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Microsoft’s Bing boings into life – early

No, you won’t need to go to Google to find Bing – all you need to do is to visit Bing.com where you’ll find that Bing is now in beta. Although Microsoft wasn’t set to launch Bing into life until June the 3rd, it seems as though someone at Microsoft just couldn’t wait for Bing to start singing its siren song of search. So, while Google may have thought it still had a couple of days up its sleeve to work on whatever plans it had to sting Bing, it looks like Microsoft has danced like a butterfly so it could do some stinging of its own. Finally, the world can now see whether Microsoft has the smarts to make Live, MSN and even Google Search but distant memories, but will the reality be a surge of interest in Bing before the familiar ring and results of Google become too overwhelming? You’ll have to let us know what you think of Bing, dear reader. The big question is… how quickly Google will take some of the elements Bing has brought forward and duplicate them in its own search results? But

Chipmakers Get Tied Up in Home Networking

Chipmakers are spreading their bets around on the three current standards for home-networking—all of which could give way in the end to G.hn. Wireless networking gets all the love in today's mobile world, but inside the home, wires will still play a key role in delivering entertainment and other content. Your set-top box may sport an Ethernet port, but it still connects to the wall via coaxial cable. Wires are a secure, fast, cheap, and existing network inside most homes. The main links around the home are power lines, coaxial cable, copper phone wires or some mix of the three, depending on where in the world a person lives. But the three standards vying for dominance today could gradually give ground to an emerging standard for delivering IP-based services called G.hn. This fall, the electronics industry will finalize a standard called G.hn (already being pushed by the HomeGrid Forum) that will allow chip companies to provide the silicon that can deliver 700-Mbps speeds over pow

iPhone's Safari Browser to include Geolocation

I can't believe I missed this. Even worse, it looks like just about everyone did (OK, not everyone). I just checked a GPS-enabled webpage page, below, on a 3.0B5 iPhone's Mobile Safari and Boom! The webpage checks the GPS coordinates of the iPhone and returns a result. The test webpage was built by Doug Turner for Mozilla's upcoming implementation of the Geolocation API (if you have Firefox 3.5B you can try it out). Google also mentioned in their Latitude for iPhone presentation last week that they were no longer going to build a native app for the iPhone. They said Latitude was now going to be a WebApp that would run in Safari. That should have tipped me off that Safari would have to be able to not only retrieve others' locations, but also broadcast the location of the user's iPhone. GPS in the browser is a relatively new trick. The Geolocation API Specification is part of the W3 Consortium's standards but hasn't been finalized just yet. That means that the

To Survive Cancer, Live With It

For all the weapons deployed in the war on cancer, from chemicals to radiation to nanotechnology, the underlying strategy has remained the same: Detect and destroy, with no compromise given to the killer. But Robert Gatenby wants to strike a peace. A mathematical oncologist at the Moffitt Cancer Center, Gatenby is part of a new generation of researchers who conceive of cancer as a dynamic, evolutionary system. According to his models, trying to wipe cancer out altogether actually makes it stronger by helping drug-resistant cells flourish. Rather than fighting cancer by trying to eradicate its every last cell, he suggests doctors might fare better by intentionally keeping tumors in a long-term stalemate. It’s an unorthodox notion. But nearly 40 years after Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, orthodox approaches have produced little in the way of treatment. Cancer death rates have fallen by 20 percent in the last 15 years, but experts say that much of the improvement comes from lifesty

Just for Laughs: Farting Galore

Farting may be an act of someone immediately unloading eruptive smelly gases before leaving a room; leaving that special something to be remembered by. Person 1: That party was the worst. Person 2: Don't worry, I made sure to thank them with a farting gift. LOL!

Down Markets Favs Twitter Founders

Twitter has reportedly been valued by investors at $1 billion with Oprah Winfrey on board the twitter ship. A high-profile D conference was set yesterday with the company's (Twitter) founders. So it's odd they seem to see their own product as a repository for jokes about cleavage, bird shit and killing Jason Calacanis. There were many comments about twitter as many would write that twitter is just another social networking site. Some would like to post their impressions or products so that users or any web paparazzi can get a hold of the real score. Nonetheless, we quote some of what the users think of twitter. Twitter allows its users to mark some tweets they find particularly amusing, insightful, witty, informative, or whatever as "favorites." But this may also mean that rifling through the founders' favorites is a pretty good way to get a sense of what they think Twitter is good for: crude jokes and narcissistic status updates. Below is a sample of the tweets f

N. Korea to Test More Missiles

SEOUL, South Korea — One day after its nuclear test drew angry and widespread condemnation, North Korea further antagonized the international community on Tuesday by test-firing three short-range missiles. In addition, a South Korean newspaper reported on Wednesday that American spy satellites had detected plumes of steam and other signs of activity at a North Korean plant that reprocesses spent nuclear fuel to make weapons-grade plutonium. The report from the newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, appeared to support a claim by North Korea in late April that it had restarted its reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital. The missile firings came just hours after South Korea said it would join an American-led operation to stop the global trafficking in unconventional weapons, an action the North had said it would consider a declaration of war. The developments sharpened the confrontation between North Korea and much of the world — especially the United States — as the U