The Plot to Kill Google
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-02/ff_killgoogle

DOJ story on Google's failed attempt to do advertising with Yahoo.. and lawyer-ly intrique and microsoft scare tactics

An article on everyone's favorite search engine by the awesome folks over at Wired.com.

Google may not be evil, but it sure does have enemies.

Simply put, location changes everything. This one input—our coordinates—has the potential to change all the outputs. Where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go—they all change once we merge location and the Web.

Interesting Wired article on Geotagging and photographs. Shows the potentially creepy side of stalking throught the net using geotagged flickr photos!

location, location, location location awareness needn't be invasive or creepy. But it can be isolating.

To test whether I was being paranoid, I ran a little experiment. On a sunny Saturday, I spotted a woman in Golden Gate Park taking a photo with a 3G iPhone. Because iPhones embed geodata into photos that users upload to Flickr or Picasa, iPhone shots can be automatically placed on a map. At home I searched the Flickr map, and score—a shot from today. I clicked through to the user's photostream and determined it was the woman I had seen earlier. After adjusting the settings so that only her shots appeared on the map, I saw a cluster of images in one location. Clicking on them revealed photos of an apartment interior—a bedroom, a kitchen, a filthy living room. Now I know where she lives.

Latest list of games you must have if you own a iPhone/iTouch.

January 2009 01/2009

Marshall McLuhan pointed out that whenever we get our hands on a new medium we tend to use it like older ones. Early TV broadcasts consisted of guys sitting around reading radio scripts because nobody had realized yet that TV could tell stories differently. It's the same with much of today's webcam video; most people still try to emulate TV and film. Only weirdos like MadV are really exploring its potential. A bigger leap will occur when we get better tools for archiving and searching video. Then we'll start using it the way we use paper or word processing: to take notes or mull over a problem, like Tom Cruise flipping through scenes at the beginning of Minority Report. We think of video as a way to communicate with others—but it's becoming a way to communicate with ourselves.

Article connecting YouTube with participatory culture.

"So here's my question: What exactly is this? What do you call MadV's project? It isn't quite a documentary; it isn't exactly a conversation or a commentary, either. It's some curious mongrel form. And it would have been inconceivable before the Internet and cheap webcams—prohibitively expensive and difficult to pull off."

It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

Studies show that information workers now switch tasks an average of every three minutes throughout the day. This degree of interruption is correlated with stress and frustration and lowered creativity.

"Paying attention isn't a simple act of self-discipline, but a cognitive ability with deep neurobiological roots — and this complex faculty, says Maggie Jackson, is being woefully undermined by how we're living. In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Jackson explores the effects of "our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society" on attention. It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively. Of course, every modern age is troubled by its new technologies. "The telegraph might have done just as much to the psyche [of] Victorians as the Blackberry does to us," said Jackson. "But at the same time, that doesn't mean that nothing has changed. The question is, how do we confront our own challenges?" Wired.com talked to Jackson about attention and its loss."

yes

The other important thing is to discuss interruption as an environmental question and collective social issue. In our country, stillness and reflection are not especially valued in the workplace. The image of success is the frenetic multitasker who doesn't have time and is constantly interrupted. By striving towards this model of inattention, we're doing ourselves a tremendous injustice.

What's going on? Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right? Robert Proctor doesn't think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases.

More accurate title: Robert Proctor on how lying asshats dilute the truth.

More Twitter news.

ny moisture sensor attached to a circuit board with an Ethernet port. You stick it in your plant's soil, and when the moisture levels drop below a certain level, your plant sends you a tweet begging to be watered.

Another cool Twitter use article. Quite clever, actually.

automate with twitter

"It's so simple and easy to access, people are thinking of more and more uses for the platform," says Dan Wasyluk, creator of the Twitter-based Snipt service. Wasyluk launched Snipt last week as a way to let programmers share short snippets of code over Twitter.

I get this: "The more I upload the details of my existence, even in the form of random observations and casual location updates, the more I worry about giving away too much. It's one thing to share intimacies person-to-person. But with a community? Creepy."

Erwischt!?

Wired magazine article ... another in the line of stories about social media burnout and why/if it is really worthwhile.

From the magazine

와이어드의 GPS기사

Inside the GPS revolution it's more than maps and driving directions: location-aware phones and apps now deliver the hidden information that lets users make connections and interact with the world in ways they never imagined. The future is here and it's in your pocket.

This is crazy scary!

A great article on the incredible potential (and scary pitfalls) of broadcasting your location at all times. Including some really interesting discussion of the way our social contexts haven't really caught up (e.g. people thinking he was lonely or depressed and yearning for company).

This is scary stuff, I tell you what.

"In the mid-'80s, Wall Street turned to the quants—brainy financial engineers—to invent new ways to boost profits. Their methods for minting money worked brilliantly... until one of them devastated the global economy."

The Nobel winning formula

Mary Lou Jepsen didn't set out to invent the netbook and turn the computer industry upside down. She was just trying to create a supercheap laptop.

Get product reviews and news about digital cameras, computers, laptops, mp3 players, iPod, PDAs, phones, PCs, Macs and wireless from Wired.com

Mary Lou Jepsen didn't set out to invent the netbook and turn the computer industry upside down. She was just trying to create a supercheap laptop. In 2005, Jepsen, a pioneering LCD screen designer, was tapped to lead the development of the machine that would become known as One Laptop per Child. Nicholas Negroponte, the longtime MIT Media Lab visionary, launched the project hoping to create an inexpensive computer for children in developing countries. It would have Wi-Fi, a color screen, and a full keyboard—and sell for about $100. At that price, third-world governments could buy millions and hand them out freely in rural villages. Plus, it had to be small, incredibly rugged, and able to run on minimal power. "Half of the world's children have no regular access to electricity," Jepsen points out.

l dominance ov

nice screenshot of related tweets

Why Twitter sucks.

TweetNews takes Yahoo’s news results and compares them to emerging topics on Twitter, in effect using what’s most popular on Twitter as an index for determining the importance of news stories. In other words, TweetNews uses Twitter to rank stories that are so new they may not have enough inbound links for algorithm-based ranking systems to prioritize them. The result is a search engine mashup that tracks breaking news stories ranked by Twitter search results, offering faster updates, better relevance and more in-depth coverage than either source by itself.

interesting

Lugejate valik 10 parimat loomavideot

By Felix Salmon at Wired Magazine, February 23, 2009.

Must-read Wired article about the new Chief Software Architect of Microsoft - Ray Ozzie. Bill Gates him one of the top 5 programmers in the universe. That's a compliment!

This makes me want to dig up that "Ozzie is trying to build that thing he's been trying to build for the last 25 years; nobody cares, still" article.

Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com

Really interesting article about the issues facing Microsoft, Cloud Computing and other problems and possibilities for Microsoft.

A developer on Tuesday released a patch enabling Apple TV to play practically any DRM-free multimedia file with the insertion of a thumb drive into the box. Normally, Apple TV can only play video and music files that are compatible with iTunes or bought through the iTunes Store, but coder Scott Davilla's patch essentially "Jailbreaks" the TV set-top box from such restrictions by installing an open-source media center called Boxee. Currently in limited, invite-only alpha testing, the patch automatically installs itself onto a thumb drive and adds a Boxee button to the main menu of Apple TV. Clicking on Boxee brings you to an interface allowing you to view about 30 types of DRM-free multimedia (e.g., DIVX, AVI, MKZ and BIN) from any computer connected to your network; you can even play multimedia through internet streams (e.g. Hulu and ABC.com videos).

A developer on Tuesday released a patch enabling Apple TV to play practically any DRM-free multimedia file with the insertion of a thumb drive into the box. Normally, Apple TV

*Plus applicable sales tax International Orders Give a Gift Privacy Policy

In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can't explain exactly how it was done. The loot was never found, but based on circumstantial evidence, Notarbartolo was sentenced to 10 years. He has always denied having anything to do with the crime and has refused to discuss his case with journalists, preferring to remain silent for the past six years. Until now.

In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable... and even now the police can't explain exactly how it was done.

Compelling yarn, optioned for screen adaptation for obvious reasons.

There are now 96 known active hacker spaces worldwide, with 29 in the United States, according to Hackerspaces.org. Another 27 U.S. spaces are in the planning or building stage. Located in rented studios, lofts or semi-commercial spaces, hacker spaces tend to be loosely organized, governed by consensus, and infused with an almost utopian spirit of cooperation and sharing.

Located in rented studios, lofts or semi-commercial spaces, hacker spaces tend to be loosely organized, governed by consensus, and infused with an almost utopian spirit of cooperation and sharing. "It's almost a Fight Club for nerds,"

Community spaces for diy software and hardware projects around the world.

There are now 96 known active hacker spaces worldwide, with 29 in the United States, according to Hackerspaces.org. Another 27 U.S. spaces are in the planning or building stage. Located in rented studios, lofts or semi-commercial spaces, hacker spaces tend to be loosely organized, governed by consensus, and infused with an almost utopian spirit of cooperation and sharing.

"In our society there's a real dearth of community," Altman says. "The internet is a way for people to key in to that need, but it's so inadequate. [At hacker spaces], people get a little taste of that community and they just want more."

At the center of this community are hacker spaces like Noisebridge, where like-minded geeks gather to work on personal projects, learn from each other and hang out in a nerd-friendly atmosphere. Like artist collectives in the '60s and '70s, hacker spaces are springing up all over. There are now 96 known active hacker spaces worldwide, with 29 in the United States, according to Hackerspaces.org. Another 27 U.S. spaces are in the planning or building stage. Located in rented studios, lofts or semi-commercial spaces, hacker spaces tend to be loosely organized, governed by consensus, and infused with an almost utopian spirit of cooperation and sharing. "It's almost a Fight Club for nerds," says Nick Bilton of his hacker space, NYC Resistor in Brooklyn, New York. Bilton is an editor in The New York Times R&D lab and a board member of NYC Resistor. Bilton says NYC Resistor has attracted "a pretty wide variety of people, but definitely all geeks. Not Dungeons & Dragons–type geeks,

Inductive reasoning at it's finest.

In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings. Developed by Cornell researchers, the program deduced the natural laws without a shred of knowledge about physics or geometry. The research is being heralded as a potential breakthrough for science in the Petabyte Age, where computers try to find regularities in massive datasets that are too big and complex for the human mind. (See Wired magazine's July 2008 cover story on "The End of Science.") "One of the biggest problems in science today is moving forward and finding the underlying principles in areas where there is lots and lots of data, but there's a theoretical gap. We don't know how things work," said Hod Lipson, the Cornell University computational researcher who co-wrote the program. "I think this is going to be an important tool." Condensing rules from raw data has long been considered the province of hu

“In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings…”

In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings. Developed by Cornell

Nine Inch Nails iPhone App Extends Reznor's Innovative Run

"My quest in life now is to surround myself with smart, innovative people," he says, "instead of the gangster types who have exploited artists over the years."

Changing attitudes towards work.

v swissmiss

Leonardo Notarbartolo strolls into the prison visiting room trailing a guard as if the guy were his personal assistant. The other convicts in this eastern Belgian prison turn to look. Notarbartolo nods and smiles faintly, the laugh lines crinkling around his blue eyes. Though he's an inmate and wears the requisite white prisoner jacket, Notarbartolo radiates a sunny Italian charm. A silver Rolex peeks out from under his cuff, and a vertical strip of white soul patch drops down from his lower lip like an exclamation mark.

Pretty amazing account of a diamond heist in Antwerp. I imagine that various Hollywood types are scrabbling for the rights to produce "Notarbartolo's Five" even as I type this...

Leuk verhaal over grote 3Oceans 11" achtige kluisbraak in Antwerp Diamond Centre

Get the latest in science news, including space, physics, planet earth, discoveries, NASA, satellites, and space travel from Wired.com

Stonehenge in Georgia

Fascinating, thanks Pam!

The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern.

♫

"Twitter's growing fame as a text platform is slightly deceiving. A huge amount of music gets posted to to the messaging service every single day — the trick is knowing how to find it."

The Best Ways to Discover Music Through Twitter

The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.

According to the researchers, "short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days' work, and as a result, increased productivity." More importantly, "firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online under the pretence that it costs millions in lost productivity." Someone should let them know their logic is flawed.

To summarize: build the smart grid on top of the Internet, and put wireless mesh routers in power meters and cars.

So obvious once heard; everything can be reduced to software eventually.

The intelligent network we need for electricity can also turn cars into nodes. Interoperability is a multiplier.

The home page is nearly blank. At the center, just below a colorful logo, you'll find an empty data field. Type in a phrase, hit Return, and knowledge

Consider a question like “How many Nobel Prize winners were born under a full moon?” Google would find the answer only if someone had previously gone through the whole list, matched the birthplace of each laureate with a table of lunar phases, and posted the results. Wolfram says his engine would have no problem doing this on the fly. “Alpha makes it easy for the typical person to answer anything quantitatively,” he asserts. Wolfram needs some prodding before he talks about the business model. “Plan A is to get this out,” he says. “Maybe it will be a giant piece of philanthropy.” On the other hand, he adds, “we’re happy to license this.” He thinks Alpha would be welcome inside applications, on mobile devices, and in a generalized search engine. Wolfram has already shown Alpha to former intern Brin and thinks that it could make sense to have the engine running behind the scenes in Google searches. Another possible source of revenue: licensing data­bases.

Bill Gates once derided open source advocates with the worst epithet a capitalist can muster. These folks, he said, were a "new modern-day sort of communists," a malevolent force bent on destroying the monopolistic incentive that helps support the American dream. Gates was wrong: Open source zealots are more likely to be libertarians than commie pinkos. Yet there is some truth to his allegation. The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism.

Operating without state funding or control, connecting citizens directly to citizens, this mostly free marketplace achieves social good at an efficiency that would stagger any government or traditional corporation. Sure, it undermines the business model of newspapers, but at the same time it makes an indisputable case that the sharing model is a viable alternative to both profit-seeking corporations and tax-supported civic institutions.

mmunal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikin

The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism. Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large.

The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism.

There are more orphans than in a Dickens novel. Google won’t say how many there are. But UC Berkeley Professor Pamela Samuelson estimates that 70 percent of books that are still in copyright have rights holders that can’t be found. Copyright infringement can be expensive – up to $150,000 per violation. So if you scan an old book and start selling copies of it, or displaying chunks of it on the web, and the orphan’s father shows up one day waving a paternity test in your direction, you could face a mean copyright infringement suit. Unless you are Google: Since all U.S. book copyright holders are now plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Google gets liability protection from authors who abandoned their books by not registering in its books database. If they show up later, all they can do is collect a little cash, change their book price or ask Google to stop selling the book.

So in partnership with major university libraries, Google began scanning and digitizing millions of books in 2002, from ones like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that are no longer copyrighted to the Harry Potter series to books whose authors and publishers cannot be located. The idea is simple, and audacious. Make the library of all libraries by converting every book ever published into an e-book that can be indexed, searched, read — and sold — online.

"The Google Book Search Settlement has been much in the news recently, with the Internet Archive, Philip K. Dick’s heirs, consumer groups and Microsoft registering their objections to the search giant’s agreement with authors and publishers. And now Justice Department anti-trust lawyers are meeting with Google about the settlement, raising the possibility of a full-blown anti-trust court showdown between the government and the world’s biggest search and advertising company."

Wired article about Google archiving books.

e locks and hotel room safes: These days, Tobias is attacking the lock famous for protecting places li

Get Wired's take on technology business news and the Silicon Valley scene including IT, media, mobility, broadband, video, design, security, software, networking and internet startups on Wired.com

Thinking like a criminal is Tobias' idea of fun. It makes him laugh. It has also made him money and earned him a reputation as something of the Rain Man of lock-breaking. Even if you've never heard of Tobias, you may know his work: He's the guy who figured out how to steal your bike, unlock your front door, crack your gun lock, blow up your airplane, and hijack your mail. Marc Weber Tobias has a name for the headache he inflicts on his targets: the Marc Weber Tobias problem.

"Marc Weber Tobias can pick, crack, or bump any lock. Now he wants to teach the world how to break into military facilities and corporate headquarters."

An article about someone with a gift for picking locks.

Tobias is laughing. And laughing. The effect is disconcerting. It's a bwa-ha-ha kind of evil mastermind laugh—appropriate if you've just sacked Constantinople, checkmated Deep Blue, or handed Superman a Dixie cup of kryptonite Kool-Aid, but downright scary in a midtown Manhattan restaurant during the early-bird special. Our fellow diners begin to stare. Tobias doesn't notice and wouldn't care anyway. He's as rumpled and wild as a nerdy grizzly bear. His place mat is covered in diagrams and sketched floor plans and scribbled arrows. His laugh fits him like a

"I'm going to talk about online auctions," says Hal Varian, the session's first speaker. Varian is a lanky 62-year-old professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and School of Information, but these days he's best known as Google's chief economist. This morning's crowd hasn't come for predictions about the credit market; they want to hear about Google's secret sauce

Google getta le basi per una nuova forma di organizzazione economica.

Why does Google even need a chief economist? The simplest reason is that the company is an economy unto itself. The ad auction, marinated in that special sauce, is a seething laboratory of fiduciary forensics, with customers ranging from giant multinationals to dorm-room entrepreneurs, all billed by the world's largest micropayment system. Google depends on economic principles to hone what has become the search engine of choice for more than 60 percent of all Internet surfers, and the company uses auction theory to grease the skids of its own operations. All these calculations require an army of math geeks, algorithms of Ramanujanian complexity, and a sales force more comfortable with whiteboard markers than fairway irons.

by forcing users to commit their thinking to the bite-size form of the public tweet, Twitter may be giving a powerfully productive new life to a hitherto underexploited quantum of thought: The random, fleeting observation.

perspectives on twitter

For those of you increasingly convinced that you're the last human alive who doesn't get the point of Twitter, I have comforting news: Nobody does. Not really.

Dual Perspectives article by Julian Dibbell: ... Sure, it's easy to dismiss Twitter because of the content — the endless stream of latte orders, flight delays, mood swings. Who cares? But that would be a mistake. Early critics of the television also wrote it off as a time waster with few redeeming social or cultural values: the boob tube. But TV became a powerful change agent regardless of, or even in spite of, the programming. The medium was the message. ...

Read in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics, and culture at Wired.com.

Why Twitter from Wired Magazine

For those of you increasingly convinced that you're the last human alive who doesn't get the point of Twitter, I have comforting news: Nobody does. Not really. Sure, the twittering masses (17 million registered U.S. users, by latest count) have some idea what their habit is good for. For many, Twitter's steady stream of one-line updates — "microblogging," as the form is known — is a low-maintenance way to feel connected to family, friends, celebrities. For others, it's a marketing tool, a public diary, a communal news feed, or even, simply, a sort of brain game — a text-message Sudoku, where the daily challenge is to fit the maximum amount of cleverness into the minimal space of a 140-character limit. But knowing how people use Twitter isn't the same thing as knowing why they use it. And that turns out to be a puzzle even seasoned Twitter watchers have found difficult to crack.

"Tricks work only because magicians know, at an intuitive level, how we look at the world," says Macknik, lead author of the paper. "Even when we know we're going to be tricked, we still can't see it, which suggests that magicians are fooling the mind at a very deep level." By reverse-engineering these deceptions, Macknik hopes to illuminate the mental loopholes that make us see a woman get sawed in half or a rabbit appear out of thin air even when we know such stuff is impossible. "Magicians were taking advantage of these cognitive illusions long before any scientist identified them," Martinez-Conde says.

GReader: Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion http://ow.ly/5xUu [from http://twitter.com/ChipRiley/statuses/1725035126]

Retweeting @copyblogger: Penn & Teller Reveal the Neuroscience of Illusion - http://is.gd/vRUV [from http://twitter.com/apoorvgadwal/statuses/1698147950]

""People take reality for granted," Teller says shortly before stepping onstage. "Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple." For Teller (that's his full legal name), magic is more than entertainment. He wants his tricks to reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be. Our brains don't see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli."

Facebook's long game. Written by former FB insider

How do you find a new search engine if all you know is Google? Typing search engine into the usual box might lead you to Microsoft's newly launched Bing,

link to audio book. "All this was possible because Alan Kay, an engineer at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, understood what Moore's law was doing to the cost of computing. He decided to do what writer George Gilder calls "wasting transistors." Rather than reserve computing power for core information processing, Kay used outrageous amounts of it for frivolous stuff like drawing cartoons on the screen." - "By 1970s IT standards, Kay had "wasted" computing power. ... This is the power of waste. When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently.

Chris Andersons neues Buch "Free" kostet 27 Dollar - wenn man es im Buchladen kauft. Wer sich jedoch die Audiobuch-Version herunterladen möchte, bekommt sie geschenkt, ganz im Sinne des Buchtitels - "Kostenlos: Die Zukunft eines radikalen Preises".

Cool! ditch the shoes

OK this is funny! If you wear flipflops it's less likely you will injure your foot!

To Run Better, Start by Ditching Your Nikes

Funny compendium by Wired

mouais, mieux vaut (re)créer soi-même qqch à partir d'une boite classique.

2009

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-08/st_best worst 1 wired 2 wiredwired 3

1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around. 2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this "pseudopenis," which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit. 3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom's torso and into her pouch for a nipple. 4 Giraffe birth canal. Mama giraffes stand up while giving birth, so baby's entry into the world is a 5-foot drop. Wheeee! Crack. 5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile prey. Yet it has a shell so fragile it practically explodes when it falls? Well, at least it can produce silk to make a sail. Oh, wait — it can't!

Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like 'horseless carriage'.

'Maybe Media Will Be a Hobby Rather than a Job'

Chris Anderson sur l'avenir du journalisme. Des changements en vue et des idées provocatrices du rédacteur en chef de Wired

"In a SPIEGEL interview, Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of US technology and culture magazine Wired discusses the Internet's challenge to the traditional press, new business models on the Web and why he would rather read Twitter than a daily newspaper." via Roy Greenslade: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/jul/30/digital-media-us-press-publishing

article on lockpicker Marc Weber Tobias

Marc Weber Tobias can pick, crack, or bump any lock. Now he wants to teach the world how to break into military facilities and corporate headquarters.

Wired.com: The Ultimate Lock Picker Hacks Pentagon, Beats Corporate Security for Fun and Profit - http://bit.ly/fSW4Q (via @BlackHatEvents) [from http://twitter.com/jkordish/statuses/1997565339]

Pretty discouraging article about the efficacy of locks beyond keeping honest people honest.

More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plugin to track users and store information about them, but only four of them mention the so-called Flash Cookies in their privacy policies, UC Berkeley researchers reported Monday.

internet privacy

hyperthymestic syndrome,

This piece blew my mind.

Researchers had never found a subject with a perfect memory — then along came Jill Price.

a mulher que não esquece nada

The woman remembers dates to the day. Amazing. But know few quizzers who can do the same.

On a case study, and investigators discussings the difficulties

How modern information gathering technology complicates the lives of those who want to start a new life.

The urge to disappear, to shed one’s identity and reemerge in another, surely must be as old as human society. It’s a fantasy that can flicker tantalizingly on the horizon at moments of crisis or grow into a persistent daydream that accompanies life’s daily burdens. A fight with your spouse leaves you momentarily despondent, perhaps, or a longtime relationship feels dead on its feet. Your mortgage payment becomes suddenly unmanageable, or a pile of debts gradually rises above your head. Maybe you simply awaken one day unable to shake your disappointment over a choice you could have made or a better life you might have had. And then the thought occurs to you: What if I could drop everything, abandon my life’s baggage, and start over as someone else?

a plan to escape

For Matthew Alan Sheppard, all of the anxiety, deception, and delusion converged in one moment on a crisp winter weekend in February 2008.

Hee hee hee

It is possible to successfully fend off a zombie attack, according to Canadian mathematicians. The key is to hit hard and hit often.

best science visualization video os 2009

"It's exactly like a leaderboard in a game, where you want to have the bragging right of being on top, so you work harder at getting better," says Steffen Walz, a game theorist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Walz says governments worldwide are hiring designers to create games that encourage healthier behavior; he himself is creating one, where teenagers will run around their city with GPS-equipped mobile phones, unlocking prizes by visiting different locations.

using rewards & tracking to encourage everyday behaviours

"Games create drama and excitement," as Jane McGonigal, one of the leading thinkers in the field, told the crowd at this year's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. "We've done that for years with videogames, and now we can apply that thinking to the rest of life."

Every employee is given virtual tokens — say, 100 a week, — that they can attach to e-mail they write. If you really want someone to read a message now, you attach a lot of tokens, and the message pops up higher in your correspondent's Outlook inbox. Reeves figured this would encourage people to send less e-mail: Those who are parsimonious would wind up with lots of tokens, which means when they really have something to say, they can load it up with tokens and make sure it'll get through. Sure enough, that's what happened. When a work group at IBM tried out Attent, messages with 20 tokens attached were 52 percent more likely to be quickly opened than normal. E-mail overload ceased to be a problem.

We don’t have Craigslist around here, and looking at it makes me wonder that it works at all. But sometimes the sheer density of information can make the battle worth it. As does a lack of marketing blindness: How many times did marketing or ‚developing a business‘ actually improve products or the companies making them? From the POV of the user/customer, that is.

I Thought this was a very interesting read - the tragedy of craigslist

The Internet's great promise is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful.

The axioms of this worldview are easy to state. "People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day," Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.

Craig Newmark says that craigslist works because people are good, and he has stuck to this point of view without wavering. Whether you accept it as true will depend on your standard of goodness.

despite the initial focus on the irrelevant topic of CL's design, and the typical wired.com annoying writing, the article becomes quite good later: "These are technically sophisticated people who take pride in their work, and when we knock them down they don't just decide to go find something else to do. You could say we are breeding the perfect spammer."

"Craig Newmark seems to have discovered a new way to run a business. He suspects that it may be the right way to run the world."

Great article on the problems with Craigslist as well as a good profile on the founder

The Internet's great promise is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful. So how come when you arrive at the most popular dating site in the US you find a stream of anonymous come-ons intermixed with insults, ads for prostitutes, naked pictures, and obvious scams?

Newmark's claim of almost total disinterest in wealth dovetails with the way craigslist does business. Besides offering nearly all of its features for free, it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and does not innovate. Ordinarily, a company that showed such complete disdain for the normal rules of business would be vulnerable to competition, but craigslist has no serious rivals. The glory of the site is its size and its price. But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.

"If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging." "During the company's first years, Newmark approved nearly every message on the list, and in the decade since he has spent much of his time eliminating offensive ones. Even by the most conservative accounting, he has passed judgment on tens of thousands of classified ads. Very few people could do this and thrive." "These all signal Newmark and Buckmaster's wariness about what humans, including themselves, might do if given the chance. There may be a peace sign on every page, but the implicit political philosophy of craigslist has a deeply conservative, even a tragic cast. Every day the choristers of the social web chirp their advice about openness and trust; craigslist follows none of it"

this is the anti-business

Interesting, LONG article about the placebo effect. I always liked the thought that your mind has the power to heal you. Or if you are in a negative mood, sometimes just saying positive things can alter your feelings.

Placebos have long been used to control for the effects of taking *any* medicine. However, now those effects seem to be getting stronger... Fascinating.

"It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger."

Mida Beecher avastas, miks see tähtis on ja kuidas edasi, kui platseeboefekt ise näib tugevamaks muutuvat?

Entire markets have been transformed by products that trade power or fidelity for low price, flexibility, and convenience.

But the experience taught Kaplan and Braunstein a lesson: Customers would sacrifice lots of quality for a cheap, convenient device. To keep the price down, Pure Digital had made significant trade-offs. It used inexpensive lenses and other components and limited the number of image-processing chips. The pictures were OK but not great. Yet Pure Digital sold 3 million cameras anyway.

The low end has never been riding higher.

Suggests that high production values, high quality products are not where the mainstream market is. Looks at digital video cameras, legal services, health care, and Web content. Made me think about legal publishing, where increased costs are justified by "value added" content, which gets very little use. At some point the "good enough" plateau will be reached so that lawyers and librarians will not continue to pay for improvements that go beyond what is valued.

Interesting article on how goods are increasingly becoming just good enough as opposed to high quality

Interesting article but sorely mistaken about the novelty of 'good enough'. This is an old phychological framework.

After some trial and error, Pure Digital released what it called the Flip Ultra in 2007. The stripped-down camcorder had lots of downsides. It captured relatively low-quality 640 x 480 footage at a time when Sony, Panasonic, and Canon were launching camcorders capable of recording in 1080 hi-def. It had a minuscule viewing screen, no color-adjustment features, and only the most rudimentary controls. It didn't even have an optical zoom. But it was small (slightly bigger than a pack of smokes), inexpensive ($150, compared with $800 for a midpriced Sony), and so simple to operate—from recording to uploading—that pretty much anyone could figure it out in roughly 6.7 seconds.

Instead of just a "Citation Needed", we'll now have various shades to give us hints as to the reliability of information.

Wired.com

Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the information you find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will color code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page. More than 60 million people visit the free, open-access encyclopedia each month, searching for knowledge on 12 million pages in 260 languages. But despite its popularity, Wikipedia has long suffered criticism from those who say it’s not reliable. Because anyone with an internet connection can contribute, the site is subject to vandalism, bias and misinformation. And edits are anonymous, so there’s no easy way to separate credible information from fake content created by vandals.

This idea (and the tool for its implementation) has been around for a while. Now it seems that wikipedia is going to implement it. Interesting debate here about the nature of truth: truth by consensus, or, the loudest voices win. Has it ever been any other way? Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fwiredscience%2F2009%2F08%2Fwikitrust

Gullibility on the rise? Count me in!

2009-08-24

We're gluttons for infographics, and a team at Kansas State just served up a feast: maps of sin created by plotting per-capita stats on things like theft (envy) and STDs (lust). Christian clergy, likely noting the Bible Belt's status as Wrath Central, question the "science." Valid point—or maybe it's just the pride talking.

For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now.

“The search results are extremely poor,” [...]. “Like nobody cares.” [...] “Google does get a lot of credit for putting it together and making it available,” [...] “But search capabilities are important for such a large collection of data. The archive’s value to the community is considerably reduced if it’s not conveniently searchable.” A year after Slashdot called attention to the bugs, the problems with the archive not only haven’t been fixed, but they aren’t reflected in the Google Groups “known issues” page. Asked if the bugs are documented anywhere, or if Google planned on repairing its library, a company spokesman was noncommittal. “We’re aware of some problems with the way search is working in Google Groups,” said Jason Freidenfelds, in an e-mail. “We’re always working to improve our products.” Templeton, who helped Google compile an index of historically significant Usenet articles when it first launched its archive, thinks Google’s neglect is a simple matter of economics.

"the rusting shell of Google Groups" ABANDONED FOR A REASON?

Geeks, as a general rule, are pretty easy-going. We like to think things through, so passionate confrontations aren't commonplace for us. When we get well and

“Mac, Windows, or Linux? Does it really make a difference?”

Geeks, as a general rule, are pretty easy-going. We like to think things through, so passionate confrontations aren't commonplace for us. When we get well and properly provoked, though, watch out! We won't stop talking until every last point that we can think of has been made at least twice. So, what do you say to provoke a geek? Glad you asked!

Top ten ways to provoke a geek argument: http://cli.gs/hBUzX9 (via @JinniDotCom) [from http://twitter.com/mkeagle/statuses/2118079070]

not so productive argument.....

Lovely

Avicennia marina

بهترین عکسهای میکروسکپی درخلال 35 سال گذشته در اینجا گردآوری شده اند

Imagens de coisas que, ainda que estejam a nossa frente, não conseguimos enxergar

Wired Science | Wired.com Beautiful microscopic photos!!!

"35 Years of the World’s Best Microscope Photography"

quantifying and optimizing all facets of life

quantifiedself.com.

Fun to play if you're bored. You get to be a pirate!!

Wired Magazine's game about the business of Somali pirating; see related article published in Wired, "An Economic Analysis of the Somali Pirate Business Model." Commentary at http://jag.lcc.gatech.edu/blog/2009/07/cutthroat-capitalism.html

"You are a pirate commander staked with $50,000 from local tribal leaders and other investors. Your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture a ship, and successfully negotiate a ransom."

See the latest multimedia and applications including videos, animations, podcasts, photos, and slideshows on Wired.com

You are a pirate commander staked with $50,000 from local tribal leaders and other investors. Your job is to guide your pirate crew through raids in and around the Gulf of Aden, attack and capture a ship, and successfully negotiate a ransom.

pretty cool list.

If you can’t sell music, sell something else. From soup cans to sonic Buddhas, there is life beyond the stream. Here are 10 of our favorites.

ndustry execs may fret about declining traditional sales, but some enterprising artists and labels have devised new ways to sell music that give fans something to collect, even in an age when the music itself can be infinitely duplicated for free. Or when the cloud makes the very idea of collecting and owning music seem quaint.

For reference.

Amazing.

How to disappear completely...

Is it possible to disappear when the entire internet is looking for you? One guy finds out.

Ratliff goes off the radar to see if he can live without being found in the modern age. After 28 days, someone did. See how it happened and what can be learned from it.

As books make the leap from cellulose and ink to electronic pages, some editors worry that too much is being lost in translation. Typography, layout, illustrations and carefully thought-out covers are all being reduced to a uniform, black-on-gray template that looks the same whether you’re reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or the Federalist Papers.

Photographer Clay Enos shows us how to do a street-studio portrait session with a sheet of white paper, some tape, and a camera. (found via <a href="http://twitter.com/JohnMilleker">@JohnMilleker</a>)

Echt een fantastische video over #straatfotografie.

Very cool xray like looking map of flight lines

Flight patterns information visualization for the US in a 24 hour period. Where the flights are going and what their altitude is (altitude is mapped with color, darker is higher, lighter is lower)

Map showing bright spots at airports 8/12/08

Google Maps parnership

Looks like connecting neurons in the brain..

"Microsoft, Ozzie wrote, had to think and operate more like an Internet company and, as much as possible, like a Web startup. Consider ad-supported or subscription business models, he advised, viral distribution, and experiences that "just work." Instead of the clunkiness that Microsoft products so often displayed, focus on being "seamless." Bottom line: Change big-time, or else."

the back story on Azure and the good 'ol days

.

Previously, a big part of any development team at Microsoft was making sure its new product worked in lockstep with everything else the company produced. While that approach avoided annoying conflicts, it also tended to smother innovation. "This philosophy of independent innovation...is something Ray pushed very strongly," Ozzie's approach was to encourage people to rush ahead and build things. Then he'd have a team of what he calls the spacklers fill in the gaps and get things ready for release. He spent a lot of time on the physical workspace for his team. He had workers rip down the labyrinthine corridors on one floor and called in architects to create a more open design. Now, walking into the Windows Live Core group is like leaving Microsoft and visiting a Futurama set. Office windows open onto hallways so that quick eye contact can trigger spontaneous discussions. Whiteboards are everywhere. Pool tables, mini-lounges, and snack zones draw people toward the center of the space.

Enigma or not, Ozzie is the one who must lead—or drag, if need be—a software giant with 90,000 employees, $60 billion in revenue, and an untold number of blue screens of death across a chasm. Can he do it? Ozzie's big advantage is that he knows what's on the other side. In fact, he caught a glimpse of it 35 years ago and has been heading there ever since.

Broussard and Miller assembled a seven-person team to build the product. The pair had a knack for discov

On the last day, they gathered for a group photo. They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts. Their team was — finally — giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding. So they headed down to the lobby of their building in Garland, Texas, to smile for the camera. They arranged themselves on top of their logo: a 10-foot-wide nuclear-radiation sign, inlaid in the marble floor.

absolutely

Hulu, the online TV service launched two years ago by Fox and NBC, has enjoyed incredible success with viewers — too much, it may turn out. Two weeks

this explains the "dumb logic" by old farts at hulu ... a little. this will go on for a while until they realize this is not 1999 any more. until then - i'm not into sunny myself, but ... i became so spoiled by on-line TV ... i'd simply stop watching lost if it wasn't available on-line. real life IS more fun pipl!

Interesting read about the adversarial relationship between cable and the internet. Hulu is forced to cut down programming, since it conflicts with the cable companies´ interests.

Frank Rose nails it. A lot of people who are torrent users (who, of course, I, ahem, ahem, ahem, know none of these, ahem, people, ahem, forgive me, gotta frog in my throat) would give up torrent use if they could steadily rely on an instant (non-skipping damn it!) all-access commercial-laden on-demand access to any television show or movie they ever wanted to see. It's where the future lies, but the studios do not want to go there ...

"Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit." ... "This is why other people are so helpful: They shock us out of our cognitive box."

Recomm. by Francois R.

Homebrewed CPU Is a Beautiful Mess of Wires

8-bit computer made by hand

Sorry, I don't use the word "media." I don't use the word "news." I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.

[english] Explication par Chris Anderson (wired.com) des conséquences d'internet pour les médias. Très pertinent.

Hardware is becoming much more like software.

The door of a dry-cleaner-size storefront in an industrial park in Wareham, Massachusetts, an hour south of Boston, might not look like a portal to the future of American manufacturing, but it is. This is the headquarters of Local Motors, the first open source car company to reach production. Step inside and the office reveals itself as a mind-blowing example of the power of micro-factories.

“In the age of democratized industry, every garage is a potential micro-factory, every citizen a potential micro-entrepreneur 1) INVENT dream up your own. Pro tip: Check the PTO first 2) DESIGN Use free tools like Blender or Google’s SketchUp to create a 3-D digital model of your invention. Or download someone else’s design and incorporate your groundbreaking tweaks. 3) PROTOTYPE desktop 3-D printers like MakerBot are available for under $1,000. Just upload a file and watch the machine render your vision in layered ABS plastic. 4) MANUFACTURE The garage is fine for limited production, to go big, global — outsource. Factories in China are standing by; sites like Alibaba.com can help you find the right partner. 5) SELL Market your product directly to customers via an online store like SparkFun — or set up your own ecommerce outfit through a company like Yahoo or Web Studio. Then haul your golden goose to Maker Faire and become the poster child for the DIY industrial revolution.”

Chris Andersen's latest book outline http://bit.ly/6ty5BX [from http://twitter.com/jamescrabtree/statuses/8357654578]

Older news, but I finally got around to reading it. Interesting piece on the importance of color.

In the latest and most authoritative study on color's cognitive effects, test subjects given attention-demanding tasks did best when primed with the color red. Asked to be creative, they responded best to blue.

Want to know how Google is about to change your life? Stop by the Ouagadougou conference room on a Thursday morning. It is here, at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the world’s most powerful Internet company, that a room filled with three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives figure out how to make their search engine even smarter.

Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

Excellent in-depth look at how Google's constantly-improving algorithms make it superior.

Want to know how Google is about to change your life? Stop by the Ouagadougou conference room on a Thursday morning. It is here, at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the world’s most powerful Internet company, that a room filled with three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives figure out how to make their search engine even smarter. This year, Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm, and each will be determined at a gathering just like this one. The decisions made at the weekly Search Quality Launch Meeting will wind up affecting the results you get when you use Google’s search engine to look for anything — “Samsung SF-755p printer,” “Ed Hardy MySpace layouts,” or maybe even “capital Burkina Faso,” which just happens to share its name with this conference room. Udi Manber, Google’s head of search since 2006, leads the proceedings. One by one, potential modifications are introduced, along with the results of months of testing in vari

Filosofisk (?) artikel om googles algoritmer

Want to know how Google is about to change your life? Stop by the Ouagadougou conference room on a Thursday morning. It is here, at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the world’s most powerful Internet company, that a room filled with three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives figure out how to make their search engine even smarter. This year, Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm, and each will be determined at a gathering just like this one. The decisions made at the weekly Search Quality Launch Meeting will wind up affecting the results you get when you use Google’s search engine to look for anything

Sean Carroll

A cool look at why we view the world we do and why certain actions can't be reversed.

Die IE6, die! Browsercide evangelism FTW!

Several large websites in Norway have launched an advocacy campaign urging Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade their outdated web browsers.

hat tip to Leonardo Souza

“What’s hard for parents is that what feels like your own personal taste, it’s everybody’s taste,” Wattenberg says. “It’s a no win situation - if you pick a name you like, probably everybody else will like it too.”

"“What’s hard for parents is that what feels like your own personal taste, it’s everybody’s taste,” Wattenberg says. “It’s a no win situation - if you pick a name you like, probably everybody else will like it too.” And that’s what’s fascinating about watching the nation-level trends in baby naming. The national nomenclature is transformed living room by living room as one frazzled couple after another makes a seemingly personal decision for underlying phonetic reasons they haven’t considered. “People may think they named a child after great, great grandma Olivia, but they have a lot of great, great grandmas, and they picked Olivia because it fits the popular sounds,” Wattenberg says. And that’s how a country’s culture changes: People cherry-picking from the past as they look for a name to call the future."

Brendan Koerner argues that research shows that social media breaks actually boost the creativity and productivity of innovation-focused workers. He writes: "Twitter and Facebook give knowledge workers the chance to turn downtime into a game where creativity and insight are rewarded, if only with digital pats on the back."

RT @tcar Here's a great article to give your boss when they catch you slacking off on Twitter: http://bit.ly/amZ8qu

Contrary to recent research about social networks and efficiency, taking a break from work to read that tweet about Lady Gaga's lingerie might actually stoke creativity and enhance problem-solving skills.

Article discussing the value of "down time" in creativity, and extending the idea to Twitter, Facebook, etc.

even take driving tests, apply for passports, or enroll in college classes under one of his many aliases: J

a real-life master criminal

Your Facebook Profile Makes Marketers’ Dreams Come True

by Eliot Van Buskirk // Generally I stay away from Wired, which often has published technological fantasies and hype that have been downright silly -- and very misleading

Your Facebook Profile Makes Marketers’ Dreams Come True http://bit.ly/4rs9Z [from http://twitter.com/AdNerds/statuses/1659055245]

'타블렛이 어떻게 세상을 바꿀 것인가'(Wired) http://bit.ly/9Kl5mU 잡지 사놓고 우물쭈물하고 있는 사이 그 기사가 온라인에 올라와버렸다. 뭐하러 책을 돈주고 샀는지 ㅠ.ㅠ; – Jungwook Lim (estima7) http://twitter.com/estima7/statuses/10942583345

iPad - Wired article on (proposed) future of computing.

GReader: The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown [feedly] http://ow.ly/3ipE [from http://twitter.com/ChipRiley/statuses/1563319028]

Much of this country's geography is remote, and beyond the reach of cellphone coverage, making American satellites an ideal, if illegal, communications option.

An article on how Brazilian satellite hackers use high-performance antennas and homebrew gear to turn U.S. Navy satellites into their personal CB radios.

Brazilian satellite hackers use high-performance antennas and homebrew gear to turn U.S. Navy satellites into their personal CB radios.

TuneCore

TuneCore is poised to partner with Amazon’s on-demand CD-printing-and-distribution service, Wired.com has learned. It’s a deal that could put powerful new physical publishing options in the hands of musicians, even as the world goes increasingly digital.

"TuneCore is poised to partner with Amazon’s on-demand CD-printing-and-distribution service, Wired.com has learned. It’s a deal that could put powerful new physical publishing options in the hands of musicians, even as the world goes increasingly digital."

RT @feliciaday Go Tunecore: http://bit.ly/FcQyV Cutting out middle-man=lovely. [Less upfront risk for cash-strapped indies.] [from http://twitter.com/skipzilla/statuses/1877133840]

We have discovered more than a half dozen passages in the forthcoming book that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources.

Did Chris Anderson plagiarize from Wikipedia

blog commenters include the Chris Anderson

Mega matéria na Wired

Awesome article in Wired "As Lost Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It, What’s Going On" http://bit.ly/doLFq0 via @dougmeacham

Your privacy and Facebook RT @flashlight: Good read on Wired about the need for an open Facebook alternative. http://bit.ly/aHWMuI

Facebook is redefining what "privacy" means.

it's one thing to try to ignore big brother, but we're just giving him our keys and credit cards

RT @ryanwynia: RT @ScottMonty: RT @Dfrom82: Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative http://is.gd/c0p23

RT @fmeichel: #diaspora RT @rosselin "Zuckerberg rêve de dominer le monde, il est temps de trouver une alternative" @daveWiner http://bi ...

Wired Magazine: Facebook's gone rogue. http://bit.ly/9Wl9uc

facebook =/= privacy.

Thinking about quiting ole Facebook soon. http://is.gd/bZVab Just getting tired of it. But can I do it? Is the question. Started thinking – Jabiz Raisdana (intrepidteacher) http://twitter.com/intrepidteacher/statuses/13623538994

Yet another privacy issue with facebook.

"While the sniffing of e-mails is not unknown — it’s how Google serves up targeted ads in Gmail and how Yahoo filters out viruses, for example — the notion that a legitimate e-mail would be not be delivered based on its content is extraordinary."

Facebook private messages are governed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which forbids communications providers from intercepting user messages, barring limited exceptions for security and valid legal orders. While the sniffing of e-mails is not unknown — it’s how Google serves up targeted ads in Gmail and how Yahoo filters out viruses, for example — the notion that a legitimate e-mail would be not be delivered based on its content is extraordinary.

article re FB censoring messages containing piratebay

AHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA

On Facebook, links to The Pirate Bay is not allowed even in private messages

The door of a dry-cleaner-size storefront in an industrial park in Wareham, Massachusetts, an hour south of Boston, might not look like a portal to the

The door of a dry-cleaner-size storefront in an industrial park in Wareham, Massachusetts, an hour south of Boston, might not look like a portal to the future of American manufacturing, but it is. This is the headquarters of Local Motors, the first open source car company to reach production. Step inside and the office reveals itself as a mind-blowing example of the power of micro-factories.

open source

Tea is Booming in Silicon Valley

...say interweb chieftains

High tech hipsters, including Kevin Rose and Timothy Ferriss, love expensive teas.

Fold an Origami 'Millennium Falcon'

<< previous image | next image >> A hummingbird's neck is structured like a bucket

High-Speed Cameras Reveal the World Inside Time - http://gatorurl.com/fu3lj8 (via @stii) [from http://twitter.com/shawnroos/statuses/1857348702]

Wow. The world sure is neat.

Social networking is a phenomenon both online and offline. "Steroid use (in baseball) spread because of the wicked combination of a closed network, or cluster, and positive reinforcement..."

Krebs believes everything is quantifiable as a social network, from steroid use to linked websites to a strand of HIV working its way through the porn industry. He is at the cutting edge of the growing discipline of social network analysis, and creator of InFlow, one of the most advanced social networking software tools. The field has exploded recently as social networks, the complex sets of relationships between members of groups, have formed the backbone of popular Web systems like Facebook and Google's search crawler. Social network analysts use software, like Keyhubs and NetMiner, to uncover how the structure of peoples' connections affect their thoughts and actions.

In the eyes of Valdis Krebs, the bulging bodies of baseball's steroid era reveal a problem exacerbated by a powerful social network.

The field has exploded recently as social networks, the complex sets of relationships between members of groups, have formed the backbone of popular Web systems like Facebook and Google's search crawler. Social network analysts use software, like Keyhubs and NetMiner, to uncover how the structure of peoples' connections affect their thoughts and actions.

iPad

So why didn’t they choose HTML5 and build a custom viewer application around WebKit?

I just downloaded the Wired iPad application, and like most iPad applications (and most magazines for that matter), I found myself bored with it within the first 20 minutes. I’m sure the content is engaging, I’m sure the articles are worth reading – but I am stumped as to why I would chose this over the physical magazine itself, or their website for that matter. In fact, for reasons I’ll get into below, I’m starting to believe that the physical magazine’s “interface” is vastly superior to it’s iPad cousin. However, what strikes me most about the Wired app is how amazingly similar it is to a multimedia CD-ROM from the 1990’s. This is not a compliment and actually turns out to be a fairly large problem… 1990’s Here We Come … Again

at you can’t do application specific

A really good take on how iPad is not really delivering "Value" with their iPad magazines..

"Gardeners are among the world's most charming snobs. Rightly so: As with music and mathematics, the more you know, the more elegant your work. Erudition is valued, and so is a smattering of pretension. If you are a geek looking to put down roots, welcome to gardening. We offer you common ground. Think of it as localized terraforming, if that helps. Before you start, though, contemplate your knees and knuckles, and get ready for hard, sweaty work. As with making babies, people can't really imagine what they are getting into when they plan to tangle with the trowels and hoses. The sketches and explanations on the following pages will inspire you to stake out, nurture, and defend your tiny patch of Earth, feed your loved ones, and even sequester a bit of carbon. How smart is that?"

En un interesantísimo artículo de Wired podemos ver como funciona Pixar y un resumen del largo proceso de varios años que ha llevado al estudio de animación a crear la tercera parte de la conocida película Toy Story.