U.N.: No tsunami yet from Indonesia quake

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U.N.: No tsunami yet from Indonesia quake

By Nick Wadhams, Associated Press Writer | March 28, 2005
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations had no immediate reports of tsunami from the major earthquake that struck Monday off the west coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island, a U.N. official said.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. disaster relief coordinator, told a briefing there had been widespread panic in areas near the quake, which he said was a "great earthquake" and not an aftershock.

"The hard-hit population of western Sumatra have been again struck by a very large earthquake," Egeland said. "We do not have reports of any tsunami yet and we have also only limited reports of damage."

He said there were "unconfirmed reports" of deaths on Nias, a renowned surfing spot badly hit by the earlier quake.

Egeland said there were thousands of relief officials in the region, and they were ready to respond if casualties and damages were reported.

Yahoo to Step Into Blogs, Social Networking

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday it will soon start invitation-only testing of its new Web log and social networking service Yahoo 360, which aims to better connect users to people they already know.

The Yahoo 360 test release will mark the first time the company provides a service to create and share Web logs, also known as blogs, in the United States. Yahoo already offers such tools in some international markets like Japan and South Korea.

Available March 29, the free test will integrate Yahoo's existing products, such as instant messenger, photos, local search, music and groups with new offerings such as blogs, mobile blogs and sharing tools for recommending movies, restaurants and other items.

Yahoo plans to offer a broader test of the service within six weeks of the initial beta release.

Yahoo's 360 announcement comes amid growing investment in blogging and social networking technology by other Internet companies like Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research)

The home-grown technology will give users complete control over who sees their content, said Julie Herendeen, Yahoo's vice president of network products.

Yahoo, which garners most of its revenue from advertising, said there are no current plans to put ads on Yahoo 360.

"We'll keep evaluating opportunities as we move forward," Herendeen said.

Blogs and social networking have each drawn significant user interest and venture capital dollars in recent months and have become an increasingly popular venue for self-publishing content for the Internet's large audience.

Microsoft late last year added MSN Spaces, a blogging service, to its MSN Internet service.

Google bought Blogger creator Pyra Labs in early 2003. The Web search company also has runs an affiliated social networking service called Orkut.

Sony picks non-Japanese CEO

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TOKYO — Sony named Howard Stringer as its chairman and chief executive today, marking the first time a foreigner will head a major Japanese electronics company and comes as Sony seeks to improve results at faltering core electronics business.

By Yuri Kageyama
The Associated Press

Yahoo Birthday

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Yahoo turn 10 today!

A Google approach to email

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Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want. The key features are:


Search, don't sort.
Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.


Don't throw anything away.
1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.


Keep it all in context.
Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.


No pop-up ads. No untargeted banners.
You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest.