online

EasyTask Online (iPhone App)

Are you the list-making type? Grab this application for the iPhone, which helps you manage your tasks and to-do lists. You can also use it with the Mac OS X client, so you can sync tasks from your Mac to your iPhone. You'll need to register to get started.

iPhone Link: http://www.easytaskmanager.net/iphone/index.html

Web site link: http://www.easytaskmanager.net

Look out, PayPal: Amazon has a new payment service

The days of PayPal's dominance over casual payments online are changing rapidly. A little over a year ago, Google unveiled its Checkout service, which has become an increasingly popular way to purchase items from various online retailers using a single account. Today, Amazon.com is unveiling its own payment program that lets Amazon.com users purchase items or services using their Amazon.com account credentials and billing information.

The new program is called "Flexible Payment Service", or FPS, and is launching with an invite-only API for developers who want to integrate the new payment service. What does … Read more

Multiverse to launch version 1.0 of its virtual world platform

For people wanting to design their own 3D virtual world, or online game, doing so just got a little bit closer to reality.

That's because the Multiverse Network has announced version 1.0 of its development platform, a system that allows anyone to create a fully functional massively multiplayer online game based on a common set of tools.

Until now, the platform had been in beta, but over the last year or so, more than 11,000 teams of designers have begun using it.

Multiverse's model provides the platform free of charge to anyone who wants it. The … Read more

Spamming Net drug dealer gets 30 years in prison

AOL once deemed an infamous Minnesota spammer named Christopher William Smith "the poster child for the Can-Spam Act."

A federal judge in his home state on Wednesday had a new name for the convicted junk mailer: "drug kingpin." He sentenced Smith to 30 years in prison for multiple charges stemming from his highly lucrative online drugstore, whose illegal sales brought in about $24 million, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis reports.

U.S. authorities originally arrested Smith in 2005 on the belief that he had moved his business, called XPress Pharmacy, to the Dominican Republic after his … Read more

Microsoft acquires 'ad exchange' company AdECN

Underscoring its commitment to the advertising business, Microsoft on Thursday announced it has bought AdECN, a company that is a technology platform for buying and selling display advertising.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Speaking at Microsoft's Financial Analysts Day, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Platform and Services Division, told financial analysts that the deal complements Microsoft's adCenter software and its planned acquisition of Aquantive.

He said that AdECN provides an ad exchange, like electronic stock trading markets, that allows publishers and advertisers to broker the sale of display advertising.

AdECN is a venture-backed company … Read more

Sony goes snap Crackle and pop

Online video is all the rage and everyone wants in on the action. One year ago Sony acquired Grouper for $65 million dollars and today that enterprise is known as Crackle. In an effort to distinguish itself from the crowded competition, Crackle has chosen to dangle fame in front of would be producers young faces. Given that the elusive hope of fame has fueled a pilgrimage to Hollywood for close to 100 years, such tantalizing promises will likely deliver the goods.

In order to ensure that the lure of fame resonates with Crackle's audience the company is currently offering three contests that will likely advance the careers of the lucky winners.The High Wirecontest will allow the funniest individual a chance to perform at the IMPROV. The Shorts contest offers a $15,000 purse and the winner an opportunity to pitch his or her best idea to Columbia Pictures. Finally, the Wet Paint contest winner is open to aspiring animators and also comes with a $15,000 cash prize as well as a trip to the Sony Pictures Animation Studios. Participants should expect a rotating array of enticing contests.

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Taking the temperature on Google Health

Vince Kuraitis has dissected a multitude of postings and literature produced by Google's vice president, Adam Bosworth, and here's his theory on the search giant's health initiative.

Kuraitis, principal and founder of healthcare consultants Better Health Technologies, predicted Monday at the fourth annual Healthcare Unbound conference that Google may develop the next generation of the personal health record.

After combing through Bosworth's material, Kuraitis said he wouldn't be surprised to see a Google Health that is patient-centric, where consumers own their personal health data and access it via a Web site, which acts like a … Read more

The end of the daily paper?

Every day on my way to work, I pick up the three free daily newspapers that are distributed in San Francisco, and once a week I grab the two (also free weeklies). Even though I can get the San Francisco Chronicle for a quarter at the BART station, it's the rare occasion when I actually decide to plunk down the twenty-five cents. Instead, I usually surf SF Gate and skim the online version of the publication. As Jon Fine at Business Week points out, I'm not the only one.Killing printrequires acknowledging not just that the old mode is dead but also that the future means less revenue and shrunken staffs. This is why it makes sense soonest at a money-losing newspaper already grappling with those realities, and one in a major city that generates enough local ad dollars to support a sizable online business.

On paper, San Francisco is perfect: a Web-centric town, a cash-drain daily, and private ownership. Which does not mean this will happen. San Francisco is the ancestral home of the Hearst empire, the birthplace of William Randolph Hearst and the town where he ran his first paper. It could be hard for Hearst to consider the move on those grounds alone. (In Asher's deposition, though, he said Hearst briefly considered selling the Chronicle in 2005.)He goes on to explain that the Chronicle has 265,000 subscribers, and though that number isn't massive, it's important to keep in mind that there are less than 800,000 people in San Francisco so quite a few people still rely on that daily paper coming to their door. Beyond the old-fashion appeal to the printed word, San Francisco is a city filled with commuters, like me, who rely on public transportation and seize that opportunity to read their daily paper. Perhaps municipal wi-fi and better mobile browsers will lead to commuters surfing instead of thumbing through the paper, but as I look around I see far more papers than Palm's and don't expect things to change anytime soon.

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Online safety needs to go beyond 'Don't talk to strangers'

As a previous generation of children was given the blanket advice "Don't talk to strangers," today's kids are told "never give out your personal information online." A new study suggests that this well-intentioned advice is not sufficient to protect children from unwanted sexual solicitation and harassment. The study comes to the controversial conclusion that sharing information online is not correlated with victimization. Many other online safety experts maintain that privacy protection is always a good first line of defense, though clearly not the only step.

The study, published in the February 2007 issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and reported by the AP, found that victimization is likely to be associated with online behavior such as talking about sex with people met online, or intentionally embarrassing someone else on the Internet. … Read more