Source: aolmedia.tekgroup.com

AOL is strengthening its own entry in the battle against the likes of YouTube and Google Video. Early this morning, the company announced that AOL Video has formed partnerships with 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.

AOL, a leader in live and on-demand entertainment video programming and video search, today announced partnerships with 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group that will offer consumers downloadable movies through the AOL Video portal. These new partnerships complement the more than 17 video content partnerships and more than 45 on-demand channels that AOL Video announced in July. Available to anyone on the Web at http://www.aolvideo.com, the AOL Video portal is a one-stop, high-quality entertainment destination to find, watch and share millions of free streaming and pay-to-download video content from across the Web, broadcast and cable television, and movies.

"We’re very excited to add digital movie downloads and additional TV content to the already wide-variety of content that we offer through the AOL Video portal," said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL. "As we continue to build AOL Video into the best source to find millions of free as well as pay-to-download videos, we’ll continue to add more and more high quality branded content to the mix and we look forward to working even more closely with 20th Century Fox, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, and Warner Bros."

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By: Seth Schoen | Source: eff.org

How can you help prevent damaging privacy invasions like AOL’s data leak? Along with spreading the word about this debacle, you can take steps to protect yourself online. Beneath the fold, we’ve listed some tips and tools that will help keep your search history private.

• Don’t put personally-identifying information in your searches, at least not in a way that can be associated with your other searches. You should take the precautions below to avoid giving away your identity to your search engine anyway, but they’re especially necessary if you want to do a search to see if your personal information has appeared online or want to do a vanity search for your name.
• Don’t use a search engine operated by your ISP. Most ISPs inherently know who their users are, at any given time and over the long run. If you use their default search tool, they know who you are and everything you search for. Use someone else’s search tool instead.
• Don’t log in to a search engine account. If you use a web-based e-mail service or other services provided by your search engine — such as GMail or Yahoo! Mail — see below on cookies.
• Don’t accept cookies from your search engine. If you use a service like web-based e-mail that requires you to accept cookies, don’t let the personally-identifying information in your e-mail get linked with your searches. For Firefox users, the free CustomizeGoogle extension will allow you to anonymize your search cookie without breaking GMail (see the "Privacy" tab in the CustomizeGoogle options). We’re still looking for extensions that provide corresponding functionality for Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL users. You can also use Privoxy, although it’s a bit more difficult to configure.
• Use a separate browser or browser profile for search and for other activities.
• Use an anonymizing proxy, or proxy network like Tor, to prevent search engines from learning your IP address, especially if your ISP gives you the same IP address each time you use the Internet.

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By: David A. Utter | Source: webpronews.com

Image search isn’t just for the Yahoo index anymore; images posted to the Flickr photo sharing service will now show up in searches on Yahoo.

In the palatial lead-lined offices of WebProNews headquarters, your friendly neighborhood scribes discussed black and white photography for a few minutes today. I had attached a trio of black and white postcards to my monitor. The pictures featured a huge collection of jazz players posing on a Harlem street, a Leibovitz shot of a very young Grateful Dead, and a misty night image of the Pont Neuf, taken in the 1930s.

We were talking about why black and white photographs have appeal. Jason Lee Miller suggested that the oeuvre strips away the distractions that a full color image can bring, and I’m inclined to think that is correct.

Looking for black and white photographs from among all levels of photographers became a little more rewarding with Yahoo’s announcement today. Lingxian Ding posted at the Yahoo! Search Blog how the service now has Flickr integration:

Read more at webpronews.com

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