Coupons, Inc. drops DMCA lawsuit against coupon hacker

A copyright lawsuit against a man who posted instructions on how to print unlimited coupons online has finally been dropped after he argued that he didn't circumvent anyone's copyright protection in order to produce his "hack."

November 21, 2008 - 11:45AM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Roll your own search results with Google's new SearchWiki

Google's SearchWiki—the feature that allows people to annotate, add, delete, and move around search results—will soon be available to all users logged in with a Google account. The company's not sure yet what it plans to actually do with the data, though.

November 20, 2008 - 06:45PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

SnapTell for iPhone looks up books and music, but is limited

SnapTell Explorer is a handy iPhone app that lets you look up various products on Amazon, Wikipedia, and more by snapping a photo. We took a spin and liked the functionality; we just found ourselves wishing it would identify more products.

November 20, 2008 - 03:02PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

High-definition videos sneaking onto YouTube

YouTube is experimenting with high-definition videos on its site, and you can access the capability using a handy URL trick. If YouTube manages to score enough movie and TV content from its owners, then it might eventually give Hulu some competition.

November 20, 2008 - 02:32PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

EU opens digital library to public with over 2 million works

The EU has finally launched Europeana, a digital online library that hosts more than 2 million books, maps, recordings, photographs, paintings, and documents from cultural institutions in its 27 member states. The EU hopes to have 8 million more works added by 2010.

November 20, 2008 - 01:33PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

New Opera designer looking for desktop UI feedback

Opera's new lead designer, Jon Hicks, is looking for comments from Mac, Windows, and Linux users (and everyone in between) about how the browser feels as a native app on their operating systems. If you have feedback, now's the time to give it.

November 19, 2008 - 03:03PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Report: Online shoppers cutting back this holiday season

Thanks to inflation, low confidence in the economy, and unemployment, almost 71 percent of online shoppers plan to cut back their spending this holiday season. Things are not looking so rosy in Whoville, it seems.

November 19, 2008 - 02:40PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Antipiracy group pushes 10 years jail time for UK infringers

The Federation Against Software Theft is miffed at the UK Intellectual Property Office for not considering "recommended" changes to the copyright law that would punish online copyright infringers with 10 years of imprisonment in order to "bring parity with commercial dealing in pirated works."

November 19, 2008 - 11:00AM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Judge slaps down Psystar's antitrust claims against Apple

US District Judge William Alsup has dismissed Psystar's legal counterclaims against Apple, saying that Apple has not violated various antitrust laws by tying its OS to its hardware, and that Psystar failed to provide sufficient legal support for its claims. With Apple's suit against Psystar still going strong, the clone-maker looks to be on thin ice.

November 18, 2008 - 04:39PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Study: many young people want to do their banking over IM

Young people tend to drive technology trends, even in otherwise "boring" industries like the financial sector. Microsoft has found that, thanks to the preferences of the "Millennial" generation, banks are changing how the public can conduct business with them.

November 18, 2008 - 11:30AM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Chinese pirates crack Blu-ray DRM, sell pirated HD discs

A recent bust in China netted several hundred pirated HD discs ripped from Blu-ray masters. The discs were only 720p, not 1080p, but their mere existence shows that Blu-ray's amped-up DRM schemes, AACS and BD+, won't be enough to stop pirates.

November 17, 2008 - 05:15PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Apple issues update for no-button trackpads, but be cautious

Apple has issued a Software Update for users of late-2008 MacBooks and MacBook Pros that purports to fix issues users have been having with registering clicks on the trackpad. But be careful, because one Ars staffer already ran into an issue during update.

November 17, 2008 - 04:37PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

OpenTable's iPhone app makes reservations a breeze

Tired of calling restaurant after restaurant in order to make reservations on date night? OpenTable's new iPhone app makes it as simple as a tap or two to get guaranteed reservations across the US and even overseas. We decided to review the app and fell in love with it immediately, even with its minor flaws.

November 17, 2008 - 01:37PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Study reminds us why we're always fixing our parents' PCs

The American public has a lot of technology‚ and a lot of tech headaches. People have the most frequent problems with their Internet connections, cell phones, and home PCs, according to data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

November 17, 2008 - 11:53AM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Most users don't office in the cloud: 1% use Google Docs

Only one percent of a group of surfers surveyed report using Google Docs in the past six months. That compares with five percent for OpenOffice.org and over 50 percent for Microsoft Office.

November 17, 2008 - 09:17AM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

This week in Apple: Parallels goes 4.0, iTunes bargain bin

This week's top Apple news revolved around Parallels' latest major virtualization release for the Mac, but was also spiked with news about iTunes, Black Friday, some iPhone digging, and OS X 10.5.6. Check it out in case you need to catch up.

November 15, 2008 - 12:30PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Hack shows that 4-finger gestures could come to older Macs

Why do brand new MacBook and MacBook Pro users get to have all the fun when multitouch capabilities are built into a handful of older Mac notebooks? A software hack has shown that an original MacBook Air can gain four-finger multitouch capabilities through software, which means Apple could add it easily.

November 14, 2008 - 04:17PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

No second chance for marriage after Second Life "adultery"

What would you do if you caught your spouse having sex with a prostitute? What if that prostitute was virtual, and your spouse was doing it in a virtual world? Welcome to another episode of "Too Much Drama."

November 14, 2008 - 11:20AM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Equifax's new age-verification tool cumbersome, limited

Equifax has launched a new service that lets you securely prove that you're over 18 online. It's a good idea in theory, but there are major problems in how Equifax is going about it.

November 13, 2008 - 08:55PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng

Cell phone boarding passes coming to an airline near you

American Airlines announced today that it had begun testing mobile boarding passes for domestic travelers out of Chicago's O'Hare, and will soon be rolling it out for Los Angeles and Orange County as well. Just whip out your phone, let the TSA have a scan, and go on your way. Well, sort of.

November 13, 2008 - 04:05PM CT - by Jacqui Cheng