Technewsbuzz.com

So, web video is getting bigger. There’s your obvious news item for the day. If you want specifics though, comScore has them : 31 billion web videos were viewed in November by 170 million U.S. internet users. Google sites are still the establishment, accounting for just shy of 40% of views, with YouTube serving 99% of those. Hulu is the rising star, now in second place. Thing is, Hulu only adds up to 3%. Once you’re done counting YouTube views, the market becomes very fragmented. The average video length — four minutes — is still quite low. With Hulu at #2 and TV network sites …

Wow. I thought Modern Warfare 2’s night vision goggles made for a pretty special edition, but this edition of Enemy Zero , a mediocre Sega Saturn game , is the specialest of them all. The crate it comes in? Not a novelty crate! It’s the smallest container they could find that would hold all the wonderful things they wanted to give you. So what exactly is in this cornucopia of survival horror ephemera? Well, in addition to the “normal” special edition of the game, you get shirts, a promotional costume they used at shows, a replica of the gun from the game, a VHS tape of the game’s music (?!), and about 500 other things. It was put up on Yahoo! Auctions in…

Just when we though this decade had run short on phone form factors, Motorola comes along to blow our minds with this new Backflip / Enzo / Motus device . Amazingly, the most interesting part of this device might not even be the reverse hinge design, which flips the keyboard back behind the screen and faces out when not in use, but the fact that there’s a clear-as-day AT&T logo on it — something we’d heard rumored , but dared not believe until we saw it with our own eyes. The rest of the leaked photos go on to corroborate earlier rumors: there’s a touchpad on the back of the keyboard to aid in no-look scrolling, it’s running Blur on top of Android 1.5 (with a few AT&T apps, Yahoo search and no…

Your next business-office-away-from-home could be a McDonald’s. The fast-food chain has announced that, beginning in mid-January, it will offer free Wi-Fi Internet access at 11,000 of its 13,000 U.S. restaurants. The service is presented as a partnership with AT&T. McDonald’s already offers free Wi-Fi in some other countries, such as Belgium and Italy. McDonald’s currently charges U.S. customers $2.95 for two hours of wireless Internet, although AT&T customers get free Wi-Fi. No Purchase Required McDonald’s said that, in addition to no hourly charges, no food or drink purchases will be required. In fact, in …

Business-oriented social network LinkedIn has a new feature out called faceted search . As you search for something or someone, it automatically generates search filters, based on your query results, which let you quickly refine your search. The filters are based on 8 facets: current company, past company, location, relationship, location, industry, school, and profile languages. In practice, this means you can create amazingly precise queries. For example, I’ve searched for web designers in the UK, who speak English, who used to work at Yahoo, and who are my first and second connections (meaning, I’m either friends with them directly, or they’re friends of friends). The search results adapt instantly as you apply the filters, making the entire process quick and effortless. While this is great for…

Executives from eBay and Craigslist testified in a Delaware court over the course of the week over the auction giant’s stake in the classifieds leader. If you didn’t fork over $400 to watch today’s live stream of the culture clash between the folksy Craigslist and pragmatic eBay, I’ve pieced together what you missed: According to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, Google had tried to buy early Craigslist employee Phillip Knowlton’s shares, but Craigslist became more interested in eBay because it would be satisfied with a minority stake, whereas Google wanted to buy the whole company. Buckmaster said he also discussed selling the shares to Yahoo, Salon.com, the venture arm of Bertlesmann…

Topics: OS , Freeware , Internet Tools , Widget Watch , Snow Leopard Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPhone and its App Store juggernaut, it’s just sometimes it seems that people have forgotten all about the iPhone app’s father: the Dashboard widget . First introduced in Mac OS X Tiger in 2005, widgets changed the way people quickly accessed simple information on their Mac. And though Apple did not create the concept of a widget , it did present them in the best way. With the press of a button I had access to my portfolio, my Yahoo! news, my local weather, calculators for everything, translators…

RadiusIM , the New York-based startup behind the eponymous location-aware instant messaging service, is actively trying to find a buyer, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources. We first caught wind of the company back in August 2006, and dubbed it ‘another proximity-based IM service’ . The company is not too shy about e-mailing all the usual suspects to see if they’d be interested in acquiring them outright, so either they wanted this to become public knowledge and we’re helping them, or they’re so desperate to find someone to take the service off their hands that they really had no other option left but to contact anyone who could be potentially interested by e-mail. Or both…

The results are in: Bing, Yahoo, and Google have all released their top search trends for 2009. We’ve been following them over the last few days, and decided we’d put them side by side to see if any interesting patterns emerged. Note that Bing’s results are US only (and Yahoo’s exclude other English-speaking properties) so we’re including Google’s US results for the most apples-to-apples comparison. Before we draw any conclusions, it’s important to note that the methods employed are neither consistent between search engines, nor are they scientific to begin with. Aside from the obvious removal of porn and other NSFW related queries, the search engines generally ignore …

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday said its chief financial officer is departing at the end of the year and will be replaced by the man now responsible for the books at the division that produces Microsoft Office and other business programs. CFO Chris Liddell led an effort this year to slice $3 billion in costs at Microsoft after it became clear the technology sector would not be immune from the effects of the economic meltdown. The plan included Microsoft’s first mass layoffs, wage freezes as well as cuts to employee travel and other expenses. He joined Microsoft in 2005, and during his tenure…