New Zealand Geek - news page 48

Automated systems have again left web giant Yahoo looking stupid.

This time, the company's news site has displayed a photo gallery of Olympic scenes, tourists, performers and fluffy mascots under the bad taste headline 'Tiananmen Square massacre remembered'
August 05, 2008

One of Thailand's top video games distributors is pulling Grand Theft Auto IV off the shelves after a teenager allegedly robbed and stabbed to death a Bangkok taxi driver in an apparent attempt to recreate a scene from the controversial video game.

Thai police said Polwat Chinno, 18, told them that he was angry his parents could not afford to buy him a copy of the game.
August 05, 2008

NEW YORK - Motorola named Sanjay Jha, the chief operating officer of Qualcomm and a star of the wireless industry, to head its handset division as that unit prepares to become an independent company.

Jha will also be co-chief executive of the parent company, sharing the responsibility with incumbent Greg Brown until the spinoff next year. Brown will take responsibility for Motorola's other two divisions.
August 05, 2008

BEIJING - The Olympics are coming to YouTube.

Highlights of the Beijing Olympics will be streamed daily on the popular video-sharing website to 77 territories where digital rights have not been sold, or have been acquired on a non-exclusive basis, the International Olympic Committee said. The IOC did not release financial details of the deal.
August 05, 2008

TOKYO - Toyota has developed a motorised, stand-up-and-ride scooter designed to help people dash around at malls and airports.

But the "Winglet," shown in Tokyo, takes some getting used to. A demonstrator accompanying a reporter cautiously trying out the Segway-lookalike on a short course in a Toyota showroom was visibly worried about its safety.
August 04, 2008

At first glance it seems to be a complete oxymoron, an exercise website. Given the highly sedentary nature of going online, which typically involves being seated in front of a computer for extended periods of time, the notion that an online site is going to get me motivated enough to leave the comfort of my office cubicle and run up a flight of stairs seems a little farfetched. However, that's what Wellington based online Start-UP, TheNakedTrainer.net, is attempting to do.

Founded by Andy Hansen, a Wellington based fitness professional, The Naked Trainer is an online health and fitness community which allows it's members to set health goals, create and track weekly activity plans, and motivate each other through different group activities and individual messages of encouragement.
August 04, 2008

BEIJING - Like everything else done for the Olympics, China's quest to clear up notoriously polluted skies in time for opening ceremonies this week has been marked by gargantuan effort.

In what scientists are calling the single largest attempt ever made to improve air quality, scores of heavily polluting factories were shut down and some 2 million vehicles were pulled off roads across Beijing and a huge swath of northern China - an area roughly the size of Alaska. During the weekend, the hazy skies finally gave way to swirling blue.
August 04, 2008

SAN JOSE - Yahoo's board emerged largely unscathed from the internet company's annual meeting as a subdued crowd of shareholders raised few questions about the directors' rejection of Microsoft's $47.5 billion takeover bid.

Some shareholders expressed displeasure by opposing the re-election of Yahoo's current directors, but the resistance wasn't as intense as last year, when three directors were rejected by more than 30 per cent of the vote.
August 04, 2008

It wasn't what anyone expected to see while perusing a news article.

But there, in the final paragraph of an online story about the call girl involved in the Eliot Spitzer scandal, Yahoo's automated system was inviting readers to browse through photos of underage girls.
August 04, 2008

Several factors make for sluggish broadband - from long phonelines to competition from other users. Photo / Getty Images

Best of business analysisGill South: Former workers get help taking the plunge into the labour poolDeborah Hill Cone: Obsessed with Eric? Just a bitSo, you've got your super-duper ADSL2+ broadband internet connection with its potential speed of 24 megabits a second - and you're wondering why it's not delivering web pages to your desktop at quite that rate? Welcome to the world of contention rates, backhaul and bandwidth bottlenecks.
August 04, 2008

Conducting conference calls in the wee hours of the morning is not exactly the lifestyle Mike Riley had in mind when he moved to New Zealand two years ago - he had set himself up for a life roaming the vineyards of Hawkes Bay.

But instead Riley found himself on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week running Endace, one of New Zealand's largest technology companies.
August 04, 2008

Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds unveils his first full-year result for the company on Friday.

He will be conscious that in the volatile sharemarket environment, any unexpected bad news may be severely punished.
August 04, 2008

Privacy groups are keeping a close eye on internet giant Google as it prepares to publish images of thousands of Kiwi homes on its Street View website.

Cars fitted with specialised cameras have been roaming the roads of New Zealand for six months, taking pictures of houses, buildings and anything else in their paths.
August 03, 2008

The latest figures from Statistics New Zealand show 1.5 million subscribers are now hooked up to the internet and most have broadband.

Broadband subscriptions have increased 10.7 per cent in the six months to March 2008, to reach 891,000.
August 02, 2008

In 2007, sales of CD albums fell by 10 per cent, while the number of tracks downloaded from the internet rose by more than a third.

Given the pervasiveness of digital music players, it is perhaps surprising that the download market is not growing even more quickly.
August 01, 2008