Local Search

Appolicious – This week’s best games list offers a pretty wide variety of quality titles at (mostly) bargain prices, and it kicks off with Gameloft’s newest entry to the App Store, Order & Chaos Online. If you’ve heard of World of Warcraft, you probably get the gist of the developer’s expansive and ambitious title. There are a lot of players to team up with in Order & Chaos, and the first three months of gameplay are free without a subscription. …

[Read more →]

Mashable – Thursday evening, Marvel made some key announcements about its upcoming massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, called Marvel Universe, including revealing the identity of the game’s lead writer.
The game was created with hardcore comic nerds, hardcore comic geeks and even the casual enthusiast in mind. Gamers will get to play superheroes — including Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Wolverine, Hulk and Spider-Man — in some of the most epic events in Marvel history, classical canon and modern adventures alike.

[Read more →]

Mashable – Thursday evening, Marvel made some key announcements about its upcoming massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, called Marvel Universe, including revealing the identity of the game’s lead writer.
The game was created with hardcore comic nerds, hardcore comic geeks and even the casual enthusiast in mind. Gamers will get to play superheroes — including Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Wolverine, Hulk and Spider-Man — in some of the most epic events in Marvel history, classical canon and modern adventures alike.

[Read more →]

AP – Katherine Jackson isn’t looking forward to the upcoming trial of the doctor charged in connection with her son’s death. She says the pain of his loss nearly two years ago remains and the potential punishment for the physician doesn’t seem like it’s nearly enough.

[Read more →]

AP – Time Warner Cable Inc.’s high-speed Internet service overshadowed its core cable TV business as a boost in broadband subscribers contributed to a 52 percent increase in first-quarter net income.

[Read more →]

AFP – Russia’s top Internet portal Yandex announced plans Thursday to hold an initial public offering on New York’s NASDAQ stock exchange.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Baidu Inc more than doubled its profit in the first quarter and forecast stronger-than-expected revenue for the second quarter, betting on strong online advertising demand among China’s businesses.

[Read more →]

Reuters – EBay Inc’s efforts to make its marketplaces more appealing to online shoppers paid off in the first quarter as more people bought items on its auction site, and its PayPal payment system was used by more merchants.

[Read more →]

PC World – Apple’s rumored iTunes-in-the-cloud service may be called iCloud, and the iOS maker may have paid as much as $4.5 million to acquire the new name, according to online rumors. Until recently, iCloud was the name of a free Webtop and online file storage service run by Xcerion, a company based in Linköping, Sweden. But anonymous sources have reportedly told GigaOm that Apple snapped up the domain iCloud.com from the Swedish company.

[Read more →]

Reuters – North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is ready to hold direct talks with South Korea but the isolated state will not apologize for two deadly attacks on the divided peninsula last year, former President Jimmy Carter said on Thursday.

[Read more →]

Mashable – As we move into day 11 of the PlayStation Network outage, Sony continues to rebuild its beleaguered network while apologizing profusely to users.
The latest update on the PlayStation Blog reassures users that law enforcement and technology security experts are investigating the April 17 breach. It took the company until Wednesday to admit that user data had been stolen.

[Read more →]

Mashable – Apple’s iPad 2 arrived in Japan Thursday, and the company has announced that the tablet will be in 11 more countries by Friday.
iPad 2 will be available at Apple retail stores and select Apple authorized resellers at 9 a.m. local time, as well as the Apple online store starting at 1 a.m. Apple’s suggested price for the Wi-Fi only iPad 2 is $499 for the 16 GB model, $599 for the 32 GB model and $699 for the 64 GB model. The recommended price for the 3G plus Wi-Fi version is $629 for the 16 GB model, $729 for the 32 GB model and $829 for the 64 GB model.

[Read more →]

PC Magazine – Tomorrow will be the largest royal wedding in history, beating out the 750M who watched Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, and possibly making it the largest televised event of all time. 400M people are expected to watch online- that’s a lot of bandwidth.

[Read more →]

AP – Faded social networking site Friendster will soon delete nearly a decade’s worth of user photos, blog entries and other data in a revamp to set it apart from Facebook, a company official said Thursday.

[Read more →]

Mashable – We knew it was supposed to happen Thursday, but it’s still hard to believe our eyes. After an extended period of downtime, the white iPhone 4 is finally available in Apple Online Store.
The device should also become available in Apple retail stores when they open later today, as well as AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and at select Apple authorized resellers.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Sony Corp could face legal action across the globe after it belatedly disclosed one of the biggest online data breaches ever.

[Read more →]

PC World – China’s largest search engine, Baidu, reported strong revenue and profit growth in the first quarter, driven by “solid traffic growth” and measures to generate more revenue from the company’s sites.

[Read more →]

PC World – Mobile hotspots like Novatel’s popular MiFi 2200 have been greeted warmly by tech users and have sold well. They simplify things by providing our various devices with Internet connectivity under one data service bill. And it’s a moveable feast–mobile hotspots are superportable.

[Read more →]

PC World – What responsibility does Sony have to the 77 million Playstation Network customers who found out this week – days after the fact – that their personal data, online account info and credit card information were stolen by identity thieves?

[Read more →]

Mashable – [More from Mashable: Social Media Has Little Impact on Online Retail Purchases [STUDY]]

[Read more →]

AP – EBay Inc. on Wednesday said that its first-quarter profit rose 20 percent on reinvigorated growth at its namesake e-commerce website and further swift growth at its PayPal payment service.

[Read more →]

PC World – Smartphone users are unusually responsive to advertising, according to survey results Google has released. And this could be because searches on smartphones are weighted toward finding local information.

[Read more →]

AP – YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are cooking up another Internet company. This time, its ingredients will include the content-sharing service Delicious.

[Read more →]

Reuters – French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday he would invite Internet business leaders to an end-May G8 summit to discuss regulation of the web and he called for more scope for governments to tax Internet firms.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Sony Corp warned that hackers had stolen names, addresses and possibly credit card details from the 77 million user accounts of its video game online network, in one of the largest Internet security break-ins ever.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Telecoms gear maker Ericsson blasted past first-quarter core profit expectations thanks to surging mobile broadband sales but said it would take until the third quarter to resolve Japan quake supply problems.

[Read more →]

PC World – This is a timeline of major events associated with the attack on Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity online services.

[Read more →]

AFP – Former US president Jimmy Carter met North Korea’s de facto head of state during his peace mission to Pyongyang Wednesday and said in a blog posting that the North seeks better ties with Washington.

[Read more →]

Mashable – Social media has several effects on academic work — some more positive than others. But what is social networking’s overall impact on college students’ performance?
According to data gathered from several sources by OnlineEducation.net, Facebook and Twitter are used to great benefit — sometimes. Students welcome online engagement and resources; around 75% of student respondents said they’d like to do some online collaboration for class, in fact.

[Read more →]

Mashable – Bounce, the fabric softener brand, suffers from the same problem a lot of brands in low-interest categories do: People don’t talk about it much.
In the social media age, that’s a problem, but the brand has a two-part solution. Phase One: Create a false controversy. Earlier this year, Bounce marketers began promoting the idea — among mommy bloggers — that you’re either a bar person or a sheet person.

[Read more →]

Mashable – The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is right around the corner (well, this Friday at least). The two lovers are not, of course, the only people that will ever get married, ever. It’s very possible that you, dear reader, might need some online help for your own nuptials.
Social media and the Internet can be treasure troves of information for planning a wedding. Here are some tools and resources so you can plan your own Royal Wedding. That, and some bizarre proposals for inspiration.

[Read more →]

Appolicious – Multiplayer fans, we’ve got a couple of quality games for you on today’s Fresh Games list. Fire up Super Stickman Golf and hit the Internet to play some side-scrolling physics-heavy golf action, or gather a couple of friends and hack through bad guys with a Bluetooth connection in Golden Axe 2. We’ve got the details below on both, and more, below.

[Read more →]

Mashable – The White House released President Barack Obama’s birth certificate Wednesday, after years of speculation about whether he was actually born in the U.S. and eligible to be president.
The birth certificate from Hawaii’s Department of Health confirms that Obama, who has already announced his intention to run for re-election in 2012, is indeed eligible.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Sina Corp, China’s largest Internet portal, has no immediate plans to list its microblog operations, its chief said on Wednesday.

[Read more →]

AFP – Sony warned that hackers stole password, birthday and other data about users of its PlayStation Network that connected PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles to online games, films and more.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Sony suffered a massive breach in its video game online network that led to the theft of names, addresses and possibly credit card data belonging to 77 million user accounts in what is one of the largest-ever Internet security break-ins.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Amazon.com gave a confident revenue forecast that suggested its aggressive expansion into new businesses is paying off, soothing concerns about its slimmed-down profit margin.

[Read more →]

Appolicious – Amazon (AMZN) is much more than just the online shopping hotspot it started out as. The website is becoming competition for iTunes, Netflix (NFLX), even your local library… and it soon might take on Apple itself.

[Read more →]

PC World – They say e-mail and IM is the death of interpersonal communication. Well, if the latest dating service in front of me right now is any indication, love could be following the same path. Enter Cloud Girlfriend, a new service which allows you to have a fantasy romance online.

[Read more →]

AP – Amazon.com said Tuesday that its net income fell 33 percent in the latest quarter, a steeper drop than Wall Street expected as the online retailer poured more money into expanding its operations.

[Read more →]

AFP – Internet security firm Check Point on Tuesday launched software that lets parents watch over offspring on Facebook without being “friends” at the online social network.

[Read more →]

AFP – Internet giant Google has agreed to redo its online map of Rio de Janeiro within a year after being criticized for giving undue prominence to the Brazilian city’s notorious favelas.

[Read more →]

AFP – Internet retail giant Amazon.com on Tuesday reported that its quarterly profit slipped despite revenue climbing to $9.86 billion.

[Read more →]

Reuters – China’s massive Internet market should not be singled out and treated differently from other Internet markets in the world, a Google China executive said on Tuesday.

[Read more →]

AFP – Facebook began offering a deals program on Tuesday similar to the online bargains made popular by Groupon, LivingSocial and other companies.

[Read more →]

AFP – In under a decade, Ferrari-driving maverick tycoon Takafumi Horie built one of Japan’s top Internet empires with a brash business style that earned him stardom but few friends in the establishment.

[Read more →]

Reuters – A group of anonymous internet activists have surged to prominence in Germany by examining the doctoral dissertations of politicians for plagiarism on a public Internet site.

[Read more →]

Mashable – If you haven’t heard, the UK’s Prince William and Catherine (better known as Kate) Middleton are getting married at Westminster Abbey in London on Friday, April 29.
(We assume you have.)

[Read more →]

Appolicious – There are plenty of apps that offer a specific publication’s hot spots in a given city, but Best Of . . . might have them all beat. Instead of telling you the Thrillist picks for best bar in town or GQ’s top restaurant spot, Best Of . . . offers a collection of the best of everything as decided by numerous sources, including the Houston Press, LA Weekly, Village Voice and “scores” of other city guides and magazines, according to the iTunes description.

[Read more →]

Reuters – Amazon.com Inc is thinking long-term when it spends heavily on “the cloud,” but investors may see a little more short-term rain when the online retailer reports its earnings on Tuesday.

[Read more →]