PCIN.net Update

From Reuters:

If you ever thought it would be cool to have an Xbox laptop, or wished those old Atari games in your attic could be reborn on a retro handheld device, you might want to talk to Benjamin Heckendorn.

Better known as Ben Heck, the 32-year-old Wisconsin native has attained legendary status among “modders”, hobbyists who tinker with video-game hardware to make it do things the original designers never intended.

Technology Web sites enthusiastically track Heckendorn’s latest projects, which are marked by workmanship that makes the finished products look they rolled off a factory line instead of a basement workbench.

From SiliconValley.com:

About nine months ago, Steven Boal, founder of Coupons Inc., began to see the fabled hockey-stick-like growth that has made fortunes for so many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

That’s when he knew a recession was coming. The last time Boal saw this kind of growth was in 2001, after the dot-com collapse. Back then, his company, which provides technology to manufacturers and supermarkets who want to offer online coupons, was still too small to take advantage of the surge in scrimping.

From the New York Times:

After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law.

So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.

And because it would be extraordinarily difficult for the companies that collect such data to adhere to stricter rules for people in New York alone, these companies would probably have to adjust their rules everywhere, effectively turning the New York legislation into national law.

From the Globe and Mail:

It’s one of the fastest-growing, most lucrative departments at CBS Corp. right now. But the company’s president, Les Moonves, has a far more blunt way to describe how the network has turned March Madness basketball into an Internet gold mine.

“People sit at their computers and waste away their afternoons watching basketball games while their bosses are looking the other way,” Mr. Moonves told analysts recently in New York.

When asked about the advertising dollars CBS expects this year from online broadcasts of the annual U.S. college tournament starting today, Mr. Moonves simply added: “We are having our best year, by far. Ever.”