Back in March 2007 it became apparent that it would now be the turn of UK citizens to receive threatening letters for claimed breach of copyright. A team consisting of lawyers ‘Davenport Lyons’, anti-piracy tracking company ‘Logistep’ and several games publishers such as Zuxxez/Topware and CodeMasters started sending letters to those it accused of unauthorized distribution of their products - otherwise known as ‘uploading’. The most persistent cases are those featuring the games Dream Pinball 3D, Colin McRae Dirt and Call of Juarez.

In their letters, Davenport Lyons adopt a very serious tone, as they threaten to take people’s homes away, should they be unable to pay their ‘fines’. Of course, not many people like this tone, and they can get very indignant in the face of it. Needless to say - guilty or not - some people are sufficiently annoyed and simply refuse to pay. Others refuse to pay for different reasons - TorrentFreak is in touch with a few of them.

The reasons for non-payment vary, but some simply don’t have the money. ‘Tania’ told us: “I’m a single mom and my son must’ve done this but I don’t have £600 ($1200). I can’t pay it, I don’t have that sort of money.” ‘Paul’, who works a 70 hour week on two jobs explained that he is massively in debt with credit cards and the demands for cash from Davenport just go “on the pile with the others.” None of these people have been taken to court.

Others are refusing to pay because they are innocent. Even though Davenport insist that its anti-piracy tracking partner ‘Logistep‘ is faultless in its data-gathering, it’s generally accepted that anti-piracy companies are using systems which can produce bad data. Only last week researchers managed to get infringement notices sent to printers, devices incapable of committing such an act. Davenport insists - rather like BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor - that if the High Court thought the evidence was compelling enough to order the ISP to give up the personal details of the alleged sharer, then the data must be accurate. If that is the case, how come Davenport haven’t taken anyone to court or asked Logistep to take up the offers they received to have their system independently audited? That would surely boost their credibility. Or not.

TorrentFreak spoke with many people who are obviously wrongly accused for various reasons. We’re pretty sure that ‘Lucy’, a 67 year old grandmother of 8, had no interest in Colin McRae Dirt, and that ‘Peter’, a 21 year old student who used to have a game-loving flat-mate, is completely innocent. What about ‘Jason’, a father of four who was in the Middle East at the time of the alleged infringement, or ‘Joanne’ who had probably been running a wide-open wireless router for the best part of two years - in a building of around 60 residents? As with the other group, none of these people have been taken to court.

One man, ‘Stuart’, has been corresponding with Davenport Lyons for many months now over claims his uncle with whom he lives, infringed copyright on Colin McRae Dirt. The Internet account is in his uncle’s name, but his uncle never uses the computer, so the wrong person was accused immediately and Stuart vigorously denies all accusations too.

After many letters sent to Davenport last year, where Stuart (on behalf of his uncle) denied all allegations, with Davenport duly ignoring most points and reiterating that if he didn’t pay he’d be going to court (each time giving only a few days to stop the court action), everything went dead. Then a couple of months ago, déjà vue kicked in as a letter dropped through the door which seemed to start from the beginning again, essentially stating that if he didn’t pay, court papers would be prepared and he would be incurring huge costs, etc.

Stuart wrote back, re-iterated his total innocence, and reminded Davenport that endless correspondence was getting them nowhere while they insist he is guilty, and he insists he is not. They wrote back and reminded him (again) that they were going to start court proceedings if he didn’t pay. He hasn’t paid and they have not taken him to court. Again.

Stuart is not unique in receiving lots of letters, lots of threats and then - nothing. TorrentFreak is in touch with nearly 40 people accused in these cases and not one of them has been taken to court, in some cases more than 15 months after these people apparently had 14 days to pay up or else.

It’s not clear if Davenport Lyons has completely given up on taking anyone to court, they may still surprise us. It’s believed they did ‘win’ one case when someone they accused didn’t turn up in court but all the indications point to a stalemate on the outstanding cases, including those of Stuart, Lucy, Peter, Jason, Joanne and countless others.

It’s thought that around 40% to 50% of people who received letters have paid up, and maybe that’s enough for the operation to be profitable for Davenport. Taking people to court in the UK for such a small infringement is definitely unprofitable. Maybe this is the greatest indicator as to where these cases are going to end up when the defiant, penniless and innocent refuse to pay.

TAKEN FROM torrentfreak.com

Internet Explorer 8 is set to be Microsoft’s most standards compliant browser ever. After originally stating that IE8 would default to the same noncompliant behavior exhibited by IE7, Microsoft relented and plumped for standard-by-default. The first beta of IE8 was released in March and it did indeed default to standards compliance. Web developers have been clamouring for standards compliance for a long time; IE is a long way behind the competition, requiring considerable hacks and workarounds to get pages working properly. IE8 should make things a lot better—but it will still fall far short of the standards set by Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Some of these problems are technical, but others are cultural. Where the other browser developers are open and communicative, Microsoft is still leaving web developers in the dark.

Microsoft was initially concerned that defaulting to standards compliance mode would “break the web”—that is, make a significant proportion of web pages render so badly as to be unusable—and experiences with beta 1 have provided some justification for the company’s concerns. Microsoft is appealing to web developers to fix their web pages, but the unfortunate reality is that the owners of many websites will be unwilling to foot the bill for those fixes to be made.

To mitigate this difficulty, Microsoft is adding a new feature to aid the transition. Web developers will be able to add a tag to their page (or their web server) to force pages to render in the same manner as IE7. Pages without the tag will continue to use the “doctype switch” to choose between the old, nonstandard “quirks mode” and the new “standards mode”; pages with the new tag will still use the doctype switch, but this time to choose between “quirks mode” and “IE 7 mode.” The tag will be supported in beta 2 of IE8 (due in August), and is also available to IE 8 beta 1 with the latest security update.

With this tag, Microsoft is hoping that developers will have a low-cost way of making their pages work once IE8 ships, while still allowing standards mode to be the default going forward. The response from developers, however, has been lukewarm. Many commenters on the Internet Explorer blog have stated that they are happy to do the work to make their page’s standards compliant; the problem is that Microsoft has not disclosed which parts of which standards it will support, nor which bugs will be fixed.

The ultimate reason for these problems with standards mode is that IE7’s standards mode was both buggy and nonstandard. Developers wrote IE7-specific workarounds to ensure that pages worked in both reasonably standards-conforming browsers (such as Opera, Safari, and Firefox) and IE7. Without telling developers what to expect for IE8, the same problem is liable to occur with that, too; instead of targeting the standards, pages will contain workarounds and hacks to avoid IE8-specific problems.

Taking clues from Apple and Mozilla

To really tackle this problem, Microsoft will need to be a lot more open about its plans for the browser and offer updates far more frequently. Both WebKit (the rendering engine of Safari) and Firefox offer nightly builds, and even the commercial Opera browser has weekly builds available. These regular releases make it much quicker for bug fixes to get into developers’ hands, making it easier for them to update their sites now rather than having to wait months between betas.

Greater transparency about what is and is not supported is also needed; for example, although Firefox 3, due for release any day now, will not have complete support for SVG, we can see exactly which bits it does support. Internet Explorer has no equivalent documentation, with the result that developers are operating in the dark. Although in the case of SVG, IE is “easy”—it has no support for any of the specification—in areas such as CSS and HTML, IE does offer partial support.

Microsoft has made steps in the right direction; the IE blog is giving more insight into the browser’s development than it used to, and developments such as the CSS 2.1 test suite are a useful benchmark for all browsers. But the standard has been set by the open source browsers, and so this is the level of openness and transparency that MS should be striving for, even if it finds that this sits uncomfortably with its commercial nature.

Internet Explorer is hemorrhaging market share, thanks to its virtual abandonment between about 2001 and 2006 and the rapid progress by competing browsers. To stop losing ground to Firefox and Safari, Internet Explorer needs to stand head and shoulders above both of them. But with Microsoft’s lack of clear objectives, infrequent releases, and poor communication, IE8 will be struggling to even achieve parity with its competitors.

TAKEN FROM arstechnica.com

About a year ago, I compiled a huge list of artistic sites. It seems like the trend has carried on in 2008 and is growing stronger (thank God the glossy style is gone). So what’s hot now? Pencil sketches, handwritten notes, card stocks, watercolor effects, collage art, script fonts, grungy and splatter ink backgrounds (glossy gradients are not “in” this year). Another trend to be on the lookout for are the vintage and retro styles which I’ve posted earlier this year. Here is a list of 82 sites picked from Best Web Gallery that show the current design trends.

Vintage / Retro Styles

• TAKEN FROM www.webdesignerwall.com

1

Google’s cupcake princess, Marissa Mayer, and Kevin Rose, the playboy of the Webhead world, would make an awfully cute couple. Not romantically — the two are dating other people at the moment. But we hear Mayer is pushing hard for an acquisition of Rose’s Digg, for a price below $200 million. Kara Swisher hinted a few days ago that the social news site, on which users “digg” or “bury” their favorite news headlines, might be on Google’s shopping list. Mayer’s goal: to use what Digg has learned to fix Google News which, while popular, doesn’t make Google any money. (Digg CEO Jay Adelson would not comment on the sale rumor, but did disclose that he was having a “delicious” In ‘N’ Out burger for lunch.)

What’s interesting is the timing. A source familiar with the talks says Google and Digg reached an agreement last month; it’s not clear whether the offer was verbal or a formal termsheet. So why the delay? One possibility: Digg may have been exploring whether it could hire a rock-star CEO and raise more money. Adelson has long been flying cross-country, twice a month, to San Francisco from his upstate New York home, and privately complains about the commute to friends. But so far, I’ve heard nothing about Digg raising a new venture-capital round, or Adelson making way for a higher-profile hire.

Of Digg’s possible acquirers, Google is the company’s most natural home — despite Digg having a multiyear advertising contract with Microsoft. Google desperately wants to get a handle on social networking; it has struggled to sell ads profitably on News Corp.’s MySpace. More importantly, Digg could help Google improve the relevancy of its search results, especially with the news articles Digg readers vote on and discuss so vociferously. That might be worth more to Google than any ads it might manage to sell on the site.

The deal may not happen. Insiders are already mystified by its lack of progress since word first started spreading last month. As Sarah Lacy revealed in Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, Digg has held a series of deal discussions that never came to fruition. That history makes it hard to take any new Digg-sale rumor seriously. But we hear these discussions are close enough to take seriously. Cupcakes, anyone?

TAKEN FROM valleywag.com

Burlingame - Jerry Yang has a lot to prove. Turning down Microsoft’s $33 a share bid and jumping in bed with Google means that he’s betting the future of his company–and his career–that doing a deal with his Silicon Valley “frenemy” will pay off.

Jittery investors, of course, will be looking for Yang’s deal with Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )–to run ads supplied by the Internet giant that will be placed alongside Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) search results–to generate a ton of money.

Here are 10 signs that the Yahoo! co-founder and chief executive’s gamble is panning out–or not.

1. Stock Soars

Before Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) launched its initial $31 per share offer for Yahoo! on Jan. 31, the Web portal’s stock had been in freefall since late October, dropping from $33.63 to $19.18. The software giant’s bid gave it an immediate boost to $28.38–but it has yet to top Microsoft’s last offer of $33 a share. In the next six months, Yahoo’s stock needs to show a lot of upward direction. The goal: getting above that $33 water mark.

2. Yahoo! Piles Up $2.47 Billion In New Revenues

Yahoo! needs to make like Whole Foods (nasdaq: WFMI - news - people ) and start showing us the organic green stuff. It’s called sales growth, and for Yahoo! to succeed it will have to show that, excluding the effect of any acquisitions, it can do this. The magic number: $2.47 billion. That’s how much Microsoft’s online services business made for the fiscal year ended June 2007. Asking Yahoo! to hit that number isn’t fair. It means Yahoo! would have to boost its annual run rate by roughly a third. Then again, that’s the kind of sales growth Google posts, and proving Yahoo! can keep up with Google–and add new online business comparable to that of the company that tried to acquire it–would silence it critics.

3. Deal Makes Yahoo! Faster And Tougher

With Microsoft breathing down its throat for months, Yahoo! started picking up the pace and launched many more products and services than usual in recent months. Now, it will surely benefit from Google’s killer instincts and crafty strategies. Google Chief Eric Schmidt is said to have mentored Yang on the Microsoft deal. Now Yang and Schmidt can be open about their talks. Riiiight.

4. Monetizes Its 500 Million Visitors–Finally

Yahoo! has been sitting on an unexploited goldmine for far too long. The company’s combined sites get the most traffic of any portal around the world, yet Yahoo! earns so little from it. But it can’t look to Google for help on this one: the Internet giant is so far a one-trick pony, making all its money from search advertising. Yang really should ask Microsoft chief and salesman extraordinaire Steve Ballmer for guidance here, but that would be a tad awkward now.

5. Becomes A Magnet For Techies Again

Remember when Yahoo! was the “it girl” of the tech world a decade ago? Everyone and their mother wanted to work there. Great holiday parties and pricey Christmas gifts, such as MP3 players, for every employee. If revenues soar and the stock jumps appreciably, the world’s best engineers will be knocking on its doors again.

6. Yang Buys A Zeppelin

People need leaders they can believe in, and Silicon Valley’s greatest do their best to acquire symbols of excess. Nvidia (nasdaq: NVDA - news - people ) Chief Executive Jen Hsen Huang parks his hand-built Swedish road rocket in the company parking lot between his employees’ Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys. Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page ride in a 767 emblazoned with the company logo. Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) Chief Executive Steve Jobs cares for 413 cats. If Yang is to succeed, he’ll need to show he’s the new big tabby in town. Our suggestion: a gigantic gray and purple zeppelin. Hey, Hangar One at nearby Moffett Field is just a short drive from Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquarters. And yes, we lied about the cats.

7. Yahoo! Buys Facebook

Would such a deal be safe? Is it even sane? Hell no! But the ability to make a crazy, game-changing move, such as buying Facebook, would seal Yang’s status as one of the greatest CEOs of all time. In contrast, passing up on the opportunity to buy Google, and losing DoubleClick to Microsoft are two of the reason’s Yang’s predecessor, Terry Semel, has been nominated for a spot in the Chief Executive Hall of Lame. A bold deal shows that Yang isn’t afraid of losing Yahoo’s independence, rather, he’s eager to use it.

8. Larry Ellison Comes To Yang For Advice

Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ) Chief Executive Larry Ellison is the Sith Master of Silicon Valley: cool, calculating and quite stylish. Yang, by contrast, seems to be the very opposite. But what if it’s all a trick? What if getting the 218-pound monkey who runs Microsoft known as Steve Ballmer off his back was just the first phase in some kind of darkly brilliant master plan? If so, Ellison will sniff it out, first, and pay his respects.

9. Steve Ballmer Loses His Job

The Yahoo-Microsoft negotiation was a mess. Someone’s head needs to roll, and if you are Jerry Yang, you’re first in line for a little of the old high-level chop-chop. However, if Yahoo! starts to perform (see items 1 and 2), then it will prove that, despite all his bluster, Ballmer didn’t have the nerve to pay what Yahoo! was worth, after all. One way or another, this story won’t end until we have a loser.

10. Poach Someone, Anyone , From Google

All we need is one, Jerry, just one. It doesn’t have to be a star, such as Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Meyer. Convince one promising Google employee to step away from the all-you-can-eat-buffet at the Googleplex and maybe we’ll start to believe in you, too.

TAKEN FROM www.forbes.com

Steve Wozniak is much more than a throbbing brain with a tie. He knows that the quickest way to a girl’s heart is to jailbreak her iPhone… on TV. As he tells Ms. Griffin, “You know, some people would criticize you for not having hacked your iPhone.” Certainly not you, Mr. Apple Co-founder? Watch it all go down after the break.

P.S. Looks like Woz’s watch is a Nixie — the man’s nerd to the core.
TAKEN FROM www.engadget.com

We got a nice helping of slides dropped on our virtual doorstep this evening, fleshing out Dell’s upcoming netbook — which they seem to be calling the “Dell E.” Um, Eeenteresting name choice, but that doesn’t seem set in stone, and there’s plenty else going on here to ponder over. Dell’s breaking the Dell E into two device types, a 8.9-inch model clearly meant to take on the Eee 900, and the 12.1-inch “E Slim” which actually looks positioned to take on the MacBook Air and X300, at a mere 0.8-inches thick, though perhaps in a lower-end capacity. Even the 8.9-inch model will have some distinctions, with E Classic model for super low-end use, and E Video and E Video+ for more RAM, larger flash storage, webcams and Bluetooth in the + model. Rollout looks to be slated for August for the E, August / September-ish for the E Slim, and a followup for both of those in October of WWAN, with WiMAX after that. Dell even has a second version of both devices slated for Q2 2009, but that’s all we know about those so far. Perhaps most interesting is that all of these run Linux and Windows XP, and while it’s not clear if there’s a full-featured Linux OS onboard, there does seem to be an instant-on, Foleo-esque Linux included on all of them called BlackTop. We’re not sure if there’s any relation to Splashtop, but the janky-ass interface and email / calendar / contacts apps seem to be telling us no. BlackTop will support WWAN and WiFi, and Dell plans to move the 2.0 version to the Latitude and Vostro lines in a year or two. Peep the slides below for all the gory details. Oh, and the price? Dell E starts at $299.

TAKEN FROM www.engadget.com