Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

I don’t know if any of you at home have both the BBC iPlayer and 4OD (on demand) but for those they don’t, they are essentially ways of watching the last weeks worth of TV on your PC from the respective channels (ITV doesn’t get a look in because theirs simply isn’t that good). Basically the main difference between them is that the BBC iPlayer has no adverts but the 4OD has a catalog of past series, and it is the latter that makes the 4OD that little bit better. It is a shame if you catch the end of a series but can’t watch the rest, or if you are away for over a week.

However TV fans do not fear, because the BBC has plans to incorporate all (that’s right, all) off their catalog onto the BBC iPlayer setup. That means 80 years of classics such as Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Montly Python and even Bargain Hunter will be available at your fingertips. 

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The internet pornography industry is massive, of that there is no doubt, and the USA hosts 89% (244,661,900) of them. This is a staggering figure, and one that first points towards a degrading society, and then to what impact this is having on the children of today. Statistics show that the average age that a child first sees pornography on the internet is 11, and that within the 8-16 age bracket 90% of children have viewed porn online. So is it really surprising that children are putting naked photos of them selves online? Not really.

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Both Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault are now offering their services - and servers - to consumers who want to store their personal health records (PHRs) online. Consumer advocates say they’ll be keeping a close eye on both technology giants to make sure they have a healthy respect for their customers’ privacy.

Yet Google Health’s privacy policy admits that its service is not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act (HIPPA), which Congress passed 12 years ago to protect medical records. And HealthVault’s privacy policy makes no mention of HIPPA, instead asking consumers to put their trust in TRUSTe, the independent, non-profit group founded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and sponsored by Microsoft and AOL, for enforcement of privacy standards.

I asked the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. for its reaction to Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault. The email I received from Deven McGraw, director of the CDT’s Health Privacy Project, acknowledges that both companies have good privacy policies.

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Don’t look now but Adobe’s free Photoshop Express is gradually becoming a powerful online image editing tool. They have just introduced some new features, which include a slide show feature. This slide show works similar to other online slide show applications such as SlideShow and the slide show tools found in Flickr and Photobucket. Users can also choose to embed the Photoshop Express slideshow on websites, blogs, and social networks.

Aside from the slide show feature, Photoshop Express has also recently introduced the ability to interact directly with photo-sharing community such as Flickr. This feature, as we previously mentioned enables users to take photos in their accounts from Flickr, edit them in Photoshop Express then export back to Flickr. Sounds neat eh? Wait, there’s more. Users can also easily save a copy of their edited photos and then tinker with the copy instead of the original. Hence users are assured that the original copy is intact even if they mess up the new version.

Via [Switched]

Hulu.com has seen growing trends in its viewership, so much so that News Corp and NBC Universal have decided to distribute its service to seven new sites. Hulu users watched a total of 63.2 million videos on its website last April and the average Hulu user spends around 129.3 minutes per month. Because of the enormous usage of the site, Hulu is set to distribute its videos on TV.com, TVGuide.com, Break.com and Zap2it.com.

Hulu had been reported to exceed the level of usage of all US television network websites in its first month after the official site launching – as stated in the VideoCensus data by ACNielsen.

Although Google’s YouTube remain to be the unbeatable site for online videos, Hulu has made remarkable milestones as a competitor. Major advertisers like McDonalds and Bank of America have already been attracted by the video website. Now that Hulu is beginning to further distribute its service, it should definitely see continued increase in its viewership.

Read [Reuters]

An Apple Store employee whose apartment she was sharing with two roommates was recently victimized by burglars, however they had a happy ending thanks to the help of her stolen Mac’s screen sharing feature and built-in webcam.

After the house was burglarized by thieves, the Apple Store employee received a call from a friend asking if she was online, since it appears that she is online on her friend’s computer. The victim immediately logged on to the Internet and used the Back-to-My-Mac program and found out that her Mac was indeed connected to the Internet. Not wasting any time, the victim quickly activated her Mac’s built-in webcam and the screen sharing feature in order to take a snapshot of the thief who was currently using her notebook. The victim’s friend recognized the man in the picture as someone who had been at her apartment during the recent get together. 

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It looks like Amazon’s decision to file a lawsuit against New York’s new tax policy on online stores may back fire on them as the Texas Comptroller’s Office is investigating the probability that the online store may actually owe the Texas government millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. If you will recall, in its case against the New York tax policy, Amazon argued that it should not pay the NY government any taxes because it doesn’t have a “physical presence” in New York.

The same reason is now being used by the Texas government as it found out that Amazon has a “physical presence” in the area. Apparently, Amazon has operated a distribution center at 2700 Regent Boulevard in Irving from 2006 to 2007. This was pointed out by the Dallas Morning News when it called Amazon to ask why it is not charging sales taxes to its online customers.

Amazon has not yet issued a statement confirming that it actually owns the distribution center. But if the presence of an Amazon flag outside the building is any indication of ownership, then Amazon may indeed own the distribution center.

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The recently released Photoshop Express, which is a free web-based photo editor has just added support for Flickr. With the newly added support users can now take images from their Flickr account, edit them in Photoshop Express and place the hopefully nicer images back into their Flickr photo stream for everyone to enjoy. If you are new to Photoshop Express, you can check out the recent review from our own Debbie Cook.

Via [Lifehacker]

Universal Music Group is joining the ranks of music companies who are giving away their music for free and in a legal way. The company has announced that it has reached an agreement with file-sharing site Qtrax to offer free, legal downloads of all its digital music. If you would recall, Qtrax announced sometime in January that it has the support of “all major music labels” in its revenue generating ads music download service. But some of this music companies denied Qtrax’s claim, including UMG. Prior to these events, Qtrax was forced to shut down its service a few months after it was launched in 2002 to avoid some legal troubles.

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Look who’s playing catch up with Apple’s iTunes?  Microsoft has confirmed the rumors that it will start selling TV shows in its Zune Marketplace, possibly to compete with the recently announced iTunes movie download offerings. For starters, Microsoft has sealed a deal with NBC, which incidentally is coming off the recent break-up with Apple’s iTunes.

Although Microsoft’s move maybe a little bit late, lagging behind Apple’s iTunes which started selling TV shows two years ago, Microsoft is confident that its Zune Marketplace will be able to make some headway over the iTunes especially now that one of iTunes biggest content providers has decided to move over to the Zune Marketplace. NBC and Apple had previously disagreed over pricing which caused NBC to stop offering their content in iTunes. 

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