1-800-FREE411 Receives Patent for Free 411 Ad-Supported Directory Assistance Service
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Jingle Networks, Inc., operator of the 1-800-FREE411 directory  assistance service, today announced that it holds a U.S. patent directed  to the advertising supported directory assistance service introduced by  its 1-800-FREE411 service in September 2005.  U.S.
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When 'free' isn't free An online advertiser that falsely claimed consumers had won free prizes has agreed to pay a $200,000 penalty to the Federal Trade Commission, which says the outfit failed to disclose that people had to spend money first.â¦Learn &amp; Contribute, Live &amp; Online - The Register Debates Green Computing
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Clearswift is giving existing customers a free Internet appliance offering spam, virus, and malware protection.
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Residential and small business customers of SBC Communications Inc. in Flint, Ann Arbor and metro Detroit can now access their home and wireless voice mail as well as e-mail accounts
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Software allows users of personal digital assistants to make free calls using Wi-Fi networks.
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(InfoWorld) - If you've ever dreamed up an ingenious new invention and then wondered if someone else has already made it, Google's new patent search offering is for you. The new site, www.google.com/patents, lets anyone search for U.S. patents by keyword, patent number, inventor, and filing date. Users can view a scanned image of the original patent and zoom in on pages. The main search page displays five different random patents each time the page is visited. Recent inventions that popped up include toy skunk, pocket protector, toupee, and doll having delayed wetting and crying action. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) already allows anyone to search its site for patent documents. But Google's offering may have some advantages. "The existing Web sites have patents that you can view so it's not that the information isn't there. The problem is finding it and that's where Google's expertise comes in," said Mike Overy, secretary for the Wessex Round Table of Inventors, an inventors club in England. Overy formerly developed products for Nokia and is now a freelance inventor. Google said that like its Web search technology, the patent search site uses a number of different signals to evaluate how relevant each patent is to a user's query and then determines results algorithmically. The USPTO is not the only patent office to offer an online patent search facility. The European Patent Office also hosts such a service, covering patents from European countries, the U.S., Canada and other patent authorities. Overy finds that database good but not very user friendly, he said. Discovering existing patents is extremely important for inventors, Overy said. While Google's new offering may ease what is often an incredibly tedious job, it may not be able to fully solve the problem, he said. One issue inherent in new inventions is naming them. "If you've invented what you think is the first gizmo whatsit and you type that into a search engine, you won't find much because the other person who invented it called it something different," he said. Google's patent search covers 7 million patents. The database doesn't include patents issued in the last few months but Google "looks forward to expanding our coverage in the future," according to the frequently asked questions section of its site. Although Google's database only lists U.S. patents for now, the company said it hopes to expand the patent offices it includes and languages it supports. Presumably the site will one day allow users to save and print patents too: a note at the bottom of a posting about the new service on the Google blog says that a reference to saving and printing has been removed since Google is still working on the capabilities.
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StopBadware.org will ask the FTC to investigate FastMP3Search.com.ar, a Web site that offers free MP3 search software.
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Search giant now provides easy access to U.S. patent database.
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To: ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS  Contact: Douglas Morgan, +1-713-417-5577, for nanoTox   HOUSTON, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S.
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(InfoWorld) - Spammers have found a way to mine free Web-hosting services for cash. Online scammers have long used free hosting services such as Yahoo Geocities or Tripod as a way to get around e-mail filters that might otherwise recognize their spammy Web sites. But now some enterprising spammers have begun selling each other these free Web pages, according to security vendor McAfee Inc. For US$25 per week a spammer will sell 50 Web-hosting accounts that can be used to redirect Web traffic to sites that normally would be flagged. "These 'link providers' create and maintain thousands of free hosting accounts on behalf of the spammers," wrote McAfee's Nick Kelly in a recent posting to McAfee's Avert Labs blog. That posting can be foundÂ here. "They know that the bigger hosts are unlikely to get blacklisted because they have so many legitimate users," he added. Scammers also use the free Web pages to try to manipulate search engines, by making it look as if their Web sites are widely linked, said Adam O'Donnell, senior research scientist with Cloudmark Inc., an e-mail filtering company. And while the free hosting providers are taking steps to shut down this abuse, they appear to be fighting a losing battle. In late June, Cloudmark researchers were seeing about 1,500 phony URLs (uniform resource locators) on any given day on one of the most abused free hosting services (O'Donnell declined to name names). One month later, that number had jumped to 3,500. Spammers are simply able to out-pace the hosters' security teams, O'Donnell said. "They will gain more hosts for their pages than the company is able to take down," he said. The free hosters have been placed in a tough position because they do not want to shut down legitimate users, but they also do not have the technical resources to mine spam for Web pages that are being misused, O'Donnell said. Lately, however, the hosters have been partnering with security vendors to address the problem. Cloudmark is working with some hosting providers, hoping to sell them "reputation" information that tells them how many times their member URLs are being seen in spam. McAfee has been providing similar information to an undisclosed service provider, Kelly wrote. "This relationship has cut the abuse observed by us on that provider by over 90 percent in less than a week." He added, "let's hope those spammers are buying their new watches from pound$hop rather than Bolex this summer."
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SAN JOSE, Calif. and REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 9  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. , a leading provider of GPS-enabled silicon and premium software location platforms, and Openwave Systems Inc.
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The agency said this week that it had settled with a spammer who had failed to tell consumers they actually had to spend money to receive "free" products.
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com October 26, 2004, 7:41 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been enterprise directories as organizations spawn projects around identity infrastructure.
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The Zend Developer Zone has both announced a winner for their ZendCon commercial contest and posted another contest on their site today:   Now for our grand prize winner, a free ticket to ZendCon '07: Chris McKinney [with his slogan to end the commercial] 'a shiny badge with your name on it!'   The next contest follows in a similar theme, but this time the prize at stake is three free nights at the hotel where the conference is being held, the Hyatt Burlingame. Entering this contest is even easier than the last one - especially if you're already headed to the conference. All you have to do is register before September 12th - it's that easy!
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The Motley Fool - It's been four months to the day since I last wrote on the subject of the cell phone industry's plan to publish your unlisted cell phone number for all the world to see -- and charge you for the privilege. Fortunately, the U.S. Senate has not been sitting on its hands all this while. Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved a bill on the proposed "E411" cell phone directory, sending it on to the full Senate for a floor vote.
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Wireless networking startup Meraki plans to deliver free wireless Internet access, supported by advertising, across San Francisco by the end of the year, it announced Friday.An earlier&#160;attempt by Google and EarthLink&#160;to offer&#160;free city-wide Wi-Fi access in San Francisco&#160;foundered in August when&#160;EarthLink pulled out. They had planned a two-tier service, with faster, paid access provided by EarthLink and a more limited, advertising-funded service to be offered by Google. The search engine giant is also an investor in Meraki.Meraki will base the service on an existing project covering parts of the city, Free the Net, which has signed up 40,000 users over an area of 5 square kilometers since it began last March.To avoid the need for extensive cabling, Meraki will build the backbone of the network using a mesh network of solar-powered wireless repeaters installed on rooftops. The nodes will use some of their wireless capacity to offer Internet access to those nearby, and the rest to haul traffic back, via adjacent nodes, to the network&#39;s core.The company is looking for city residents willing to put a repeater on their roof. Those hosting a repeater will get free access to the service -- but so will their neighbors -- although for them, the signal may not be as strong. Although devices are shared, Meraki aims to deliver data rates of around 1Mbps&#160; to each user.Meraki will pay the cost of rolling out the service, and no public funds are involved, it said. Investors have offered the company an additional $20 million in venture capital to fund the move, it announced Friday.Ozone in Paris offers a similar wireless Internet service based on a network of wireless repeaters. Its service is only free for those who host repeaters, though: others must pay &#8364;18 ($26) a month.
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com October 18, 2004, 9:58 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been enterprise directories as organizations spawn projects around identity infrastructure.