September 4, 2008
September 2, 2008
“ Ever wanted your Internet search to show Google, YouTube, MSN, Wikipedia and Yahoo results all on one webpage? Well, now you can. Widexplorer.com is a new search engine that displays Web results from multiple search engines onto one long, horizontal page.
“ Here’s an idea for a bulletin board online - how about a Million Dollar Homepage style page where anyone can take up a certain amount of space on the page for their flyer or pamphlet for free, editable like a Wiki for anyone to use. I have no idea how it’d be regulated, or how to keep out spammers (maybe no external links allowed?) but it’d be interesting to see if something like that could take off.
“ [Both sides expose their arguments… side by side. Interesting]
Should We Support Net Neutrality?
Net neutrality is the principle that says all information flowing across the Internet should be treated equally. But with more people streaming data-rich video and playing online games, the Internet faces congestion concerns. Should carriers be able to sell multi-tiered access to heavy users? Should sites that generate massive traffic — like Google and Yahoo! — pay extra fees? The U.S. Government is examining Net Neutrality and its financial, legal and social implications. Do we need federal intervention to ensure fairness, or is this an issue for the market to work out?
Should We Support Net Neutrality?
Net neutrality is the principle that says all information flowing across the Internet should be treated equally. But with more people streaming data-rich video and playing online games, the Internet faces congestion concerns. Should carriers be able to sell multi-tiered access to heavy users? Should sites that generate massive traffic — like Google and Yahoo! — pay extra fees? The U.S. Government is examining Net Neutrality and its financial, legal and social implications. Do we need federal intervention to ensure fairness, or is this an issue for the market to work out?
August 31, 2008
“ Recently, a handful of creators (present company included) have scrapped pen and paper for mobile phone and keypad, and started texting their novels — in real time, just a few characters at a time. Our medium is Twitter, a service that lets you broadcast bursts of 140 characters at a time to be read by people who subscribe to get your updates. In my case, I’ve for the last two months been using Twitter to write a real-time thriller. Hence: Twiller. (Cheap word play is what you get when you disintermediate, as they say, your agent and editor). It’s about a man who wakes up in the mountains of Colorado, suffering from amnesia, with a haunting feeling he is a murderer. In possession of only a cell phone that lets him Twitter, he uses the phone to tell his story of self-discovery, 140 characters at a time. Think “Memento” on a mobile phone, with the occasional emoticon.
“ Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has fallen prey to social media spammers and it is now full of requests to spam bookmarking services for pennies per link. Although these HITs may stop short of being “fraud” in the legal sense of the word, they are certainly dishonest and unsavory. In addition to these spam bookmarking requests, we’re also seeing HITs for Diggs, Stumbles, Slashdots, etc. of spammers’ web pages and web sites. In case you’re unfamiliar, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourced marketplace for tasks. A person needing work done can set up a HIT (human intelligence task) - the small job they need done. Others come along to perform the HITs, earning micro payments along the way. In this way, businesses, developers, and other individuals have access to an affordable, scalable workforce
August 30, 2008
“ For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television.
“ End of anonymity - Next generation wiki links every word to its author
Reporting in Nature Genetics, scientist Robert Hoffmann develops the first Wiki where authorship really matters. Based on a powerful authorship tracking technology, this next generation wiki links every word to its corresponding author. This way readers can always know their sources and authors receive due credit. The history of a collaborative wiki article can become extremely complex within a few editing cycles. Someone creates a paragraph; someone else deletes a sentence, inserts a word here and there, and so forth. - “How could the reader of such an article know who wrote what,” asks Dr. Robert Hoffmann, Society in Science fellow and visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. In first generation wikis, this information could theoretically be found in the archives, but in practice, it is impossible for a reader to reconstruct the authorship of specific texts from hundreds of previous versions.
Reporting in Nature Genetics, scientist Robert Hoffmann develops the first Wiki where authorship really matters. Based on a powerful authorship tracking technology, this next generation wiki links every word to its corresponding author. This way readers can always know their sources and authors receive due credit. The history of a collaborative wiki article can become extremely complex within a few editing cycles. Someone creates a paragraph; someone else deletes a sentence, inserts a word here and there, and so forth. - “How could the reader of such an article know who wrote what,” asks Dr. Robert Hoffmann, Society in Science fellow and visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. In first generation wikis, this information could theoretically be found in the archives, but in practice, it is impossible for a reader to reconstruct the authorship of specific texts from hundreds of previous versions.
“ Thanks to a software program called a zapper, even technologically illiterate restaurant and store owners can siphon cash from computer cash registers and cheat tax officials. While zappers are most likely to be used by medium and small businesses, the take is anything but small change. A 12-store restaurant chain in Detroit used a zapper to skim more than $20 million over four years, federal prosecutors say. Zappers — also known as automated sales suppression devices — are a new twist on an old fraud. “The technology is new and getting newer, but the concept is as old as having two sets of books,” said Verenda Smith of the Federation of Tax Administrators, the association of state tax administrators. Zappers alter the electronic sales records in a cash register. To satisfy tax collectors, the tally of food orders, for example, must match the register’s final cash total. To hide the removal of cash from the till, a crooked business owner has to erase the record of food orders equal to the amount of cash taken; otherwise, the imbalance is obvious to any auditor.
August 29, 2008
“ Apple’s customers are largely forgiving of any foibles of the iPhone’s maker. But wireless companies like AT&T and Verizon are afforded no such a luxury. The 3G network is supposed to make it easier to surf the Web and watch videos online. With nearly 90 percent of all Americans owning a mobile phone, there is little room to grow and these rivals can ill afford to lose customers. Further aggravating consumers, neither company has fully explained why calls were dropped and the network was slow. Theories abound, which is causing even more confusion — and finger-pointing. Is it a problem with the phone itself? Richard Windsor of Nomura Securities surmised in a research report that a new radio chip made by Infineon, a German chip maker, was to blame for the iPhone’s spotty service in areas where the cellular signal was weak. Since Americans are not the only iPhone users complaining — consumers in the Netherlands reported iPhone problems too — some analysts think the iPhone is partly to blame. Apple offered a software fix to mixed reviews — but no explanation. Most analysts put the onus on AT&T.
“ THE cable industry, aiming to prevent Internet companies like Yahoo and YouTube from snatching away its ad revenue, has introduced an experimental political channel that gives advertisers a uniform way to buy time and measure the number of people watching. The channel, called Elections ’08 On Demand, lets people watch videos whenever they want, much the way they can on YouTube or the Web sites of television networks. Depending on where they live, people can tune into the channel to see an infomercial for Barack Obama, coverage of the Democratic National Convention, or historical clips like Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Daisy” ad.