Oracle announced that Hurd has joined Oracle as president and has been named to Oracle’s board of directors. In his new role, Hurd joins Safra Catz as co-presidents under Ellison. . . . → Read More: Oracle announced that Hurd has joined Oracle as president]]>

Oracle announced Sept. 6 that the database giant has hired former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd as co-president reporting to Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison.

Oracle announced that Hurd has joined Oracle as president and has been named to Oracle’s board of directors. In his new role, Hurd joins Safra Catz as co-presidents under Ellison. Charles Phillips, formerly co-president with Catz, announced his resignation from the company on Sept. 6. Phillips’ departure means Oracle’s office of the president will remain a duopoly rather than a triumvirate.

Hurd resigned from HP in August amid a scandal around an investigation by HP’s board relating to a sexual harassment allegation and reports of fudged expense reports.

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The building, located in the famous rue Beaubourg close to the Pompidou museum, is being renovated in an environmentally friendly way.

“Luckily, the building is connected to . . . → Read More: The warmth generated by human bodies in the Parisian metro will help heat a public housing project]]> The warmth generated by human bodies in the Parisian metro will help heat a public housing project in the city center, the capital’s largest owner of social housing said on Friday.

The building, located in the famous rue Beaubourg close to the Pompidou museum, is being renovated in an environmentally friendly way.

“Luckily, the building is connected to the metro through a staircase,” Francois Wachnick from Paris Habitat told Reuters.

The calories emitted by passengers, around 100 watts per person, combined with the heat from trains moving along tracks and the underground location of the metro mean that corridor temperatures are 14-20 degrees Celsius all year around.

The project, which is based on geothermal technology, aims to draw heat from subterranean passages and move it to heat exchangers before supplying heating pipes. The system will complement district heating.

The project should slash carbon dioxide emissions by a third compared to using a boiler room connected to district heating, Wachnick said.

A tender for the experimental project, which is expected to heat 17 flats, will be launched before the end of the year, and work is expected to start in 2011.

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Wise is the freshly chastised sportswriter from The Washington Post who was suspended last week for taking his company’s reputation too lightly when he intentionally used Twitter to post false information on the Web. When Wise keyed in a phony scoop . . . → Read More: The good people at Twitter should send a bottle of champagne to Mike Wise]]>

The good people at Twitter should send a bottle of champagne to Mike Wise.

Wise is the freshly chastised sportswriter from The Washington Post who was suspended last week for taking his company’s reputation too lightly when he intentionally used Twitter to post false information on the Web. When Wise keyed in a phony scoop about Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger–using a Twitter account that identified Wise as a Washington Post reporter–he was trying to show how some journalists and bloggers will reprint unfounded rumors without doing any fact checking. He intended to illustrate the weakness of blogs and social networks as news sources.

Instead, Wise succeeded in highlighting Twitter’s importance as an information pipeline.

No, not all the news distributed on the social network is accurate but what Wise should have realized is that Twitter is just a platform that enables anyone to publish info. The quality of information found there will vary widely and it’s up to readers to determine the source’s credibility. Legions of well-regarded journalists and bloggers use Twitter daily to alert readers to breaking news and provide them with a heads up about recently published stories.

And it’s not just pros who break news on Twitter. Some of the first reports and photographs about the heroic crash landing of a U.S. Airways commercial jet on New York‘s Hudson River came from non-professional journalists using Twitter. The first reports about the fatal shooting at Fort Hood in November first circulated on Twitter.

Twitter spokesman Matt Graves had this interesting statistic: one quarter of all Twitter posts include a link to another piece of content, such as a news story or video. Twitter has 190 million unique monthly visitors, so that’s a lot of content zooming across the platform.

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Accepting credit cards is an easy way to collect payments online and increase the sales of the company. It’s a convenient way to accept payments and one that you can get without a major hassle.

Pricing merchant accounts starts with the discount rate. Everybody always asks for this rate when comparing merchant . . . → Read More: Ecommerce Merchant Account Guidelines at eComTechnology]]> Ecommerce Merchant Account Guidelines at eComTechnology

Accepting credit cards is an easy way to collect payments online and increase the sales of the company. It’s a convenient way to accept payments and one that you can get without a major hassle.

Pricing merchant accounts starts with the discount rate. Everybody always asks for this rate when comparing merchant accounts. For internet based transactions, the discount rate will typically be about 2.1 to 2.5%. PayPal is a merchant account provider that charges a flat rate of about 3%. Even though this may seem to be easier to reconcile, it will ultimately cost most merchants more money simply because 80% or more of your transactions should go through at that lower qualified rate.

A non-qualified or mid-qualified rate will usually add on an additional .5% to 1.5% for these transactions that are “downgraded” because they are either a rewards card which cost more to process or a government or business credit card.

Apply today at eComTechnology

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Google will shell out $8.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with seven people who argued the Google Buzz social service violated users’ privacy.

Google appeared to launch Buzz Feb. 9 with good intentions, allowing users to opt in to a service that lets users share and discuss links, photos and videos with their Gmail . . . → Read More: Google will shell out $8.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with seven people]]>

Google will shell out $8.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with seven people who argued the Google Buzz social service violated users’ privacy.

Google appeared to launch Buzz Feb. 9 with good intentions, allowing users to opt in to a service that lets users share and discuss links, photos and videos with their Gmail contacts.

However, the company quickly ran afoul of users who realized their e-mail contacts were being exposed to users of Buzz with whom they did not want to share their contacts.

The lack of explicit permissions irked people who felt Google was taking too much license with their data.

Google scrambled to close these privacy holes and add more user controls, but the damage had been done.

Seven individuals filed a class-action suit in San Francisco court, arguing that Google violated privacy law in with Buzz.

The AFP said the plaintiffs will receive $2,500 apiece, with most of the settlement money funding organizations focused on Internet privacy policy or privacy education. Some $2 million will go to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

Google Buzz was the first of two major privacy snafus on Google’s part this year. The search engine in May admitted its Street View cars has accidentally collected 600 gigabytes of user data from WiFi networks in countries all over the world.

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WinRAR is a powerful compression tool with many integrated additional functions to help you organize your compressed archives.

… puts you ahead of the crowd when it comes to compression. Consistently creating smaller archives, WinRAR is often even faster than the competition. This will save you disc space, transmission . . . → Read More: Send large emails with WinRAR compression at eComTechnology]]> Educational institutions receive a discount  on WinRAR at eComTechnology.

WinRAR is a powerful compression tool with many integrated additional functions to help you organize your compressed archives.

… puts you ahead of the crowd when it comes to compression. Consistently creating smaller archives, WinRAR is often even faster than the competition. This will save you disc space, transmission costs AND valuable working time as well.

… has a graphic user interface, supports drag & drop, and can also be integrated to your context menu.

… is ideal for multimedia files. WinRAR automatically recognizes and selects the best compression method. The special compression algorithm compresses multimedia files, executables and object libraries particularly well…. is also ideal, if you are sending data through the web. Its 128 bit password encryption and its authenticity signature technology will give you peace of mind you are looking for.

eComTechnology is a reseller of  WinRAR multi-user licenses.

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When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple TV Sept. 1 in one of his patented oh-there’s-one-more-thing-moments, analysts rushed to compare the digital TV service to the forthcoming and ballyhooed Google TV.

The freshened Apple TV is like the old hobbyist passion, albeit streamlined and sans storage.

Where Apple once offered a $229 box for users to . . . → Read More: Apple TV get freshened up]]>

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple TV Sept. 1 in one of his patented oh-there’s-one-more-thing-moments, analysts rushed to compare the digital TV service to the forthcoming and ballyhooed Google TV.

The freshened Apple TV is like the old hobbyist passion, albeit streamlined and sans storage.

Where Apple once offered a $229 box for users to buy — another expensive piece of hardware — the company is now offering a quirky hockey puck of a device for $99.

The device, shown here, sports an HDMI connector, Ethernet and WiFi, optical audio and USB plugs. There is no local storage.

The new Apple TV is like a streaming machine, offering high-definition movie rentals for $4.99 and a TV rental option for 99 cents a show. The popular Netflix streaming service is baked in, as is integration with YouTube, Flickr and MobileMe.

Google TV, meanwhile, is an ambitious, sweeping effort to let users turn their televisions into computers.

Google TV attempts to marry channel surfing with Web surfing. The service, slated for a fall release, will let users navigate between all their channels and all their favorite Websites and Web applications through Google’s Chrome Web browser.

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 The move came after a masseuse who offered . . . → Read More: Craigslist.com has dropped its “adult services” listings]]>

 Last year, Craigslist replaced its “erotic services” ads with a new “adult” category it said would be closely screened.

 The move came after a masseuse who offered her services on Craigslist was killed and a client was charged with her murder. The man charged in the case committedsuicide last month in a Boston prison cell.

 ConnecticutAttorney GeneralRichard Blumenthal is co-leading a group of states attorneys general looking into the company’s efforts to purge illegal ads from it site.

 The private company could be earning $36.3 million or more a year from prostitution andhuman trafficking, Blumenthal said at the time, citing published reports.

 In a May blog post, Craigslist Chief ExecutiveJim Buckmaster wrote that “… Craigslist has gone beyond fulfilling its legal obligations, far beyond classifieds industry norms, has more than lived up to any promises it made, and working together with its partners is in fact a leader in the fight against human trafficking and exploitation.”

 Company spokespeople could not immediately be reached for comment on Saturday.

 Craigslist has said it had donated all revenues from its “erotic services” listings to charity. When it switched to its “adult services” listings last year it said it would make no commitment to how those revenues would be used.

The online site says it is used by over 50 million people in theUnited States, with over 20 billion monthly page views.

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