Webware

DSL Reports has gotten word that Comcast will soon be offering its Internet subscribers a bandwidth usage meter as early as the first week of January. With the new system users would presumably be able to see how much bandwidth they've used, akin to cellular service providers offering estimates to keep customers from going over their allotted limit. Such a tool for Internet bandwidth would let customers adjust their usage habits accordingly.

Back in October the communications company imposed a limit on user downloads to 250 GB a month without providing any monitoring tools of its own short of installing special software. Additionally, customers are only given one verbal warning before a one-year service suspension if they go over that limit.

Oddly enough when the cap was first announced, we had gotten a confirmation that Comcast would indeed be offering a bandwidth tracking tool of its own. This was later recanted by a Comcast spokesperson who said "there are numerous free or fee-based meters that are widely available on the Internet to anyone who wants one." Comcast's excessive use FAQ still urges people to use McAfee's security suite, but now notes that "we are in the process of creating a usage meter that will measure consumption for the Comcast account which will be available in the coming months."

Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas tells us the meter must first undergo an employee trial: "When that testing is complete, we plan to launch the meter to all of our high-speed Internet customers. It will be available for free via a customer's Comcast.net account and it will enable them to very easily keep track of their aggregate data usage each month."

Also, if you're looking to track your usage, worth checking out is my CNET colleague Seth Rosenblatt's look at half a dozen different bandwidth monitoring tools.

Related: Comcast's 50 Mbps service comes to OR, WA next month

The algorithmically generated tech news aggregator TechMeme now has a human editor, TechMeme founder and developer Gave Rivera revealed in a blog post today. The new overload to the TechMeme robots: Megan McCarthy, formerly of Valleywag and Wired.com.

Megan McCarthy, when she worked for Valleywag

(Credit: (c) Brian Solis, used with permission)

I talked with McCarthy about her new role. She describes her job as, "really, just to see all the things coming in, to make sure everything is current and relevant." The site posts about 140 to 150 items a day, she said. Her role is to make sure that erroneous items that the TechMeme algorithm flags aren't posted, that items are grouped appropriately, and that the most important items receive the highest billing on the site. The service still uses algorithms and link analysis to cluster stories, but McCarthy now has the final say and can modify the site's default story lineup and clustering.

TechMeme also runs the sites WeSmirch, Memeorandum, and BallBug. McCarthy will focus on TechMeme, but said she may also work on the other sites from time to time.

Although TechMeme is a 24-hour-a-day site, McCarthy can't, of course, work 24-7. "I don't think they'll be able to tell when I'm working or not," she said, modestly. "It should be pretty seamless. I started a few weeks ago and a lot of people haven't noticed."

To be fair to McCarthy, however, people have noticed. Here in the CNET newsroom, one writer told me recently she's seen that TechMeme story clusters now more frequently have the story that first covered a new item at the top of the group--not just the most-linked-to item.

In his post announcing the new hire, Rivera said, "Writers and publicists unhappy with the headlines on Techmeme are encouraged to transfer the bulk of their resentment to Megan." For this, McCarthy's experience at Valleywag will serve her well: "I have a very good background in people being dissatisfied with my work. I got a lot more complaints at Valleywag than commendations." Regarding her new role, she says, "I want to hear feedback. Any feedback helps."

Top of TechMeme: A story about TechMeme

In addition to the complaints, McCarthy will also be on the receiving end of entreaties from bloggers who want their stories placed well on the site. "It will be a welcome change," McCarthy says, "to the running and hiding that I used to do at Valleywag. I'm looking forward to when people have breaking stories that they shoot me an e-mail."

Asked if McCarthy has a mission to promote certain blogs or types of blogs (for example, up-and-coming blogs over mainstream sources), she said, "I'll take things on a post-by-post basis. If someone has something unique and special that adds to the story that's being told, you can make a case of wanting to expose that to more people."

Although McCarthy may be an open book when it comes to motivations and editorial perspective, TechMeme's algorithms remain proprietary. Asked if there was a move to make the code that places stories on the site more open, McCarthy demurred. "That would be something for Gabe," she said.

A company called Proximic says it has developed an easier way for consumers to do complex searches from their cell phones.

While Apple's iPhone has helped make surfing the Web from a mobile device easier, it's still difficult to type in complex search queries. But Proximic has introduced a new application called Promixic Agents for the iPhone that will help. The new technology, which is language-independent, uses point-and-click technology to highlight bits of text. This means that users don't have to type in a long string of search terms.

Search results from a Proximic search.

(Credit: Proximic)

Unlike other search engines, which rely on keywords to find results, the search technology from Proximic looks for patterns in the text to see where these patterns overlap. It then delivers relevant results based on these patterns.

Proximic co-founder and CEO Philipp Pieper believes that conducting searches in this manner provides more contextualized and relevant search results and also makes conducting complex searches much easier.

"Mobile phones today lack ease of use when it comes to complex searches," he said. "But with our technology users can click on a paragraph or a whole Web page and get other relevant stories or information."

The application is initially being offered on the iPhone through the Apple App Store. It's free to download. But Pieper said that the technology will eventually be available to other smartphones. Future releases of the software will also allow users to do much more, like find more relevant search results based on location. Other search companies such as Yahoo and Google are also using location-based technology to provide local search results for mobile devices.

Users can highlight an entire paragraph for a search query.

(Credit: Proximic)

But Pieper believes that the Proximic technology will be able to take location-based search a step further. For example, in future releases of the software, users will be able to go into a store and take a picture of a product description and then be able to search for that product or a product with similar features. Users will then get reviews of that product or will even get results for where they can buy that particular product nearby.

"Imagine you're shopping for a TV in Best Buy," Pieper said. "You punch the product description or take a picture of the description, and you can get search results that show you the same TV is being offered for a lower price down the street at another store."

Pieper went on to say that these kinds of search results could be a boon for mobile advertising.

"Advertisers are looking for useful ad placements," he said. "Especially now in the current economy, advertising needs to be useful and relevant to users. It has to be something that users value and engage in to make it worthwhile to the advertisers."

A new Firefox extension called Pirates of the Amazon lets users download movies, games, TV shows, and MP3s free of charge by cross referencing Amazon's product pages with torrent files from the Pirate Bay.

If the content can be found on the Pirate Bay's search index it shows up as a "Download 4 Free" link on the top of the Amazon product page. This links directly to the hosted .torrent tracker file, letting the user avoid having to make a purchase from Amazon in place of acquiring it illegally via BitTorrent.

The extension developer's site, along with the link to download the software is currently offline. The extension made the front page of Digg a few hours ago, which is likely what took the site out (not legal intervention). I've contacted Amazon to see if the company is making any efforts to block the extension but have not heard back yet. As it stands, the extension still works, albeit without the "Download 4 Free" thumbnail, which is hosted on the developer's servers.

As blog Torrentfreak notes, this is a really bad time for such an extension. Piracy continues to be a huge problem for movies, music albums, and PC games. Amazon's online MP3 store is one of the least expensive places to legally purchase DRM-free music, and this extension manages to make it that much simpler to pirate. It also coincides with a time of year when online retailers are getting an increase in traffic due to holiday sales.

That said, anyone who knows how to pirate content probably did not need this to continue their habit.

A similar add-on is available for IMDB users from Userscripts.org that cross references movie titles with torrent sites to find copies of films online. Despite its clear lean toward piracy, I'd argue that one of its more useful features it is to track down subtitle files, which can provide translations in smaller countries where the content might be legally available but not localized.

Below is a demo of how the extension works. Expect the developer's site, along with the download links to be back up later today.

Google and the Hallmark Channel announced Wednesday that they have formed a partnership that will make Google TV Ads the channel's exclusive advertiser. All of the ads will be placed on both the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel.

According to Hallmark, many of the advertisers it's now trying to attract through Google's TV Ads platform are new to the television platform, so it will provide more in-depth viewership data to help advertising partners make "real-time adjustments" to campaigns.

Google TV Ads are unique in the television advertising business. Instead of employing conventional techniques for television advertising, Google takes its online model and applies that to the medium. The company aims to provide greater relevancy by using proprietary targeting tools and an auction-based pricing system, which only costs advertisers when impressions are delivered to their ads.

Hallmark and Hallmark Movie Channel now join Google's growing list of TV advertising partners, which includes Sci-Fi, MSNBC, CNBC, and Bloomberg Television.

With the overall economy slumping, the tech industry is taking its fair share of hits. We'll keep updating the chart below as news of company changes comes in. See our complete coverage of how the tech sector is faring here: Tracking the tech downturn.

Know of a layoff not listed here? Let us know on this form or e-mail us.

See also: The spreadsheet of sunshine: Who's hiring.

If you're going to be traveling solo in a few weeks for round two of the holiday season, worth checking out is the Boarding Project. It's a social service that uses Twitter to helps you meet up with others at the same airport. To use it you simply tweet #boarding along with your airport code. It'll send you a reply with a link to the other Twitter users who you can message directly to meet up with.

What's neat is that Boarding Project's system does not require users to sign up for anything. It also seems to be keeping an eye out for any FAA or IATA airport code mentions in public tweets, and will send a reply to that user urging them to check in to see who's there.

The service plans to make money by offering special coupons to travelers, which could be shaped around any contextually relevant information from their Twitter stream. I didn't get any with my reply, but a discounted meal or bookstore coupon could make a delay or layover that much more bearable.

The Boarding Project can show you other stranded Twitterers at airports.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Flickr has quietly made a big change to its tagging system, which from now on will show who added a tag to a photo or video. As Flickr's Community Manager Heather Champ notes, this information was previously available through Flickr's API, but wouldn't show up on Flickr's photo pages. With the new system you simply hover over a tag and you'll get a tool tip that shows you the username of the person who added the tag.

Tags now have credit attached to them.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Since Flickr has just turned this feature on, all previous tags will simply get an "added by a Flickr Member" notation to preserve anonymity. Going forward you'll see the username, and can click on it to see other items that user has tagged.

The change, like YouTube and Ning's user agreement amendments on Tuesday, marks a trend toward having users better police themselves. With the addition of user credit on tags, there's no more anonymity when tagging since users must be signed up to make use of the feature.

It is a little surprising this took so long, since Flickr has shown credits on its on-picture notes for some time now. In practice this should give heavy Flickr taggers a little bit of a self-esteem boost, along with providing a simpler way to catch people who are using tags to spam their own shots. I wouldn't be surprised if the next step is some sort of karma system, or filtering this information into the recently overhauled activity stream pages.

One thing to note is that photo or video owners must have their privacy settings set to allow other users to add tags, something which is turned off by default. If you're looking to change that setting for all future uploads you can find it here.

(Credit: CNET)

On Wednesday, Amazon announced the throwing open of its virtual doors to iPhone and iPod Touch users everywhere with Amazon Mobile, a free app now available in the iTunes App Store.

It's a pretty nice offering that simplifies the search experience for products found not just on Amazon.com, but also on partner retailers Target and Macy's.

The bulk of the app is dominated by a search bar you can launch either from the home screen or from a separate Search screen. While there's a tiny promo area on Amazon Mobile's home screen, the app completely omits browsing by categories. The vast majority of shoppers probably beeline to their wanted product, but there should be an option to browse from the More menu.

The surprise feature is one Amazon is trying on for size that lets you snap a photo of a product to jog your memory later. In addition, the app will try to find the product in Amazon's catalog. Amazon Remembers, as the feature's called, was a little slow when we tried it out, but found our products in the end.

This visual shopping assistant is a great feature that replicates many others we've seen for iPhone and Google Android. SnapTell for iPhone (free) is also more flexible, pulling in data and price comparisons from IMDb, Barnes and Noble, and Wikipedia, along with Amazon.com.

However, Amazon Mobile's advantage to registered members is its simplified purchasing that honors 1-Click buying and Amazon Prime, and its memory for items you've flagged in your wish list, shopping cart, and now, photo bank.

Songbeat, a new start-up that takes aim at the file-sharing industry, has launched in the United States. Although it claims that its stream-recording functionality is legal because it doesn't use peer-to-peer technology to bypass copyright protection, it may not be so clear-cut.

Songbeat's software is downloaded to the user's Windows-based machine and allows the user to search for any music they desire, and then stream it directly to their computer through services like SeeqPod and Project Playlist. They can then record it to their hard drive or burn the song directly to a disc.

The software also allows users to record songs directly from Last.fm, owned by CNET News publisher CBS. By entering the name of an artist in Last.fm, the service will start streaming songs, which can be recorded in Songbeat.

Viability of downloading streaming songs aside, the legality of using Songbeat is in question. Songbeat claims that this form of "downloading" is legal in Germany, where it is based, and is nothing more than "the digital version of sitting by your old radio, waiting for your favorite show, armed with a blank cassette."

I doubt that the RIAA will approve of a desktop service downloading tracks directly from popular Web music streams without paying royalties. But for now, the company is operating without any interference from the music industry.

Recording the first 25 songs is free on Songbeat. Once that limit is reached, users will be required to make a $29.99 one-time payment to record an unlimited number of tracks.