Watch Out Trolls, Your Menacing Comments Could Lead to Big Fines



Two former Yale University law students have settled their suit brought against some 30-plus anonymous commenters who posted derogatory remarks about them on an internet forum called AutoAdmit. The comments, which ranged from standard insults to those of a more sexually explicit nature, were so vile they prompted the women to sue in order to out the identities of those doing the commenting. According to the plaintiffs, the suit was necessary because the discussion board, a site designed for law school graduates, was often monitored by firms looking to hire. Because the comments were associated with their names, the women claimed that it would hurt their chances of being offered a job.

The Case

This case had been in litigation for years, having been originally filed back in 2007. The problem stemmed from the fact that internet sites such as AutoAdmit are essentially able to operate under different rules than those that apply to TV and newspapers when it comes to libel. This is due to a law called "Section 230," which immunizes internet publishers from legal harm. At the time of its establishment in the 90's, however, those "publishers" were the ISPs themselves - the AOLs and CompuServes that delivered Internet access to consumers. The idea of bloggers, social media publishers, and anonymous blog and forum commenters didn't really exist yet and therefore wasn't taken into consideration. That meant the women weren't able to sue the operators of the discussion board website itself, but had to go after the anonymous posters instead. That, of course, was quite the challenge.

In the end, the women's attorneys were able to identify some eight or nine of the anonymous posters, according to the Hartford Courant and they settled with some of them.

Because the terms of the settlement were confidential, the lawyers representing the former students, Heide Iravani and Brittan Heller, would not discuss them. However, San Francisco attorney Ashok Ramani, whose firm, Keker & Van Nest took the case pro-bono said that their clients were "very pleased with how the case went." The women had sued for monetary damages so a settlement means they were likely awarded at least some of the amount they had hoped for.

Was the Settlement a Win or a Loss? Depends on Who You Ask

Marc Randazza, the attorney for one of the defendants scoffed that if the women's intention were to have the negative comments removed, their interests were very poorly served. "Now there's even an Encyclopedia Dramatica page for them," he told the Yale Daily News.

However, David Rosen, one of the women's attorneys and a Yale Law professor, countered that unmasking some of these anonymous posters who were hiding behind pseudonyms and then holding them accountable for what they said had accomplished "the fundamental goals of the case." He thinks the suit may even have some internet commenters thinking twice before posting. The possibility of a lawsuit "may make some people pause before posting comments that are malicious and completely indefensible," Rosen was quoted as saying.

Will This Really Change Things?

While obviously a major case, this suit isn't the first time a defamation case like this has been brought to court. In fact, only months ago, an anonymous blogger using Google's Blogger.com service was sued for rants she made about a fellow model, one Liskula Cohen, on her site "Skanks in NYC." The victim sued to reveal the identity of the malicious blogger. Thanks to a judge's ruling that Google must hand over to Cohen any identifying information they had on the site's creator, the blogger in question was revealed to be Rosemary Port. (She's now suing Google for not protecting her).

Although a slightly different case, the womens' suit involving the forum commenters also succeeded - at least in part - in revealing the identities of those posting the defamatory messages. Combined with the prior example, it will be interesting to see what impact these cases have on the online world. Will this lead to more lawsuits where alleged victims seek to out the identities of their internet foes? Will it lead to more self-policing among the commenting community? Will internet trolls actually think before they type?

It's too soon to say, but it's possible that a kinder, gentler - and possibly more boring - internet may be in our future.

Image credit: Troll - flickr user tandemracer;

From: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/watch_out_trolls_your_menacing_comments_could_lead_to_fines.php

A drop too many: When politicians over-indulge



It may indeed have been cold medicine. But Shoichi Nakagawa has still had to resign after his drunken performance at the G7.

As he nurses his aching head, he may well be thinking that in politics, prohibition works best (unless you're Winston Churchill that is).

Comment Central rounds up those politicians who've had a run in with the bottle.

George Brown: The former Foreign Secretary set the standard for drunken gaffes during a trip to Peru. Rumour has it that his attempt to ask a figure in purple to dance met with the following:

No, First you are drunk. Second, this is not a waltz. It is the Peruvian national anthem. And third, I am not a woman. I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima.

Ouch. Things did not improve for Brown when he drunkenly shouted at Harold Wilson. He resigned soon afterwards. His legacy? The phrase 'tired and emotional.'

Boris Yeltsin:

As drunken contests go, Yeltsin was the Michael Phelps of politicians.

There was the time he couldn't get off the plane in Ireland, his stumbles on the podium and, of course, that moment when he decided to have a go at conducting a passing military band.

Some argue that he had a neurological disorder, which meant that even a little bit of alcohol knocked him sideways. Others counter that concealing vodka as cough medicine suggests a somewhat larger problem.

Aneurin Bevan:

Deny. Deny. Deny. That was Bevan's policy when he read about his drunken antics with Morgan Phillips and Richard Crossman at a Venice conference. The three men sued the Spectator for libel and won.

Years later, Crossman's diaries confirmed that they had indeed been as inebriated as suggested. And that was saying something. This gem came from the barman in the original report:

If only I had four clients like Mr Bevan I could set up a bar on my own

Winston Churchill:

When Churchill was sent out to cover the Boer War, he packed the following: 18 bottles of scotch, 36 bottles of wine and 6 bottles of brandy. This set the theme for the rest of his career.

Churchill famously refused to give up alcohol to set an example to the troops, though he was strict about the importance of not having hard liquor before breakfast. Ultimately, he concluded:

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

 Richard Nixon:

Drinking was the least of Nixon's problems but it certainly made life harder for his staff. Recently released transcripts detail a harried Kissinger dealing with the Arab-Israeli war in 1973. At one point, Ted Heath's office rang to talk to Nixon about what should be done:

"Can we tell them no?" Kissinger asked his assistant, Brent Scowcroft, who had told him of the urgent request. "When I talked to the president, Kevin Rudd:

The former PM was fond of his liquor. Known as 'Squiffy' for most of his life, rumour has it that Margot once tried to dilute his brandy in an attempt to curb his drunkenness.

Asquith's antics even inspired his very own drinking song. The BBC reports on the popularity of the following little number during his tenure:

Mr Asquith says in a manner sweet and calm: Another little drink won't do us any harm

 Charles Kennedy:

Kennedy soared into the public eye when he became the youngest MP in the Commons. By 1994 he was Leader of the Liberal Democrats. But rumours of his drunkenness persisted. He received an apology from the BBC after Jeremy Paxman asked if he drank 'by yourself, a bottle of whisky late at night.'

But his political career faltered when he was forced to admit that he had indeed received treatment for alcoholism.

What Women Want Now

If you were a woman reading this magazine 40 years ago, the odds were good that your husband provided the money to buy it. That you voted the same way he did. That if you got breast cancer, he might be asked to sign the form authorizing a mastectomy. That your son was heading to college but not your daughter. That your boss, if you had a job, could explain that he was paying you less because, after all, you were probably working just for pocket money.

It's funny how things change slowly, until the day we realize they've changed completely. It's expected that by the end of the year, for the first time in history the majority of workers in the U.S. will be women — largely because the downturn has hit men so hard. This is an extraordinary change in a single generation, and it is gathering speed: the growth prospects, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are in typically female jobs like nursing, retail and customer service. More and more women are the primary breadwinner in their household (almost 40%) or are providing essential income for the family's bottom line. Their buying power has never been greater — and their choices have seldom been harder.

It is in this context that the Rockefeller Foundation, in collaboration with TIME, conducted a landmark survey of gender issues to assess how individual Americans are reacting. Is the battle of the sexes really over, and if so, did anyone win? How do men now view female power? How much resentment or confusion or gratitude is there for the forces that have rearranged family life, rewired the economy and reinvented gender roles? And what, if anything, does everyone agree needs to happen to make all this work? The study found that men and women were in broad agreement about what matters most to them; gone is the notion that women's rise comes at men's expense. As the Old Economy dissolves and pressures on working parents grow, they share their fears about what this means for their children and their frustration with institutions that refuse to admit how much has changed. In the new age, the battles we fight together are the ones that define us.

A Quiet Revolution
In the spring of 1972, TIME devoted a special issue of the magazine to assessing the status of women in the throes of "women's lib." At a time when American society was racing through change like a reckless teenager, feminism had sputtered and stalled. Women's average wages had actually fallen relative to men's; there were fewer women in the top ranks of civil service (under 2%) than there were four years before. No woman had served in the Cabinet since the Eisenhower Administration; there were no female FBI agents or network-news anchors or Supreme Court Justices. The nation's campuses were busy hosting a social revolt, yet Harvard's tenured faculty of 421 included only six women. Of the Museum of Modern Art's 1,000 one-man shows over the previous 40 years, five were by women. Headhunters lamented that it was easier to put a man on the moon than a woman in a corner office. "There is no movement," complained an activist who resigned her leadership position in the National Organization for Women two years after it was founded. "Movement means 'going someplace,' and the movement is not going anywhere. It hasn't accomplished anything." (Read TIME's 1972 cover story "Where She Is and Where She's Going.")

That was cranky exaggeration; many changes were felt more than seen, a shift in hopes and expectations that cracked the foundations of patriarchy. "In terms of real power — economic and political — we are still just beginning," Gloria Steinem admitted. "But the consciousness, the awareness — that will never be the same."

So it's worth stopping to look at what happened while we were busy ending the Cold War and building a multicultural society and enjoying the longest economic expansion in history. In the slow-motion fumblings of family life, it was easy just to keep going along, mark the milestones, measure the kids on the kitchen door and miss the movement. In 1972 only 7% of students playing high school sports were girls; now the number is six times as high. The female dropout rate has fallen in half. College campuses used to be almost 60-40 male; now the ratio has reversed, and close to half of law and medical degrees go to women, up from fewer than 10% in 1970. Half the Ivy League presidents are women, and two of the three network anchors soon will be; three of the four most recent Secretaries of State have been women. There are more than 145 foundations designed to empower women around the world, in the belief that this is the greatest possible weapon against poverty and disease; there was only one major foundation (the Ms. Foundation) for women in 1972. For the first time, five women have won Nobel Prizes in the same year (for Medicine, Chemistry, Economics and Literature). We just came through an election year in which Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Tina Fey and Katie Couric were lead players, not the supporting cast. And the President of the United States was raised by a single mother and married a lawyer who outranked and outearned him.

It is still true that boardrooms and faculty clubs and legislatures and whole swaths of professions like, say, hedge-fund management remain predominantly male; women are about 10% of civil engineers and a third of physicians and surgeons but 98% of kindergarten teachers and dental assistants, and they still earn 77 cents on the dollar compared with men. They are charged higher premiums for health insurance yet still have greater out-of-pocket expenses for things as basic as contraception and maternity care. At times it seems as if the only women effortlessly balancing their jobs, kids, husbands and homes are the ones on TV.

Now the recession raises the stakes and shuffles the deck. Poll after poll finds women even more anxious than men about their family's financial security. While most workers have seen their wages stall or drop, women's earnings fell 2% in 2008, twice as much as men's. Women are 32% more likely than men to have subprime mortgages, leaving them more vulnerable in the housing crisis. The Guttmacher Institute found that the downturn has affected the most basic decisions in family life. Nearly half of women surveyed in households earning less than $75,000 want to delay pregnancy or limit the number of children they have. At the same time, women are poised to emerge from the downturn with even greater relative economic power as the wage gap narrows. A new survey by GfK Roper for NBC Universal gives a whole new meaning to the power of the purse: 65% of women reported being their family's chief financial planner, and 71% called themselves the family accountant. According to a Mediamark Research & Intelligence survey, they make 75% of the buying decisions in American homes. Together, women control more wealth than ever in history.

Progress is seldom simple; it comes with costs and casualties, even challenges about whether a change represents an advance or a retreat. The TIME survey provides evidence of both. At the most basic level, the argument over where women belong is over; the battle of the sexes becomes a costume drama, like Middlemarch or Mad Men. Large majorities, across ages and incomes and ideologies, view women's growing role in the workforce as good for both the economy and society in general. More than 8 in 10 say mothers are just as productive at work as fathers or childless workers are. Even more, some 84% affirm that husbands and wives negotiate the rules, relationships and responsibilities more than those of earlier generations did; roughly 7 in 10 men say they are more comfortable than their fathers were with women working outside the home, while women say they are less financially dependent on their spouse than their mother was.

This is not to say there's nothing left to argue about. More than two-thirds of women still think men resent powerful women, yet women are more likely than men to say female bosses are harder to work for than male ones. Men are much more likely to say there are no longer any barriers to female advancement, while a majority of women say men still have it better in life. People are evenly split over whether the "mommy wars" between working and nonworking mothers are finally over.

But just as striking is how much men and women agree on issues that divided them a generation ago. "It happened so fast," writes Gail Collins in her new book, When Everything Changed, "that the revolution seemed to be over before either side could really find its way to the barricades." It's as though sensible people are too busy to bother bickering about who takes out the garbage or who deserves the corner office; many of the deepest conflicts are now ones that men and women share. Especially in the absence of social supports, flexible work arrangements and affordable child care, it's hardly surprising that a majority of both men and women still say it is best for children to have a father working and a mother at home. Among the most dramatic changes in the past generation is the detachment of marriage and motherhood; more men than women identified marriage as "very important" to their happiness. Women no longer view matrimony as a necessary station on the road to financial security or parenthood. The percentage of children born to single women has leaped from 12% to 39%. Whereas a majority of children in the mid-1970s were raised by a stay-at-home parent, the portion is now less than a third, and nearly two-thirds of people say this has been a negative for American society.

Among the most confounding changes of all is the evidence, tracked by numerous surveys, that as women have gained more freedom, more education and more economic power, they have become less happy. No tidy theory explains the trend, notes University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers, a co-author of The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness. "We looked across all sectors — young vs. old, kids or no kids, married or not married, education, no education, working or not working — and it stayed the same," he says of the data. "But there are a few ways to look at it," he adds. "As Susan Faludi said, the women's movement wasn't about happiness." It may be that women have become more honest about what ails them. Or that they are now free to wrestle with the same pressures and conflicts that once accounted for greater male unhappiness. Or that modern life in a global economy is simply more stressful for everyone but especially for women, who are working longer hours while playing quarterback at home. "Some of the other social changes that have happened over the last 35 years — changes in family, in the workplace — may have affected men differently than women," Wolfers says. "So maybe we're not learning about changes due to the women's movement but changes in society."

All the shapes in the puzzle are shifting. If there is anything like consensus on an issue as basic as how we live our lives as men and women, as lovers, parents, partners, it's that getting the pieces of modern life to fit together is hard enough; something has to bend. Equal numbers of men and women report frequent stress in daily life, and most agree that government and businesses have failed to adjust to the changes in the family. As the Old Economy dissolves before our eyes, men and women express remarkably similar life goals when asked about the importance of money, health, jobs and family. If male jobs keep vanishing, if physical strength loses its workplace value, if the premium shifts ever more to education, in which achievement is increasingly female, then we will soon be having parallel conversations: What needs to be done to free American men to realize their full potential? You can imagine the whole conversation flipping in a single generation.

It's no longer a man's world. Nor is it a woman's nation. It's a cooperative, with bylaws under constant negotiation and expectations that profits be equally shared.

From: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1930277_1930145,00.html

50 technological advances your children will laugh at - Telegraph



Over the last 30 years the pace of technological change has increased so quickly that one decade's must-have gadget becomes the next decade's laughing stock.

 

By Shane Richmond and Ian Douglas
Published: 4:44PM BST 21 Oct 2009

Telephone boxes: what we used to have to put up with before mobile phones Photo: AP

Road signs: will the sat-nav be sophisitcated enough to rid our streets of hulking sheets of metal? Photo: Julian Simmonds

Audio tape: already a thing of the past Photo: EPA

Glasses to correct vision may be replaced by augmented reality services Photo: GETTY

You may have felt cool with your Sony Walkman as a teenager but contemporary teens can fit more music onto a device smaller than a box of matches. And they don't have to flip the tape over halfway through an album.

There can be little doubt: yesterday's cutting edge technology looks silly to today's children and much of today's technology will look silly to tomorrow's children. Here's a list of 50 technological advances, past and present, that will have young people asking: "you used to have to do what?!"

1. TV schedules
That week-long wait for your favourite TV programme was a familiar feature of many a childhood as little as a decade ago. These days TV schedules are less meaningful because of 'catch-up' TV channels, numerous repeats, on-demand internet TV services and, for the less law-abiding, torrent services. In future the concept of scheduling will further disintegrate as TV transforms into a primarily demand-driven service.

2. Laptops
One way or another, whether it's through smartphones, tablet computers or electronic paper, the idea of carrying around a bulky, heavy computer is going to seem odd in the not-too-distant future. "I used to have to carry a separate bag for my computer," you'll find yourself explaining to some youngster as he unfolds his e-paper, touchscreen laptop, connects it to his cloud storage database and starts watching a film.

3. Cordless phones
The phone used to be attached to the wall by a cable and, for some unknown reason, it would probably be in the hall, forcing you to sit on the stairs while you chatted. Then came the cordless phone. Isn't it great to be able to walk around the house while you're on the phone? But don't try leaving the house with your phone - it doesn't do that. Already telephone companies are providing phones that switch from the home network to the mobile network, allowing you to carry on a conversation while leaving the house. Your kids will wonder why phones were ever attached to homes, which brings us to...

4. Buildings with phone numbers
Yes, you really did have to call a building to ask whether the person you wanted to speak to was there or not. Buildings had phone numbers, not people. Now, almost everyone has a mobile phone and the concept of trying to guess where someone might be before you call them is almost entirely redundant. At some point people will probably be issued with phone numbers at birth.

5. Glasses to correct vision
Wearing glasses to correct vision problems is still a social norm but with laser eye surgery and contact lenses, it's not hard to imagine a point in the near future when they become obsolete. However, the concept of hanging lenses in front of your face has been around for centuries and is still pretty useful. Sunglasses will be around for a while and your children may start wearing glasses to take advantage of augmented reality services, for example for navigation.

6. Video and audio tape
Tape is already a thing of the past in most homes. There's no need to remember to rewind a rental video before you return it and no need to spool back and forth to hear your favourite song on an album. The language remains, however, and your children may wonder why you talk about "taping" a TV show when what you're actually doing is saving it to a hard drive on a 'personal video recorder' (PVR). Your PVR lists each programme you've saved and even lets you start watching at a specific point. If you explain to your children that you used to have to fast-forward through your video cassette to see whether you taped Only Fools and Horses before or after last week's Question Time, they'll think you're having them on.

7. Photo processing
The comedian Demetri Martin says that he loves digital cameras because they allow him "to reminisce instantly". The idea that you'd have to shoot a whole roll of film holding, if you are lucky, 36 pictures, before you can see whether any of them were any good sounds odd to the digital camera generation. Stranger still is the idea of taking your film to the chemist - after snapping three pointless shots of your cat to finish the film - and then waiting an hour while they processed them. On top of that, a quarter of your snaps would have stickers on telling you off for taking blurry pictures.

8. Watches
You spend most of your time sitting in front of a computer that shows the time in the corner of the screen. When you're at home you can see the time on your DVD player and your oven. And when you're out and about you're carrying a mobile phone that displays the time. Admit it, your watch is just a piece of jewellery now, isn't it?

9. Keyboards
Many touchscreen devices still make a clicking noise when you type on them but there's no real reason to. Modern keyboards are very quiet - nothing like the thump of old typewriters or the clacking of keyboards from the 80s. But the keyboard itself may not last much longer. They take up space, adding to the bulk of portable devices, and they suffer from being fixed: a British keyboard cannot transform into a Russian one but a touchscreen can. Though touchscreens take some getting used to for those who have learned keyboards it's unlikely that those who grow up with them will have the same problem.

10. CDs, DVDs and Minidiscs
Physical media are constantly being replaced. The path from records to eight track cartridges to cassettes to CDs to minidiscs to MP3 players is littered with defunct stereo equipment. Along the way are cul de sacs such as laser discs, digital audio tapes and HD-DVDs. They take up space, require specialist equipment and are ultimately all going to be replaced by wireless downloads to your watching or listening device. Your CD collection is already as outdated as your grandfather's library of 78s.

11. TV weather maps
Remember when weather forecasters had to stick little lightning-spurting clouds to a cardboard map? Do you think today's flash graphics, in which forecasters swoop across the country like, well, flying weather forecasters, are going to look any better in 20 years?

12. Paper-based voting
You get a slip of paper weeks before polling day. You store it somewhere safe or, if you're me, lose it entirely. Then on polling day you go to a rickety cabin in the playground of the local school, hand the card to a person with a long list and then go into a booth and tick a box. That's ripe for technological improvement, surely? Future generations will, at birth, have a voting chip implanted into their brains - right before they're given their lifelong phone numbers. (Probably.)

13. Pagers
Having your name called over the tannoy in a busy hotel or airport is undoubtedly cool. Being paged says 'I'm important'. Or perhaps 'I have a name that sounds silly when read out over a tannoy'. Either way, it's cool. But the pager - which requires someone to call a number so that a message can be sent to you to ask you to call them back - is a nonsense. Don't even try to explain it to your children. It makes no sense. Get a mobile phone and use text messages.

14. The map and compass
Maps and compasses aren't likely to disappear anytime soon. We all need to find our way to places. But the time of the paper map and physical compass has already passed. Having a map in a device, such as a mobile phone, means that it can be updated when necessary and can be made interactive by removing unnecessary elements or overlaying directions. Build the compass into the device too and you're all set.

15. Black & white film and TV
The world used to be in black and white, at least that's how it appears to children.

16. Letters
The art of letter writing was covered by Matthew Moore in his list of things being killed by the internet. However, it's not just the art but the technology of letters that has been usurped. The idea of writing something, putting it in the post, waiting for it to arrive and then waiting even longer for a reply seems bizarre in our world of always-on communications. Plane tickets, bank statements and bills are already paperless for most people.

17. Business cards
We still hand each other little pieces of card at meetings so that we can get in touch afterwards or even just remember who we met. Then we file these pieces of card or transcribe the information into a contacts book or onto a computer. Or just lose them. It's a pointless system that, we can only hope, our children will not have to go through. We can exchange data wirelessly now, you know.

18. Fax machines
Every now and again a piece of paper can't be emailed to someone and, as discussed above, the post is just too slow. So we have to dust off the fax machine in the corner. This technology dates back to the 1970s and its slightly magical properties - "it's the letter I just printed! sent over the phone! in seconds!" - were never quite trusted. Many people still phone after sending a fax to check that the magic has worked. The process involved in sending a fax thus becomes: write letter on computer; print it on headed paper; fax it; phone to check the fax has been received.

19. Email
As we've seen already, email has replaced letters and offers a pleasant alternative to the horrors of the fax machine. But don't think being email-friendly means you can escape the mockery of your juniors. Teenagers these days eschew email in favour of instant messenger for direct communication and prefer social networks for longer messages. Even that is likely to be swept away by collaboration tools such as Google Wave, which combines aspects of instant messenger, email, filesharing and the web into a real-time tool.

20. Petrol-powered vehicles
Our children may be slightly perplexed to hear that we used to pump liquid into our cars to keep them running. They may well be plugging theirs in instead. They certainly won't miss the fume-filled streets that fossil fuel-powered cars create.

21. Games consoles
Mobile phones are games consoles these days. A games console has considerably greater computing power than a phone but it's not hard to imagine a future in which the computing is done by your television or your PVR and the game is streamed from the internet, instead of being delivered on a disk. In fact, with a more powerful phone, the computing could be done in your pocket and the game streamed to the TV. Oh, and games controllers will be a thing of the past too.

22. Phone boxes
The trouble with attaching phone numbers to buildings (see item 4) is that there's no way to phone people when you're out. So we left phones lying around the country, in giant red boxes with unfeasibly heavy doors and used those instead. Whenever someone wanted to use one of these phones they had to pay, which meant needing to have change on you. And then you phoned a building a found that the person you wanted wasn't there, wasting your money and requiring you to find another phone box later so you could try again.

23. Multiple remote controls
We used to have to walk across the room to change the channel on the television. That wasn't a big problem - for ages we had only three channels anyway. But eventually we got remote controls and then we got more boxes - videos, satellite tuners and so on - and with those came more remote controls. Eventually, faced with the prospect of not being able to get into the living room because of the pile of remotes, the human race developed universal remotes that, in a rather clunky fashion, emulated multiple remotes. In future, your mobile phone will probably double as a remote for whatever it is you're trying to operate. (These mobile phones of the future are doing a lot, aren't they?)

24. Postcodes on street signs
The quaint habit of printing postcodes on street signs in Britain's major cities is surely unnecessary once we all have maps and compasses on the mobile devices that we carry around with us? (See item 14.)

25. Floppy discs
Storage media come and go (see item 10) but floppy disks were commonplace between 1969, when they first appeared in their eight-inch format, and the mid-1990s, by which time they had shrunk to three-and-a-half inches and were in a plastic, decidedly un-floppy case. Your children are bound to see them in films and will be amazed to learn that at their best, they held up to 240MB. That's roughly equivalent to an eighth of the capacity of the latest iPod Shuffle.

26. Telephone directories
Back to phones again. Having stuck one in most buildings (see item 4) and left a few in the street (see item 22) we then had the problem of how anyone would find the number they needed. So we printed every phone number we thought would be relevant into a huge book which we delivered to every household in the country. Seriously. Then people started asking to be left out of the directory, rendering them largely useless.

27. Dial-up internet access
It will seem odd to future generations that we used to turn our internet access on for short periods of the day. It's rather like turning the water on at the mains every time you want to run a bath. Part of the reason for these short bursts of web activity - during which you couldn't use your phone - was that you were charged by the minute for access. And the minutes soon added up at dial-up speeds, as anyone who has ever watched a picture appear on their screen one line at a time will confirm.

28. Wiring-up a wireless network
Remember when you wired up your house to the national grid? No? How about when you fitted a water pipe and hooked yourself up to the sewer system? No? Well you've almost certainly connected yourself to the internet by now and you've probably had a go at creating a wireless network. Just how many wires does a 'wireless' network need, anyway? In future, when the wireless cloud surrounds us, our children will marvel at our stories of routers and switches and RJ45 cables.

29. Computers in boxes
The big beige box on your desk received its death sentence with the launch of the iMac in 1998. Now, only the budget end of the desktop market and very high-powered machines need their own tower away from the monitor. As components get smaller still and more computing power is transferred to the cloud, cutting the need for local resources, the need for a box will be eliminated altogether.

30. Visiting the supermarket
Unless you really like wandering aisles filled with washing powder or shower gel be thankful for supermarket home delivery. By the time your children are grown up, all of those boring products will be ordered online and delivered to save you the trouble of going to the shop and getting them. Your supermarket will instead be a giant farmers' market filled with fresh fruit and veg, exotic meats, cakes and the kind of products you would like to spend some time browsing. Either that or it will be turned into a big Poundstretcher. Sorry.

31. Local data storage
That 512Mb of hard disk plugged into your WiFi router might look like a pretty slick piece of engineering right now but your kids, with access to unlimited amounts of super-cheap online backup for a few pennies, will wonder what all the fuss was about.

32. 'Owning' music, books and film
The idea of 'collections' of media has been central for as long as there have been books, films and music. But once data can be stored in the cloud and accessed by your device whenever you need it, the idea of 'owning' something starts to seem strange. If you buy more than one album per month, you might be better off putting that money into a subscription service and listening to the album you would have bought and any other album that takes your fancy. Availability and portability issues are holding these services back at the moment, along with the nagging fear that the service could just disappear, taking your 'collection' with it. It's changing fast though: your children won't collect albums, they'll have every album at their fingertips all the time.

33. Cords and cables
That spaghetti-like jumble of plastic clogging up the space behind your desk has to go. Wires are messy, difficult to plug in, always too short and prone to loose connections. Wireless data transfer, battery-powered devices and cordless charging mats will make the knot of dusty copper in every office look as dated as the Sweeney's Ford Granada.

34. 35mm cameras
Digital cameras take away the rigmarole of getting photos developed (see item 7) and they also don't require you to carry rolls of film with you and then fiddle around in the back of the camera every time you want to change a film.

35. TVs and radios that need tuning
People on television and radio still occasionally say "stay tuned" when they are really asking you not to switch off or change the channel. The phrase lost its original meaning and your children will never guess that you used to turn a tiny dial like a safe cracker in an effort to get your TV tuned to the correct channel. Not content with the fiddliness of this process, some television manufacturers supplied their sets with a tiny plastic stick that had to be inserted into the tuner so you could find your channel. If you lost your tiny stick, the entire set was rendered useless.

36. Low-res digital pics and video
Concepts like 'low bandwidth', 'limited storage space' and 'two megapixel sensor' will soon be as laughable as the 16K Ram-pack attached to the back of a ZX81. High definition cameras will be fitted as standard to mobile phones and computer screens (and spectacles, headlights and foreheads, for all we know) and YouTube's successors will deliver crystal-clear pictures with hifi-quality sound, driving the video piracy watchdogs of the future round the bend.

37. The mouse
Since 1968 our hands and fingers have been reduced to crude pointing devices, capable only of pointing to one set of co-ordinates on a screen and then stabbing at it. Multi-touch interfaces mean we can use all of our ten fingers to move, zoom, select, dismiss, manipulate and edit. Touchpads will unite the mouse and keyboard, removing one more device from our desktops.

38. Phones with aerials
There were few better ways to make yourself look important in the late 80s and early 90s than by taking a phone the size of a minibus out of your briefcase, extending an aerial six feet long and having a shouty conversation about share prices. Stockbrokers of the future will have to have shouty conversations into invisible, tiny earpieces, which at least has the virtue of making them look sillier.

39. Desktop software
Most software has now moved from disks to downloads and the next step is to remove the software from your desktop entirely. There are already online office packages that offer a full feature set without needing to be installed on your hard drive. Expect software of the future to be run entirely in the cloud - another blow to the notion of media 'ownership'.

40. ADSL
Your ADSL broadband connection might feel fast now but try downloading HD-quality video while someone else plays an online video game and a third person streams internet radio. The connection speeds of the future are already available in many parts of the world. Assuming the Government and ISPs get their act together, your kids won't be stuck with 8MB speeds in 20 years time.

41. Single-use batteries
You probably don't have very much that's battery-powered these days. Mobile phones, laptops and MP3 players mostly use rechargeable batteries. The idea that you used to have to throw batteries away and then go and buy some new ones already seems quite strange.

42. Wifi hotspots
'Gather round, children, and I'll tell you a story of mysterious areas of the country where no wireless transfer of data was possible, and only workarounds involving mobile phones and something called '"tethering" would let you check your email or look things up online. Ah, can you imagine the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that would result, or the long, dreary trudging of the streets when we had to find an invisible place where someone would charge us many pounds for a few minutes of connectivity?'

43. Fillings in teeth
It's good to know that in the near future all that business with injections, numb mouths and metal amalgams will be over and old, damaged teeth will be removed and replaced with shiny news ones, grown from stem cells to order. The last generation to know the special fear that comes with the rising whine of the drill is already brushing its own teeth.

44. Passports
You rarely have to rush back home from the airport in a taxi having forgotten to bring your retinas or thumbprints, but still we persist in carrying around little faux-leather bound pages of documents as though we're bearers of Her Majesty's seal.

45. Cheques
You probably laugh at these already, and your children will be laughing right along with you. Imagine: a booklet of pre-printed IOUs that you use instead of money. You have to write 'only' at the end of the amount for some reason, and you hand out details that would allow the recipient to set up direct debits on your account with every payment. They are secured only by your signature, which the person processing the cheque has as much chance of recognising as they have passing on the payment in less than three working (that's what they used to call monday to friday, kids) days.

46. Road signs
Universal sat-nav will mean that the local council can save money by tearing down those hulking sheets of metal at the side of the road and insisting that your car informs you that it's five miles to the town centre or that road works will be disrupting traffic until July 2035. Those same devices will also keep an eye on your speed and report your movements to the traffic police, so there will be no need for fleets of Gatso cameras either.

47. Teletext and Minitel
The funny colours, the tiny amount of text on the screen, the need to remember numerous page numbers - Teletext was a rubbish internet really, wasn't it? It's taken a while for the internet to make it to the television but your children can now watch minute-by-minute commentary of the football instead of watching a loop of latest scores on teletext.

48. Paper timetables
The trouble with transport timetables is that they tell you only what is supposed to happen. The reality is often different. These days, GPS and the internet mean that you can find out exactly where your train is right now and what time it's going to arrive at your station.

49. Recipe books
In the house of the future, intelligent appliances will mean no more head scratching over what to cook for dinner. Instead, your fridge will know exactly what food items it contains, and what meals you can make with those ingredients, while video panels embedded within the work surfaces will guide you through every stage of the cooking process.

50. Walkie talkies
Children always used to want walkie talkies. They would allow you to hear unintelligible messages from your friends, just so long as you didn't go more than a garden's-length away from each other. Nowadays children would rather have a mobile phone so that they can call any of their friends without having to give them a walkie talkie first.

Twitter's five billionth tweet - the 'pentagigatweet' - sent - Telegraph

Twitter's five billionth Tweet, or 'pentagigatweet', has been sent, apparently by a San Franciscan man called Robin.

By Tom Chivers
Published: 2:52PM BST 20 Oct 2009

The 'pentagigatweet' itself Photo: TWITTER

@robinsloan's message � a simple "Oh lord", replying to another Twitterer, @sexysloan9912e � was sent around 11pm BST on 19 October.
The microblogging site only reached its one billionth Tweet last November, and was only up to 1.6 billion in April. The remaining 3.4 billion Tweets have been sent in just six months, suggesting massive growth in the use of the site.

 There is some debate over whether the @robinsloan Tweet � which he is calling the "pentagigatweet" � is really the five billionth.

The number of a Tweet is displayed in its web address or URL. @robinsloan's Tweet is at the URL twitter.com/robinsloan/status/5000000000 , or five billion.
However, Twitter has changed its numbering system on more than one occasion. It is not clear that Tweet 5,000,000,000 would have the exact URL number 5000000000.
What is definite, however, is that the five billion mark has been passed.
A third-party site called GigaTweet has been counting all Tweets for some time now. Its count at the time of writing had just passed 5,018,584,000, although it is going up by around 300 a second.
@robinsloan, or Robin Sloan as he is known outside Twitter, is apparently a former news company executive turned novelist based in the San Franscisco Bay area.
Since posting the "pentagigatweet", he has said that he intends to delete it, creating a zombie version called the "necropentagigatweet".

Apple: 'Windows 7 is antiquated technology' - Telegraph

Apple says that consumers may turn to Mac computers because Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 7, is 'complex and expensive'

Apple says Windows 7 is based on antiquated technology. Microsoft says the operating system is easier to use and better than ever

The criticism comes from Brian Croll, vice president of Apple's Mac OS X worldwide product marketing. He said that Microsoft users were tired of the "headaches" caused by the Windows operating system, and expects some disillusioned Windows users to switch to Apple's Mac platform.

"Windows users are really tired of all the headaches that they've been getting over the years, starting all the way back from Windows Me to NT to Vista and now Windows 7," he said. "As a result, I think people are looking for something different, and the Mac offers real ease of use, stability and security."

Apple says Windows 7 is based on antiquated technology. Microsoft says the operating system is easier to use and better than ever

The criticism comes from Brian Croll, vice president of Apple's Mac OS X worldwide product marketing. He said that Microsoft users were tired of the "headaches" caused by the Windows operating system, and expects some disillusioned Windows users to switch to Apple's Mac platform.

"Windows users are really tired of all the headaches that they've been getting over the years, starting all the way back from Windows Me to NT to Vista and now Windows 7," he said. "As a result, I think people are looking for something different, and the Mac offers real ease of use, stability and security."

Apple recently announced its best ever quarter for Mac computer sales, and Mr Croll said there's "a lot of momentum" behind the platform.

He said the difficulty some users will experience upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 � which involves a clean install of the entire PC � will prompt them to simply buy a new computer, and he believes a significant number will opt for a Mac.

"We think this is an opportune time for people to take a look at a Mac. We believe we can get even more people moving over.

"Windows 7 is still just Windows. It doesn't change a lot. It's still complex, it's still really expensive when you look at the cost of the upgrade, and there's still security concerns," he said.

"It also still requires a lot of assembly. It turns out when you get Windows 7 it doesn't even have some of the basic applications like mail or chat, or programs to manage your photos. You actually have to go and find them and download them.

"For the consumer, there's a lot of headache and annoyance built in to Windows 7. It's built on a lot of antiquated technology... that doesn't change from release to release. We think that most people probably aren't going to make that jump [from Windows XP to Windows 7], and as a result, are going to be looking for new computers."

Mr Croll did not comment on whether Apple intended to run any special offers or advertising campaigns to tempt Windows users away from Microsoft. Despite Mac computers costing substantially more than some PCs running Windows, Mr Croll said Apple's computers still represented "great value for money".

He also denied claims from some critics that Apple had launched its most recent operating system, Snow Leopard, before it was ready. Scores of Mac users have reported compatibility issues between Snow Leopard and other software, and Apple itself had to confirm that a bug in the software was wiping crucial files, folders, music and data from some users' computers.

"Occasionally, there are some issues that people find, but they've been extremely rare for a new release," he said.

Microsoft has high hopes for Windows 7, the successor to the much-maligned Windows Vista. The new operating system is designed to make it easier for users to share files, photos and music between computers at home, offers better support for touch-screen devices, and will enable users to browse the internet more safely.

"Windows 7 is more than just a collection of new features," said Ashley Highfield, a senior Microsoft executive. "It's a pivotal turning point in Microsoft's history." He said that Microsoft had listened to the needs of users, and worked hard to produce a simpler, more efficient operating system.

"We want to be the glue that binds your digital life together," he said.

PC World has reported strong first day sales of Windows 7, with demand for the new software outstripping similar early demand for Windows Vista, which was released in 2007.

 

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/6406920/Apple-Windows-7-is-antiquated-technology.html

The internet's 40th birthday: anniversary of Arpanet - Telegraph

 

Happy 40th birthday, internet Photo: ICANHASCHEEZBURGER.COM

On 29 October 1969, two letters � LO � were typed on a keyboard in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and appeared on a screen at the Stanford Research Institute, 314 miles away.

The computer scientists had intended to type LOGIN, but the connection was lost just before the G. Nonetheless, this was the first time a message had been sent over a telephone line between two computers.

It was not called the internet � that name was not coined for another five years. It was called Arpanet, for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, and was developed by scientists in the US Defense Department.

Nor was it the World Wide Web � that was created by the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, now Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at Cern, the Geneva physics laboratory that now houses the Large Hadron Collider, 20 years ago in March.

And email had existed for a few years before that, between different terminals on single mainframes; the first true email sent between different computers was not sent until 1971.

But 29 October is as good a birthday as any. Those two letters, typed by an undergraduate at UCLA called Charley Kline on an "interface message processor", were the precursors of everything from the eBay Buy It Now button to LOLcats, Kara's Adult Playground (we won't link to that) to Google Wave.

The speed of change that the internet has brought into our lives is sometimes surprising.

Given the ubiquity of online video, it may be hard to believe that it is just four and a half years since YouTube was launched, for instance.

The huge uproar over illegal music downloads, which seems to have been going on forever, was kicked off by a legal challenge to Napster in 2000, just nine years ago. Before that, everyone bought their music on shiny plastic discs from a teenager in HMV.

Amazon, the first of the big online shops, is more venerable � it was founded in 1995 � but still, in just 14 years, it and others like it have forever changed how we shop.

Next week we will be celebrating the sort-of birthday of the sort-of internet. They say life begins at 40. It will be extremely interesting to see where the next 40 years take us.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6415607/The-internets-40th-birthday-anniversary-of-Arpanet.html

Google launches social search - Telegraph

By Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent in San Francisco, reporting from Web 2.0 conference
Published: 8:35AM BST 22 Oct 2009

Google has announced it has also signed a search deal with Twitter Photo: GETTY IMAGES

In a surprise announcement made by Marissa Mayer, Google's vice-president of search products and user experience, at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Google said it would launch the new initiative as an experiment in Google Labs in "the next few weeks."

In order to use social search, users need to be logged into a Google profile. Google will then suggest connections to those listed as friends on users' publicly available social network profile information and by crawling your Gmail contacts, if they have a Gmail account.

 Once these details have been tracked for the first time, search results from social networks will always appear at the bottom of the page with a note of which network the information has been pulled from.

Ms Mayer used the example of searching for New Zealand on Google. If users have recently visited New Zealand and written anything about it on a social network or a blog, social search will pull in these results at the bottom of the page.

Google has also built social search into its image search. When searching for a celebrity, for example, George Clooney, the new opt-in feature will also bring up photos of real friends also called George, at the bottom of the image results page.

However, this tool is only likely to work with social networks and websites, where the data is open � so it is unlikely to be able to crawl Facebook, as the majority of information is closed behind privacy settings.

"This is great from a precision and relevance standpoint," said Ms Mayer. "Social search recognises a fundamental need for real-time information and demonstrates Google's commitment to innovating in search."

Google has announced it has also signed a search deal with Twitter on the same day Microsoft's Bing declared its partnership with the microblogging service.

Only a few hours earlier, Microsoft announced it had signed a deal with Twitter and Facebook to include its users' status updates in Bing's search results, at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.

Google retaliated, announcing a very similar sounding deal via its blog. The post said: "Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results.

"We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favourite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."

Nokia sues Apple over iPhone patents - Telegraph

Nokia sues Apple over iPhone patents

Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, is suing Apple for allegedly infringing patents on technology used in the iPhone.
By Rupert Neate
22 Oct 2009

The Finnish company claimed in a statement that Apple had failed to pay it for using patented technology and accused the iconic technology company of "attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation".

Nokia said the suit, filed with the Federal District Court in Delaware, related to technologies that are fundamental to making devices compatible with one or more mobile standards.

The 10 patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption and are "infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced in 2007。

Nokia claims it had spent €40bn (324bn) on researching and development mobile phone technology over the last 20 years.

It said most of the other mobile phone companies had signed an agreements to use its technology under licence, but it claims Apple, its key rival in the growing smartphone market, had not signed up to the accord。

"By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation," said Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia's vice president for legal and intellectual property.

"The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for. Apple is also expected to follow this principle."

Nokia, which makes almost four in ten of all the mobile phones sold worldwide, last week reported its first quarterly loss in more than a decade as its customers defect to the iPhone.

Apple was unavailable for comment.

 

PortableApps.com Debuts Freeware Portable Apps

PortableApps.com, the world's most popular portable software platform, is proud to announce the debut of freeware packaged in PortableApps.com Format. The freeware releases began with the releases of 2X Client Portable, FreeCommander Portable, Google Chrome Portable, SpyDLLRemover Portable and Skype Portable in the last day. The release will continue with IcoFX, XMPlay and many other popular software titles.

The decision to add freeware to our lineup is the result of months of work and is part of our overall strategy to ensure that a single, open source, open development, open format portable environment remains the industry standard.

Freeware Publishers Welcome, Commercial Publishers Contact Us

PortableApps.com Format, the standard for portable software, is now available for third party freeware and open source software publishers to package in. The full details on the format and the installer are available in the PortableApps.com Development Section. Because of our unique dual-licensing, publishers can package their freeware applications in our open source installer without needing to change their applications or licensing. Freeware publishers can begin packaging their apps in PortableApps.com Format today and contact us for listing in the PortableApps.com Directory. Commercial publishers will be able to do the same soon, just contact us for details.

PortableApps.com Itself Remains 100% Open Source

The most frequent question people ask is whether this means PortableApps.com is switching to a closed source model for our utilities, platform, installer and other tools. The answer is absolutely not. We believe open source is the best model to provide our software and to ensure the continued reliability, security, feature enhancements and flexibility of our platform. That means that the PortableApps.com Platform (including the menu, backup utility and upcoming updater), the PortableApps.com Installer, the upcoming universal launcher and all our other tools remain 100% open source, all under the GPL, and will remain so. Even the full PortableApps.com Suite remains 100% open source software.

Why Closed Source Software Is Important to Open Source Platforms

The next question some people ask is, "If you're so committed to open source, then why add freeware to the PortableApps.com lineup?" There are a few reasons. First off, there are several applications that do not have a full-featured open source equivalent, especially on Windows. So, it makes sense to ensure that people have access to the software they need to get through their day.

The second reason is that excluding freeware and commercial software from an open platform is a bad idea. As portable software becomes more popular, more and more software publishers of both open and closed source software have expressed interest in releasing portable packages. If PortableApps.com was closed to freeware and commercial software, the publishers would simply look for another venue that would accept their offerings. As we've seen, that venue will usually be a closed-source, possibly hardware-locked, encumbered one that is hostile to open source software. As more software moves to it, more publishers on both sides become interested in it until you're left with fewer choices. It can even happen where open source projects only release their software in the closed format because that's where they believe the most users are. We've seen this happen in the past and we want to ensure that it won't happen again.

The final reason is because it's the right thing to do. Keeping an open platform and allowing all software to compete on a level playing field just makes sense. Many users have some 'favorite' software of theirs and they won't consider moving to a platform that doesn't have it, no matter how logical your argument that X software is nearly equivalent. This is one of the reasons so many users who don't know much (or don't care much) about open source refuse to move to Linux. "It doesn't have PhotoShop. I can't play my favorite games." What if Linux *did* have PhotoShop and their favorite games? That's one of the reasons software companies should be encouraged to write software for Linux (and PortableApps.com), regardless of license or pricing.

Users Who Want to Can Still Have 100% Open Source

For users who wish to use only open source software, we will soon be debuting a new PortableApps.com Directory that will let you filter the application listings to only show open source software. Currently, freeware is clearly marked as such. The upcoming PortableApps.com Updater (also open source) that will allow you to update all your software will have a setting allowing you to select whether to show all software or only open source software. It's similar to picking your 'universe' in Ubuntu's software utility.

Download Today

You'll find our new freeware offerings in the PortableApps.com Applications Directory available today. Additional apps will be posted as they are announced. Download some new software today!

From: http://portableapps.com/news/2009-10-22_-_portableapps.com_debuts_freeware_portable_apps

Google maps: where in the world are you? - Telegraph

The search giant is turning to people power to help it hone its products and services Photo: AP

Google's mission to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful is about to take on a slightly different hue. The search giant is turning to people power to help it hone its products and services.

At Google's European headquarters in Zurich, the company's geospatial team has long believed in the wisdom of the crowd. These engineers, who have helped to build many things, from Google Earth to Street View, know that the best kind of knowledge is local knowledge.

 

"We have our own mission – to geographically organise the world's information," says Avni Shah, a senior product manager for Google. "Note, that's not to organise specifically geographical information, but rather all information with geographical applications."

That means that everything from photographs to video footage could be used to build a geographical picture of the world around us. "They have an inherent location element," says Shah. "Even though you wouldn't think of them as traditionally 'geographic'."

Google, despite its vast resources, is well aware of the scale of its undertaking. Finding and organising millions of bits of data is a huge effort, as Shah admits.

"We know we can't do it alone. The way we see, it's our job to build the technology not just to help our users explore the world around them, but to enable them to contribute to it, and for others to build upon it."

Google has already stamped its authority on the "geo web": Its mapping tools are built into dozens of mobile phones; businesses embed its maps in their websites and millions of people print off Google Maps to navigate unfamiliar cities. Google Earth allows school children to orbit the planets and dive beneath the oceans, or get a glimpse of life in ancient Rome; Street View enables web users to take a virtual stroll through their local neighbourhood and peek at the homes of their friends and co-workers.

But as sophisticated as Google's mapping tools are, there is a recognition that it cannot possibly map every inch of the Earth.

Noam Ben-Haim, another member of the geospatial team, says the challenge is not simply in pulling together data from disparate sources to create a single, unified point of information for users, but in ensuring their aren't any gaps in that information.

"The people who really have all the data are our users," he says. "Every user is a local expert, for his neighbourhood, for his favourite restaurants. Pretty early on, we started reaching out to users and letting them help us create this amazing thing that we call the geo web. We want to give users a way to not only create their own maps, but share them with the world."

It's a strategy that is already paying dividends for Google. One tool, Map Maker, has proved a particular hit with web users, allowing residents in the Indian city of Chennai to fill out a blank map of the area with key roads, streets and points of interest.

One web user in Argentina edited Google's map of Buenos Aires to mark the direction of one-way streets; internet users in the Carribbean have edited the coastline of Little Tobago to make it more accurate and have painstakingly mapped out the positions of pins and holes on a popular golf course.

"Every hour, users add or correct 10,000 points on Google Maps," Shah says.

This crowd sourcing is not just confined to the geoweb. Search and translation relies on people power too. Alfred Spector, vice president of research and special initiatives at Google, says that encouraging people to help refine the accuracy of its translation service, and build on the 50 languages already in the database, will benefit the whole web.

Such is Google's cachet with the online community that it seems to have little trouble in encouraging web users to spend their spare time enhancing its products and services.

 

William Gurstelle: Take Smart Risks

By William Gurstelle 09.21.09

Among our primitive ancestors, those who ventured farthest from their caves in search of better food or who overcame their fear of fire accrued significant advantages over their meeker kin. That's why a lot of us like the idea of living on the edge: It's in our DNA to take risks.

Hunter S. Thompson called his version of living dangerously "edgework." Sure, Thompson crossed the line with the LSD and shotguns, but a more disciplined brand of edgework can be a good thing. Done artfully and wisely, living dangerously engages our intellect, advances society, and even makes us happier.

A 2005 German study concluded that people who take above-average risks have a higher-than-average index of life satisfaction. Researchers at the University of British Columbia found that among business managers in the US and Canada, those who take greater risks are the most successful. More risk, more reward—not to mention livelier cocktail-party conversation.

On a bell curve, the timid and the reckless are the outliers. The one-third who are slightly more likely to take risks I call the golden Third.

It is possible to work consciously toward joining the golden Third: Just get in there and start pitching. As with knife-throwing, unicycle-riding, and whip-handling, one gets better mainly by practice. Make your choices smart ones. It's not difficult to discriminate between a good, soul-enriching risk and one that's just plain nuts.

Driving a Porsche 911 at 148 mph on the autobahn... golden

Driving on the interstate with a Friday-night buzz... nuts

Building a propane-accumulator flame cannon... golden

Building a pipe bomb filled with match heads... nuts

Imbibing a properly prepared absinthe at l'heure verte... golden

Imbibing for hours at any hour... nuts

Eating fugu (e.g., tiger puffer fish) sushi in a fine Yokohama restaurant... golden

Eating egg salad that's spent an afternoon in the sun... nuts

The most successful adventurers take the high road of risk-taking without falling off the mountain. They channel neither Evel Knievel nor Caspar Milquetoast, neither lion tamer nor monk. That's the golden art of living dangerously.

William Gurstelle (www.williamgurstelle.com) is the author of Absinthe & Flamethrowers, now out in paperback.

From: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_gurstelle

A New Electronic Reader, the Nook, Enters the Market

By MOTOKO RICH

Published: October 20, 2009

The Nook electronic reading device from Barnes & Noble was unveiled Tuesday, offering a competitor to the Kindle.

As widely expected, Barnes & Noble unveiled its Nook electronic reading device at a splashy news conference on Tuesday to generally positive views from the publishing community, and offered some details about its whispered-about lending capabilities.

As much as anything, publishers seemed relieved that Barnes & Noble, which operates the nation's largest chain of bookstores, had produced a credible alternative to Amazon's Kindle. The Nook, priced at $259, went on sale Tuesday afternoon at nook.com, at a price that matched the latest edition of the Kindle. The Nook will ship starting in late November.

Amazon currently dominates the market for electronic readers. Estimates vary, but according to the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, Amazon has sold about 945,000 units, compared with 525,000 units of the Sony Reader.

Barnes & Noble opened an e-bookstore in July, and its editions, which are available in ePub and Adobe PDF versions, can be read on a variety of devices, including Apple's iPhone, the BlackBerry, Macs and PCs. Barnes & Noble will continue to support those devices, as well as forthcoming e-readers from iRex and Plastic Logic.

But it is clear the company is trying to consolidate sales of e-books onto the Nook, which features a six-inch gray and white reading screen and a color touch screen control panel. In any of the chain's 1,300 stores, consumers can download books on the Wi-Fi network. Outside the stores, consumers will access AT&T's 3G network to download books.

One of the differentiating factors of the Nook is that customers can "lend" books to friends. But customers may lend out any given title only one time for a total of 14 days and they cannot read it on their own Nook while it is lent.

In an interview, William Lynch, president of Barnes&Noble.com, said the company would aggressively market the Nook within its bricks and mortar stores. The Nook also has software that will detect when a consumer walks into a store so that it can push out coupons and other promotions like excerpts from forthcoming books or suggestions for new reading. While in stores, Nook owners will be able to read any e-book through streaming software.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/technology/21nook.html?_r=1&em

Survey: Many would take Internet over sex

(CNET) -- Just how reliant are you on the Internet?

More women would give up sex rather than go without Internet access, according to a new survey.

Nearly half of the women questioned by Harris Interactive said they'd be willing to forgo sex for two weeks, rather than give up their Internet access, according to a study released Monday by Intel, which commissioned the survey.

While 46 percent of the women surveyed were willing to engage in abstinence versus losing their Internet, only 30 percent of the men surveyed were willing to do likewise.

The U.S. survey, which queried 2,119 adults last month, found that the gap grew even wider for both men and woman who were 18 to 34 years old. For woman, the percentage of those willing to skip the sheets in favor of the Web rose to 49 percent, while it climbed to 39 percent for men.

And for women 35 to 44 years old, the figure jumped to 52 percent.

(Results as of Monday from CNET's related online poll showed that 30.5 percent of respondents would give up sex for one year, while 26.1 percent would do without Internet access for a year. Almost 40 percent of voters didn't want to sacrifice either.)

These figures were just some of the tidbits that came out of the Intel's broader commissioned study on Americans' reliance on the Internet in today's economy.

Though not as sexy but equally interesting, the survey also found that 87 percent of respondents said the Internet saves them money.

Specifically, 84 percent of those surveyed found the Internet saved them money by comparing prices online and searching out the best deals, while 65 percent said it aided them in finding coupons, discounts, and special promotions.

And TV, which has been losing its share of eyeball time to the Internet over the years, found that the majority of adults would be willing to forgo two weeks of watching TV versus losing one week on the Internet.

Of course when it comes to TV, perhaps size matters, at least according to a different survey earlier this year of Britons conducted by electronics retailer Comet. Almost half of the men polled said they would give up sex for six months in return for a 50-inch plasma TV, according to Reuters.

That compared with just over a third of women who were willing to make the same sacrifice for the big-screen television

From: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/12/15/internet.sex.survey/index.html