The news came just after file sharing site Filesonic has disabled its function and MegaUpload was taken down. The website, which is not fully-functional at this time, only has Paypal and social networking buttons working. When you visit the site, you will be greeted with a landing page that requests for funding. The site’s builders posted a statement, saying that they are hoping it to be online by January 25 if they have the proper funding.

AnonyUpload promises to offer users the same services as of that of MegaUpload, enabling users to share files by uploading them to the site.

Anonymous, the hack-attack group famous for its distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on corporate websites and its activism regarding freedom of speech, posted a tweet denying any link to the website.

“FYI – We have NO affiliation with this site, and by the looks of it, this is a SCAM – anonyupload.com,” tweeted @YourAnonNews.

Computer security experts said that whether or not Anonymous truly created the AnonyUpload website, it should be avoided. “My advice would be to avoid the AnonyUpload site, and certainly not donate any money,” writes Sophos’ Graham Cluley. “You don’t know whose pockets you might be lining, and as AnonyUpload’s own blurb makes clear there are ‘many reasons’ why their service is ‘not good.’”

via: Web Pro News

Anonymous denies links to MegaUpload clone is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Wikipedia, the world’s sixth most-visited website, has blacked out its English website in protest to the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), which is currently passing through the Senate, and the Stop Online Piracy Act, which is getting passed through the House of Representatives.

The protest gained momentum when Florida Senator Marco Rubio, co-sponsor of PIPA, withdrew his support for the bill. Rubio, a Republican, is seen as a possible bet for the vice presidential race this year.

“Earlier this year, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “Since then, we’ve heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s power to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences.”

Other senators that withdrew their support are Orrin Hatch, Toy Blunt, John Boozman and Charles Grassley. Representatives who pulled out their support are Rep. Terry Lee, Rep. Ben Quayle and Rep. Rick Larsen.

Currently, it appears that online protests were successful. The website blackouts and viral videos have made SOPA wildly unpopular within just a few number of weeks. We’ll just have to wait and see the outcome of this big fight.

via: Cnet

U.S. lawmakers withdraw support for SOPA after blackout is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Aside from Wikipedia, other websites such as Boing Boing and Reddit said that they will also go offline on Wednesday. Some of the big names online, including Facebook, Google, Tumblr and Twitter, are opposing the proposed bills even though they are not joining the blackout.

“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” a spokesperson from Google said.

The SOPA and PIPA have been presented as a way to fight piracy and to protect record labels, movie studios and other similar businesses. Supporters range from the United States Chamber of Commerce to the Country Music Association.

As of now, the House bill is on hold and U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, one of the bill’s supporters, said that he is in favor of research on provisions that raised objections from ISPs. Senator Harry Reid said that he intends to pursue pushing PIPA forward because it is “job-saving,” although he noted that it has issues that needed to be resolved.

via: Wiki News

Wikipedia, Boing Boing and Reddit to go dark on Wednesday is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

According to Net Applications, usage of Internet Explorer 6 in the United States dropped to 1 percent. This seems to be good news for Microsoft Corp., which has been trying to have users switch from the old browser to their newer release.

“IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we’ve been as eager as anyone to see it go away,” wrote an Internet Explorer marketing team member Roger Capriotti in a post on The Windows Blog. “We hope this means more developers and IT Pros can consider IE6 a ‘low-priority’ at this point and stop spending their time having to support such an outdated browser.”

Capriotti was eager to see the browser fade away. An Internet Explorer 6 Countdown site was even launched to speed up the process. The site has generated 5.6 million page views and over 2.7 million visitors in less than a year.

Internet Explorer 6 was released in August 2001, around the time when Microsoft is wrapping up its work on Windows XP. It has lived for a long while, but with newer and better browsers released, Internet Explorer 6 has become some kind of a joke online.

via: Geeky Gadgets

Microsoft finally retires Internet Explorer 6 is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

This new initiative is sponsored by Hiscox, who offer specialist insurance products including home insurance and insurance for business.

What’s also great about this new product is that it enables you to bookmark web content for later. Rather than having to ‘copy and paste’ your articles into an email, one tap of the bookmarklet – a button you put onto your browser tool bar – will allow you to save news articles and text from as many publications as you like. This makes it perfect for those who prefer to consume their media from multiple sources rather than subscribing to just one.

Another bonus is that the product allows you to share with fellow Kindlers; whether you want to advocate particular articles, or even swap your reading lists. Although the product is currently only available on the Kindle, and of course the web, it will be accessible on a range of other mobile devices in the near future.

Discussing the partnership between Hiscox and clipDO, Simon Wood, Marketing Manager at Hiscox said: “We have been building a direct brand in the UK for the last ten years. Our experience in the market has built an excellent understanding of our customers and how to engage with them effectively. More recently we have accelerated our online presence with innovative advertising campaigns such as our partnership with clipDO.  This partnership has given us the opportunity to target audiences who are on the move on the increasingly popular Kindle platform.’’

Click here for more information on clipDO.

Hiscox is an insurance provider listed on the London stock exchange which specialises in niche areas of the insurance market. The company sells both personal and commercial insurance cover in a range of areas. For high net worth individuals products include property and contents insurance, fine art and classic car insurance as well as personal accident cover. Hiscox also offers companies professional indemnity insurance, hacker insurance and political risk insurance.

For further information regarding clipDO, or to schedule an interview with Managing Director Jon Slinn, please call +447977402918 (UK) or e-mail jon@tangaro.net

This content was supplied by Hiscox

News at the Clip of a button from Hiscox is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

The browser from Google captured 23.6 percent of the market, surpassing the 23.5 percent of Internet Explorer 8. However, combining all versions of the browsers available, Internet Explorer still takes the cake, followed by Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

According to StatCounter, the upswing can be attributed to the continued increase of business Chrome users.

“Google announced Chrome for business exactly a year ago and IT administrators appear to have embraced it in a remarkably short time,” said StatCounter Chief Executive Officer Aodhan Cullen in a statement. “It looks as if people favor Chrome on weekends at home but office commercial use has now caught up.”

Cullen said that Chrome 15 have been overtaking Microsoft’s browser on weekends since the start of October, but Google’s fast browser has overtaken Internet Explorer for the first time.

The Internet Explorer, which is included by Microsoft in its Windows operating system, used to have dominance on the browser market, and Google did not even launched a browser until 2008.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, has always supported the company in bringing a browser to the market. Google started developing a browser in 2006 after concerns that existing browser will not support its online services.

Are you an Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome user?

via: Mashable

Google Chrome now the most popular browser in the world is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Google said that this was a fulfillment of the company’s initiative to archive the affected areas in Japan.

“Today, we’re making good on that promise — after driving more than 44,000 kilometers through the affected regions, 360-degree panoramic imagery of those areas is now available through the Street View feature in Google Maps,” said Kei Kawai, senior product manager of Google Street View, in a blog post.

The images were shot in July, where the Google Street View team drove along roads to capture a panoramic view of the areas. Users of the service can also compare the images of the regions before and after the disaster, noting the devastating results of the earthquake and tsunami.

Kawai said that the company hopes this digital archiving project will be helpful to scientists and researchers who study natural disasters and its effects. He added that the service is a useful tool for people who want to understand the extent of the damage.

The images can also be viewed on a special website called Mirai e no kioku, which means “Build the Memory,” where people can easily compare photos of the towns.

The Google Street View is currently helping researchers and scientists all over the world and since last year, the company has been helping researchers in Antarctica by providing imagery of the continent.

via: Official Google Blog

Google releases Street View of tsunami-stricken Japan is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

According to comScore, 184 million internet users in the United States watched 42.6 billion in the month of October, 20.9 billion or 49.1 percent of which are from YouTube. This is up from 182 million users in September who watched an average 19.5 hours of video per viewer.

The research firm credits Google/YouTube with an audience of almost 161 million unique viewers, almost three times the reach of social network giant Facebook, which was on the second spot, having less than 60 million unique viewers. The research also claims that 7.1 hours of video were viewed per viewer, up from 6.3 hours in September.

This means that more and more people spend more and more time watching videos in YouTube monthly after month.

VEVO was ranked third by the study, having 57 million unique visitors, followed by Microsoft with 49.1 million and Viacom Digital with 48.2 million. A month earlier, VEVO was ranked second with 57.3 million hits.

The viewing figure of YouTube is much higher than this as the research firm has limited its statistics to the United States. The site has revealed that more than 3 billion videos are viewed each day, generating at least 90 billion views per month.

via: comScore

YouTube surpasses 20 billion views for the first time is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

The list is compiled by a panel of experts, and the results will be featured within the main newspaper tomorrow. To coincide with the list’s release, consumer research was conducted, which looks at trends in gadgets and technology, together with people’s spending plans this holiday season.

Taking the top spot in The Sunday Times Tech List’s best gadgets is the Elgato EyeTV mobile. This device enables iPad 2 users to watch and capture Freeview digital TV content using their tablets without having to connect to the Internet. For those who watch TV a lot, they will find this device to be very useful.

The following is The Sunday Times Tech List Top 10 Gadgets of 2011:

1. Elgato EyeTV Mobile (£100)
2. Zeal Optics Transcend GPS goggles (£420)
3. Light Strike (from £30)
4. Pure One Classic Series II (£55)
5. JP Twister 2.4G Police Helicam   (£137)
6. Virgin Media TiVo (from £3 per month)
7. Lego Technic Unimog U400S (£145)
8. Arcade Nano Sonic (£9.85)
9. Gear4 Angry Birds Speakers (from £50)
10. Street Surfing Wave 360 (£100)

“Gadgets are at the top of many people’s Christmas wish-lists and the average British adult spends nearly half their waking hours using some kind of technology,” commented Matt Bringham, The Sunday Times’ tech expert. “So it is no surprise that there are thousands of high-tech products to choose from. The Tech List’s top 100 Gadgets will help everyone cut through the techno-babble and enable them to choose the best possible gadget this Christmas.”.

To learn more about the study and its findings, visit The Sunday Times’ Tech List page.

The Sunday Times releases its Top 10 gadgets of 2011 is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

The research, which was conducted by youth research firm Dubit on behalf of the film, TV, music and video industries, discovered that by age 11, 21 percent of children access illegal video and music file-sharing websites regularly. When they reach 12 years of age, 28 percent do so and by age 13, almost half (42 percent) regularly visit illegal film, TV and music sites. The study also revealed that 73 percent of kids are introduced to these illegal websites by their friends.

Child Psychologist Prof. Tanya Byron is supporting online safety group Childnet International to help teachers and parents teach kids about responsible internet use.

“The majority of parents will confidently tell their children that it is wrong to steal or shoplift in the real world, but it’s vital that they also help kids understand what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour online, and why it’s just as harmful,” said Professor Byron, giving out her reasons for starting the campaign. “The new leaflet and our conversation starters provide parents with concise, up-to-date information and practical advice to start conversations about responsible internet use with their children. These will not only help parents address the issue of illegal film, TV and music file-sharing with their children, but will help them to discuss online responsibility together.”

Childnet International’s Music Film, TV and the Internet guide was created with support from music and video industries in the United Kingdom to promote good digital censorship.

The question is, do you think 11 is early enough?

Study reveals that 28% of kids regularly visit illegal sites is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos