Free Republic

SIDNEY, MT — The quiet town of Sidney, Montana made headlines recently after a transdimensional portal appeared in the home of Bob and Cynthia Allen. Sources say the wife accidentally opened the time-tunneling tesseract while trying to find the power button on the remote. The cat was sucked into the otherworldly vortex before the couple realized what was happening. "I just pushed all the colored buttons, hoping one of them turned it off!" screamed Cynthia while clutching the kitchen table with her husband and watching her favorite bowl disappear into the otherworldly schism. "This is why I just let you...

Facebook employees have been caught leaving glowing reviews on Amazon for Facebook's new video-chat device. Facebook released the Portal, a video-chat and smart-speaker device, in October. It's the first hardware product built and sold under the Facebook brand. The new gadget has already faced some hardship, as Facebook acknowledged that it could collect data about its owners to help the company target ads at people.

Telescreen = Portal and Echo

The social media giant today introduced two devices, which are both Amazon Alexa smart speakers with video displays. The Portal and Portal+ are hands-free devices with cameras and microphones for video calls to Facebook friends. As you might have guessed, a Facebook account is required. If another person joins you on the call, everyone will always be in the frame. “Both models are designed to make you feel closer to the important people in your life, and make video chats seem less like a call and more like you’re actually in the same room,” according to a Facebook press release....

Carly Fiorina has taken a hard line against Planned Parenthood as a Republican presidential candidate, but in 2005 she invested in a health care website similar to WebMD that touted abortion benefits and directed users to Planned Parenthood. The Revolution Health Group website assured users abortion is safe and directed them to pro-choice groups including Planned Parenthood for more information, but did not link to any pro-life groups or offer a pro-choice perspective. Fiorina joined RHG as an investor and board member when it was founded in 2005. Her campaign did not respond to requests for comment regarding her knowledge...

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican is taking a leap into the world of new media next week with the launch of a news information portal that Pope Benedict XVI himself may put online with a papal click. Vatican officials said Saturday that Benedict has been following the development of the portal — http://www.news.va — .. a one-stop-shop for Holy See news. The portal is being launched Wednesday, ..

The Gifford Children's Choir of Racine, Wisc. performs a song you may not be expecting to hear from a children's choir.

Mysteries in the MountainsA real-life Twilight Zone may exist in Southeastern Arizona near the Mexican border. by Ron Quinn May 15, 2003 Deep in the mountains close to the Mexican border, a mysterious place exists where time is altered at random. A joke? Not according to Ron Quinn. Quinn first submitted his stories to The Weekly's former editor, Michael Parnell, in November 2002. Upon his departure in January, Parnell passed them on to current Weekly Editor Jimmy Boegle. The Weekly staff decided to publish them; after all, they are quite compelling. Plus, Quinn's got some credibility; a life-long treasure hunter,...

Greetings! I just volunteered for a project at work to chair a team that will look at building a knowledge base for our internal use. We are a technical company that provides computers, software and services with resources that are based around the globe. Our documentation is scattered about with pockets of organization and a lot of head-knowledge. The charter will be to develop a tool that is easy to use (otherwise no one will use it, of course) that allows our resources to access the information via an index or query and provide links to where formal documentation may...

Archaeologists discovered maze of stone temples in underground caves MEXICO CITY - Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.

CHINA: Two mainland Web portals blocked Sina and Sohu given three days to 'rectify' mistake of failing to filter keywords like 'Tibet' and 'Bingdian Weekly' South China Morning Post Tuesday, June 20, 2006 By Shi Jiangtao Beijing --- The search engines of two of the most popular Web portals on the mainland have been blocked in a sign of intensified internet censorship, with millions of users expected to be affected. Sina and Sohu are the latest victims of Beijing's increasing control of the internet for having failed to filter certain keywords deemed politically harmful, industry sources in Beijing said yesterday....

Saturday April 29, 1:37 AM Google Fails to Make Inroads in S. Korea Google Inc. has seeped into many aspects of online life across the globe, but the Internet search engine has failed so far to make any notable inroads in one of the world's most-wired countries: South Korea. Users here are some of the most Internet-savvy in the world, with millions of people running their own blogs and taking advantage of omnipresent broadband hookups and Wi-Fi hotspots. South Koreans would seem like natural Google users, but the leading search engine is merely a bit player. Google referred only about...

New London, WI – August 17th, 2005 – Jonbon Technologies will launch The Grand Old Portal (http://www.GrandOldPortal.com) on August 29th, 2005. The Grand Old Portal is a human-edited search engine of Republican websites on the World Wide Web. This search engine is different from other search engines as it only lists sites that support the Republican Party. Each site that is submitted is reviewed by an editor who then determines if the site will be listed in the search engine. Webmasters who run websites that support the Republican Party are invited to visit http://www.GrandOldPortal.com and submit their website for inclusion...

Excerpt - Google has unveiled a new service that allows people to consolidate various Google features they use, ranging from web search to email, into a personalized home page. The new personalized home page service will no doubt make many people scream "Portal!" That's because despite the name, it is essentially a "My Google" feature, similar to the My Yahoo, My MSN and other My Whatever pages that portals created so their users could access the many features they offer. Well, Google's already been a stealth portal as I've called it for some time, offering standard portal features such as...

Google News uses computer algorithms to identify top stories while Yahoo News favors old-fashioned human editors. But do Google's automated search results display a conservative bias? In newspaper newsrooms, editors often go to great lengths to achieve a semblance of balance in coverage of the two major candidates for president. Some count the story inches devoted to both men. Others make sure that photo size and placement don't favor one over the other. Journalistic fairness demands equal treatment. But what are the rules for online search engines, where millions of users are turning for their daily news fix? Does evenhanded...

Spanish Internet company Terra Lycos has retained investment bank Lehman Brothers to explore a possible sale of its U.S. Internet business, including its flagship Lycos.com Web site, according to a document obtained by CNET News.com. What's new: Terra Lycos has retained investment bank Lehman Brothers to sell Lycos.com in hopes of focusing on its Spanish-language businesses.Bottom line: The sale would unwind the $12.5 billion merger of Terra Networks and Lycos, struck during the height of the dot-com boom. A sale of the unit, which is based in Waltham, Mass., would unwind the $12.5 billion merger of Lycos and Terra Networks,...

A fast-spreading Internet worm infecting more than a million computers worldwide forced the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration to shut its offices for the day and is causing problems for other computer networks in the Washington region. The worm, dubbed "Blaster" by security experts, is having a "sporadic" effect on federal agency networks, said a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security......(snip) [Article is long but good]

<p>John Little of Portal Software cover is profiled in this 1999 Forbes Special Issue: America's 400 Richest People.</p> <p>The executives and board members of Portal Software have had more success selling their stock than they have running the company.</p> <p>Since Portal of Cupertino went public in May 1999, 21 insiders have cashed in $704 million in stock. During that time, the company has sold only $616.2 million of its billing software and services.</p>