Surfing For Dummies

Well, maybe not just for dummies, but for grandmas and grandpas and luddites and more, there comes a new service called Scandoo. The service acts as a front-end to Ask, Google, MSN Search, and Yahoo by scanning your search results in order to protect you from visiting websites that spread viruses or spyware, as well as to protect you from viewing offensive
content. To use Scandoo, you just visit the Scandoo homepage and enter your search query. You can select which engine you want your results pulled from by clicking the bullet next to that engine’s logo (Google is the default, but of course). Safe results have a green checkmark next to them, dangerous ones a red "X". Wanna see?

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Navio Systems is a startup based in Cupertino, Calif., the hometown of Apple, and this company is going to make waves. They have designed a system that stores the rights associated with a piece of content (ie. music, a game, a movie, etc.) within the file itself. Your rights to access this content is stored in a "digital locker" that tracks what you’ve purchased. The big deal about doing DRM this way is that Navio doesn’t care where that content came from — which means anyone can sell music, games, videos, etc. Anyone who? Well, there are already some big names going ga-ga over this technology: Fox, Sony, Disney/Pixar, Verizon, and Cingular are early Navio customers. Instead of duking it out with companies like iTunes about the prices, the rights-owners can just sell the content themselves, knowing it’s protected. By the end of next month, Navio will offer software to its customers (those big names) that will allow their users (like you and me) to play copy-protected videos on the iPod — ones that weren’t purchased from the iTunes music store! Stay tuned…

With Amazon’s flashy (or should I say AJAX-y) new e-reader you can read your purchased books online, print pages, add notes, bookmark pages, search for words or phrases in the book, view single pages or continuous pages by scrolling, and zoom in and out. The greatest thing about it, besides its sleek look and ease of use, is that you can upgrade your physical books to a digital version. If you buy a book that is in the Amazon Upgrade program, you are given the option to upgrade to online access at the end of the purchase process. Nice! Too bad it’s not a free upgrade…still, the one book I had available to upgrade was only $1.28. Not horrible. You can see the new e-reader in action here.