Listen in RealAudio

In order to ensure that customers migrate to the new Internet Explorer 7 Web browser, Microsoft will offer the program to Windows users as part of its automatic security update program. Microsoft's aging browser, IE6, is riddled with security holes that allow malicious hackers to infect PCs with viruses, worms and other nasty stuff. The final version of IE7 is due late this year, and will be flagged as a "high priority" automatic download. Many security-conscious consumers have already migrated to other browsers, including Firefox.

Guest: Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle

Listen in RealAudio

Press critic Jay Rosen teaches journalism at New York University and writes the PressThink weblog, where he advocates more citizen involvement in journalism. He is also an advisor to the new Center for Innovation in Journalism at American Public Media, which aims to make news coverage smarter and more relevant by tapping the knowledge and insights of the public.

Now, with a small investment by Craig Newmark of the online classified site Craigslist, Rosen has announced plans to start an online investigative journalism venture that will get its story ideas from the public. NewAssignmnet.net will also seek donations to pay professional journalists to write and edit the stories. Rosen says NewAssignment.net will not compete with traditional media, but will seek to do investigative work the mainstream press is ignoring.

Listen in RealAudio

Apple Computer has added new television shows, including the sitcom "Friends," to its iTunes store. Downloads cost $1.99 per episode, and can be viewed on a computer or video iPod.

Commentator Brian Cooley with CNET says adding more video content is one way Apple is trying to maintain its iPod dominance as a new threat from Microsoft looms.

Listen in RealAudio

Hacktivismo, a group of hackers, human rights activists, lawyers and security experts, has released an instant message program that allows users to communicate anonymously. ScatterChat works with popular IM programs like AIM and MSN. ScatterChat's lead developer, Joe Testa, says the program is for dissidents living under oppressive governments.

Also today: Internet phone companies have promised for years that sound quality of calls routed over the 'Net would get better and better. But a new study says the quality has been steadily declining since 2004.

Listen in RealAudio

The Democracy Player is a program that lets users subscribe to video channels, download programs in the background, and view most video formats in full-screen resolution. There are 500 channels, including popular video blogs like "Rocketboom" and mainstream content like ABC News. There are Windows, Mac and Linux versions of the free, open source program.

The Democracy Player has a political mission as well: to give individuals more control over the TV they watch and produce. The project is being led by the non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation, which is dedicated to free, open access to media.

Co-founder Nicholas Reville says Democracy Player does a better job than internet video sites such as YouTube of providing a picture quality closer to traditional television.

Listen in RealAudio

A new study says people who live in San Francisco, Seattle, Las Vegas and other major western cities are more likely to become victims of identity theft than residents of big cities east of the Mississippi River. Sperling's Best Places conducted a study of the 50 largest metropolitan areas. Bert Sperling says affluent, highly wired cities are the riskiest. High rates of methamphetamine use also seem to correlate with ID theft.

Listen in RealAudio

National Geographic is known for bringing the world alive through its magazine and television documentaires. Now it's aiming to educate the world about diverse cultures through music. National Geographic World Music is a music store, and includes videos, photos, maps and features from National Geographic Magazine.

Listen in RealAudio

The popular image of bloggers is quite different from reality,
according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

We tend to think of blogs as mainstream media alternatives, heavily focused on news, politics, technology and government. Many blogs fit that category, but the survey shows blogs are far more personal than that.

Guest: Pew Internet's Amanda Lenhart

Listen in RealAudio

In a new report, antivirus company McAfee says writers of malicious code are collaborating more and more with their partners in crime from around the world. McAfee says virus writing has taken on the characteristics of the open source software movement, in which software writers work together over the Internet to improve their code. The analysis appears in McAfee's Sage, a new semi-annual report.

A separate report concludes that American businesses are actually losing less money due to viruses and other security breaches every year. According to a survey of 616 U.S. companies by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI's Computer Intrusion Squad, losses decline almost 20 percent over the last year.

Listen in RealAudio

Finding the words to your favorite songs has always been a hit or miss experience. The Internet has helped, but Web sites devoted to lyrics are unauthorized, often innacurate, and notorious for peddling dangerous spyware. Now, digital entertainment company Gracenote say it's obtained licenses from record labels to distribute lyrics to consumers.

Gracenote now has the rights to the lyrics of more than 1 million songs from several major labels including BMG and Vivendi Universal. Gracenote says it will work with its partners, such as Apple and Yahoo!, to deliver lyrics by download and streaming. For example, consumers might have the option of downloading the lyrics of the songs they buy on iTunes. The service will also show up in search engines.

Listen in RealAudio

Intel's fast, energy efficient Core 2 Duo chips hit the market later this month amid high hopes they can boost the company's sagging sales. Hardware reviewers are nearly unanimous in their praise of the chips.

Guest: Jason Cross, senior technology analyst for Extreme Tech

Listen in RealAudio

Dan Briody wrote a column raging against rude cell phone behavior for InfoWorld magazine back in 2000. He suggested a list of dos and don'ts -- his ten commandments of cell phone etiquette. The article keeps getting passed around the blogoshpere, and it still looks fresh.

Listen in RealAudio

Computer experts are always telling us to make copies of our documents, digital photos, mp3s, and other important files in case of computer failure. Good idea, but most us never bother because of the hassle involved. A couple of new services have cropped up that make backup a little easier.

CNET's Rafe Needleman writes about two offsite backup services, Mozy and Carbonite, on his Web 2.0 blog.

Listen in RealAudio

Several news sources reported last week that Microsoft is planning to sell an iPod-like device, which should be available for the holiday shopping season. The Seattle Times says the device will carry the XBox brand. It's expected that the media player will be able to download songs wirelessly.

Analyst Phil Leigh with Inside Digital Media says in order to succeed against the enormously popular iPod, a Microsoft music player must have innovative new features and be easy to use.

Listen in RealAudio

Jimmy Wales challenged our notion of the formal, top-down style of encyclopedias with Wikipedia, an online, group-edited reference source. Now, Wales wants to bring the same collaborative spirit to the rough-and-tumble world of American politics. Wales has just taken the wraps off Campaigns Wikia, which aims to help campaigns tap into public knowledge and opinion through Internet wikis. Wales says he hopes Campaigns Wikia can help people of all political persuasions put partisanship aside.

Listen in RealAudio

In the world of video blogging, you can't get any bigger than Amanda Congdon. For the past 18 months, She has been the anchor for the hugely popular video blog Rocketboom. Her perfect skin and over-the-top, cheerful, 3-minute daily round-up of current events and quirky web findings propelled Rocketboom to the top of the vlog world. This week, the site finds out if there's such a thing as Rocketboom without Congdon. She left the site because of differences with creative partner Andrew Baron.

BusinessWeek Internet editor Heather Green, one of the first to recognize Rocketboom's rising star says Congdon's departure is evidence of video blogging's shallow roots.

Minnesota stories video blogger Chuck Olson, however, says there's nothing more to the breakup than two creative people who can't get along in a high pressure environment. Olson is the Minneapolis correspondent for Rocketboom and a friend of both Congdon and Baron.

Other sites:

Amanda Congdon's post-Rocketboom blog
Askaninja
Tiki Bar

Listen in RealAudio

Women underestimate their online skills more often than men do, even though they're just as competent according to a new study. The study's author believes the perception could contribute to women avoiding careers they're otherwise qualified to do. Northwestern University researcher Eszter Hargittai and Steven Shafer measured a people's abilities to find information out on the web. They found, by and large, women could find the information as well as men could. Then they also found women don't think of themselves as particularly skilled at it. Their results are published in the June issue of Social Science Quarterly.

Listen in RealAudio

Live, play-by-play blogs are one way World Cup fans can keep up with the action while they're at work. The New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post have respectable blog offerings. Another site, worldcupblog.org, also has a comprehensive live blog site, albeit with less of a filter than the more mainstream outlets. Based in a rented apartment in Berlin, a group of sports fans with some business acumen managed to provide live updates for all 62 World Cup match-ups so far. Some of the unique worldcupblog's offerings, boasts partner Sean Keener, are a section devoted to referee calls and an analysis of the teams whose coaches required the players to abstain from sex during the tournament.

Listen in RealAudio

A new handheld device snaps digital photos of text and reads it back to users in a synthesized voice. The device, which went on sale this week for about $3,500, was developed by inventor Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation of the Blind.

The Federation's James Gashel says the reader is the most significant new technology for blind people in the last 30 years.

Listen in RealAudio

Ever since Apple decided to use Windows-friendly Intel chips in its computers, consumers have more options about which operating system to run on their Mac PCs. First came Apple's own Boot Camp software, which lets users switch from the MacOS to Windows. Now, a startup company called Parallels has released software that also allows users to choose their operating system.

Guest: Leander Kahney is managing editor for Wired News and creator of the Cult of Mac Weblog.

Listen in RealAudio

A new report from the Business Roundtable, an influential lobbying group made up of CEOs of major corporations, says the U.S. is ill-prepared to restore the Internet in the event of a major disruption.

Tom Lehner, Business Roundtable Public Policy Director, says he's concerned about two kinds of Internet disasters: terrorist attacks and natural catastrophes.