dashboard

The European Commission has decided that every citizen has a right to the Internet, but still made it fairly easy for the media industry to cut the Internet off. We also see that Intel is in hot water again. And we ask that perennial question, "Why can't I own a Canadian?" And Google answers.

Intel in threats and bribery suit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8343179.stm

Google Dashboard lifts curtain on stored privacy data http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10390941-265.html … Read more

Google's biggest threat is no longer Microsoft. It is itself.

As the company harvests copious quantities of personal data, it becomes dramatically better at serving customer needs...

...and at freaking them out over privacy concerns.

In other words, Google gets stronger with every Google Doc created, every Google Voice call dialed, and every Gmail e-mail sent. It becomes stronger because data is the heart of the Web's biggest businesses, as Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady implies.

But in so doing Google also becomes more threatening to the very consumers it is trying to serve.

Google Dashboard is meant … Read more

Google is proving to be well aware of the uneasiness among the public over the increasing amount of data it stores from users of its services.

Google is launching Google Dashboard, a service that lets you log into a console and see all the personal data that the company maintains on a Google Account user across all its products, from Gmail and YouTube to Blogger and Picasa. It allows users to log into the settings page of their Google account and review links to the personal data stored by Google across many of its products from a single Web page.… Read more

Once the world's largest social-networking service and an essential tool for musicians, MySpace has fallen upon hard times, but I'm encouraged by one of the new services the company announced Wednesday.

The MySpace Artist Dashboard is a new free tool for any artist with a music profile page on the site. For artists, it offers demographic information about the people who are visiting your site, and a breakdown of what they're doing there. The geographic data could be particularly useful for small touring bands to help plan their routes. I was also encouraged by the statement from … Read more

Yesterday we discussed a problem where people were not able to invoke the large-type window for displaying full-screen contact information via the Address Book dashboard widget. While one possibility could be the aforementioned problems with the widget and Dashboard itself, since this problem has to do only with the Address Book widget for many people it indicates an error with the Address Book components, including the framework, the Address Book application, and the widget itself.… Read more

Some people are reporting that after upgrading to Snow Leopard their Address Book dashboard widget is no longer functioning properly. The widget will open and you can search for contacts properly, but when you try to present a phone number in large text by clicking on it the number will not display.… Read more

Xbox 360 owners who fire up their console today will be prompted to download the new Summer 2009 dashboard update. Among the highlights of the new software is updated Netflix functionality ("Party Watch" mode and the capability to automatically add new and popular movies and TV shows to your queue directly through the onscreen interface), more avatar customization options, and larger selection of games on-demand (digital download of full Xbox 360 titles formerly available only on disc). A full list of features can be found at the Xbox Web site.

On the Netflix front: Microsoft is now touting … Read more

As first outlined at the E3 video game industry trade show in June, Microsoft is readying an update to the dashboard software that runs on Xbox 360 game consoles, as well as the Xbox Live online service.

While it's not as radical a change as the fall 2008 dashboard update that added avatars and Netflix streaming, there are a lot of improvements to current features, as well as a few new ones. The dashboard update will be available for 360 owners on August 11th, but we were able to download an early version for a test drive.

Included were … Read more

It's the age-old question. Where do our tax dollars go? Washington is using the Web to try to provide an answer, at least as it relates to information technology.

The IT Dashboard, a new tool from the USASpending.gov site, promises a behind-the-scenes look at how our tax dollars are spent on government IT. The site was unveiled Tuesday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York by federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra and White House Director of New Media Macon Phillips.

A promising idea. But the site, which is still in beta, appears to have a … Read more