New Amazon tool's
pictures can and do lie
When trying to locate a
business, knowing what it looks like is helpful. But digital street-level
images posted on Amazon.com subsidiary A9.com’s Yellow Pages are causing
more confusion than assistance. In the free service’s preview,
businesses all across the country are mismatched with images of different
places. An Atlanta Borders bookstore, for example, is pictured as a water
fountain. In LA the Sam Ash music store on Sunset Boulevard is shown as a
motel parking lot. New York hot spot Rockefeller Center ice skating rink
is shown as a bus driving down the street, and Nathan's Famous on Sixth
Avenue is pictured as a subway station. A9 used trucks equipped with
digital cameras and global positioning receivers to acquire the shots. A9
also has to resolve issues of jeopardizing people’s privacy with
inappropriate listings. Photos and maps for abused women's shelters and
abortion clinics are included in the directory. A new feature will include
navigation tools that allow users to look at the neighborhood surrounding
a business. A9’s photos will eventually cover most of New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, Seattle
and Portland, Ore.
'24' makes mobile debut in 60-second shorts
If 60 minutes with Jack Bauer
isn't enough, Verizon Wireless is about to provide a Bauer booster.
Tomorrow the company will debut 60-second episodes of the Fox TV show
“24” for cell phones. Verizon will also feature original episodes of
the series "Love and Hate" and "The Sunset Hotel." The
mobile episodes, or mobisodes, are part of a campaign to sell mobile-phone
video service to subscribers for $15 a month. Mobile TV is one of the
latest features used to entice cell phone users. The luxury is not cheap,
however. A Verizon subscriber with a basic cell phone and plan would need
to buy the $200 Vcast phone and sign a two-year contract in addition to
paying the $15 a month fee. Last week, Cingular Wireless launched its
$9.99-a-month MobiTV service, which has 22 channels of television viewable
on four phone models. Sprint and Cingular subscribers can watch live
television from CNBC, MSNBC, ABC News, and TLC.
Teen Blaster master gets 18-month sentence
Considering the damage he caused, the teen Blaster
worm creator received a relatively lenient punishment Friday. U.S.
District Judge Marsha Pechman sentenced Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, to 18
months in a low-security prison and 100 hours of community service.
Pechman will decide on Feb. 10 how much Parson will pay in fines.
Parson’s worm spread through about 50,000 computers around the
world, exploiting deficiencies in Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows
2000 operating systems in August 2003. If Parson had not pleaded
guilty, he could have gotten 10 years in prison and been fined
$250,000. The judge cited age, parental neglect and psychological
problems in his household as factors influencing her decision to go
easy on him. She said that the Hopkins, Minn., teenager, who used the
internet name "teekid," was not as mature as most people
his age.
Spike
your old ringtone for a po#rn star's moan
Downloadable ring tones are old news. Now it’s
all about moan tones. Cell phone users can buy a array of moans,
grunts and explicit sounds all recorded by porn star Jenna Jameson
for $2.50. Fans of the porno queen can choose to hear bedroom noises
or hear Jameson make X-rated small talk, in English or Spanish, when
the phone rings. Mobile music and entertainment company Wicked
Wireless launched the venture and has already seen strong response to
the product in Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela. Jameson’s fans
from Mexico to Uruguay will have access to the tones in the next
couple of weeks. Customers in the United States will also be able to
buy cell phone wallpaper for $2.99 once the service is launched in
the states, which may be quite some time considering no U.S. mobile
carriers have expressed interest in the service.
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