The FL Times

Project Manager Interview Questions

2009-11-27T11:34:00.000+08:00

Project manager interview questions that explore the most important competencies or behaviors a project manager needs to be effective in the project manager job.

In addition to the project manager interview questions that assess your technical skills and experience you will be asked interview questions that explore your soft skills. These are the behaviors identified as necessary for survival and success as a project manager in today's tumultuous business environment.

The focus is on behavioral-based interview questions as they are used more and more in assessing suitability for a project manager job. The behavioral interview and how to answer behavioral questions is explained thoroughly at The Behavioral Interview Guide.

Go through these project manager interview questions and answer guidelines to help prepare for success in your project manager job search.

Give me an example of how you used your leadership skills to help your project team meet a difficult challenge.

An effective project manager needs to lead though setting goals and using the right methods to guide and influence the project team towards goal attainment. Good leaders enable team members to feel they have a real stake in the project and encourage them to participate in problem-solving and decision-making.

When answering project manager interview questions about leadership show how you understand the need to communicate and consult but are also aware that lots of talking and procrastination achieves nothing without deciding and taking action.

Effective project managers lead by example and are open and honest about the challenges they face. They recognize the important of collective team effort in achieving the desired results. They are able to identify and use the strengths of each team member and allocate roles and responsibilities accordingly.

This empowers team members to respond to the challenges that arise. Those that excel as project managers keep the project team motivated to give of their best to meet these challenges. They understand the appropriate management style to use with each team member at the different stages of team development. They know how to best utilize the competencies of the team and each team member to deal with challenges and problems.

Describe a time when your communication and interpersonal skills helped in dealing with difficult clients or team members.

After leadership, the ability to communicate effectively with people at all levels is regarded as the second most important project manager skill. Good project management requires clear communication about objectives, roles, responsibilities, performance, expectations and feedback. The project manager should be able to effectively influence and persuade clients and the team to ensure success. Explicit guidelines and expectations should be communicated to accomplish results.

When answering this question it is important to show how you are able to adapt your style of communication to the person you are dealing with. Empathy, understanding and self-awareness all play a role in doing this. The ability to communicate with different individuals on various levels with diverse project interests is important for successful project management. Every project team and every project is different, you must be able to adjust your style to their needs.

Included in communication skills is the ability to be enthusiastic about the shared goals and vision. Enthusiastic project managers are committed to their goals and express this through optimistic and confident communication.

Be aware of your communication style during the interview including your body language and other non-verbal signals.

Give an example of a win-win situation you negotiated

In all projects there are a number of stakeholders who all see their concerns and issues as the most important. Effective project management means responding by finding the best solutions that address the issues without compromising the other stakeholders or the overall project.

In your answer show how you are able to communicate essential information and workable alternatives in a way that gains acceptance. Your ability to understand the position of the other person and to focus on solutions rather than problems is key to effective negotiation on a project.

What was the most stressful aspect of your last project and how did you deal with it?

Very few projects stay on schedule, under budget and with no major problems. The ability to handle stressful situations is key to successful project management. Limited resources and time, changing demands and new circumstances all result in stress on the project manager.

Show how you are able to stay calm under pressure and plan to reduce stress focusing on aspects such as your people management, technology management, risk management and expectation management.

Tell me about a situation during a recent project when you had to adapt and manage change

Show that you can adjust effectively to meet changing demands and tasks. An effective project manager can quickly assess a new situation and adapt to it. The change management process is critical to the success of a project.

Each change needs to be properly defined, considered and approved before it is implemented. Focus on developing a plan for change that addresses change on both a process level and on a people level. Careful and well thought-out preparation of the stakeholders for change and the ability to overcome resistance are key to successful change management. Your answer should emphasize your ability to plan properly and thoroughly for change.

Prepare for project manager interview questions that explore these five essential competencies and show yourself to be a smart and effective project manager in your job interview.

Review the technical project manager interview questions that explore your experience on managing projects.

Useful interview questions and answers that explore your management style can be viewed here.

------------------------------------------

During the project management interview you will be asked interview questions that focus on your training and experience with the successful delivery of different projects.

You can also expect behavioral or competency-based questions that explore essential project manager skills such as team building and team management, planning and organizing, negotiation, problem-solving, leadership and adaptability.

Lets start with the likely project management interview questions that explore your experience on project delivery.

Tell us about your experience in managing different projects and how this can contribute to our position.

It is important to structure your interview answer because this is a multi-layered and fairly complex question. Start by explaining how you will answer the question. This keeps your answer on track and to the point.

"I will begin by giving you a short description of my last three projects. I will then detail the skills and abilities I developed as a result of each project and then demonstrate the value of these skills to this position."

You can then go on to provide a brief but concise summary of each project.

"I was the project manager for the XYZ project and this involved ..."

Then describe the skills you acquired during the project.

"I encountered a number of difficulties on this project that required an innovative approach. I used group problem solving sessions as one of these approaches. This worked well because it helped each team member to clarify their particular project role and responsibility and we were able to develop plans and realistic schedules that the whole project team contributed to ..."

Demonstrate how these skills will benefit the position and company.

"Projects now are faced with tighter budgets and fewer resources. This approach maximizes the available resources and keeps everyone focused and motivated for the duration of the project..."

Describe how you recently managed a diverse project team towards a common goal

Focus on your ability to delegate in a fair and practical way, how you clearly defined project roles and responsibilities, kept personality clashes and conflict to a minimum and monitored and fed back to the project team. Outline your management style and why it worked.

Describe the most complex project you have managed from start to finish

Provide a comprehensive answer remembering to explain the project as you would to a client and not to somebody who has been involved in the project.

The more complex a project the more formal processes and techniques are needed to effectively manage the work. Explain the purpose, value and implementation of the most critical aspects of the project including managing the project work plan, the project schedule, the project risks, the project issues and closing the project.

Be enthusiastic about your accomplishments and specify how your experience will benefit the company. Point out where you made a difference on the project in terms of expenditure, quality, efficiency, customer satisfaction and business and organizational success.

Standard Project Management Interview Questions:

How do you determine realistic schedules for the project?

Explain your methods for resource allocation.

How do you manage suppliers?

How do you inform all the stakeholders of the progress of the project on a regular basis?

How do you monitor risks to the project and mitigate them?

What tools do you use to monitor and control projects?

What project management methodologies are you most familiar with?

What project software have you used?

What change management processes have you used to ensure that change is introduced properly?

What are the practices you follow for closing a project and meeting the conditions required to establish closure?

What specific training have you had that would be relevant to this project manager job?

Answer your interview questions in a calm and assertive tone. Take time to gather your thoughts before answering, it is a key project manager skill to be able to process the facts before responding!

Most project management candidates handle the questions designed to evaluate their technical proficiency well but tend to slip up on the project management interview questions that explore the behaviors or competencies required for a project manager position.

Behaviors or competencies are important because over 80 percent of candidates lose the job offer due to their inability to demonstrate the required project manager behaviors.

----------------------------

These project management interview questions explore your relevant experience and skills for the project manager job. The questions look at your understanding and approach to key project management responsibilities.

What are the necessary steps to successful project management?

What is your understanding and experience of the project manager role? Include aspects such as setting clear project objectives, building the project requirements, managing project cost, time, quality and scope. Refer in you answer to the specific steps you took to successfully manage and close a recent project.

What are the priorities to consider when planning a (your field) project?

Refer again to a recent project and outline your most important considerations in the planning stage. Time, scope and budget are the usual constraints to consider, but how did you allocate and integrate all the necessary inputs to meet the project objectives and plan for risk?
The more in-detail the planning the greater the chances of project success. Highlight how each activity that is expected during the course of the project gets due attention.

In your experience what are the warning signs that your project may fail?

All project managers have had this experience. How did you pick up the warning signal (your monitoring and control processes and systems) and how did you manage it (corrective actions and implementing changes)?
Warning signals can include constantly changing specifications, lack of interest from executive management, incompetence on the project team, changes in the business environment and inadequate resources.
A project manager has to understand the uniqueness of each project and keep checking the project's contours against what they have learned on previous projects.

What are the most important considerations when recruiting and building an effective project team?

When answering this project manager interview question highlight how you not only consider the necessary experience and technical skills but look at critical roles and responsibilities and the dynamics between team members. How will the person fit in with organizational beliefs and goals? How will the person relate to the stakeholder group? A clear understanding of what is expected of each project member is essential.

Describe some innovative ways you have improved effectiveness on recent projects.

Solutions and improvements need to be found through the generation of ideas and alternatives in a creative, out-of the-box manner. Show your willingness to be creative and inventive with both the initiation of a new project and the components of an existing project.

What did you learn from your last project?

Focus on technical skills and knowledge as well as "soft" skills such as people and client management. Perhaps you learned something valuable about yourself as a project manager such as your willingness to adapt to a changing environment or your ability to mentor a team member. Highlight how you are able to learn from mistakes. What would you do differently knowing what you now know about the project?

What do you consider to be the most important project manager skills in terms of people management?

Leadership skills are key to successful project management. What are the methods you have used to guide and influence the project team towards reaching objectives. Good leaders make team members feel they have a real stake in the successful completion of the project. How do you structure your team, introduce and maintain good intra-team communication and improve team motivation and satisfaction?

----------------------------------

Project Manager Job Description

The project manager job description clearly communicates the essential tasks and requirements of the project manager job in any organization.

General Purpose

To be responsible for the overall direction, coordination, implementation, execution, control and completion of specific projects ensuring consistency with company strategy, commitments and goals.

Main Job Tasks and Responsibilities

lead the planning and implementation of project
facilitate the definition of project scope, goals and deliverables
define project tasks and resource requirements
develop full scale project plans
assemble and coordinate project staff
manage project budget
manage project resource allocation
plan and schedule project timelines
track project deliverables using appropriate tools
provide direction and support to project team
quality assurance
constantly monitor and report on progress of the project to all stakeholders
present reports defining project progress, problems and solutions
implement and manage project changes and interventions to achieve project outputs
project evaluations and assessment of results

Education and Experience

qualification in project management or equivalent
knowledge of both theoretical and practical aspects of project management
knowledge of project management techniques and tools
direct work experience in project management capacity
proven experience in people management
proven experience in strategic planning
proven experience in risk management
proven experience in change management
proficient in project management software

Key competencies

critical thinking and problem solving skills
planning and organizing
decision-making
communication skills
influencing and leading
delegation
team work
negotiation
conflict management
adaptability
stress tolerance

The project manager job description is for use by both job seekers wanting to get a clear insight into this key role and by employers.

-------------------------------------------------

Leadership interview questions focus on exploring and evaluating recognized leadership competencies. The questions are designed to assess whether the candidate has both leadership skills and leadership potential.

Management and leadership differ in a number of crucial ways. Management is a hands-on component of leadership - responsible for such functions as planning, organizing and controlling. Effective leadership is the ability to inspire followers to listen to and follow a vision. The ability to innovate and drive an organization or people towards new ideas and directions.

The ability to persuade and influence, demonstrate integrity, communicate and motivate, innovate and implement strategic vision, demonstrate drive and tenacity are all recognized leadership skills.

Leadership interview questions will require candidates to provide examples of how they have demonstrated these leadership competencies and are asked in the format of behavioral or competency-based interview questions.

How would your staff and colleagues describe your leadership style? Give me an example to support your answer.

The purpose of this question is to find out if the style is congruent with the organizational culture. The perceptive leader is able to adapt his or her style to fit the follower's, employee's and organizational needs.

What are the most important values and ethics you demonstrate as a leader? Give me an example of these in practice.

Integrity- being truthful and trustworthy and having conviction - is an essential leadership competency. The effective leader demonstrates values and ethics in personal behavior and integrates these values and ethics into organizational practices and activities. A good leader acts with the courage of his/her convictions. While leaders are open with their employees and model honesty, transparency and fairness, they do not violate confidences or divulge potentially harmful information.

Name some situations in which a leader may fail. Tell me about a time when you failed as a leader?

A number of factors can fall outside a leader's control such as the available skill pool in the organization, time constraints, the economic climate. If employees are lethargic and negatively orientated it can create a situation ripe for failure. In answering leadership interview questions that explore how you deal with difficult challenges focus on how you were able to analyze the setback and seek honest feedback to learn from failure. How you used the difficult situation to encourage constructive questioning of policies and practices. Show your ability to be resilient in the face of failure and to constantly work towards improvement.

What role does leadership play for a manager? How have you demonstrated this with your managers?

The leader's role is to communicate the strategic vision to management with clarity. To translate the vision into concrete direction and plans. To identify and communicate priorities, short term objectives, timelines, performance measures, clear accountabilities and performance agreements to management. To provide quality judgment and advice.

Tell me about an innovative solution you developed to a non-traditional problem.

Effective leaders promote change and innovation. Finding solutions to unique problems are facilitated by encouraging a constant information flow in all directions and emphasizing responsiveness to changing demands.

Tell me about a time when the going got really tough. How did you rally the staff and build morale?

Leaders build a sense of common purpose by promoting the organizational vision both internally and externally. They develop and implement effective communication strategies within the organization. Remove barriers to collaboration. Provide clear direction on priorities. Give clear and honest feedback to inspire trust.

What methods have you used to gain commitment from your team?

Leaders gain commitment by influencing and persuading the team to set objectives and buy into the process. They establish a spirit of cooperation and cohesion for goal attainment. They take the team into the performing phase as quickly as possible. Leaders encourage debate and ideas from all stakeholders. They inspire a commitment to success and excellence by demonstrating passionate personal commitment and promote a productive culture by valuing individuals and their contributions.

All leaders have to deal with conflict situations. Describe a recent disagreement or conflict you personally had to handle.

Leadership interview questions exploring how you handle conflict are looking at your ability to understand and respect different views. Demonstrate your ability to settle dispute by focusing on solving the problem taking into consideration the personalities involved. To evaluate the viability of different dispute resolution mechanisms available. To provide support and expertise to others. To negotiate compromise.

How have you influenced employees to follow your strategic vision for the organization?

Leaders develop ownership by involving employees in the decision-making and planning process. They provide resources to facilitate employee success and empower employees by devolving authority to get things done efficiently. Effective leaders develop processes that engage employees in achieving the strategic vision.

How have you encouraged learning and development of employees?

Learning happens at every opportunity. Your answer to leadership interview questions like this should demonstrate that effective leaders develop employees by mentoring, coaching and providing performance feedback on a daily basis. Leaders act as models for their employees but the most effective leaders not only teach by example they take a personal interest in the learning of others and serve as mentors. Additionally they manage learning throughout the organization by continually focusing attention on the learning agenda and providing the resources to facilitate it. Finally leaders monitor learning by getting regular feedback.

What was the most significant change you brought about in an organization?

Leaders can recognize new opportunities and anticipate long term opportunities. They determine new business directions for the organization. They are able to create enthusiasm and acceptance of the new vision or change and use the appropriate leadership style to inspire and guide employees to embrace change.

Thinks about what the concept of leadership means to you when preparing for leadership interview questions. Look back over your experiences and select insightful examples of how you have demonstrated the competencies associated with leadership.

----------------------

Prepare for The Behavioral Interview

The Behavioral Interview is a proven and widely-used method of exploring a candidate's suitability for the position.

It goes beyond just looking at the candidate's educational and work history to determine the right fit, asking the candidate for specific examples of past behavior as they relate to the job requirements.

The behavioral interview is based on the logic that past behavior predicts future behavior.

If the job requires a person to be able to analyze and find solutions to problems the interviewer will ask the candidate to provide an example of when they previously displayed that behavior.

"Tell me about a problem you uncovered in your previous job. What steps did you take to sort it out?"

It is often difficult to think of good examples within the time constraints and stressful context of a job interview.

Know which behaviors (sometimes referred to as competencies) are required in the position by reviewing the job description and requirements.

Looking back at your past jobs, prepare good examples using the following technique:

Describe the specific situation or task you were involved in
Detail the action and steps you took in the situation
Outline the results and outcome of your actions. What happened, what was accomplished, what did you learn

Listen carefully to the questions asked and, if need be, ask for further clarification. Answer with an appropriate and specific example. Often the Interviewer will ask follow-up questions to get more information,

" Tell me why you did that"

"Take me through your decision process"

"How did you feel about that"

so it is essential to have a complete, actual example to draw on.

Click on the list of Common Behavioral Questions & Answers above to help you frame your own examples.

Keep in mind that there are no right or wrong answers, it is an attempt to see how you behaved in a given situation. It is not possible to fabricate an example. The Interviewer's in-depth probing will quickly expose this.

Examples can be taken from any context as long as they clearly detail the required behavior.

Click on the specific job interview guides to review a list of behavioral questions relevant to each particular job with guidelines on how to prepare your best answers.

Typical management interview questions can be found at the manager interview questions and answers guide.

Use these expert behavioral job interview tips to give you the confidence that you know how to handle this type of interview.

View these Frequently Asked Behavioral or Situational Interview Questions.

Be prepared for success in the Behavioral Interview!

The World's Most Powerful People

2009-11-25T17:08:00.000+08:00

"I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies." --Napoleon Bonaparte

Power has been called many things. The ultimate aphrodisiac. An absolute corrupter. A mistress. A violin. But its true nature remains elusive. After all, a head of state wields a very different sort of power than a religious figure. Can one really compare the influence of a journalist to that of a terrorist? And is power unexercised power at all?

In compiling our first ranking of the World's Most Powerful People we wrestled with these questions--and many more--before deciding to define power in four dimensions. First, we asked, does the person have influence over lots of other people? Pope Benedict XVI, ranked 11th on our list, is the spiritual leader of more than a billion souls, or about one-sixth of the world's population, while Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ) CEO Mike Duke (No. 8) is the largest private-sector employer in the United States.

In Pictures: The World's Most Powerful People

Then we assessed the financial resources controlled by these individuals. Are they relatively large compared with their peers? For heads of state we used GDP, while for CEOs, we looked at a composite ranking of market capitalization, profits, assets and revenues as reflected on our annual ranking of the World's 2000 Largest Companies. In certain instances, like New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (No. 51), we judged the resources at his disposal compared with others in the industry. For billionaires, like Bill Gates (No. 10), net worth was also a factor.

Next we determined if they are powerful in multiple spheres. There are only 67 slots on our list--one for every 100 million people on the planet--so being powerful in just one area is not enough to guarantee a spot. Our picks project their influence in myriad ways. Take Italy's colorful prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi (No. 12) who is a politician, a media monopolist and owner of soccer powerhouse A.C. Milan, or Oprah Winfrey (No. 45) who can manufacture a best-seller and an American President.

Lastly, we insisted that our choices actively use their power. Ingvar Kamprad, the 83-year-old entrepreneur behind Ikea and the richest man in Europe, was an early candidate for this list, but was excluded because he doesn't exercise his power. On the other hand, Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin (No. 3) scored points because he likes to throw his weight around by jailing oligarchs, invading neighboring countries and periodically cutting off Western Europe's supply of natural gas.

To calculate the final rankings, five Forbes senior editors ranked all of our candidates in each of these four dimensions of power. Those individual rankings were averaged into a composite score, which determined who placed above (or below) whom.

U.S. President Barack Obama emerged, unanimously, as the world's most powerful person, and by a wide margin. But there were a number of surprises. Former President George W. Bush didn't come close to making the final cut, while his predecessor in the Oval Office, Bill Clinton, ranks 31st, ahead of a number of sitting heads of government. Apple's ( AAPL - news - people ) Steve Jobs easily made the list, while Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie star governor of California (which alone has an economy larger than Canada's) did not.

This ranking is intended to be the beginning of a conversation, not the final word. Is the Dalai Lama (No. 39) really more powerful than the president of France (No. 56)? Do despicable criminals like billionaire Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán (No. 41) belong on this list at all? Who did we overlook? What did we get wrong? Join the conversation by commenting now.

From: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/11/worlds-most-powerful-leadership-power-09-people_land.html

Large Hadron Collider produces first proton collisions in Big Bang mission - Telegraph

2009-11-25T17:07:00.000+08:00

Cern scientists have hailed the first proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider as a "great achievement" Photo: PA

Scientists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), hailed the development as a "great achievement" and a major step towards mimicking the conditions that followed the Big Bang to unlock the secrets of the universe.

The low-energy collisions came unexpectedly after researchers managed for the first time to circulate two beams around the 27-kilometre (16.8 mile) tunnel 100m beneath the Franco-Swiss border for the first time on Monday.

Physicists working at the facility told how there was standing room only to watch the results and cheers erupted with the first collisions.

The world's largest machine was first launched in September 2008 amid an international fanfare which saw the world's media invited to the facility to make sense of the epic experiment.

But just nine days later, the £5bn LHC suffered a spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection. Fifty-three of 1,624 large superconducting magnets - some of them 50 feet long - were damaged and had to be replaced.

Just weeks ago, an element of comedy was introduced after it emerged that further problems had been caused by a small piece of baguette dropped by a passing bird which landed in a piece of equipment on the surface above the accelerator ring.

After 14 months of repairs, the giant machine was restarted on Friday evening and the first beam started circulating in a clockwise direction around the tunnel about 10pm.

By Monday, the operators were able to move onto the next stage of circulating two beams with the hope of generating a collision. Early in the afternoon, the beams crossed for the first time, then a second time later in the evening.

At present, the beams are being circulated at low-intensity to minimise any damage in the event of an accident. The true test will come as scientists provoke high-energy atom particle collisions and begin to analyse in earnest the fall out from the proton collisions in the months to come.

Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were one trillionth to two trillionths of a second after the Big Bang, which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.

Cern's Director General Rolf Heuer said yesterday's collisions were actually the side effect of the quick advances being made by the LHC during its startup phase.

He said that the scientists would be proceeding cautiously, just a driver would with the first production model of a new car.

"We'll never accelerate this the first time with a kick-start to its maximum velocity," he said. "It's a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time. But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there's still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme."

David Barney, a physicist working at Cern said: "It's quite amazing really, we never expected this to go so quickly. We're incredibly pleased, everything seems to be working excellently. The LHC hasn't actually accelerated particles yet - it hasn't made them go any faster than they were when they came into the tunnel.

"Cern intends to collide them at higher energy next week. It's going incredibly well and we don't really know what to expect next."

Facebook's value rises to $9.5bn

2009-11-25T17:04:00.000+08:00

Social networking website Facebook's purported value has increased to $9.5bn (£5.8bn).

By James Quinn, US Business Editor

This is a near-50pc rise on its valuation in July when Russia's Digital Sky took a $100m stake.

At that point, Facebook, whose pre-IPO shares can be traded only privately between investors, was valued at $6.5bn.

The latest valuation is based on just 12 share sales between employees over the last two months, highlighting the illiquidity of the closed markets on which its shares trade.

According to SecondMarket, one of two private exchanges on which Facebook staff can trade shares with one another, shares are now selling for approximately $21 each, up 42pc from the $14.77 in July.

The value is backed up by SharesPost, the second exchange on which Facebook holdings can be traded, where bidders have pushed up offers to $20 in recent weeks.

Facebook's valuation is known for its wild swings. When Microsoft bought a 1.6pc stake for $240m in 2007, the website was valued at $15bn.

However, in the summer of 2008, when Facebook settled a lawsuit with some of founder Mark Zuckerberg's former Harvard classmates, the company valued itself at $3.7bn in court papers.

A more accurate valuation will not be known until Facebook's board decides to venture towards a stock market float.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/6617675/Facebooks-value-rises-to-9.5bn.html

Mona Lisa 'had eyebrows'

2009-11-25T16:57:00.000+08:00

The art expert says he has uncovered a host of secrets about the Mona Lisa using a 240 megapixel camera Photo: BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

Pascal Cotte said Leonardo built the painting up in layers, the last being a special glaze whose optical properties increased the illusion of a three-dimensional face. Above the glaze Leonardo painted details such as the eyebrows.

Cotte said: "That could explain why the eyebrows have disappeared – they have faded because of chemical reactions or they have been cleaned off."

He has uncovered a host of secrets about the Mona Lisa using a 240 megapixel camera. It can measure light so sensitively as to see through the top paint surface and uncover the layers below.

For example, infra-red imaging shows Leonardo moved the position of a finger on the left hand "to give a more relaxed position, consistent with the smile", Cotte said.

He said the Mona Lisa looked "totally different" 500 years ago, when it had a blue sky and the subject's skin had not yellowed.

The underlying layers of the face - painted using lead white and mercury vermillion - also show it was wider than the end result appears.

"The smile, the glance, the face were all wider," said Cotte.

But Leonardo did not change his mind half way through, he said. On top of the base layers the artist added a glazed shadowing layer to create a three dimensional effect.

"I do not say that he was successful, in reproducing a stereo-vision effect, but if you want to achieve that this is the best way to do it," said Cotte.

"But now it looks totally different to how he painted it. All the optical effects have disappeared."

He said that for Leonardo the Mona Lisa was "more than a painting, it was a challenge to reproduce real life".

Cotte's work is explained in an exhibition, The Secrets of the Mona Lisa, that opens at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on Saturday.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6555592/Mona-Lisa-had-eyebrows.html

Web Apps Suck

2009-11-16T17:06:00.000+08:00

I know I'm going to get hate mail for this one… but here goes.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about user interfaces. I became enraged by the terrible user interface of Daz Studio, and then had the pleasure to use Motion. I have generally been using a large number of applications lately, and am currently creating my own fairly complex level editor for Chopper 2.

I could write many blog posts about all the different lessons I have been learning recently, but one in particular stands out.

Web apps suck. I'm talking about the web interfaces to the google suite, the photo editors, the facebook website. Apps that run in web browsers, any app that requires an internet connection to function at all, and does most of its work on a server somewhere.

Of course web apps have their uses. I don't think they should all just go away, it's nice to have a web app when nothing else is available. But what I'm saying here, is that compared to a native application, web apps are very much worse, for many reasons.

In the most simplistic sense; you need an internet connection, so your ability to access it is unreliable, you get presented with foreign looking – and behaving – buttons and sliders, and the service could go up in price, or simply disappear on you at any point.

But even if that is OK to you, and you like living on the edge, there is still the yucky user experience due to client-server communication. This is what I'm focusing on here.

The latency between action and response in web apps can be horrible, and this fundamentally comes down to the latency between the client and the server. A problem that I can't see any solution to in the next decade or two.

Currently, the internet can be a little slow at times. It doesn't matter if it's due to server overload, bad local wifi or network, slow or misconfigured databases or whatever… there are many, many reasons why a ping to an app server might take a while, and it always seems to take 'a while'.

Clicking a button in a local/native application, doing a minor computation, returning and displaying the results takes no time. I mean you simply cannot perceive the time it takes for the button to flash, simple data to get computed, and the result to be displayed. It's stupidly fast.

Clicking on any button in any web app could take any amount of time. Usually it's fast-ish. Sometimes it even appears to be as fast as a local app. But it's not, and sometimes it is far worse.

So every web app, no matter how much it tries to pretend to be a native app, is reliant on the connection to its server, and hence can't rely on some data being available. If you change some state, you can't guarantee the state change was valid until the server responds. If you scroll down a list, you can't guarantee that the new items being revealed will be available, or even still exist.

Most of the time it kind of works, kind of a bit slow, but OK. Every now and then someone turns a microwave on, and you wait. Every now and then someone changes a standard or a server config file, or you upgrade your browser, or the database overloads, and it all goes to shit. You might even lose all your data, despite your everything-in-triplicate local backups of your own machine's data.

This is Bad. It will always be bad. As technology improves, the technology that uses it also improves. And web based apps are a step behind. Web apps will always have higher latency, more interface issues and a less 'native' experience. They will always be a worse user experience than native apps, with less user control.

So why make web apps? Because it is easier. Because a developer made a website, and suddenly it turned into a web app. Because a developer wanted to make something simple for Windows and Mac and iPhone and Linux and couldn't afford to do it properly. Because a developer intends to inject advertising into the experience at a later date.

Most web apps don't even have a revenue model. Those ones are figuring out how to capture people so they can spam them or sell their details later.

Web apps suck. They are a poor substitute for a native app, and will continue to be so, for many reasons, for many years to come.

Busy In Heaven

2009-11-06T13:25:00.002+08:00

Three men were standing in line to get into heaven one day. Apparently it had been a pretty busy day, though, so St. Peter had to tell the first one, "Heaven's getting pretty close to full today, and I've been asked to admit only people who have had particularly horrible deaths. So what's your story?"

The first man replies: "Well, for a while I've suspected my wife has been cheating on me, so today I came home early to try to catch her red-handed. As I came into my 25th floor apartment, I could tell something was wrong, but all my searching around didn't reveal where this other guy could have been hiding. Finally, I went out to the balcony, and sure enough, there was this man hanging off the railing, 25 floors above ground! By now I was really mad, so I started beating on him and kicking him, but wouldn't you know it, he wouldn't fall off. So finally I went back into my apartment and got a hammer and starting hammering on his fingers. Of course, he couldn't stand that for long, so he let go and fell-but even after 25 stories, he fell into the bushes, stunned but okay. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I ran into the kitchen, grabbed the fridge, and threw it over the edge where it landed on him, killing him instantly. But all the stress and anger got to me, and I had a heart attack and died there on the balchoy."

"That sounds like a pretty bad day to me," said Peter, and let the man in.

The second man comes up and Peter explains to him about heaven being full, and again asks for his story.

"It's been a very strange day. You see, I live on the 26th floor of my apartment building, and every morning I do my exercises out on my balcony. Well, this morning I must have slipped or something, because I fell over the edge. But I got lucky, and caught the railing of the balcony on the floor below me. I knew I couldn't hang on for very long, when suddenly this man burst out onto the balcony. I thought for sure I was saved, when he started beating on me and kicking me. I held on the best I could until he ran into the apartment and grabbed a hammer and started pounding on my hands. Finally I just let go, but again I got lucky and fell into the bushes below, stunned but all right. Just when I was thinking I was going to be okay, this refrigerator comes falling out of the sky and crushes me instantly, and now I'm here."

Once again, Peter had to concede that that sounded like a pretty horrible death.

The third man came to the front of the line, and St. Peter asked for his story.

"Picture this," says the third man, "I'm hiding naked inside a refrigerator..."

Atkins Diet Analysis Helps You Understand Low Carb Dieting

2009-11-06T13:25:00.001+08:00

This Atkins diet analysis will give you the groundwork for understanding how the revolutionary weight loss program developed by Dr. Atkins works. Because it flies in the face of what nutritionists and health care professionals have been saying about weight loss for years, some people can't imagine how it could work.

Not surprisingly, however, it has become one of the most popular weight loss programs in the country. Why? Because it does work, and it works while letting you eat plenty of rich, satisfying foods. There are some things you will have to cut out of your diet for a while, and some that you will have to continue to limit severely for the long term, but most people find it isn't nearly as restrictive as other diets.

My Atkins Diet Analysis on the Phases of the Weight Loss Program

The Atkins Diet is based on eliminating most carbohydrates from your diet. During the earliest phase (Induction), you can only have twenty grams of carbs or less, and these will come from vegetables on a list of accepted foods. Gradually you will move through three other steps (the Weight Loss Phase, Pre-Maintenance Phase and finally the Maintenance Phase) until you reach a point where you can stay on an Atkins lifestyle permanently to keep your weight at the proper level.

My Atkins Diet Analysis on Resetting Your Metabolism

The basis of Dr. Atkins' approach is using the kinds of foods you eat to reset your body's metabolism and what it burns for fuel. Because you aren't eating much in the way of carbs, your body is forced to burn more of your stored body fat for energy. It works because it is very easy for your body to burn carbohydrates, which are a quick energy source. When you are on a low carb diet, however, the body turns to other sources of energy – such as body fat.

Why You Lose Weight on the Atkins Diet

There are two reasons you lose weight on the Atkins Diet. First, you're using more of your own body fat as fuel because there are no longer excess carbs available. Added to that, it is actually a more complicated process for your body to convert fat into fuel for energy, so you actually have to use up more calories to use that stored fat. The very process means your metabolism has to "rev up" to produce the fuel it needs. You'll burn more calories faster!

My Atkins Diet Analysis on the Whole Picture

It's important in the analysis of any diet to look at the whole picture. The Atkins diet plan shouldn't be judged by the Induction Phase, which some people criticize because it is so restrictive. But this phase is only the tip of the iceberg. It lasts only a few weeks, and you aren't supposed to stay on it long term. In fact, it is used to increase your metabolism and stabilize your blood sugar, two keys to the diet.

Atkins Means Low Carb, Not "No Carb"

The Atkins approach has four phases because it is designed to become increasingly flexible as you shed the unwanted pounds. With each phase, you can slightly increase your carb intake by adding new foods. It's one reason the diet is so popular – it's low carb, not "no carb." Eventually you get a feeling for how much you can and can't eat, and how to add carbs that are healthy (such as whole grains).

My Atkins Diet Analysis on Healthy Eating Habits & Supplements

The Atkins Diet also stresses staying healthy – supplements are an important ingredient. Because Dr. Atkins recognized that you should take vitamins and minerals while dieting, many people actually discover that they feel better on the diet because they may be taking supplements for the first time in their lives.

The low carb approach of Atkins also focuses on cutting out foods that are processed, refined and full of sugars. Nearly all health care professionals now agree that this is essential to good health. Instead, the diet stresses unprocessed, fresh foods that are packed with nutrients.

The Atkins Diet has been used by over 30 million Americans and is still going strong. This Atkins diet analysis makes it obvious that Dr. Atkins has developed a program that works well and can contribute to your long-term health.

From: http://www.atkins-diet-advisor.com/atkins-diet-analysis.html

European satellite launched to explore climate change

2009-11-06T13:23:00.000+08:00

SMOS: taken into space on a Russian Rockot launcher from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia. Photo: AFP

The European Space Agency (ESA) said the £282m device was put into space in the early hours of Monday morning to gauge the impact of climate change on the movement of water across land, air and sea.

It was lifted into space on a Russian Rockot launcher from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia.

As the first space-based measure of the water in Earth's soil and the saltiness of its oceans, scientists hope SMOS will be able to fill important gaps in our knowledge about the planet's vital water cycle.

It could also help develop more accurate weather forecasts.

Yann Kerr, scientific director of the SMOS mission, said: "Climate change is a fact, but its impact on precipitation, evaporation, surface runoff and flood risks is still uncertain.

"The availability of water plays a more important role on these impacts than temperature itself."

SMOS has two missions. The first is to measure the water content of soil across the planet every three days to a depth of up to 2m.

This will monitor photosynthesis and plant growth, which is critical for calculating the process by which carbon dioxide is released and absorbed, especially by plants and the oceans.

Its second job is to measure changes in the salt content of the surface of the seas, which will improve understanding of what drives ocean circulation patterns around the world.

Variations in the salinity of ocean waters depend on the addition or removal of fresh water through evaporation and precipitation and, in polar regions, on the freezing and melting of ice.

The mission is intended to last three years, but could be extended to five. A second ESA satellite was lifted into space the same day, to demonstrate new technology, including a new type of lithium-ion battery, an advanced data and power management system, a dual-frequency GPS receiver, an experimental solar panel, an exploration micro-camera and a dozen other gadgets.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6484379/European-satellite-launched-to-explore-climate-change.html

Space Hotel Takes Reservations for 2012 Opening

2009-11-06T13:22:00.000+08:00

Space Hotel Takes Reservations for 2012 Opening

Some forward-looking vacationers have already booked a stay at the first space hotel, which is on track to open in 2012, according to the owners of the planned orbital resort.

Spacefarers can book a three-night stay at the Galactic Suite Space Resort for $4.4 million, the Barcelona-based company planning the hotel has said. So far 43 paying guests have already reserved a spot, while more than 200 have expressed interest, Galactic Suite Ltd's CEO Xavier Claramunt told Reuters.

Despite Claramunt's confidence, critics have questioned whether the hotel can really be ready so soon, and whether the company has enough money to see the plan through. Claramunt said an anonymous billionaire has fronted the company $3 billion to finance the project.

If it is built, guests can look forward to traveling around the world every 90 minutes or so and seeing the sun rise 15 times a day. Galactic Suite plans to transport its travelers to space via Russian rockets from a spaceport to be built on a Caribbean island. Guests will undergo an eight-week training course in the Caribbean prior to launch, Claramunt said.

About 1 1/2 days into the space trip, visitors will arrive at the hotel, which is expected to be constructed of connecting pods around a central hub. Each pod will be able to hold four guests and two astronaut-pilots.

"It's very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space," he told Reuters Television.

Peek's Twitter-Only Device, TwitterPeek, Debuts on Amazon - Digits - WSJ

2009-11-06T13:21:00.000+08:00

Peek, a New York mobile start-up, has begun selling TwitterPeek, a new device for posting and reading Twitter updates.

: Peek; TwitterPeek, a Twitter-friendly mobile device, went on sale for $100 Tuesday.

TwitterPeek became available on Amazon and Peek's Web site Tuesday. Its $100 price includes a full keyboard, always-on tweet delivery and nationwide Internet coverage, plus six months of service. After that, service costs $8 a month, but there is no contract. An alternate lifetime plan, without monthly charges, costs $200.

Peek sells other handheld devices that aren't cellphones, including the Peek Classic and Peek Pronto, which are designed for emailing and text-messaging but don't make calls. It's pitching TwitterPeek as a way to "unleash the thrill of Twitter on the go," particularly for Twitter users without smart phones.

But how many of those people will be lining up for it? Or, as PC Mag asks, "TwitterPeek is for people who want Twitter, but don't want to surf the Web on their phones. Do they exist?"

On Twitter, it's attracting its fair share of skeptics. "TwitterPeek is my vote for epic fail of the week," Josho2001 tweeted. "I don't see this having much demand. Two words: Smart. Phone,"wrote Marie Goltara. A third Twitter user, Nelanka, added, "TwitterPeek is the final sign that the end is near. I figured this would have come out around 2012."

For more commentary, Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky appeared on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" to show off the device (along with the soon-to-launch Motorola Droid) Monday night:

100 Greatest Pop Music of All Time

2009-11-06T13:20:00.004+08:00

Rolling Stone&MTV

01.The Beatles-yesterday
02.Rolling Stones-Satisfaction
03.Nirvana-Smells Like Teen Spirit
04.Madonna-Like A Virgin
05.Michael Jackson-Billie Jean
06.the Beatles-I Want To Hold Your Hand
07.Aretha Franklin-Respect
08.U2-With or Without You
09.the Jackson-I Want You Back
10.Backstreet boys-I Want It That Way
11.The Eagles-Hotel California
12.The Supremes-Where Did Our Love Go
13.Guns N' Roses-Sweet Child O' Mine
14.The Rolling Stones-Brown Sugar
15.John Lennon-Imagine
16.Sinead O Connor-Nothing Compares to You
17.Stevie Wonder-Superstition
18.R.E.M.-Losing My Religion
19.Madonna-Vogue
20.Bob Dylan-Like a Rolling Stone
21.Van Morrison-Brown Eyed Girl
22.Michael Jackson-Beat It
23.Roy Orbison-Oh, Pretty Woman
24.Marvin Gaye-What's Going On
25.Britney Spears-Baby One More Time
26.Fleetwood Mac-Go Your Own Way
27.Prince-When Doves Cry
28.Hanson-MMMBop
29.Queen-Bohemian Rhapsody
30.Elton John-Your Song
31.Santanaf Rob Thomas-Smooth
32.tis Redding-The Dock of the Bay
33.The Who-My Generation
34.Alanis Morissette-Ironic
35.Bruce Springsteen-Born to run
36.TLC-Waterfalls
37.O.P.P.-Naughty By Nature
38.David Bowie-Changes
39.Goo Goo Dolls-Iris
40.Whitney Houston-I Will Always Love You
41.Creedance Clearwater Revival-Proud Mary
42.The Police-Every Breath You Take
43.Rolling Stones-Miss You
44.ABBA-Dancing Queen
45.Eric Clapton-Tears in Heaven
46.Smokey Robinson-The Tracks Of My Tears
47.Van Halen-Jump
48.Pearl Jam - Jeremy
49.Bob Dylan-Tangled Up In Blue
50.Prince-Little Red Corvette

51.The Temptations-Just My Imagination
52.Paul McCartney-Maybe I'm Amazed
53.George Micheal-Faith
54.Red Hot Chili Peppers-Under The Bridge
55.N'Sync-Bye Bye Bye
56.Gloria Gaynor-I Will Survive
57.The Go Gos-Our Lips Are Sealed
58.The Wallflowers-One Headlight
59.Stevie Wonder-You Are the Sunshine of My Life
60.Billy Joel-Just The Way You Are
61.REM-The One I Love
62.Madonna-Papa Don't Preach
63.the Beatles-In My Life
64.Elton John-Bennie and The Jets
65.The Cars-Just What I Needed
66.Cyndi Lauper-Time After Time
67.Eminem-My Name Is
68.Garbage-Only Happy When It Rains
69.Depeche Mode-Just Can't Get Enough
70.Beach Boys-Good Vibrations
71.Romones-I Wanna Be Sedated
72.Tom Petty-Free Fallin''
73.Culture Club-Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
74.Elton John-Tiny Dancer
75.Sly and Family Stone-Hot Fun In The Summer time
76.Radiohead-Creep
77.Al Green-Lets Stay Together
78.Green Day-Longview
79.Janet Jackson-Nasty
80.LL Cool J-I Need Love
81.No Doubt-Don't Speak
82.Michael Jackson-Rock With You
83.Foreigner-I Want To Know What Love Is
84.Oasis-Wonderwall
85.Cheap Trick-Surrender
86.Human League-Don''t You Want Me
87.Pretenders-Brass In Pocket
88.Wyclef Jean-Gone Till November(acoustic)
89.Wham-Careless Whispers
90.Brandy and Monica -That Boy Is Mine
91.Black Street & Dr. Dre
92.ACDC-You Shook Me All Night Long
93.Bee Gees-Stayin' Alive
94.Blink 182-All The Small Things
95.Chic-Good Times
96.Def Leopard-Photograph
97.B-52's-Love Shack
98.Fine Young Cannibals-She Drives Me Crazy
99.Biz Markie-Just A Friend
100.Soft Cell-Tainted Love

What women want: top ten romantic gestures - Telegraph

2009-11-06T13:20:00.002+08:00

Send her a bouquet of flowers, or a box of chocolates at work Photo: GETTY

Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman claims that British men are some of the least romantic in the world following a study he conducted of 6,500 men and women all over the world.

He found that they are less likely to pay compliments, be inspired to write love poetry or take their loved ones away for surprise holidays than their foreign counterparts, instead believing sexy lingerie and expensive gifts are the way to a woman's heart.

"Contrary to what many men believe, you do not have to spend large sums of money to woo a woman – it really is the thought that counts," Prof Wiseman said.

The following are the ten best ways to woo her:

1 - Cover her eyes and lead her to a lovely surprise

2 - Whisk her away somewhere exciting for the weekend

3 - Write a song or poem about her

4 - Tell her that she is the most wonderful woman you have ever met

5 - Run her a relaxing bath after she has had a bad day at work

6 - Send her a romantic text or email, or leave a loving note around the house

7 - Wake her up with breakfast in bed

8 - Offer her a coat when she is cold

9 - Send her a bouquet of flowers, or a box of chocolates at work

10 - Make her a compilation of her favourite music

Top Ten Kitchen Signs

2009-11-05T13:12:00.001+08:00

Top Ten Kitchen Signs

10. A messy kitchen is a happy kitchen and this kitchen is delirious.

9. No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.

8. A husband is someone who takes out the trash and gives the impression he just cleaned the whole house.

7. If we are what we eat, then I'm easy, fast, and cheap.

6. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

5. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.

4. A clean house is a sign of a misspent life.

3. Help keep the kitchen clean - eat out.

2. Housework done properly can kill you.

1. My next house will have no kitchen --- just vending machines.

From: http://jokes.edigg.com/Top_Ten/Top_Ten_Kitchen_Signs.shtml

Best of the Ig Nobel prizes 2009

2009-11-05T13:09:00.002+08:00

Why don't pregnant women topple over? Do cows notice kindness? Does cracking your knuckles bring on arthritis? And is there more than one use for a bra? These questions and more inspired the research rewarded at the Ig Nobels, which were handed out on Thursday at Harvard University in a ceremony organised by the Annals of Improbable Research.

After a year of global financial turmoil, the theme was risk, expounded in a 1-minute keynote address by Benoit Mandelbrot, the mathematician who years ago showed that financial markets are fraught with wild fluctuations.

After a year filled with a flock of financial achievements any one of which might merit an Ig Nobel, the economics prize was bound to be controversial. The Ig Nobel committee picked the management and auditors of four Icelandic banks – Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank and the Central Bank of Iceland – for experimentally demonstrating that financial market fluctuations can rapidly transform very small banks into very large banks, then rapidly reverse the process, thereby demolishing the national economy.

The mathematics prize went to another financial wizard, Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, who imbued his compatriots with a sophisticated understanding of large numbers by printing the national currency in denominations ranging from 1 cent to 100 trillion dollars as the country's inflation rate soared to 231 million per cent.

Non-financial risk inspired Elena Bodnar of the University of Chicago medical school, who received the public health prize for a dual-use brassiere. Having lived in Ukraine at the time of the Chernobyl accident, she knew the importance of being prepared for unexpected public-health emergencies. Together with two Chicago colleagues, she designed and patented a brassiere with cups that can double as a pair of gas masks. In the event of nuclear accident, bioterrorist attack or smoky fire, the wearer can quickly detach the two cups, fasten one over her own mouth and nose for protection, and hand the other to a needy bystander.

The experimental quantification of risk earned the peace prize for Stephan Bollinger of the forensic medicine department at the University of Bern in Switzerland. With four colleagues, he attempted to find out whether a full beer bottle or an empty one is more likely to crack someone's skull. Using modelling clay, they mounted bottles horizontally in a bathtub, with small blocks of wood on the upward-facing side of each one.

It turns out that empties make a more dangerous weapon. Dropping 1-kilogram steel balls onto the blocks from various heights indicated that 30 joules of energy shattered full bottles, but empty bottles could withstand 40 joules (Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, vol 16, p 138). Both would suffice to break the weaker parts of a human skull.

In the same alcohol-related vein, the chemistry prize recognised Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga and Victor Castaño of the National Autonomous University of Mexico for developing a peaceful, low-risk application for another alcoholic beverage: tequila. They found that tequila could be used to make diamond films – a super-tough semiconductor (www.arxiv.org/abs/0806.1485).

The physics prize recognises a delicate gravitational study to answer a question that only small children usually dare ask: why don't pregnant women tip over? For four-legged mammals and our knuckle-walking cousins, the maternal load is balanced between front and hind limbs, but for bipedal humans baby and belly protrude perilously.

How could primitive humans have survived when they spent most of their adult lives pregnant or nursing infants, wondered anthropologists Katherine Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, Austin. The answer, they discovered, was that women have a more pronounced curvature in their lower backs than men, shifting the upper part of the trunk backwards so their bodies balance better during pregnancy.

Donald Unger, an allergist in Thousand Oaks, California, earned the medicine prize for addressing another timeless question: does cracking knuckles really cause arthritis, as his mother warned him it would? As a child, he naturally thought his mother omniscient, but as a teenager he learned about science and started questioning received wisdom of this kind.

To resolve the issue Unger embarked on a long-term controlled experiment, and began cracking the knuckles on his left hand twice a day, but not those on his right (Arthritis and Rheumatism, vol 41, p 949). He has done so for more than 60 years, and never suffered arthritis in either hand. "Mother, you were wrong," he says, looking heavenwards. What he now wants to know is: "Was it really necessary for me to eat my broccoli?"

The veterinary medicine prize went to UK-based researchers Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University's agriculture school for revealing a secret of milk production. Surveying 516 dairy farmers, they found that cows regularly called by names gave significantly more milk than those that remained anonymous (Anthrozoos, vol 22, p 59)

Cows "feel happier and more relaxed if they are given a bit more one-to-one attention", helping them produce more milk, says Douglas.

And finally, the biology prize went to Fumiaki Taguchi of Kitasato University in Japan and colleagues for showing how bacteria extracted from giant panda droppings can reduce the mass of kitchen waste by more than 90 per cent (Journal of the Japan Society of Waste Management Experts, vol 14, p 76).

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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

2009-10-26T18:17:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-26T18:16:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-26T18:11:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-26T18:10:00.001+08:00

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

2009-10-24T23:21:00.002+08:00

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

2009-10-24T23:18:00.001+08:00

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

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

2009-10-24T23:16:00.002+08:00

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

2009-10-24T23:13:00.002+08:00

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

2009-10-24T18:15:00.000+08:00

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

2009-10-24T18:13:00.000+08:00

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

2009-10-24T18:12:00.000+08:00

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

2009-10-24T18:11:00.000+08:00

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

2009-10-24T18:09:00.000+08:00

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

2009-10-24T14:28:00.000+08:00

(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

10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich

2009-10-24T14:25:00.000+08:00

How to get rich the smart way? Read what some creative people did:

1. Million Dollar Homepage

1000000 pixels, charge a dollar per pixel – that's perhaps the dumbest idea for online business anyone could have possible come up with. Still, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a millionaire.

2. SantaMail

Ok, how's that for a brilliant idea. Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every letter you send to their kids? Well, Byron Reese sent over 200000 letters since the start of the business in 2001, which makes him a couple million dollars richer. Full Story

3. Doggles

Create goggles for dogs and sell them online? Boy, this IS the dumbest idea for a business. How in the world did they manage to become millionaires and have shops all over the world with that one? Beyond me.

4. LaserMonks

LaserMonks.com is a for-profit subsidiary of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, an eight-monk monastery in the hills of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison. Yeah, real monks refilling your cartridges. Hallelujah! Their 2005 sales were $2.5 million! Praise the Lord. Full Story

5. AntennaBalls

You can't sell antenna ball online. There is no way. And surely it wouldn't make you rich. But this is exactly what Jason Wall did, and now he is now a millionaire. Full Story

6. FitDeck

Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for $18.95. Sounds like a disaster idea to me. But former Navy SEAL and fitness instructor Phil Black reported last year sales of $4.7 million. Surely beats what military pays.

7. PositivesDating.Com

How would you like to go on a date with an HIV positive person? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin thought that someone would, so they created a dating site for HIV positive folks last year. Projected 2006 sales are $110,000, and the two hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.

8. Designer Diaper Bags

Christie Rein was tired of carrying diapers around in a freezer bag. The 34-year-old mother of three found herself constantly stuffing diapers for her infant son into freezer bags to keep them from getting scrunched up in her purse. Rein wanted something that was compact, sleek and stylish, so in November 2004, she sat down with her husband, Marcus, who helped her design a custom diaper bag that's big enough to hold a travel pack of wipes and two to four diapers. With more than $180,000 in sales for 2005, Christie's company, Diapees & Wipees, has bags in 22 different styles, available online and in 120 boutiques across the globe for $14.99.

9. PickyDomains

Hire another person to think of a cool domain name for you? No way people would pay for this. Actually, naming domain names for others turned out a thriving business, especially, when you make the entire process risk free. PickyDomains currently has a waiting list of people who want to PAY the service to come up with a snappy memorable domain name. PickyDomains is expected to hit six figures this year. Full Story

10. Lucky Wishbone Co.

Fake wishbones. Now, this stupid idea is just destined to flop. Who in the world needs FAKE PLASTIC wishbones? A lot of people, it turns out. Now producing 30,000 wishbones daily (they retail for 3 bucks a pop) Ken Ahroni, the company founder, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.

To see other businesses that have not made the top 10 list but came pretty close, visit Business Ideas Blog

10+ Unusual Ways To Make Easy Money On The Internet If You Love Writing.

Who Is Shawn Casey? Is He For Real?

Urgently Need Cool Domain Name Ideas, Will Pay For Your Suggestions

Books on startups:

Startups That Work: Surprising Research on What Makes or Breaks a New Company

Start Your Own Business for $1,000 or Less

The 100 Best Businesses to Start When You Don't Want to Work Hard Anymore

The Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook

Getting Rich in Your Underwear: How to Start and Run a Profitable Home-Based Business

P.S. This Blog Has Made Over 10K With Copeac (With Affiliate Links Like This One) . Do Ask Me For Tips, After You Register And Play Around With It A Bit (Include Your Copeac ID In Email So That I Know That You've Used My Ref Link).

From: http://www.nichegeek.com/10_totally_stupid_online_business_ideas_that_made_someone_rich

Masturbation in Showers

2009-10-24T14:21:00.001+08:00

Oops!

Top 100 Real-Time Web Companies

2009-10-24T14:09:00.000+08:00

As part of the lead-up to our inaugural event this Thursday 15th October, The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit, we're pleased to announce our list of the top 100 Real-Time Web companies. A couple of weeks ago we posted our top 50. Thanks to the comments on that post and messages we received in the days after, we discovered 50 more companies!

The Top 100 is now categorized, making it easier to understand and spot trends from. We'd like to give a huge thanks to William Mougayar of Eqentia, who helped us develop the list and the categories.

A reminder that the ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit is happening 15th October in Mountain View, California. Many of the ReadWriteWeb team will be there, so we look forward to meeting and talking with you all! You can register here for the low price of $270.

The Top 100 list below is ordered by category.

Company	Category
Superfeedr	Aggregation
FirstRain	Analytics
HubSpot	Analytics
PostRank	Analytics
Lexalytics	Analytics
Scout Labs	Analytics
Sysomos	Analytics
WebTrends	Analytics
Insttant	Analytics
Tumblr	Blog
Posterous	Blog
TypePad	Blog
WordPress	Blog
Eqentia	Business Intelligence
Bantam	Collaboration
Present.ly	Collaboration
Shareaholic	Collaboration
Socialcast	Collaboration
Olark	CRM
Saratoga	CRM
Gelato	Dating
DocVerse	Document Management
Liaise	Email
Kampyle	Feedback
Rypple	Feedback
StockTwits	Finance
Vayusphere	Messaging
Gnip	Messaging
Cleartext	Messaging
Kaazing	Messaging
Real-Time Innovations	Messaging
TIBCO	Messaging
Isode	Messaging
Twitter	Microblogging
Yammer	Microblogging
AllVoices	News
Tweetmeme	News
Mixx	News
Thoora	News
Fwix	News
YourVersion	News
bit.ly	Search
Rankspeed	Search
Evri	Search
Faroo	Search
Cluuz	Search
BoilingPage	Search
BuzzFeed	Search
MicroPlaza	Search
HighNote	Search
Tweetag	Search
OneRiot	Search
CrowdEye	Search
itpints	Search
Topsy	Search
Twazzup	Search
Tweefind	Search
Collecta	Search
Google	Search
Scoopler	Search
Surf Canyon	Search
Wowd	Search
Yauba	Search
Pachube	Sensors
Cliqset	Social Media
Nomee	Social Media
Social Mention	Social Media
UberVu	Social Media
BackType	Social Media
Disqus	Social Media
IntenseDebate	Social Media
JS-Kit ECHO	Social Media
FiltrBox	Social Media
Monitter	Social Media
Radian6	Social Media
Pip.io	Social Media
Aardvark	Social Media
Yahoo! Meme	Social Media
Omgili	Social Media
Jive Software	Social Media
Foursquare	Social Networking
Loopt	Social Networking
Vyoom	Social Networking
Yelp	Social Networking
Twones	Social Networking
Facebook (and FriendFeed)	Social Networking
Enjoysthin.gs	Social Networking
Streamy	Social Reader
Threadsy	Social Reader
Seesmic	Social Reader
TweetDeck	Social Reader
Brizzly	Social Reader
PeopleBrowsr	Social Reader
LazyFeed	Topics
Twingly	Topics
Praized Media	Twitter
Chartbeat	Web Monitoring
Clicky	Web Monitoring
Woopra	Web Monitoring
PBworks	Wiki

Have we missed your favorite? Let us know in the comments!

From: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_real-time_web_companies.php

Hacking the Tower: Jelli Crowdsources FM Radio - ReadWriteStart

2009-10-24T14:00:00.000+08:00

In a few weeks moviegoers will flock to Philip Seymour Hoffman's latest rock ensemble flick Pirate Radio. A fictional period comedy about an illegal station in the North Sea, the film embodies the same anti-authoritarian sentiments that Gen X and Y audiences have grown to love. Jelli.net, a crowdsourced radio station with a web-based interface, has found a way to democratize sound waves and captivate that same 18-35-year-old audience. The Bay Area company launched in June allowing users to access a Digg-like interface and vote up and down realtime FM radio during CBS' Live 105 KITS' Sunday programming. As of this evening the company has penned a national deal with 450 Triton Digital Media radio stations and a distribution deal with Australian broadcaster Austereo.

Says Jelli's CEO Mike Dougherty, "What makes this different than request radio is that while program directors set up the broadcast sandbox, there is no actual middle man between a request and radio play." According to Dougherty, Jelli's voting platform directly informs programming servers sitting at the radio station's transmission tower. In other words, if the community decides to vote up a War of the Worlds-style radio scenario, it's entirely possible to do so. As of today, the community now has access to a nationwide network of stations, and in a few months time, they'll also have access to stations in Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne.

Rather than kowtowing to advertisers and labels, programming is directly affected by the likes and dislikes of the Jelli community. According to Dougherty, on average two tracks are voted off the air per hour. Just as music fans vote their favorite songs onto the radio, they can also "bomb" them down into the lower echelons of Jelli's charts. In some cases waring factions of fans have rallied to take over the airwaves, and in other cases programming revolves around a specific theme. Jelli's chat feature makes it possible to sway the music mob.

In the past, community music sites have struggled to increase their catalogues due to the balancing act they must maintain between freemium music models and major label licensing fees. With Jelli, the community gets the music they want via streaming web service or traditional radio, and stations continue to tackle the ad placement and legal work.

With radio transmission towers constantly connected to the cloud, Dougherty believes that there is a world of opportunity to pull in Facebook applications, mobile interfaces and additional levels of a web-based feedback loops. For developers, stations and advertisers, this cloud-based data means the difference between waiting on a quarterly Jelli.net.

From: http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/10/hacking-the-tower-jelli-crowds.php

Spring Design Announces Android-Based Dual-Screen eReader

2009-10-24T13:59:00.000+08:00

Spring Design, a relatively unknown hardware design company, justannounced that it will enter the eBook market with a dual-screen eReader based on the Android operating system. This device, the 'Alex,' will combine a 6-inch eInk display with a 3.5-inch color LCD touchscreen. According to Spring Design's press release, the company will use an 'enhanced' version of the Android OS that has been optimized to facilitate the integration between the two screens. Spring Design plans to release this device later this year.

Hardware

The dual-screen concept is definitely interesting and somewhat reminiscent of the rumoredBarnes & Noble-branded eReader that is scheduled to be announced tomorrow. For now, Spring Design's press release remains quiet about any content partnerships. Even though the company says that the device will be able to connect to 3G, EVDO/CDMA and GSM networks, Spring Design doesn't appear to be ready to announce any partnerships there either.

Multimedia Books

Maybe the most interesting aspect of the device is that the company plans to give developers and publishers the ability to enhance the text that appears in the eInk screen with multimedia content on the LCD screen. This could open up a lot of new avenues for publishers, but at the same time, we have to wonder how many publishers would be willing to develop new content for this device. Creating an eBook version of a manuscript is easy, but adding additional content to this text could quickly become a costly undertaking.

Color Us Skeptical

Given how vague the details are, we remain skeptical about this device until we get more details. For now, all we know is that it will run Android, feature two screens and have an SD card slot, and that users will be able to cache Web content on the device and then display it on the eInk screen.

We also can't help but look at the device and think that it would be rather unwieldy to use. It is definitely exciting to see that somebody is using Android to develop an eReader, but this device seems to forgo usability for novelty. While we are all looking forward to color eInk displays, this device looks like an odd chimera that is meant to bridge the gap between these two generations. In the long run, this concept probably doesn't have much of a future.

From: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/spring_design_announced_dual-screen_android-based_ereader.php

Firefox is Coming to Android

2009-10-24T13:56:00.000+08:00

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

Mozilla plans to release Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox, for Nokia's Maemo, Windows Mobile and Android devices in the near future. In an interview with Om Malik, Mozilla CEO John Lilly also said that Mozilla has fallen behind in the mobile space, as WebKit-based browsers like Safari on the iPhone currently have a large lead, but he is confident that Mozilla can deliver a better browsing experience. Mozilla, according to Lilly, wanted to wait for devices to get to the point where they could handle everything a desktop browser could. Mozilla, however, isn't likely to develop a mobile version of Firefox for BlackBerry anytime soon.

Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox, which was announced in April 2008, reached its beta earlier this year. At that time, Mozilla was looking into OEM deals with Nokia, Windows Mobile and Symbian. At that time, it was unclear if Mozilla was going to develop a version of Fennec for Android and the browser was only available for the Nokia 810. Since then, the mobile browser market has shifted once again and now Maemo and Android are the prime targets for Fennec.

In the mobile market, Fennec goes up against Opera Mobile and Skyfire, which are available on a wide variety of platforms. The most important competitor, however, is probably Safari, though Apple only makes its browser available on its own phones. Safari may not be available on a large number of different phones, but it has set the bar pretty high when it comes to the user experience that users now expect from a mobile browser. With the Awesome bar and Weave bookmark synchronization, Firefox, however, will offer a number of features that Safari doesn't currently offer. Fennec will also offer support for plugins.

Om Malik looked at an early version of Fennec on the Nokia N900 and thinks that the browser "is perhaps its single biggest standout feature" on the device.

Mozilla on the iPhone

Earlier last week, a number of rumors about a Mozilla app for the iPhone also started to make the rounds, though it remains unclear what this app would look like. Apple, after all, isn't likely to allow a full Firefox-based browser on the iPhone.

Yahoo! To Come Full Circle With News Link Curation Site

2009-10-24T13:53:00.000+08:00

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

Yahoo! started out as a hand-curated directory of links and will now recognize the value of manual curation again in a new project to be run by respected online journalist Andrew Golis. That according to Golis himself, who comes from Talking Points Memo - a site widely recognized as one of the best examples of new journalism online.

"The site will be a combination of curation and original reporting," Golis wrote this morning on his personal blog, "with gregarious linking and sharp, smart writing. In other words... I'm going to be building a team to bring the most popular news site in the United States into the news link economy."

We assume the new site will be enabled by all kinds of news research technologies to unearth hot content, but in creating this kind of site Yahoo is acting on a feeling many people have about the fast-flowing real-time river of news: it's best navigated with a combination of machine and human editorial input. Information curation is hot already and will probably only get hotter as a (great) job in the near future.

Golis is currently the Deputy Publisher of Talking Points Memo. He joined the company in 2006, has a Harvard degree and lives in Sunnyside, New York. He's married to prominent feminist authorJessica Valenti.

News found via the fabulous Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard.

Google Releases API for Website Optimizer: A/B

2009-10-24T13:51:00.000+08:00

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

Google Website Optimizer, a powerful tool that allows website owners to split traffic and test the effectiveness and conversion rates for an array of variables, has traditionally required a lot of back-and-forth between any given site and the Website Optimizer interface.

With the release of a new API, announced today, Google is allowing site owners to conduct multivariate and A/B testing from their own platforms. Part of Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer (GWO) is a free tool that "handles splitting a website's traffic, serving different variations and crunching the numbers to find statistical significance." For site owners, these minute variations can widen conversion funnels and lead to exponentially greater engagement and profit if changes are executed correctly.

For an overview of how GWO and A/B or multivariate testing work, take a look at this Google-produced video explaining the product and the process:

According to a post by Googlers Gary Kačmarčík and Erika Rice Scherpelz, "Creating experiments with Website Optimizer usually involves a lot of back and forth between your website and the Website Optimizer interface. Using the API, you can integrate Website Optimizer into your platform. In short, you can create and launch experiments from whatever tool you use to edit your site."

The GWO API does not provide access to testing results. To see the experiment results, users must visit the experiment report page.

In addition to simplifying the site optimization process, the API might also make it simpler for companies to conduct in-house testing, reducing both the cost and time of optimization. Site owners and others can register for the GWO API webinar, which will take place on October 28th at 10 a.m. PDT. During the webinar, Website Optimizer engineers will walk users through how the API works, and two platforms that have already integrated GWO using the API will demonstrate their products.

Blogs on the Go: WordPress.com Goes Mobile

2009-10-24T13:50:00.000+08:00

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

The millions of blogs on WordPress.com will now have a clean mobile theme turned on by default, removing most of the formatting and making the sites easy to load on a phone. WordPress bloggers may want to opt-out of the new setting; not everyone likes how the first mobile themes selected by WordPress look.

As we wrote earlier today though, consumers are not happy with how the mobile web is performing. Turning on mobile themes by default could be one small step towards solving that problem in the large territory that is WordPress.

One theme, WPTouch, will be displayed on the iPhone, Android and other modern browsers and another simpler theme will be shown to users of other phones. WPTouch is not the only option available if users are instead on WordPress.org. Another favorite is Carrington Mobile.

Earlier this month WordPress announced that users can now more easily publish links to their new blog posts out into the world's defacto light-weight RSS reader, Twitter.

From the slow emergence of mobile reading and publishing to the unwillingness of carrierers to solve bandwidth problems, it's clear that the mobile web is still in its very early stages. For now, little things like this make a very big difference.

Office Web Apps Expands, More Invited to Join Technical Preview

2009-10-24T13:49:00.000+08:00

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

Office Web Applications, the browser-based versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, are now being made available to more users according to a post on the Windows Live Team blog. The online office suite, which began its initial alpha testing (in Microsoft terms, it's called a "Technical Preview") in mid-September, was originally made available to only a limited number of users. Today, the Technical Preview is opening up, allowing more people to try the Web Apps, Microsoft's first attempt at porting their desktop Office software to the cloud.

About the Web Apps and the Technical Preview

Although still limited to users in the U.S. and Japan, participants in the Technical Preview are able to access the web versions of the Office programs through Windows Live SkyDrive, Microsoft's online cloud storage service and a part of their Windows Live suite of tools and services.

SkyDrive, which provides each user with 25 GB of online storage, is used to host the documents created using the Office Web Applications. For now, the service is entirely free. However, during our earlier interview with Takeshi Numoto, the corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Product Management Group, we questioned him about future monetization plans for the online suite. He wouldn't confirm any details, only saying that Microsoft was "experimenting" with several options. To date, nothing has changed on that front.

At the moment, the Technical Preview is not offering full access to all the Office programs - only Word, Excel and PowerPoint are currently available. There is a placeholder for OneNote, but it displays a message reading "Still to come..." when clicked. We're told that OneNote support is due later this fall. That should be relatively soon, considering that it's already October.

The web version of Microsoft Word is also incomplete at this time, allowing you to view files but not create or edit them. Only Excel and PowerPoint allow for both read and write access at the moment.

According to Microsoft, the Technical Preview program is designed solely for the purpose of collecting user feedback prior to the broader beta release of the service. No date has been given for the beta launch as of yet but the online suite is due to ship next year alongside Office 2010, the next version of the company's desktop software suite.

How to Join

If you're interested in signing up for the Technical Preview, you'll need to establish a Windows Live IDif you have yet to do so. Hotmail and Windows Live Mail users should already have one - it's your @hotmail.com or @live.com email address. You can then sign up for the Technical Preview program via this link. As noted above, you will need to select either the United States or Japan during signup, as those are the only two countries supported at this time. After completing the sign up process and accepting the license agreement, your Windows Live ID will have access to the Web Applications by way of SkyDrive.

Disclosure: Sarah Perez also freelances for Microsoft's Channel 10. She is not a Microsoft employee.

Nurphy Wants to Replace Email with Conversations

2009-10-24T13:47:00.000+08:00

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

The beta launch of Google Wave has once again put the spotlight on the shortcomings of email. Wave tries to be everything for everybody, but others, like the recently launched Nurphy, have opted for a more focused approach. Nurphy, founded by Paul Horsfall and Neil Cauldwell, wants to be a replacement for email conversations with multiple recipients. The result is an interesting mix between email, Twitter, Yammer and IM that is aimed at both business and casual users.

Conversations Instead of Email

To initiate a conversation, you first have to sign up to the service or sign in with your Twitter credentials, which doesn't take more than a minute. On the website itself, Nurphy looks a bit like a cross between Twitter and an email client. After you have signed up, you can start a conversation with anybody who is on the service already or by email. Recipients who don't want to sign up for Nurphy can continue to reply to messages by email.

Conversations on Nurphy are shown in a Twitter-like timeline in reverse chronological order. Conversations can be public, private or by invitation only (though still visible to the public). Public threats - like Nurphy's own customer service site - look a bit like forums and Nurphy recommends that you post links to these public conversations on your social networking profiles so that you can have a 'real' conversation with your friends. Without threaded conversations, however, it can be hard keep track of conversations. Instead of using sub-threads like Yammer, Nurphy borrowed Twitter's @reply structure.

It is clear that Nurphy's designers paid a lot of attention to detail. If you ever registered for aGravatar in the past, for example, it will automatically choose this picture as your profile image in Nurphy. The service also offers a nifty mobile website, which looks especially good on the iPhone.

Needs some Fine-Tuning

The service, however, also still needs a bit of fine-tuning. You can't edit messages once they have been posted - the only option is to delete the whole message. It can also take a few minutes before an emailed message actually appears in a conversation. There are also a few small design flaws that take a user out of the experience. When you add a message, the whole page reloads, for example, even though the system seems perfectly capable of adding incoming messages to the conversation without a reset.

It almost seems like Nurphy is trying to keep things too simple in its current iteration. While we understand that the company is trying to make it as easy as possible for new users to get started, it would be nice if you could set up a private Yammer-like network for your friends or colleagues, for example.

Twitter in talks with Google and Microsoft to add real-time tweets to search results

2009-10-24T13:42:00.000+08:00

Twitter is reported to be in "advanced negotiations" with Google and Microsoft about licensing its data feed for use in their search engines.

Published: 1:26PM BST 09 Oct 2009

Twitter is said to be discussing adding video-tweets. Photo: ALAMY

A deal between the companies would make the tweets sent by Twitter users appear more prominently in the real-time search results of both Microsoft's search engine, Bing, and Google.

According to the All Things Digital technology blog, the deal would be non-exclusive, and the parties involved are believed to be discussing a number of business models, including an upfront payment to Twitter, as well as revenue-sharing proposals. Twitter is said to be negotiating separately with Google and Microsoft about ways of building tweets into their search engines.

So-called "real-time" search is viewed as the next battleground for internet search, with web users tapping in to services such as Twitter to find out the hot topics of conversation and latest news at any given moment.

Neither Google or Microsoft would comment on the rumours."

"This could be a way for Twitter to make some money, and maybe more than just a little money," said Dan Olds, an analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Co. "It finally means a business model for Twitter, or at least the beginnings of one. And, of course, it means real revenue, which is very important, not just in licensing revenue from Google or Microsoft, but also in potentially getting a piece of the action on an ongoing basis. So there could be considerable upside here for Twitter."

Twitter, which has millions of users around the world, is yet to find a way to make money directly from its user base. A recent round of funding raised $100 million, valuing the company at around $1 billion. Twitter is believed to be considering carrying advertising on the site, or selling premium services to business customers, as a way of building up a revenue stream.

"The [real-time search] data is valuable," Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research, told Computerworld. "It allows the search engines to front-end Twitter. And it also clues them in to what people on the web are talking about.

"What people are now twittering about is what people are now interested in... so the engines could include tweets as indexed content, either through an option, a separate search page, or a search window."

How Can Libraries Use the Cloud?

2009-10-23T18:02:00.003+08:00

from http://tametheweb.com/2008/08/04/how-can-libraries-use-the-cloud/

I've been using Apple's .mac service for years, since 2001 as a matter of fact. The recent upgrade from .Mac to MobileMe has garnered a lot of press for the problems, breakdowns and failures of the service meant to "push" data to my iPhone, my Macs and to the service itself, described as a "cloud."

Luckily I haven't had much issue with the upgrade/switchover. I will say, however, that I think for a couple of weeks in July some emails I sent took a long time to get where they were going as did some I received. Compared to folks who lost loads of mail, that's not the end of the world.

Apple is trying – as are other companies – to tie into this idea of cloud computing. I'm fascinated by this – could all of my data someday be stored in the cloud, be it at Apple's, Amazon's or some new service? Could I easily access my data from any PC, Mac, phone, tablet, etc at my disposal? And the number one thing on this music lover's mind" could my entire 5,264 item, 34GB iTunes library live in the cloud and be accessible from anywhere I have a wifi or cellular connection to my phone, home stereo, car stereo, etc?? That's what Kusek and Leonard were forecasting in The Future of Music.

For more, don't miss Robin Hastings' presentation "Collaborating in the Cloud" at Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/webgoddess/collaborating-in-the-cloud
So, we've reached a time when much of my data could be stored in other places and accessed from anywhere. Will Richardson just posted:
Of course, this raises some eyebrows, and I invariably get questions and comments along the lines of "How do you trust Google to keep your information secure?" or "What if you can't get on the Web?" These invariably lead to conversations about how mobile devices and Web enabled phones are changing the landscape and how the potential reward of easy collaboration and sharing at this point at least outweigh the risk of losing files.

Between IBM's recent announcement to build huge data centers to support "cloud computing" for its customers, Kevin Kelly's recent Ted Talk about the next 5,000 days of the Web, and the continuing discussion on the Fast Forward blog, it's pretty apparent that we are shifting away from our reliance on one or two devices to hold our information and that our focus is now becoming what devices give us easiest access to that information on the Web.

(Thanks Will, your post reminded me I've had this in draft for awhile!)
Don't miss Will's post and then click through to check out Kevin Kelly's talk at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html.
What do the next 5,000 days of the internet look like? Kelly says the Internet has already become "one machine" and our devices are windows into it. I wonder how libraries might make the most of this trend?

Some idle thoughts while I sync the iPhone with new music and apps:
Understand converged devices are everywhere. The days of "No Cell Phones" in the library are long gone. Courteous cell use in our libraries is very important but banning cell phones – a user's window, if you will — should by now have gone the way of the dodo. We've said this before: these converged devices are much more than just phones. Encourage use. reach out to users this way.

Allow unfettered access to the cloud. Locked down PCs won't help users get to their data. This means offering multiple browsers, providing the fastest connections you can, and security measures that do not block access to what users want. Hardware access too: I carry a 160GB portable drive everywhere with all of my stuff on it. I may need to plug it into your library computer someday to sync data. Please let me.

Understand that the cloud may also be a valuable information resource in its own right. how many times have we answered a reference question via Facebook, wikipedia, blog posts, a Flickr picture, etc. These are all viable means to get answers. Tap into user-generated data as a resource. It may become one of our most important mechanisms.

Utilize the cloud to save time and money. Be aware that Google Docs and similar will only get more share of the application market, as Will Richardson illustrates. Maybe offering access to Google docs and instruction on how to use them would be a useful way to save time and money. That's why I am so interested in universities contracting with Google for apps and email. Maybe only a few computers in your library will need MS Office in the future. Maybe OpenOffice and some online version of the same will allow us a lot more freedom to spend our dollars and time on other improvements.

Understand the importance of personalization. Kelly addresses this toward the end of his talk. People are personalizing their information experiences and spaces. How many years has Amazon welcomed me back with open arms, and a few suggestions for purchase? Libraries should allow them to do the same with our systems and services. Look at some of the recent innovations with OPACs to see where this is headed. Affording personalized connections into the cloud might make the library a gateway to user's data and put library resources in their view. Blocking access — Facebook? MySpace? — negates this benefit and dampens this possibility.

Don't miss the most important aspect: localization. Many of the new social networking apps on the iPhone tap into using my location in various ways. It's messy, weird, kind of silly, but speaks to the promise of what could come. I might easily find three vegetarian restaurants within a mile of a conference hotel via localized search on my device. I might tap into the wisdom of three other hikers while exploring a national park via services like "Find Twitter users near me." This is where the privacy discussion becomes so important. We need to understand how much is too much (see the image at the right) and how much is too little ("No photos in the library! It's a privacy thing!").

The Kelly video and Will's post, as well as the little tone my iPhone makes every time an email comes into it from the cloud, gives me a lot to think about.

How else might we tap into the cloud? What are the great possibilities? What are the pitfalls?
Flickr image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kky/704056791/

Google Book 'finger condoms' cause mirth - Telegraph

2009-10-23T17:54:00.000+08:00

Google Book 'finger condoms' cause mirth

Is this the Hand of Google? The sheathed fingers of scanners employed by the search giant's Google Books service are provoking amusement and consternation online.

Pink fingers spotted in The Episcopal Church annual on Google Books Photo: Kidicarus222 on Twitter

Eagle-eyed bloggers have spotted rogue hands obscuring the pages of dozens of books made available over the internet.

The index and middle fingers are invariably clad with pink rubber "finger gloves" to prevent smudging, with many people pointing out their resemblance to condoms.

More than 10 million books have now been scanned and archived by Google and its publishing partners, allowing members of the public to search their text just like any other web pages.

The titles can then be bought as hard copies or, in the case of out-of-copyright books, downloaded page by page as scans.

But the speedy input of so many titles has thrown up several glitches, not least the scattering of pink fingers in classics including Plato's The Trial and Death of Socrates.

While some readers said they were charmed to glimpse hints of the human endeavour behind a process that they presumed was mechanical, others were disconcerted.

"Was it the condom that made the picture seem obscene and pornographic?" asked the blogger Phil Patton, who found fingers in the Joseph Conrad novella The Shadow Line.

"The suddenness of its appearance suggested scanning as an unclean process; I thought with horror of the guy who found a finger in his bowl of fast food chili."

The Self Publishing 2.0 blog has described the phenomenon as "finger spam" and called on Google to ensure its scanning is more reliable if it wants to make money from on-demand publishing.

"The book business is fussy, and readers who encounters finger spam in the wrong location aren't going to click on the next result. They're going to ask for their money back and buy their next book from Amazon or visit a library instead," it wrote.

Google pledged to address the wayward finger problem when the issue was first raised two years ago, but the mistakes have yet to be rooted out.

Things Have Changed: Facebook to Open Public Messages to Search

2009-10-23T17:51:00.000+08:00

Facebook began as a place for college connections, secluded from the prying eyes of the outside world, but today that era is officially over. Major Facebook investor Microsoft announced this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Summit that it has closed deals to bring status messages from both Twitter and Facebook into the search results of Bing.com.Twitter search is live now, Facebook is forthcoming.

Facebook is opening up to a search engine - that's very big news. Only content from accounts marked public will be indexed by Bing, but it's a sea change none the less. Facebook has an explicit, acknowledged agenda to make more people comfortable sharing more information publicly - once they do, that information will be searchable on Bing. This 'aint your big sister's Facebook anymore.

Facebook opened on-site search across user profiles and messages late this summer. The company has been careful to only expose information from people who have opted-out of their own default privacy settings and we don't expect this Bing deal to be any different. While some people like Facebook because of the privacy settings, a growing number of users like it for the promotional and networking advantages that can be maximized with a public profile.

You don't want to be public with your Facebooking? Facebook will respect that, but the company does hope you'll change your mind. Seeing some peoples' Facebook status messages show up in Bing search is likely to freak out people who aren't familiar with public profiles and have a strong interest in their own data remaining private.

It's very unlikely that Bing will be allowed to cache the Facebook messages it serves up.

Facebook status messages used to be entirely closed to outside search engines - and now they will not be. Even these public search results won't be full participants in the open web, though. It's very unlikely that Bing will be allowed to cache the Facebook messages it serves up. Facebook prohibits other software from keeping user data in cache because the company says users must be allowed to change privacy settings and have those reflected everywhere around the web that Facebook data could be found. That's an unusual arrangement for a search engine. It breaks one of the fundamental laws of the internet - that what you publish publicly once is public forever.

Will the company make a similar deal with Google? Probably not. Twitter may have gone both ways, but Facebook's long-term ambition to challenge Google and its Microsoft backing will probably mean that the world's leading search engine will never be allowed to index activity on the world's leading social network. The public parts of profiles, yes, but activity? No.

Say hello to the new Facebook, now a partial player in one public part of the rest of the web.

Real-Time Search Startups on Google/Bing/Twitter News: Who Will Prevail, Who Will Profit?

2009-10-23T17:49:00.000+08:00

Is today's news of major search engines' integration of Twitter posts in search results the herald of a mass extinction or a mass acquisition?

According to tonight's conversations with key players in the space, the day's events and announcements could spell either or both. Every real-time search engine we spoke to has expressed every intention of weathering the storm on their current strategies, all of which center on providing an excellent UX though excellent product development. And all see the day's events as a validation of years of concentrated effort. But who will prevail, and who will profit?

We spoke tonight with Tobias Peggs of OneRiot, Gerry Campbell of Collecta, and Bill York ofWowd. We've had in-depth conversations with each of these real-time search engines in the past, and we're indebted to them for their insight.

Gut Reactions

Universally, these startups said that hearing today's Google/Microsoft/Twitter news was a welcome validation of their years of perseverance in real-time search.

"It's super exciting," siad Peggs. "There's been one way to search the web for 10 years, and we're looking at a total revolution in the way that people find information. It's a huge change in the industry. To see that feeling validated is awesome."

According to York, "I don't think we could ask for anything better than an endorsement from the major players. This is nothing but good for us. Back when I started, the marketplace was not very receptive to a new strategy." York continued to say that he supported mainstream exploration of the real-time space, with the telltale caveat, "even if it means licensing someone else's information and community."

Campbell said this new information is something Collecta has built into their corporate strategy. "This is something we heard rumors on and had anticipated. It was fully expected. Having been involved with one of the giants [AltaVista] at one time, it's quite obvious. It's something we've anticipated and part of how we structured our company."

Thoughts on Product Development

All the startups in real-time search have taken various approaches to the monumental task of indexing the real-time web. Collecta has employed the XMPP technology that powers IM clients in order to push streams of information. OneRiot has a fascinating algorithm that indexes tweet content, links in tweets, and the content of the linked-to pages to serve relevant results. And Wowd has developed a SETI@Home-like distributed computing model to effectively harness and parse the dataset created by users of real-time technologies.

Each company is proud of its hard-won advances and speculated on how Google and Microsoft will handle the data.

Campbell told us, "I can't say Google will bring to real-time search. But it makes sense that any dataset will be part of their approach. This is the largest corpus of real-time data that has not been accessible. As a search practitioner, I think they're going to keep on with their ranking approach."

York added that nothing unforeseen has yet been announced. "The Twitter thing, that's the kind of thing people have been expecting."

But he also talked about the challenges of parsing real-time user-generated content. "I think the data stream is broader and shorter. There's more and more real time, and you need different architecture to keep up with it. It's important to have real filtering applied to a noisy, low-value data stream. We believe people are the key to finding the good stuff."

"Knowing what goes into the product is quite eye-opening," said Peggs. "There's a tremendous lot of work to do once you've got tweets containing links, to process that information in real time and index the content on the page and render results based on content rather than just tweets. It's relatively easy for someone to spam Twitter with irrelevant links; but you've got to follow the links and index the pages and search against the content of the pages, not just the 140-character tweets. You also have to link to results based on relevancy, not just based on retweets."

Follow the Money

The opportunities for monetizing a new and powerful stream of Google- and Bing-driven traffic are both exciting and confounding for these startups, some of which have not yet put into play their own ideas for generating revenue.

As York noted, Google's and Microsoft's entry into real-time search represents a shift in the marketplace from these startups and their technology being a geek's plaything to being a new way to direct user attention and serve powerfully relevant advertising.

"Google is in the enviable position of having a high profit margin in the search business itself," he said. "It does fit their strategy to have as many eyeballs as possible, to get more people doing more stuff. We're interested more in matching personal interest profiles."

Also, as Peggs noted, "OneRiot has an API that allows anyone to incorporate our results. We also have a real-time ad model."

Collecta also has rolled out two APIs, one for general search results from the real-time web and one for XMPP-powered streaming data. Campbell has also hinted that their monetization plans are innovative, but his team has not yet released specifics.

"Having been involved in this growth of paid search several times over," said Campbell, "the creation of new technology creates new business opportunity. The monetization of search was a redefinition of online business models: You can advertise to users without being slimy. There's now an opportunity to make users even happier without distracting them from the page."

Strategy: Beyond "Get Acquired Or Die"

The startups in the real-time search space also universally expressed a commitment to current business strategies. Some seemed to have clearer exit goals than others, but all believe that their unique focuses on tech and product will allow them to survive the intrusion of Microsoft and Google into their arena.

Campbell, like many of his cohorts at other startups, noted that Twitter is a small segment of the available content sources for real-time web information. He also said, "Engines that are based solely on Twitter are probably more dead-on in terms of competition [with Google]. The less-funded companies are in a position where they have to do something more clever and unique."

Collecta, he said, is still figuring out their role in the story. "We are a push search engine," he told us. 'That is increasingly our defining characteristic. The perception of speed is critical, but it's not our most unique characteristic. Because we're based on XMPP, the chat protocol, we're pushing results as soon as possible."

Said Peggs, "Our strategy doesn't change. We're focused on producing the most relevant web results based on not just Twitter, but also Digg and other services - a much wider pulse of the real-time web on the back end. And we continue to distribute those through our API."

What's to Come for Real-Time Search Startups

Every single startup we spoke to tonight expressed some trepidation about things to come.

"What happens to the bubble of startups in this space?" asked Campbell. "I hope they've had the foresight to see this through."

"It doesn't really change our strategy," said a confident Peggs. "Two years ago, when you explained how this would change search, they looked at you like you were crazy."

York's assessment of Wowd's place as an open-sourced approach to a problem now being tackled by major corporations was also optimistic. "When you're a startup company competing with established players, there are always reasons to be cautious. We believe the approach we're taking is a great way to go. It's different, even than what you've heard today. We think this approach isn't a gimmick; it is a fundamentally different approach."

The bottom line, as in all verticals, is that once the major leagues take interest, some startups will sink and some will swim. Some will be acquired, and some will fail. Some may survive long enough to pose a legitimate challenge to the dominant players, but this circumstance is less likely.

Let us know your prognoses in the comments, and stay tuned for developing coverage of this space and these startups from ReadWriteWeb.

Making my tags

2009-10-23T14:07:00.001+08:00

culture, tech, internet, web, google, microsoft, yahoo, baidu, yeeyan, twitter, delicious

McDonald’s Accused of Selling Cancer-Causing Chicken (Update3) - Bloomberg.com

2009-10-23T12:44:00.000+08:00

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- McDonald's Corp.,Burger King Holdings Inc. and Friendly Ice Cream Corp. were accused in a lawsuit of selling chicken they know contains a chemical that can cause cancer even in small amounts.

McDonald's, the world's biggest restaurant company, and the other dining chains were sued today in state court in Hartford, Connecticut. The complaint, filed by Washington-based Cancer Project on behalf of two Connecticut residents, seeks class- action, or group, status on behalf of people who bought or ate the grilled chicken from October 2006 to this month.

"We're not looking to have them stop selling the product," Daniel Kinburn, a lawyer with the Cancer Project, said in a phone interview. "The product is a legal though dangerous product that should be sold with a warning, like a chainsaw."

A similar suit against seven restaurant chains in 2006 and another against Yum! Brands Inc.'s KFC unit last month were filed in California. That state listed the chemical, PhIP, which forms during the grilling process, as a known carcinogen in 1994, according to the complaint.

"At McDonald's we have some of the highest food safety standards in the industry," Cynthia Goody, director of nutrition at the company, said in an e-mailed statement. "There is no scientific evidence to suggest the small amount of PhIP that can be created as a byproduct of cooking methods humans have employed for thousands of years poses a health risk."

'No Merit'

"Burger King Corp. believes the lawsuit filed in Connecticut by the Washington-based Cancer Project has no merit," the company said in an e-mailed statement. "The compound referred to in the lawsuit, PhIP, is a naturally occurring by-product of the normal cooking process and is produced when any poultry, meat or fish is broiled, fried or grilled. There is no evidence that the small amount of PhIP contained in food poses a significant health risk."

"We ensure that we meet or exceed all guidelines and regulations for food preparation and safety," Maura Tobias, a spokeswoman for Friendly's, said in an e-mailed statement. "Very low levels of PhIP occur naturally when any meat is grilled, including cooking at home."

The companies "concealed the presence of a known carcinogen in their grilled-chicken products to retain profits that would be lost, in whole or in part, as a result of properly informed consumers choosing other food products," the residents said in their complaint.

California Settlement

Burger King settled the first suit and agreed to post warnings in its California restaurants, Kinburn said. The company wouldn't agree to a national settlement, he said. The case is otherwise unresolved, he said. KFC was sued separately because it added grilled chicken to its menu in April, he said.

"Dozens of studies show even relatively small amounts of PhIP can increase the risk of various forms of cancer," Kinburn said.

The residents who filed the Connecticut suit, Rebecca Delio, of Stamford, and Mary-Ann Ellison, of Meriden, want the court to force the companies to include warnings in their restaurants, menus and advertisements that the food is known to contain chemicals that cause cancer.

Delio ate grilled chicken from one of the three companies' restaurants once a week, and Ellison four times a month at a McDonald's in Wallingford, according to the complaint. Both stopped buying the grilled chicken about a year ago when they learned of the cancer risk, they said in the complaint.

'A Possibility'

Delio, 66, was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, she said in a phone interview. She can't blame her diagnosis on eating grilled chicken, she said. "It's a possibility," she said, adding that cancer runs in her family.

"I happen to like grilled chicken," Delio said. "I checked it out on the Internet, and I learned that this is true, that grilled stuff is really no good for you."

Ellison's boyfriend was diagnosed with colon cancer, Kinburn said. He has other medical issues and the couple turned to grilled-chicken salads for what they thought would be healthful meals, the lawyer said.

Ellison doesn't have cancer, Kinburn said. She didn't immediately return a call for comment.

"Outside of the scientific oncology community and upper management of national restaurant chains, few people are aware of the presence of PhIP in grilled, flame-grilled or barbequed chicken," Delio and Ellison said in their complaint.

Poultry Industry

The fast-food companies and the poultry industry mislead consumers into thinking that grilled chicken is healthier than beef, they said.

Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's offerings include Premium Grilled Chicken Classic Sandwich and Premium Bacon Ranch Salad With Grilled Chicken. Miami-based Burger King, the largest U.S. hamburger seller after McDonald's, sells Tendergrill Chicken Sandwich and Tendergrill Chicken Garden Salad.

Wilbraham, Massachusetts-based Friendly's is owned by the private-equity firm Sun Capital Partners Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida. The restaurant chain sells Grilled Chicken Deluxe Sandwich, BBQ Chicken Platter and Cheddar Jack Chicken with Grilled Chicken.

Rick Maynard, a spokesman for KFC, said when the California suit was filed against it that its grilled chicken meets all regulations for food safety. California's attorney general determined in 2006 that the state's Proposition 65 doesn't require a warning for PhIP in chicken, Maynard said.

Yum Brands! is based in Louisville, Kentucky.

McDonald's fell 59 cents to $58.33 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 4:15 p.m. Burger King rose 17 cents to $18.18.

Bing Keeps Growing While Yahoo's Steady Decline Continues

2009-10-23T12:37:00.004+08:00

Google's dominance in the search engine market isn't likely to end anytime soon, but Microsoft's Bing managed to continue its slow but steady growth last month, even though the search engine market in general remained at seasonal lows. According to the latest data from Compete, Bing's market share only grew from 8.7% in August to 8.8% in September, but the total query volume on Bing grew 8.2%. All the other large search engines - except for Ask - registered a decline in total search queries last month.

Yahoo

Yahoo Search continues its steady decline. Yahoo Search lost another 1% market share last month and has now lost a total of 5% since September 2008 when it still owned 18.8% of the market according to Compete. The total search volume on Yahoo was down 8% and Yahoo served 100 million less queries in September than August.

Google, Ask and AOL Hold Steady

Google's market share grew slightly from 72.3% to 72.6%, while Ask and AOL remained stable. Based on this data, Bing seems to be eating into Yahoo's market share, but isn't growing at Google's expense.

Searches Per Day

Compete's Marko Madjarac points out that Bing's numbers are even more impressive when we take into account that Bing's users tend to perform fewer searches on the service (5 searches per user per day) than Google's users (5.6 searches). Bing apparently lives up to its promise to get users to relevant answers faster than any other search engine. Yahoo users performed an average of 7.8 searches per day.

"Yes, I'm a 27-Year-Old Virgin"

2009-10-23T12:26:00.003+08:00

Every time Elna Baker hits the heavy-breathing stage with a new guy, she has to decide whether to lose her virginity. Listen (and laugh — she's OK with it) as she explains the perils of dating while Mormon.

By Elna Baker
[Editor's note: This article contains sexual content]

I'm lying on my back in a king-size bed at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, wearing nothing but my underwear. Next to me is a man I'll call James, an insanely attractive British guy (think a younger Clive Owen) I've had a crush on since we met last year. Hands down, he's the most handsome man I've ever seen close up, not to mention naked. I sneak a peek at us in a massive mirror across from the bed and think, I like him — a lot — and I might have sex! Yet I'm still not sure I can go through with it.

Let me explain: I'm a virgin. As a practicing Mormon, I'm supposed to wait until marriage to have sex. But not just intercourse. I'm really only allowed to kiss sitting up. Which means I'm definitely not supposed to be in bed with a naked man. My life was supposed to go like this: get married in my early twenties to another Mormon in a Mormon temple, have children, raise them, marry them off, become a grandmother and die.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when I strayed from that course and ended up, at 27, single and perilously close to losing my virginity every other week. Perhaps it was the day I received my college acceptance letter from New York University. My mother was terrified. "Elna," she said nervously, "the first thing that will happen in New York is you might start to swear. Swearing will lead to drinking, and drinking will lead to drugs. And Elna," she continued, looking directly into my eyes, "what would you do if a lesbian tried to make out with you?"

My mother, who once referred to Manhattan as Babylon, sat with her arms folded, waiting for me to answer.
"I'd say, 'No, thank you … lesbian.'"

She rolled her eyes. "There's one more thing," she said. "There are clubs in New York where men pay women to dance with very little clothing on. Don't do that."

Despite her concerns, I was pretty straitlaced at NYU. My friends, however, weren't, and I found myself fascinated by their hectic dating lives. As a Mormon, my one illicit curiosity had always been sex. With men. Sex, boys, penises. Not that I'd ever sated that curiosity in my boy-free teen years. In fact, I was so clueless about the opposite sex that when I tried sketching a penis in a college art class, my best guy friend thought I'd drawn a tugboat.

Which makes complete sense, really, because everything I knew about sex I learned in church. I remember a Sunday school class on chastity when I was 13. The teacher walked into the classroom and slammed a tray of cookies onto the table with a loud clank.

"Does anyone want a cookie?" she asked in an aggressive tone. We perked up in our seats. Chastity class was always easier to endure when the teacher brought food, but something was amiss. Upon further inspection, the cookies were half-eaten, broken and sprinkled with dirt. "Anyone?" When no one answered, she nodded emphatically and said, "That's right, no one wants a dirty, half-eaten cookie." And that, my friends, is how I learned not to have sex.

French Man Meets Mormon Girl

There were other, more significant reasons to stay a virgin, of course: I learned that I had to fight for the future I wanted, and the way to do that was by making wise choices. If I waited to have sex until marriage, I'd avoid unwanted pregnancy and disease. I'd be guaranteed the best kind of sex, the deeply-in-love kind, with someone committed enough to marry me. If I didn't wait, I risked damaging my soul, I was told. As if that wasn't enough, the biggest reason to stay a virgin was because sex is sacred — it creates life, and therefore is an act that unites us with God. Try explaining all of this on a first date.

After I moved to New York, it would've been easier for me to date only Mormons, who'd understand. Except there aren't very many in New York, and, anyway, I've always gone for guys I find attractive regardless of their religion. As a result, I dated mostly non-Mormons. But that led to the same frustrating scenario repeating itself: I'd meet a guy and fall head over heels, we'd go back to my apartment and make out, I'd cut things short by blurting out that I'm a Mormon and then, realizing he wasn't getting any, he'd split.

My longest relationship in my early and midtwenties lasted four weeks. And that's because the guy was out of town for two of them. Although my virginity was a disadvantage, I stayed hopeful about dating. And yet, some encounters were just ridiculous. One date, with a French movie director, stands out.

"You're a Mormon?" he asked me. "Can you have ze sex?"

I was surprised at his candor. "No," I answered.

He looked at me in disbelief. "Well, if you can't have ze sex, what can you do?"

For simplicity's sake I took my left arm and lined it up under my collarbone. "Nothing below here," I said. I lined my right arm across my knees and said, "Nothing above here."

"What about ze armpit?" he asked. "Can your boyfriend do anything he wants to ze armpit?"

I thought about it for a few moments. "Yeah," I said optimistically. "My boyfriend can do anything he wants to my armpit."

"This is good," he said. "He can stick his penis in and out of ze armpit, and if you grow hair there, it is almost like a vagine."

Check, please.

What if I Die a Virgin?

After braving probably a hundred disappointing dates over six years, I actually met a cute Mormon guy when I was 24. We fell in love. A year or so later he brought up marriage. I picked out a ring. I even moved to Utah to be with him. I can't believe I actually made it, I thought. I get to have sex! But I celebrated too soon. We quickly realized we were incompatible, and sadly, we decided to break up.

I moved back to New York and vowed that I would focus on myself, not on getting married, for a while. Which made me a virgin with no end in sight — a daunting predicament. I started taking yoga, hoping it would help release my pent-up sexual energy. Then, one day in class, we did a hip-opening pose lying on our backs with our legs spread-eagled. In a soft, meditative voice, the instructor said, "This position may bring up some emotions for you." Before she even finished the sentence, I started sobbing and muttering to myself, "I'm going to die a virgin!"
Right there on the floor of the yoga studio, despite everything my parents and religion taught me, I decided to change the rules. I, Elna Baker, could have premarital sex. My criteria were pretty simple: It had to be with someone I trusted (no one-night stands). Most important, I would not cave to pressure from anyone. I had to make the decision for myself.

Over the next year, instead of just kissing sitting up, I started kissing lying down (the gateway drug to sex). And my dating life actually improved. By not taking sex off the table right away, I made it past the four-week mark in relationships with several different guys.

That's how I find myself in the Hotel Chelsea with kind, funny and incredibly hot James, barely dressed and as close as I've ever been to losing my virginity. As we lie on the giant bed reflected in the giant mirror, James asks, "Should I get a condom?"

I hesitate. Mentally I run through my sex criteria. Do I trust James? I do. Then I get to the most critical one: Is it really my decision? What do I want?

And Now Back to What I Learned in Church…

The only way I can explain how I feel at this moment is this: Once, I tried to follow my daring brother's lead and dive off a 30-foot cliff into a pool of water. I hoisted myself up the jagged rocks until I made it to a ledge at the top. I took three steps back and began propelling myself forward. But as I approached the steep drop-off, I stopped and froze. My heart raced. You could break your neck. This isn't worth dying for. After a few minutes I started to climb back down. But the trip was much harder in reverse. I was stuck — too scared to go back, too scared to go forward.

There were many times I could have taken that leap with sex, and the consequences could have been heartbreaking for me. No matter how sweet and well-meaning the guys were, the hot-and-heavy moments I'd shared with them just didn't add up to something worth losing my virginity over. After all, once it was gone, I could never get it back.

As I learned in church years ago, I have to fight for the future I want through the choices I make. And even though it's hard to fess up to, a big part of me really does want to give myself to one person alone. Not for him or for anyone else — for myself.

"I'm not ready to be intimate," I hear myself tell James.

"What do you think this is?" he says, laughing and gesturing from me to him. "I think when you do finally have sex, you'll be surprised. It's not that different from what you're doing already."

"I know," I say, and I can see his point. But I also hear another reassuring voice. Someday Elna, it says, you will look around the room at your husband and children and the rich, full life you've built for yourself. And you will be so proud of the choices you've made. That's the voice I'm listening to.

More from MSN Lifestyle Site Search: Get additional content on virginity.

Elna Baker's memoir, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, will be published in October by Dutton. She lives in New York City.

Apple's iPod shuffle 'worst' mp3 player - Telegraph

2009-10-23T12:23:00.002+08:00

Apple's new iPod shuffle has come botton in a survey of mp3 players tested by a leading consumer watchdog.

The new Apple iPod shuffle, the size of an AA battery, has scored just 51 out of a possible 100 points in a study published by Which?, putting it at the bottom of a list of nine players tested.

Which? is not a cutting-edge technology magazine, but with 520,000 readers it is a very influential force in the consumer electronics market, especially with late adopters.

Apple's digital music players, first launched in 2001, have come to dominate the MP3 market, with the company selling 220 million of the devices worldwide.

Though the Shuffle is very portable, and at ￡38 not expensive, Which? found the Apple device difficult to use and very limited in its capabilities.

"Finding your way around the iPod Shuffle is a challenge", the review said, which also marked it down for its lack of FM radio, voice recorder, lack of screen and the inability for the user to choose the order of the songs.

The Philips GoGear Spark, priced at ￡38, and the Philips GoGear Raga, at ￡27, both beat the Shuffle with scores of 75 and 67.

The Philips GoGear Spark impressed the reviewers with its 49 hours of music playback – four times that of the Shuffle.

Kat Hannaford, a technology expert at T3 magazine, said she was not surprised by Which? ranking the Apple devices so poorly.

She said: "You buy an iPod because you are buying into a lifestyle. It is easy to get better quality devices at cheaper prices if you look around.

"My main problem with the iPod Shuffle is that though it only costs ￡38, the quality of the headphones it comes with is very poor and you can only use Apple headphones. This means you can end up forking out an extra ￡80 to enjoy good quality sound."

IPod's larger devices, the iPod Classic and the iPod Touch, which allows users to surf the internet, also fail to score highly in the test, with both devices beaten by lesser known competitors.

The iPod Classic, receives 70 points, but is beaten by the Samsung YP-P3, which is nearly ￡80 cheaper and gets 77 points and the Cowon, ￡20 cheaper, which gets 76 points.

The iPod Classic, which allows users to watch videos, is marked down for its screen quality, which "we wouldn't recommend for watching a full length movie on".

The iPod Touch, which has a full touch-screen and internet capabilities, is also beaten by rivals, including the Archos 7 Internet Tablet and the Creative Zen X-Fi.

An Apple spokesman pointed out that the main attraction of the Shuffle was that it chose the songs for users. He also said it frequently scored the highest possible marks in special technology magazines.

Apple also pointed out that its iPod Classic and iPod Touch, while both beaten by rivals in the test, were ranked as 'best buys’ by Which?

Vladimir Lenin died from syphilis, new research claims

2009-10-23T12:19:00.001+08:00

Nick Britten
Published: 12:23PM BST 22 Oct 2009

Helen Rappaport, an acclaimed historian and author, said that books, papers and journals charting Lenin’s last years show that he contracted the sexually transmitted disease and that it ultimately claimed his life.

She said Lenin showed many symptoms of syphilis and that many among the Soviet hierarchy believed he had it. But they were banned from speaking in public and threatened with death because of the embarrassment it would cause.

Instead, official documents show that his death was attributed to declining health following three stokes and an assassination attempt in 1918.

Central to Miss Rappaport’s case was a report written by the celebrated scientist Ivan Pavlov – famous for his Pavlov’s Dog’s theory – which claimed that the "revolution was made by a madman with syphilis of the brain."

While public criticism of Lenin was banned and anyone found guilty of doing so would be often be killed, Pavlov was free to be so scathing because Lenin had granted him immunity in order to trade on his pre-eminence in the world’s scientific community.

Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, the vanguards of communism, led the 1917 October revolution, part of the Russian revolution which overthrew the Government and installed the Soviets. He became the first Head of State of the Soviet Union and remains one of the strongest political influences of the 20th Century.
He died in January 1924, aged 53, after suffering three stokes in the previous two years. By the end he was paralysed and dumb.

Blaming the strokes for his death, the Soviets made huge attempts to cover up whatever lay behind Lenin's erratic, manic behaviour, his bouts of rage and his untimely death.

Miss Rappaport, an expert on Russian history and a member of several societies, including the Society of Authors and the Oxford Writers’ Group, said evidence showed Lenin probably caught syphilis from a prostitute in Paris in about 1902.
She makes her claim in a new book "Conspirator: Lenin in Exile".

She said: "It was the unspoken belief of many top Kremlin doctors and scientists that Lenin died of syphilis, but a decades-long conspiracy of silence was forced on them by the authorities.

“But through it all, none was more vocal in his assertion than Prof Pavlov.”
Miss Rappaport said that proof of Pavlov’s assertion are in a documented conversation, held at Columbia University New York, he had with a fellow doctor, Mikhail Zernov, in Paris in 1928.

She said: "Pavlov maintained to Zernov that Lenin had suffered from syphilis and that during his time as Soviet leader he had manifested all the classic signs of someone sick with progressive paralysis brought on by the disease.

"Pavlov knew the eminent scientists who had been called in to examine Lenin's brain after his death in 1924 and they all concurred in this diagnosis. It was an open secret among them, but of course none stated it publicly and there are no official Soviet records documenting it.”

Lenin would not be the first leader to be struck down with syphilis. Other documented cases include Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Hottest gadgets - Telegraph

2009-10-22T18:16:00.000+08:00

Motorokr T505

This Bluetooth-enabled in-car hands-free system lets you make and receive calls without having to fiddle around with your mobile phone. It features an FM transmitter, so your conversations will be played through your car’s speakers. Thanks to noise-cancelling and echo-reducing technology, call quality is sharp and clear, and it will automatically pause whatever music you’re listening to when a call comes in.

From: motorola-shop.co.uk

Microsoft Windows 7 'bigger than Harry Potter', says Amazon - Telegraph

2009-10-22T17:41:00.001+08:00

Windows 7, which goes on sale at midnight tonight, brings better touch-screen support and home network management to PCs. It's Microsoft's first new operating system since Windows Vista in 2007, which received poor reviews from users and critics.

Online retailer Amazon says it has received more pre-orders for Windows 7 than it did for 2008's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final instalment in JK Rowling's seven-book series, and for Nintendo's popular games console, the Wii.

"The launch of Windows 7 has exceeded everyone's expectations, storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the biggest grossing pre-order product of all time at Amazon.co.uk," said Brian McBride, Amazon's managing director. "Demand is still going strong. Over the past three months, only Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol has sold more copies than Windows 7, which is an incredible achievement for a software product.

Amazon also confirmed that it had received more pre-orders for Windows 7 in the first eight hours that in did for its predecessor, Windows Vista, throughout its entire pre-order period.

Microsoft's operating systems are used on an estimated one billion computers around the world. Test versions of Windows 7 have received excellent reviews from industry analysts, and Microsoft says it has worked closely with third-party manufacturers to ensure that many of the compatibility issues that blighted the release of Windows Vista are not repeated with this launch.

Ten Things You Need to Stop Tweeting About

2009-10-22T13:26:00.005+08:00

Created by @6friends