They say life begins at forty. As we stand at the cusp of the semantic Web, that adage certainly holds true for the ‘Net. To mark the fortieth anniversary of the Internet, the Computer History Museum brings us an eyewitness account of how it all began. More →

When Google introduced Google Wave in an eighty-minute presentation, many people were confused. When Google tried to explain Google Wave in eight minutes, many people were still confused. In fact, there’s a whole Web site listing things easier to understand than Wave.

If you’re one of those confused people, this fanmade Google Wave video will make the wonders of the service crystal clear. From chat to media to polls to games to playback, let Samuel L. Jackson show you how it’s done. Google Wave Cinema presents: Pulp Fiction.

Online book retailer Barnes & Noble, which earlier in the month launched its nook ebook reader, has been collaborating with Adobe to standardise the EPUB ebook and content protection standards.

It means that users aren’t restricted to using a nook to read books purchased at the B&N store, but can also use e-reader software for iPhone, PC, BlackBerry and more, as well as access content copy-protected by Adobe technology. More →

The road to application approval hasn’t always been smooth, with apps approved and then pulled, or outright banned on rather shaky grounds, but that hasn’t stopped Apple powering to 100,000 approved apps in the iTunes App Store.

The web site Appshopper.com has counted 102,485 approved applications and 93,659 available.

That’s a mind-boggling number, and unfortunately says nothing about the quality of those applications. Bear in mind that there are many variations on the same theme, and some (a lot) of them are complete and utter rubbish. More →

I hear a lot of old media types whine about how newspaper and magazine closings aren’t “fair” to veteran journalists, about how search engines don’t provide media outlets “fair” compensation.

Well, guess what: life isn’t fair. Adapt.

Technology doesn’t care how hard you worked to climb the old media heirarchy. New media maven Gary Vaynerchuk said it best in a recent talk: tech has no feelings.

Forget paying per gigabyte, trying paying per site. This awesome infographic shows us in no uncertain terms what your Internet access pricing will look like, should the enemies of net neutrality have their way.

If you still know any idiots buying into the telcos’ propaganda about “network management”, show them this chart. The way it’s worded in perfect marketingese, it may as well be a leaked document from an actual telco.

(Via Mr. Baby Man.)

As early as nineties, people were already playing music from their browsers instead of traditional media players. Despite its eventual fall from popularity, I brought a client to the top of her local pop charts on MP3.com. Despite its current stagnation as Yahoo Music, I have fond memories of listening to Launch.com at work.

Between services like Imeem and Pandora and Last.fm, music has been going the way of almost every other computing application: to the cloud. Google, of course, wants to be your gateway to the everything in the cloud. That’s why they’ve introduced Google Music Search.

Google’s approach to music stands in stark contrast to their approach to video. With video, they bought the world’s number one video destination site, then used it as a testbed for video search, recommendation, and monetization across the Web. With music, they’re skipping the testbed phase entirely. Given the litigious nature of the RIAA, the relative simplicity of music compared to video, and the preponderance of major music destination sites, perhaps that’s the best approach: let partner sites worry about rights clearing. That way, Google can focus on what it does best: search.

In the meantime, let’s hope Google works its algorithmic magic to take this feature to awesome extremes. Right now, I’m imagining song recommendations, genre searches, and predictive playlists. Now that would rock.

Want to learn the fascinating origins of the most powerful company in online media today, but don’t have time to read The Google Story? Fear not: here’s the Google story in two minutes, as colorfully recounted by Mountain View powerhouse itself.

(Hat tip to Cliff Sawit.)

Proposals to cut off people who persistently download files illegally from the Internet have been washing around for several years now, but today Lord Mandelson, the UK government’s secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, laid out plans to introduce tough measures to combat illegal filesharing.

Opposed by leading ISPs, who fear that they will be forced to introduce costly and inconvenient monitoring and recording systems, Lord Mandelson did say that he had “no expectation of mass suspensions”, instead outlining a “three strikes” approach whereby persistent offenders would still have the right to appeal if cut off from the Net. More →

Just when you thought there were no companies left jumping on the music download bandwagon, along comes UK ISP Tiscali with their offering.

Claiming a catalogue of 6.5 million tracks, including artists such as Johnny Cash, Paul Weller, Temper Trap, The White Stripes, and Adele.

It can boast this number of tracks because it has partnered with eMusic. That means you won’t necessarily get all the latest tunes as you might on services like iTunes, but still have access to a decent range of music. More →