP. But Windows 7 is packed with features and tweaks that make using your computer an easier and more satisfying experience.

The new taskbar shows small previews of many windows and allows for larger previews.

Windows 7 introduces real advances in>>>