online activities

The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too. U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Think you know who's behind that "friend" request? Think again. Your new "friend" just might be the FBI.

The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Think you know who's behind that "friend" request? Think again. Your new "friend" just might be the FBI.

If a new product unveiled this week by Freescale Semiconductor is any indication, 2010 could be "the year of the tablet computer." Just in time for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opening Thursday in Las Vegas, the company has launched a seven-inch touchscreen tablet computer that it described as "the future of the smartbook category."

A new study confirms what your 130 Facebook friends and scores of Twitter followers may have already told you: The Internet and mobile phones are not linked to social isolation.

Online activities such as e-mail, blogging and frequenting Internet hangouts can even lead to larger, more diverse social networks, according to the study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The study refutes research earlier in the decade suggesting that people's growing embrace of technology has come at the expense of close human connections.

France's lower house of parliament approved a pioneering bill Tuesday allowing authorities to cut off Internet access to people who download illegally, a measure that entertainment companies hope will be a powerful weapon against piracy.

Critics, meanwhile, complain the bill threatens civil liberties, and questions remain about exactly how it will be enforced. The bill has garnered attention beyond France, both from music and film industries struggling to keep up official revenue and from privacy advocates who worry about government intrusion.

by Jeff Strabone
What kind of space is cyberspace? Of all the things we take for granted, cyberspace is near the top of the list. The promise of the internet in the twenty-first century is to make everything always available to everyone everywhere. All of human culture and achievement, the great and the not so great, may, one day soon, be a click away.

Chinese Web surfers are being asked to stay off the Internet on July 1 to protest the Chinese government's demand that blocking software Green Dam Youth Escort be installed on all PCs sold in China.

That is the date the software filter sold by Jinhui Computer System Engineering is due to debut. All PCs sold in China on and after this date must have the software. It's also the anniversary date of the founding of the Communist Party in China.

Mozilla has quietly rolled out its second beta download of the next-generation Firefox Web browser, code-named Shiretoko. Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is a public preview release primarily intended for developer testing and community feedback.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is available for download in 54 languages. Though the software's developers consider their latest public release to be stable, they said users of Firefox 3.0 should not expect all their browser plug-ins to work properly with Firefox 3.1 Beta 2.

AIDS.gov was launched on World AIDS Day on December 1, 2006 to provide federal, state, and local HIV/AIDS service partners with a dedicated portal to access federal government information and resources on HIV/AIDS.

AIDS.gov was launched on World AIDS Day on December 1, 2006 to provide federal, state, and local HIV/AIDS service partners with a dedicated portal to access federal government information and resources on HIV/AIDS.