Internet & Media

Facebook photo a Powerball prank? A million users hedge bets

If you can't be the winner of a multimillion-dollar jackpot, you might as well snag your 15 minutes of fame -- and have a little fun -- for not winning it.

That seems to have been the thinking of one Nolan Daniels, who posted a photo of himself on Facebook last night, holding what he claimed was one of the winning Powerball tickets. Daniels asked his fellow Facebookers to share the photo, saying he'd give a random sharer a million-dollar slice of the pie.… Read more

Google: This is your Knowledge Graph on drugs

Searching for information about medicine on Google? You'll soon find drugs injected into your search results.

Google rolled out an update to search today injects key facts about medicine into the results page. You'll find side effects, warnings, related medications and other information on the right-hand side of the screen. The information comes from a variety of sources including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Library of Medicine and the Department of Veterans Affairs, Google said.

It's the latest development in the Knowledge Graph, Google's growing database of connections between hundreds of millions … Read more

Ouch! Yahoo ordered to pay $2.7B in Mexican lawsuit

A Mexican court walloped Yahoo with a huge judgment today, ordering it to pay $2.7 billion to a couple companies accusing it of breaching contract related to a yellow pages listings service.

Details are pretty scarce about the initial complaint. Yahoo's press release noted that Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas, S.A. de C.V. claimed breach of contract, breach of promise, and lost profits arising from contracts related to a yellow pages listings service.

Yahoo, meanwhile, said it believes the claims are without merit. It plans to vigorously pursue all appeals.

We'… Read more

Appellate judge compares Aereo's antennas to tax dodge

NEW YORK -- A federal appeal's court here sounded highly doubtful of Aereo's claims that by using thousands of tiny Internet-connected antennas to deliver live TV to customers, the company had successfully sidestepped copyright infractions.

Aereo is the Barry Diller-backed Internet video service that currently provides users in New York with live TV. For $12 a month, Aereo will connect subscribers, via the Web, to a tiny antenna that captures over-the-air TV signals and enables them to watch TV on their PC. Aereo managers don't pay a dime to access these shows.

They should, according to the … Read more

Google acquires BufferBox, provider of delivery lockers

Google said today that it has acquired BufferBox, which rents temporary lockers to be used as shipping addresses for more convenient parcel deliveries.

"We want to remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money, and we think the BufferBox team has a lot of great ideas around how to do that," a Google spokesperson told CNET in an e-mail.

BufferBox has set up storage lockers in and around Toronto. Users sign up and receive a shipping address they can use with online merchants. When packages arrive, users receive a … Read more

Facebook app now auto-uploads smartphone photos

Facebook is releasing photo sync for iOS to the general Facebook community, after months of testing.

The new feature, available for Android and the iPhone, automatically uploads photos taken on a smartphone to a private album on a user's Facebook profile. Those photos can then be removed, kept private, or shared publicly. A total of 2GB worth of photos can be stored from mobile devices.

Facebook said it began testing photo sync in August and "will continue to make it available to more people."

Don't like the idea of your photos automatically sent to your Facebook … Read more

Fab holidays so far for Fab

Fab is reporting record sales for the Thanksgiving period, with roughly 33 percent of purchases made by way of its mobile apps.

The quirky flash-sales site sold more than $6.5 million worth of product in the span from Black Friday through Cyber Monday -- nearly four times the amount sold during the same period last year, the company said. Cyber Monday was particularly busy. Fab made the most money ever on a single day, pulling in $1.3 million in sales.

Fab said its mobile apps were partially responsible. A third of the sales came from the apps, with … Read more

Apple's streaming music service could debut in 2013 -- analyst

Apple could soon take on Pandora and Spotify directly, market-research firm BTIG Research writes in a new report.

The firm today predicts that Apple will launch a streaming-music service at some point in 2013. The research outfit, which says that it came to the conclusion after holding interviews with industry executives, said Apple's iTunes 11 launch yesterday is only further proof the service is coming.

BTIG pointed to the addition of a "Radio" option in the horizontal bar in iTunes 11, saying that while the current offering of stations "is unappealing to most consumers today, we … Read more

Friday Poll: Has Facebook jumped the shark?

A lot of things have jumped the shark. The Fonz did it first, literally donning water skis for the stunt and marking the beginning of the end for "Happy Days."

MySpace did it. Even the phrase "jumped the shark" has done it.

And what about the most popular social-networking site? In some people's eyes, Facebook is pulling on its swim trunks and eyeing the big beastie.

Bradley Horowitz, chief of rival Google+, argues that Facebook has already landed on the other side of the shark. Horowitz recently called Facebook out for the way it implements … Read more