>> Natali Del Conte: Yahoo picks a new CEO, Obama picks a new SEC chair, and the Internet is not as full of sexual predators as you may think. It's Wednesday, January 14th. I'm Natali Del Conte, and it's time to get loaded.
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>> Natali Del Conte: Let's give it up for some girl power. Yahoo has chosen its replacement for Jerry Yang as CEO, and her name is Carol Bartz. Here are her stats. She's 60 years old and was the former chairman, chairwoman of Autodesk, the project management software. She'd been there for 16 years. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor's degree in computer science, and did I mention that she's a woman? I don't mean to be overly feminist about this especially considering that on the same day of her appointment, Yahoo's president, Sue Decker, announces her departure. Decker was not popular at Yahoo, to say the least, and there's no proof that Bartz will do any better just because of her gender. But Autodesk is an upstanding company, and hopefully, Bartz will be the breath of fresh air that Yahoo so desperately needs. I wasn't going to say it, but alright I'm going to say it, you go girl. The future of our beloved technology rests in the hands of a new man. President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly chosen Julius Genachowski to head the SEC during his administration. He will replace current SEC chair, Kevin Martin. Genachowski, I hope I'm saying his name right, worked for the SEC during the Clinton administration and was a former Harvard law cohort of Obama. He's said to want to emphasis competition in the telecommunications industry particularly among the wireless carriers. He is pro-Net neutrality and, of course, pro-more broadband. I don't know his stance on white space or any other unused spectrum, but all of that rests in his hands so we'll keep an eye on him. At no time during the consumer electronics show did I see a single device that streamed Blockbuster movies. Plenty that stream Netflix but no Blockbuster. If they were there, I certainly didn't see them. They will exist soon, though. Blockbuster has announced that they will start to deliver streamed movies to various devices although we don't know which ones yet. The company says that we should expect to see them on PC's, mobile phones, portable media players, Internet-connected TV's, and Blu-ray players. They better hurry that up, though, because that media-point set top box is not going to cut it if they really want to compete with Netflix. [inaudible] is getting yet another layer, and this one has high res images from inside of buildings instead of just outside. The newest layer shows gigapixel photos from art work from inside the Prado Museum in Madrid. A gigapixel, in case you're not familiar, is an ultra high resolution image. The Prado project includes detailed exterior views of the museum plus 14 images of masterpieces inside with information on each piece. Mozilla released a new version of Snoll this week. This is their messaging client that lives inside the browser. It's a plug in to manage RSS feeds and messages. It also has an updated Riverview that groups your contacts a bit better and a new Streamview for keeping track of your messages while you're still browsing. I tested it for my Twitter feed, and I liked it, but browser real estate is at a premium in my life. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it, or just go back to an Adobe airout. My Twitter friends also tell me that Twitter Fox is a nice alternative if you like this way of managing your Twitters. Lego is set to launch a new line of electronics for children later this year. They will look like Legos except you can really use them, and you can't take them apart. The new line is collaboration between Lego and a company called Digital Blue and will include digital cameras, video cameras, mp3 players, walkie talkies, and more. They won't be out until later this summer, but they are supposed to be ultra durable so basically kid proof. They'll cost between $20 and $60. They're really cute. Do you think that maybe I could get away with something like this even if I don't have kids? CNET UK published an interesting article about Apple's new DRM3 music system. Nate Lanxon warned that even though songs purchased through Apple can be shared now, those tracks still have your personal information attached to them. If not, your username may definitely have your e-mail address attached. If you open the file in a text editor, you can see for yourself so be careful who you're sharing with. Speaking of iTunes, Apple has started to relax a lot on what they allow to be sold in the applications store. They recently allowed third-party e-mail applications and more recently began to allow third-party browsers. Apple didn't make any official announcement, but Mac rumors has a list of browsers you can use as an alternative to Safari. Opera is not one of them yet, but I'm curious to see if they will make it to iPhone, and how it will perform. Bad news for New Yorkers. Amazon has lost its appeal of the online sales tax that the state put into place last year. A New York State judge denied Amazon and Overstock's requests to stop an extra sales tax that would apply to all online transactions. Even though Amazon and Overstock do not have a physical presence in New York, the state still wants to collect tax on all of their transactions anyway. The consumers would pay this tax, and the retailers, obviously, are not for anything that inhibits consumer purchasing. There's a chance that this case could move to the Court of Appeals next so in the immortal words of Lenny Kravitz, it ain't over til it's over. If you really want to use your new 24-inch LED Apple display as a touch screen, a company called Trolltouch will enable that. They launched an integrated touch screen system that lays on top of your display. It's powered via USB, and costs $1,400 to do it yourself or more if you send the display into the company to do it for you. That is a lot of bread. You have to really be motivated to touch for that. You shouldn't worry quite so much about your child being a target of sexual predators online. You may have to worry that they'll be a victim of bullying, though. The New York Times reports that a new study concluded that sexual solicitation of children online is not a significant problem. It found that bullying among children, both online and offline, was far more serious. This came from a task force created by 49 attorney generals led by the Burkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. Of course, this doesn't mean that sexual solicitation doesn't happen. It just means that it's not the epidemic we tend to think it is, which is a good thing. Those are your headlines for today. Mark Licea will be hosting loaded tomorrow because I'm going to Washington, DC to do a story for the CBS Early Show about how the mobile carriers are preparing for the inauguration. I'll be sharing that with you next week. Thank you for watching today. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV, and you've just been loaded.
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