Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! Fined $32 Million by DOJ
Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! Fined $32 Million today by the DOJ for alleged participation in online gambling operations. Microsoft is reportedly donating its portion to charity.
DOJ press release (excerpts)
St. Louis, MO: Microsoft Corporation, Google, Inc. and Yahoo! have entered into settlements with the U.S. to resolve claims that they promoted illegal gambling, United States Attorney Catherine L. Hanaway announced today. The total amount of the three settlements is $31.5 million in value to the United States.
These settlements involve corporate conduct the Government found in violation of the Federal Wire Wager Act, federal wagering excise tax laws and various states’ statutes and municipal laws prohibiting gambling. Unregulated commercial gambling is illegal throughout the United States.
Keeping It Simple, Man!
Just two months in, I’ve once again refreshed ronaldlewis.com. This time, the refresh and layout is fairly basic and simple — A theme I’m going forward with for a lot of things. I believe we often underestimate the power of simplicity — That “Less is More” in many cases. Thus, I hope you find your visit here easier and more engaging. Thanks for visiting.
YouTube Embed Exploit Identified?
In a YouTube first, a user has managed to embed a non-standard YouTube flash player. While searching for videos, I stumbled upon this oddity. In the capture below, the embedded player shows a TV with a circulating object and can be repeated by rewinding the movie.
In the past few years that I’ve used YouTube, I’ve never witnessed such a thing. It’s apparent that the user identified an unknown exploit within YouTube’s codebase to achieve this. The only question remaining is, how?
A gimmick at best, it should also be a cause for concern due to the nature of this exploit.
Google and the PageRank buzz
There’s a lot of chatter around the blogosphere about Google’s recent adjustment to its PageRank algorithm. Advertisers and bloggers alike use this metric when negotiating advertising deals and more. Some bloggers are reporting big drops (Problogger.net is now a PR4 vs. PR6). Fortunately, ronaldlewis.com still remains at a PR5.
No one knows for sure about Google’s motivation to make this change, and while everyone has their reasons, life goes on.
No IMAP, Yet More Storage for Google Apps and GMail
The biggest news today is the announcement by Google of IMAP availability for GMail. There was some discussion prior to this on yesterday and Monday around the blogosphere, and finally, its been confirmed.
Although Google is rolling out this new feature to as many GMail users as possible, it should be noted that such new features aren’t as readily available for Google Apps users. However, I’m happy to report that my domain, ronaldlewis.com, received Google’s promised storage boost for GMail over the weekend (storage has already increased some 87% from 3.8GB three days to its current 4.36GB):
Of course, this pales in comparison to the 16GB of storage Google granted my Google Apps domain back in October 2006:
