Officials are looking to give the go ahead to a plan to create an Internet domain specifically for adult websites.

The net’’s governing body (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) previously agreed to the .xxx scheme but was forced to pull back over protests from US conservative groups.

But the decision maybe overturned after an independent review concluded the proposal should be reconsidered, the BBC reported.

Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, which suggested the plans for .xxx and would sell the domain names, said: “If the contract is signed, we could be selling names by the end of the year.”

Lawley added: “Those that do want to see it can; those that don”t can filter it out.”

The debate is set to continue on March 12

Google on Monday unveiled a new Google Labs experiment that turns public data sets into interactive charts that can be embedded in Web pages.
Google Public Data Explorer relies on the visualization technology that Google obtained when it acquired Trendalyzer in 2007.

The technology is also used to power Google Chart Tools, an umbrella name for the Google Chart API and the Google Visualization API, which can be used to add charts and graphs to Web sites.
“With the Data Explorer, you can mash up data using line graphs, bar graphs, maps and bubble charts,” explains Jurgen Schwarzler, a statistician on Google’s public data team, in a blog post. “The visualizations are dynamic, so you can watch them move over time, change topics, highlight different entries and change the scale. Once you have a chart ready, you can easily share it with friends or even embed it on your own Web site or blog.”

The release of Public Data Explorer builds upon Google’s effort to provide visual support to search queries.

In April last year, Google added charts derived from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and U.S. Census Bureau data to relevant searches.

In November, Google expanded its search visualization support to include 17 more world development indicators from the World Bank.

Monday’s announcement brought with it news that Google has integrated into its search visualization tools public data from five new sources: the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

3/8 NO RELEASES

3/9

(PS3/360)Final Fantasy XIII: Sort of ironic that a game with so many editions would be called “Final” Fantasy. Anyways I have heard that the PS3 version is better than the 360 for some reason and that you can pick this game up without having to know what you missed in the previous…I’d be lying if I told you what that roman numeral stood for.

(PS3)Yakuza 3

(Wii)Calling-Horror game for the Wii…interesting.

(PS3/360)Resident Evil 5:Gold Edition- If you have yet to pick this up I highly suggest you do so regardless of the system. This was my first Resident Evil game and I fell in love with it.

(PC)Assassin’s Creed II-My favorite original story for a video game. Also highly suggested to everyone who hasn’t had the pleasure to play one of Ubisoft’s most interesting stories.

3/10

(PSP)BlazBlue:Calamity Trigger

(PC)NEW Turtle Beach HPA2 Headset-I have a Turtle Beach I use for my 360 gaming and regardless of how great it is for shooters it adds so much to the experience even if you are playing a singleplayer game (i.e. Mass Effect). Also its worth mentioning because the previous models usually get a big price cut so you may want to give it a look.

3/11

(PC)Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II Gold Edition

(360)Supreme Commander 2

3/12 NO RELEASES

3/13 NO RELEASES

3/14

(DS)Pokemon Soulsilver/Heartgold Edition-Although I am much older now I can not criticize the continued releases of these games because I guarantee if I was to play it I would be just as in love with this one as I was with the old ones. If Microsoft was to make a cheap remake of a pokemon type game for arcade where you can vs other trainers through Live and train your “whateverMon” I would be the first to spend the points.

YouTube is making the tens of millions of videos it hosts more accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing by putting automatic captions on them.

The Google-owned company said this use of speech recognition technology is probably the biggest experiment of its kind online.

Previously captions were only on a small amount of content.

“A core part of YouTube’s DNA is access to content,” said the firm’s product manager Hunter Walk.

YouTube said by opening all this content to those who have not really been able to access it in the past should democratise information and “help foster greater collaboration and understanding”.

Initially the feature will apply to English language videos, with other languages being added in the coming months.

In November last year, YouTube rolled out automatic captions to a handful of partners including the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and National Geographic.

‘Real solution’

The technology behind speech recognition has been around for about 50 years, said Google engineer Mike Cohen, and has finally become good enough to be used on a large scale.

“I have been working on speech technology for 25 years,” Mr Cohen told the BBC.

“There have been steady improvements and this is the culmination of lots of work over years and years. We have had to work on a wide variety of problems like accent variation, background noise, the variation in language, in pronunciation.”

The project team stressed, however, that the product is not perfect.

In one demonstration, software engineer Ken Harrenstien illustrated how the technology mistook the words “sim card” for “salmon” when Google executive Vic Gundotra addressed a developers meeting.

“It is not a complete solution but it is a step on the way to the real solution,” he said.

“It’s difficult to get every word exactly right but sometimes that doesn’t matter and other times it’s amusing.”

Mr Harrenstien has worked on the project for the last five years. As someone who has been deaf from when he was a child, he said the launch of this feature was a big deal personally.

“This is huge. It is what I have dreamt about for so many years. The fact that you can now go on to any video online and expect to see captions is unbelievable and the fact I had a part in this is great.”

Students from the California School for the Deaf, in Freemont, made a video to show how much of a difference this tool means to them.

“We felt like we weren’t part of the world. We felt excluded,” said Angel Harrington.

“Now we really can completely understand what is going on and we feel like we are on an equal playing field.”

Ben Hubbard from Berkeley said this tool is a great way to open up the more than 500 courses it offers online.

“We are always looking for a way to extend the reach of this stuff and extend the reach of the content to a whole new audience.”

Bravo, I feel it is a great initiative.

Airlines have started witnessing an improvement in demand but, instead of profits, might register losses to the tune of USD 5.6 billion this year, says the latest International Air Transport Association (IATA) report.

“The three per cent increase in freight volumes from December to January is particularly encouraging. We can start to see the future with some cautious optimism. But better volumes do not necessarily mean better profits. Passenger yields are still 15 per cent below peak levels and we expect 2010 losses to be at USD 5.6 billion,” IATA Director General and CEO Giovanni Bisignani said in a statement.

IATA said, in January this year, that demand for international scheduled air traffic showed improvement. January passenger demand was up 6.4 per cent, while a 1.2 per cent increase in capacity pushed load factor to 75.9 per cent compared to last year, it said. International cargo demand showed a 28.3 per cent improvement with a 3.7 per cent increase in capacity pushing load factor to 49.6 per cent, a significant change from 40.1 per cent recorded in January 2009.

The year-on-year increases reflect a steady improvement from the precipitous fall in demand that characterised the early part of 2009, rather than merely a dramatic improvement in the month this year, the report said. However, demand must improve by a further 2 per cent to return to the peak levels of early 2008. But improvements are also geography-based, the report added. The best signs of improvement have been seen in markets with strongest economic recovery like Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Asia-Pacific carriers experienced 6.5 per cent increase in demand compared to the previous year.

The region, which is leading the global economic recovery, has realised 31 per cent demand improvement, while those in North America and Europe saw it increase by 2.1 per cent and 3.1 per cent, respectively. Middle Eastern carriers grew throughout recession with growth accelerating to 23.6 per cent in January, it said.