Checking out the Internet buzz about a DVD, book or candy while on the go is soon to become as easy as taking a snapshot of the bar code on the product.
Toshiba Corp., a Japanese electronics company that makes DVD players, laptops and nuclear power plants, has developed mobile-phone technology that searches for product reviews on up to 100 Web journals, or blogs, in 10 seconds.
Just use the phone’s digital camera to snap a photo of the bar code of a product you’re thinking about buying.
The technology can tell if the blog chatter is positive or negative and tallies the count to show if a product is getting rave reviews or being trashed by consumers. That’s useful if you’re in a store about to buy an item.
Some of the more frequently visited blogs will also show up on the screen.
The bar-code information is sent wirelessly to a Toshiba server, which gathers data on blogs from the Internet and analyzes them, and then sends a reply back to the cell phone.
Game maker rethinking treatment of gay players: A gay-rights uproar in the popular “World of Warcraft” online game has spurred the game’s maker to review its treatment of gay players.
The game, which draws more than five million players worldwide, was hit by controversy last month after a player was threatened with expulsion from the virtual Warcraft world when she sought to recruit others into her gay-friendly team.
Blizzard Entertainment, the game’s maker, apologized last week to the player, Sara Andrews of Nashville, Tenn.
It said the warning was a mistake and that it will make some changes to prevent a repeat, Andrews and her attorney from the Lambda Legal civil rights organization said Wednesday.
Blizzard representatives did not return phone calls for comment.
Gay-friendly teams already exist in Warcraft, but the issue here stemmed from Blizzard’s enforcement of its policy banning the harassment of players based on sexual, religious or political affiliation.
According to correspondence between Andrews and game officials, the company said it does not allow such recruitment efforts on its general chat channels to help prevent harassment.
Andrews, 25, said she protested because she had done similar recruitment in the past without reprimand and noted that many others associated with a political or other affiliation have done the same.
Some people go online just for the heck of it: A new study finds that on any given day, nearly a third of U.S. Internet users log on just for fun or to pass the time.
Compared with other online tasks, recreational surfing ranks behind only e-mail and search and it’s about even with getting news online, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Pew credits the growth in broadband connections at home and a rise in the number and variety of Web sites available.
The 30 percent of Internet users who went online for fun on a given day represents an increase from 21 percent a year earlier.
Skeptics may see parallels with television channel-surfing, an activity often dismissed as mindless.
But Fallows said the Internet is different: “It’s not a passive activity that you’re just sucking yourself into. You are navigating yourself around, you are discovering things, learning things.”
Google’s action in China draws fire: Scores of angry Tibetans protested Google Inc.’s launch of a censored, Chinese version of its search engine.
The protesters assembled Tuesday in the central square of Dharmsala, the northern Indian headquarters of the exiled Tibetan government, carrying placards reading “Google, Don’t be Evil,” and “Gulag, Censoring Search by Search.”
Last month, Google launched a Chinese search engine that doesn’t provide links to some Web sites about human rights, Tibet and other topics sensitive to Beijing. Google defends the move as a trade-off granting Chinese greater access to other information.
India’s outsourcing firms face a challenge in Europe: Language barriers, a fragmented market and strong local players in France and Germany are some challenges India’s outsourcing firms need to confront if they want business opportunities from Europe, industry leaders and software experts say.
For Indian companies, the European information technology market is traditionally considered closed compared with the United States, which makes up nearly 70 percent of the market for Indian software and outsourcing companies. Currently less than 10 percent comes from Europe.
“The challenge India will face will be to understand Europe, how to manage layoffs and transfers of people,” said Dominique Raviart, a senior analyst at Ovum, a leading European technology research and consultancy firm.
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