germany

Flickr just found a downside to adding support for seven languages to its photo-sharing site: limits on photo sharing and resulting accusations of censorship.

Flickr launched sites in seven languages Wednesday, expanding beyond just English. But because of a German law, the company decided it had to restrict the photos German members could see to those that had been marked "safe" by members using Flickr's filtering ability that arrived in March. That restriction triggered a forum discussion thread, "Flickr now censoring all moderate and restricted photos from Germany," and an "Against Censorship at Flickr&… Read more

In a blog entry, Second Life publisher Linden Lab has acknowledged it was contacted by a German TV station that said it had discovered images in the virtual world showing a child avatar engaged in "depicted sexual conduct" with an adult avatar.

Linden lab said it quickly began an investigation and banned the two people behind the avatars, as well as removed the images.

The television station said it had turned the images over to German authorities, but Linden Lab explained that it had not been able to get in contact with law enforcement there.

The practice of … Read more

The world's youngest celebrity is building quite a media career. Five-month-old polar bear, Knut, is already a star at the Berlin Zoo. He also stars in more than two dozen YouTube videos, which have accumulated millions of plays. When you visit Knut's new personal Web site you'll see pictures and e-mails from adoring fans.

But today we learn that Knut and a human co-author have a book deal. One purpose of the book will be to draw attention to global warming, says the human writer. The book'll be published by Scholastic, which has a track record … Read more

We've been concerned about misplacing some media players because of their petite frames, but never video cameras. And certainly not high-definition ones. But at a barely more than 1.5 by 3 inches and "smaller than a bar of soap," the "MicroHDTV" from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute could easily slip out of our pocket and into the lost-and-found category.

Engadget says the camcorder is purportedly small enough to fit in "a racing-car cockpit, helmet or any other tiny space you'd like to broadcast HDTV from." That's a euro in the photo … Read more