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POLITIQUE The Joy of Tech on the Microsoft Takeover Bid For Yahoo!
The latest The Joy of Tech comic gives an inside look at Microsoft’s recent takeover bid for Yahoo!. The comic was inspired by Kara Swisher’s recent blog post on this subject “No More Sand for the 98-Pound Weakling of the Web”. CNN to Launch Citizen Journalism Portal iReport
CNN has been experimenting with citizen journalism since summer of last year to a generally positive response from the viewing public. As it turns out, they are continuing that experiment, and inflating it into its own news hub over at iReport.com. The site currently pops up a very non-descript “under construction” message, but MediaWeek got a sneak peek at what the site is going to end up looking like, and they describe it as a very YouTubish video-centric destination where “wannabe Anderson Coopers can upload videos, photos and audio files.” That’s as far as the folks at CNN have really gotten to thinking this thing through. According to MediaWeek, CNN know’s that citizen journalism is important (or at least, profitable), but they don’t “know how iReport will evolve once users warm up the site.” It seems unclear how the site will be moderated. In one quote from CNN, they say that iReport will be completely unvetted. Then, on the other hand, Susan Grant, EVP of CNN News Services says, “We’ll be telling people in lots of different ways that it’s a post-moderated site.” Just by perusing the quotes mentioned in the MediaWeek write-up, it’s clear that CNN is completely blinded by the dollar signs. Every other mention in the piece makes note of how they know there are barrel-loads of cash to be made, but they’re just not to sure of whether citizen-journalism will work. As someone who’s been involved in ‘citizen journalism’ for more than a decade, I know as well as you that it can work. The question here is whether or not CNN is the best qualified organization to pull it off successfully. During the last attempt at collaboration with the media, the YouTube-CNN debates, they not only came away with egg on their face, but gave significant black-eyes to New Media in the process in the eyes of the public and politerati. All in all, the new site may be seen as nothing more than a sign of the times, with cable news channels behaving proactively, not wishing to see the same fate in a few years as newspaper organizations. In that, with a very visible way to solicit submissions and a public hungry for perhaps something different, it should prove to be a financial success. The way they intent to go about it’s execution, though, may prove it to be a popular entertainment portal rather than a valuable news source. Guest Post: Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. Over the past couple of years I have had many dozens of incredibly negative comments on my posts which I have often marked as spam and not posted. After I do so, I often receive a follow-up comment from the same person saying ‘I’m sure you will censor this comment too,’ which I usually do. This is not because I don’t like people disagreeing with me, but it is because most of these people who are ‘disagreeing’ usually say things in their comments such as ’shut the %#@! up you terrorist’ or use different words to the same effect. This phenomenon can easily be explained by the following graphic from the penny arcade: That said I really appreciate anyone who takes the time out to comment on my thoughts (regardless of whether they agree or disagree with me), and think that we should never underestimate the importance of truly legitimate dissent for the following 4 reasons: If your community continues to agree with whatever you say, you don’t grow as a writer and don’t get exposed to other ideas or different views on matters. By giving serious consideration to other people’s disagreements with you, you can broaden the scope of your writing, incorporate multiple viewpoints, write more thoroughly, and ultimately improve your unique value proposition to your audience. A group of sheep is not a community. Most of us write because we want to comment on new ideas and have conversations rather than simply have people agree with us. By encouraging dissent on your blog you are encouraging each community member to think for himself or herself and write their opinion on the matter rather than just echoing your thoughts. Eventually you help your entire community’s intellectual capital grow. One-sided conversations are no fun for the author and they are no fun for the community. If everyone is agreeing with you, you might as well turn the comments off and call it a day. Multiple, opposing viewpoints offer colorful conversation for everyone and ensure that there is enough debate for people to want to come back for more. This not only gives people to return to the same post again and again, but these opposing viewpoints also create opportunities for further posts and more conversations on previously covered topics. Quite contrary to polarizing people, disagreements can be a very powerful tool that can draw an even larger audience in. When people realize that there is room for them to have their say, be heard, and be correct in their own right, more people are likely to participate. People are often hesitant to do so because either they feel there is no room for contrarian viewpoints, or because they feel that if they disagree, they must be wrong. Ultimately, by encouraging and fostering dissent on your blog you can improve conversations and increase community engagement, and by making your community think and harnessing their collective power you can improve your own writing as well. Avec une augmentation de salaire de 40 % en 2007, les grands patrons français sont désormais les mieux payés d'Europe. On n'est pas encore aux 240 % d'augmentation de M. Sarkozy, mais en 5 ans on devrait y arriver... Comme ils disent : « il faut d'abord augmenter le gateau pour pouvoir le partager... » Heureusement qu'on a baissé les taux d'imposition des plus riches : Sinon, qu'est-ce qu'ils auraient payé comme impot, les pauvres... Article du Monde du 12 février : Les grands patrons français sont désormais les mieux payés d'Europe. Selon l'étude annuelle de Hay Group, publiée mardi 12 février par La Tribune, 77 % des PDG des entreprises du CAC 40 ont vu leur rémunération augmenter de 40 % en 2007. La rémunération annuelle médiane comprenant le salaire de base, les bonus et les stock-options des patrons des géants du CAC 40 – au moins 40 000 employés et plus de 40 milliards d'euros de chiffre d'affaires –, se monte à 6,175 millions d'euros. A titre de comparaison, un Britannique perçoit 5,85 millions en moyenne, et un Allemand 3,94 millions d'euros. Loin, tout de même, des 12,97 millions d'euros que gagne un grand patron américain. Selon l'étude, ce sont principalement les bonus qui ont permis cette augmentation substantielle. Et cette part de la rémunération "continue à croître de manière significative", relève Hay Group, soulignant qu'elle a bondi, en 2007, à 1,431 million d'euros pour les mieux payés du CAC, et à 764 000 euros pour le bas du CAC. Les stock-options ont également fortement augmenté (+ 48 % pour 58 % des 135 entreprises étudiées) : leur montant valorisé ainsi que celui des autres actions gratuites a atteint 4,828 millions d'euros pour le haut du CAC 40, et 1,610 million d'euros pour le bas. Seuls les deux tiers des entreprises conditionnent la distribution de ces actions à la performance du dirigeant, souligne l'étude, ajoutant que de plus en plus de PDG bénéficient d'un "matelas de sécurité". En 2007, ils étaient 39 % à ne pas en avoir, contre 60 % en 2006. Quant à la rémunération des patrons des plus petites entreprises du SBF 120, elle atteint 882 000 euros, selon les chiffres de Hay group qui a analysé les comptes de 135 sociétés (CAC 40, SBF 120, plus quinze entreprises telles que ASF, Colas, Latécoère, Sanef, Airbus et DCNS). Dans un article, Christian « Kit » Paul raconte l'histoire de la fonte utilisée dans toutes les bandes-annonces de Woody Allen, la Windsor. Welcome to the Culture, the Galactic Civilization That Iain M. Banks Built [Iain M. Banks]
The Culture Novels: Consider Phlebas Set during the war between The Culture and the Idirans, this is one of Banks' most widely-praised science fiction novels. Its events also shape the Culture for hundreds of years afterward. The Idirans are a lizard-like, hierarchical people who want to colonize as many worlds as possible in order to convert as many creatures as possible to their religion. The Culture, on the other hand, wants to spread its more democratic-anarchic beliefs to as many worlds as possible. Essentially, the two empires are fighting to control the ideologies of colony worlds. Our protagonist, Horza, has grown disgusted with the Culture way of life and has become a spy for the Idirans. As the war reaches a howling crescendo, we follow Horza from a dying ring world full of cannibalistic cultists, to a ship full of criminals, and at last to final showdown deep within the catacombs of a dead world. This is action-packed world-building at its most alluring: full of cool fights and interesting philosophical debates. Plus, Banks pulls a typical counter-intuitive move by introducing us to The Culture through the eyes of an outsider who has grown disgusted with it. The Player of Games Though the subject of this novel is gaming rather than war, we never stray far from one of Banks' central preoccupations: the psychology of combat. Gurgeh is a master gamer from the Culture, where the complete intermeshing of human and machine creatures has made computer games into some of the most complicated and beautiful of sports. Unsatisfied with what the Culture has to offer, Gurgeh ventures outside its volume of space to try his hand at a game beloved by the Azad. In the Empire of Azad, games are taken so seriously that if you win, you can become Emperor. Use of Weapons This novel, a character study of a man coming to terms with a troubled past, is a version of the first novel Banks ever wrote (the early version remains unpublished, and Banks claims you could only understand it in "six dimensions"). It's the story of Zakalwe, recruited from his podunk non-Culture society to serve in the Culture's version of a secret intelligence agency, Special Circumstances (SC). Among other duties, SC Agents are often dispatched to infiltrate non-Culture or "primitive" societies and learn about them. We follow Zakalwe's mission into many such primitive cultures, while also following him back through his own memories of growing up on a planet whose culture echoes those he's spying on. SC Agents are souped up with a lot of cool powers, and this novel offers a generous helping of superpowered spy stuff, while also ravaging your soul with the story of a man trapped in his own memories. Excession One of the most fascinating elements of the Culture is its ruling group (or the closest thing to that) -- the Minds. The Minds are AIs who live for hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years, and plunk themselves into many different bodies: ships, halo worlds called Orbitals, and cyborgs called Avatars. (Well, the Avatars are really just extensions of a Mind, but if you want to get really detailed, just read this book.) Much of Excession is told from the point of view of a Mind in a former SC ship called the Sleeper Service, who journeys to an encounter with a giant, mysterious something that exists partly in subspace known only as the "excession." (I believe "excession" is supposed to be a cool noun form of "excessive.") The joy in reading this book comes from finally getting inside the computer brains of the ships, who communicate via data packets complete with internet-like headers. But there's plenty of excitement, too. Sleeper Service is also a weapon, and the Mind is racing to reach the excession before a warlike group called The Affront (who do some incredibly horrifying things to the creatures they conquer). There's even a weird romantic subplot involving the Sleeper Service's one human passenger, a depressed human female who once tried to kill her straying lover. Banks manages to juggle all these plots beautifully, and with his characteristic dark humor. Inversions We've sung the praises of this book on io9 already. Read about it here. Look to Windward This novel combines Banks' interest in Minds from Excession with his interest the trauma of memory from Use of Weapons. In large part, the novel is about a Mind called Lasting Damage who was inside a ship during the Culture-Idiran War. Hundreds of years later, Lasting Damage is still traumatized by memories of the war, and has placed itself in the control center of an Orbital full of civilians. So essentially, the Mind has gone from being a ship of war to an artificial world devoted to peace. But other war-damaged survivors have been unable to find peace. Such is the case with Quilan, whose wife was murdered when they were both soldiers in a civil war masterminded by the Culture. To get revenge, he's journeying to Lasting Damage on an assassin's mission that even he doesn't fully understand -- it's a mission conceived by a dead Colonel's mind that's been uploaded into Quilan's, and that will culminate during the anniversary of the Culture-Idiran war. This is one of Banks' most mournful Culture novels, a strange meditation on post-tramatic stress as suffered by both machines and men. Matter If you're in the UK, you should go out and grab this latest Culture book now. If you're in the US, you'll have to wait until Feb. 27. Banks introduces the Culture in this essay. This is a long and rich world-building exercise, originally posted by Banks' friend Ken MacLeodon a newsgroup. I suggest you read the whole thing, but here are few interesting tidbits. On the galactic setting where the Culture exists: The galaxy (our galaxy) in the Culture stories is a place long lived-in, and scattered with a variety of life-forms. In its vast and complicated history it has seen waves of empires, federations, colonisations, die-backs, wars, species-specific dark ages, renaissances, periods of mega-structure building and destruction, and whole ages of benign indifference and malign neglect. At the time of the Culture stories, there are perhaps a few dozen major space-faring civilisations, hundreds of minor ones, tens of thousands of species who might develop space-travel, and an uncountable number who have been there, done that, and have either gone into locatable but insular retreats to contemplate who-knows-what, or disappeared from the normal universe altogether to cultivate lives even less comprehensible. On the ships and their Minds: Culture starships - that is all classes of ship above inter-planetary - are sentient; their Minds (sophisticated AIs working largely in hyperspace to take advantage of the higher lightspeed there) bear the same relation to the fabric of the ship as a human brain does to the human body . . . The Culture's largest vessels - apart from certain art-works and a few Eccentrics - are the General Systems Vehicles of the Contact section. (Contact is the part of the Culture concerned with discovering, cataloguing, investigating, evaluating and - if thought prudent - interacting with other civilisations; its rationale and activities are covered elsewhere, in the stories.) The GSVs are fast and very large craft, measured in kilometres and inhabited by millions of people and machines. The idea behind them is that they represent the Culture, fully. All that the Culture knows, each GSV knows; anything that can be done anywhere in the Culture can be done within or by any GSV. In terms of both information and technology, they represent a last resort, and act like holographic fragments of the Culture itself, the whole contained within each part. On law: The Culture doesn't actually have laws; there are, of course, agreed-on forms of behaviour; manners, as mentioned above, but nothing that we would recognise as a legal framework. Not being spoken to, not being invited to parties, finding sarcastic anonymous articles and stories about yourself in the information network; these are the normal forms of manner-enforcement in the Culture. On politics: Politics in the Culture consists of referenda on issues whenever they are raised; generally, anyone may propose a ballot on any issue at any time; all citizens have one vote. Where issues concern some sub-division or part of a total habitat, all those - human and machine - who may reasonably claim to be affected by the outcome of a poll may cast a vote. Opinions are expressed and positions on issues outlined mostly via the information network (freely available, naturally), and it is here that an individual may exercise the most personal influence, given that the decisions reached as a result of those votes are usually implemented and monitored through a Hub or other supervisory machine, with humans acting (usually on a rota basis) more as liaison officers than in any sort of decision-making executive capacity; one of the few rules the Culture adheres to with any exactitude at all is that a person's access to power should be in inverse proportion to their desire for it. On why most people in the Culture live in Orbitals: The attraction of Orbitals is their matter efficiency. For one planet the size of Earth (population 6 billion at the moment; mass 6x1024 kg), it would be possible, using the same amount of matter, to build 1,500 full orbitals, each one boasting a surface area twenty times that of Earth and eventually holding a maximum population of perhaps 50 billion people (the Culture would regard Earth at present as over-crowded by a factor of about two, though it would consider the land-to-water ratio about right). Not, of course, that the Culture would do anything as delinquent as actually deconstructing a planet to make Orbitals; simply removing the sort of wandering debris (for example comets and asteroids) which the average solar system comes equipped with and which would threaten such an artificial world's integrity through collision almost always in itself provides sufficient material for the construction of at least one full Orbital (a trade-off whose conservatory elegance is almost blissfully appealing to the average Mind), while interstellar matter in the form of dust clouds, brown dwarfs and the like provides more distant mining sites from which the amount of mass required for several complete Orbitals may be removed with negligible effect. Also, Banks has given himself a Culture-style name. It's Sun-Earther Iain El-Bonko Banks of North Queensferry. Image from the cover of Excession by Mark Salwowski. Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk6)The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “American Gangster” tops the chart this week. We do not link to actual torrent files because linking to files that link to files that may be copyrighted is something that might get us in trouble. The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart. As of February 11, 2008…
This is an article from: TorrentFreak Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk6)      RIP John Alvin
John Alvin (November 24, 1948 - February 6, 2008) was an award-winning cinematic artist and painter who illustrated some of the world's most recognizable movie posters. LG Wins Gadget Lab's "Weirdest Booth" Award At GSMA
By their nature, trade shows are pretty dull. Companies might glitz up their booths, but it's always done in a corporate, please-everyone way. So LG deserves a mention for its crazed Viewty exhibit at the GSMA World Congress in sunny Barcelona. I truly have no idea what on Earth is going on here, but from the menacing army of Kubrick Bearbricks, through the robot arms to the rattling bowl-O'-balls (picture below), the whole stand is a surreal delight. Not that LG can't do the traditional, corporate thing, too. For the last week, seemingly every bus in Barcelona has been plastered with dull, product pop-shot ads for the very same Viewty.
       Neuroscience stamps
 History of the evil eyeThe Curious Expeditions blog has a concise cultural history of the "evil eye." The short essay has lots of information I didn't know about this particular curse. From the blog post, titled "The Eyes Have It": Link    AOL Announces Open Mobile Platform
AOL's platform differs from efforts like Google's Android, which was demoed today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in that it isn't a singular phone operating system that attempts to lock users into one way of doing things. Rather, it is a software development platform for multiple operating systems that aims to make it easier for developers to deploy apps across the various mobile OS and platform options. Lest you think the entire endeavor is completely altruistic on AOL's part, the Open Mobile Platform is also the unified "software module" that AOL hinted at last September, which the company hopes will push its services and APIs onto as many mobile devices as possible. The platform is designed to play nice with third-party APIs, as well as those from AOL including AIM, AOL Mail, AOL Video, MapQuest, Userplane, Truveo, and Winamp. AOL is counting on developers to create mobile applications that lean on AOL services and can be deployed across multiple mobile device operating systems. The platform is also about pushing AOL advertising services onto the mobile web, as well. "The AOL Open Mobile Platform will also give developers the ability to monetize their mobile applications by utilizing advertising resources, such as clickable banner ads, provided by AOL's Platform-A," wrote the company in a press release. Some have suggested that the real battle for online supremacy will be fought on mobile devices, and that Microsoft's recently rebuffed bid for Yahoo! has as much to do with mobile as with competing on search or text advertising. With AOL's name dragged into the fray as a possible alternative for Yahoo!, their mobile efforts become that much more interesting. Leave a comment or trackback on ReadWriteWeb and be in to win a daily $30 Amazon gift voucher!         Champagne.ie UDRP Decision
The former registrant of the domain champagne.ie probably doesn't feel like celebrating, as he lost the UDRP against him. You can read the entire decision here on the WIPO site. "Champagne" and related terms have been the subject of domain disputes in several constituencies over the last few years, with the champagne.co.uk decision still being appealed. The decision is worth reading as it raises a few issues of questionable merit in particular in relation to rights and legitimate interests. While the panelist draws on previous WIPO decisions to guide him surely not all decisions can be seen as just? The area where the respondent (the registrant) seems to have committed the fatal error was in trying to get too much money for the domain and asking for EUR19 thousand. The panelist's comments on this are quite damning: The Respondent offered the domain name in dispute to the Complainant for €19,000.00, stating that he was "aware of the high value of such a domain name and the current value of potential future earnings of his name." He subsequently reduced the price that he requested.Champagne won and the domain will be transferred to them shortly (it's still showing the original registrant's details)       Dubai to Build the World's Largest Arch Bridge in 2012 [Architecture]
- It's one mile long and 670 feet tall. Fxfowle Architects via World Architecture News A Machine That Can Taste the Difference Between Good and Bad Coffee [Incredibly Strange Machines]
The machine analyzes the gas espresso gives off when heated, translating combinations of ions into subjective descriptions like "roasted, flowery, woody, toffee and acidity." Called an "electronic taster," it was created by chemical engineers at Nestle in Switzerland, and will be used as a quality control device in the coffee industry. And perhaps as an evaluation tool for a few coffee snobs (for the record, the machine only tastes ristretto pulls). Analytical Chemistry published an article this week about the amazing machine, including a precise scientific evaluation of "coffee headspace." According to a release about the research: The multisensory experience from drinking a cup of coffee makes it a particular challenge for flavor scientists trying to replicate these sensations on a machine. More than 1,000 substances may contribute to the complex aroma of coffee.Add the researchers themselves: Coffee scientists have long been searching for instrumental approaches to complement and eventually replace human sensory profiling.Well, at least the machine won't create Skynet when it becomes sentient. Instead it will probably head here. When Machine Tastes Coffee [Analytical Chemistry] comScore: Social Networks Still Growing Strong, Engagement Leveling Off
Stats to be released tomorrow by comScore show that traffic to most of the top social networking sites is continuing to increase in the US, although the amount of time users spend on such sites is leveling off. For example, while MySpace is showing 11.6% year-to-year growth in unique visitors and Facebook is up 78.6%, the amount of time the average user spends on each site is down 10.4% and up just 1.1%, respectively. Further, the average time spent on Bebo is off 63.6%, though the US is only a small part of that social network’s user base.
A few other notable numbers from the report:
Clearly, YouTube is benefiting from being acquired by Google and integrated into search results, while Flickr is continuing to grow under the Yahoo umbrella. As for Yahoo 360, its demise probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise given Yahoo’s ever-shifting social networking strategy (anyone still looking for Yahoo Mash invites?).        More Recent Articles
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To celebrate the release of Iain M. Banks' novel
...The greatest modern protection against the evil eye was made through the work of an unsuspecting Italian American rocker, one Ronnie James Dio. Growing up in an traditional Italian home, Ronnie was accustomed to seeing the horned hands or “mano cornuta” displayed against the evil eye. All crescent shaped objects ward off evil (hence the lucky Horseshoe) and the horned hand (representing pre-Christian minotaur horns, not devil horns) was yet another way of warding off bad luck and the evil eye...
AOL today announced the
If any real city on our planet can claim an active stake in creating the urban landscape of the future, it's probably Dubai. Artificial islands arranged in the shape of the world? Check. The world's only seven-star hotel? Check. And in 2012, it will also become home to the largest, tallest arch bridge ever.
Here's some info on the bridge as envisioned by New York architecture firm
This machine can taste the quality in your cup of espresso, and can identify coffee types nearly as accurately as a panel of trained human espresso tasters. How does it work?
Looking closer at the engagement metrics, it’s notable that MySpace users still spend the most time on the site versus users of other social networks. In January, the average visitor spent 203.9 minutes on the site (a 13.7% month-to-month increase), while the average Facebook visitor was logged on for 172.1 minutes (a 1.6% month-to-month increase, but notably down from a high of 199.9 minutes per visitor in February ’07).
The decline in minutes per user on Facebook certainly adds more credence to the theory that interest in applications is
