The ads weren’t working, so The Brief is now accepting $3/month or $30/year memberships. The incredibly useful site by Richard Dunlop-Walters will remain free to all, but it’s continued existence is now predicated upon a sufficient number of its 3,000-plus current and future subscribers paying for a membership.

It’s well worth it, especially if you’re overwhelmed by RSS feeds, newsletters, and social networks as sources of technology news.

This is important, and Richard Dunlop-Walters’s The Brief has a great, ongoing summary of the issue and the news coming out of the World Conference on International Communications. It may seem dry at first, but this stuff could have far-reaching effects on privacy and internet governance, so it’s worth at least a quick glance.

Richard Dunlop-Walters’ The Brief is a must-read for those interested in news about how technology affects our lives every day.

Mr. Dunlop-Walters said of Google’s AMBER Alert integration:

whenever you perform a Google search related to an area where a child has been abducted and an alert was issued you’ll see an AMBER Alert on the results page.

This is a great example of how a company can make money and help society, and do both using its core technology (in this case, search targeting). The best part? Google is working on expanding the integration internationally in cooperation with foreign missing children’s advocates.