Scott Nichols

Artwork: Richard TuschmanIn the most recent effort to thwart child predators online, both the U.S. House and Senate are considering bills that would require any Internet access provider -- possibly including public Wi-Fi hotspots -- to retain Internet user data for up to two years.

If you're like me, then you probably spend a lot more time than you should on YouTube. Wouldn't it be great if you could download your favorite videos and watch them offline too? Sure, there's always the popular Firefox Download Helper plug-in, but how about an official solution from YouTube? It's here. YouTube will let you download certain Public Domain or Creative Commons-licensed videos.

Eligible videos will have a "Download this video" option underneath the video. YouTube videos will download in the MP4 format and are--thankfully--DRM free. Not all of the videos are free of charge, though: You will have to pay for some videos through Google Checkout before downloading them. Purchased videos will appear in your YouTube account in a new "purchases" tab under "My Videos". However, videos that you have downloaded for free will not appear in your account, which could make it difficult to find your content.

Microsoft is going all out to promote the Grand Theft Auto 4 expansion The Lost and Damned by giving everyone who downloads it free access to Microsoft's Xbox Live service for a week. Well, almost a week. The promotion begins with the release of The Lost and Damned on February 17, with the free Xbox Live access cut off on the February 22. Xbox Live users with a free silver account can download games through the Xbox Live Marketplace, but normally a gold account is required to play games online. During the five days of the promotion online multiplayer will be available for silver account members as if they had a gold account.

Microsoft will also be hosting several Game with Fame events during the five-day promotion of the delayed expansion, including allowing players to play against the developers at Rockstar who made the game. Game with Fame events are a regular occurrence on Xbox Live, so scheduling them during the promotion should give silver account holders a taste of what the Xbox Live community has to offer.

Remember Apple's push iPhone notifications that were supposed to be available in September, but weren't? Apple's silence has lead to much speculation as to whether push notifications are still in the pipes or if the feature has been axed entirely. Site MacRumors offers its own speculation, claiming to have heard rumblings from Apple about an alternate to the push notifications that would allow apps to continue running even after an app is closed.

The push notifications would permit third-party apps to notify you of updates even when the app is closed. An instant messaging or scheduling app would benefit greatly from push notifications, since the app could alert you to new messages and events without requiring you to open the app first. For people like me who can get easily distracted and forget that I was in the middle of an instant message conversation, this would be a very helpful feature.

On Monday, the Senate voted to delay the switch to digital TV signals; now, instead of the switch taking place on February 17, it has been pushed back to June 12. The main reason for the delay is because not all households are prepared for the switch.

$40 coupons had been offered to households that needed a digital converter box, but funding for those coupons has dried up and needs to be reallocated. It would be foolhardy for the government to mandate a vast change, like the switch to digital TV signals, without providing a solution to ensure everyone is prepared for the change.

In the social networking arms race, without a doubt Facebook and Myspace are the leading contenders. But now, at least on a global stage, it looks like a definitive leader between the two giants has emerged, with Facebook claiming double the visitors of Myspace.

Reported by TechCrunch, according to a new data report from comScore Facebook drew more than 200 million unique visitors in the month of December compared to Myspace's number, just over 100 million. Just six months ago Facebook and Myspace were tied around 100 million visitors, but Facebook's numbers shot up at a rate of 10.8 percent per month on the global scale while Myspace stayed stagnant.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme court announced its refusal to hear appeals against the banning of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), effectively killing the bill. The American Civil Liberties Union called it "a clear victory for free speech," having fought the bill for ten years claiming it infringed on a website's freedom of speech.

COPA was first passed in 1998, and made it illegal to display any pornographic material on a Web site without an access code or proof of age message. However, state courts began challenging the bill immediately, claiming it was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment. Instead, it was ruled that parental controls should be used by individual families to block unwanted content, rather than the government determining what can and cannot be seen by all.

Yesterday's inauguration of President Obama was an historic event that everyone should see, so why not see it from 423 miles up? Thanks to GeoEye's satellite imaging we now have that view. The image was captured by GeoEye's new GeoEye-1 satellite, which took the image at 11:19 (EST) shortly before Obama's inaugural address.

A gallery of inauguration images is available on GeoEye's site, with each image offered as a high resolution download. Mid-day Wednesday ET the GeoEye's site seemed overloaded. To get a taste of the hi-rez image click on the image above (it's a cropped and reduced resolution version of the GeoEye image). Also, on Google's Lat Long blog the images are available in a Google Earth overlay that can be downloaded.

The common perception of social networking sites is that they are the exclusive realm of teens and college students. However a recent study conducted by Pew Research shows that every year, more and more adults are hopping aboard social networking sites.

According to the study, in February 2005, only 8 percent of adult Internet users claimed to use social networking sites, but that number has increased to 35 percent as of December 2008.

A hacked modem can allow you to get broadband Internet access without paying for it. But selling hacked modems is not, in itself, an illegal act, because there are actual educational purposes for the devices. But Thomas Swingler of CableHack.net, a site that sells hacked modems, has been slapped with a lawsuit, despite posting a disclaimer on his site that his company does not encourage its users to use the modems illegally.

Users trying the Windows 7 beta who keep their computers safe with McAfee virus protection are in for a bit of disappointment -- and a loss of security. According to a Channel Web report, when you try to run McAfee Total Protection in the Windows 7 beta, an error message pops up. "The version of Windows installed on this machine is not supported. Please refer to the product documentation for a list of supported operating systems."

McAfee's antivirus tool isn't the only one affected by the Windows 7 beta. A thread on Norton's community forums mentions errors that occur when running Windows 7. The official response from Norton? "At this time, we do not support Windows 7. Once Windows 7 is released, we will provide solutions for the OS." In the past, prerelease copies or even early shipping versions of Windows updates were often flagged as "potential viruses" by antivirus programs (prompting lots of jokes about Windows being fingered as a virus).

Burger King has had some pretty outlandish ad campaigns--most recently with the "Whopper Virgins" TV ads--but a new marketing scheme that utilizes Facebook is possibly its strangest yet. Burger King is asking people to drop ten friends on Facebook to receive a free whopper.