Gory video games claim freedom of expression protection
March 18, 2008
The Boston mayor moves to ban the sale of gory video games to teenagers, while the games’ advocates claim protection under First Amendment, Boston Herald reports.
The cities of Boston and neighboring Brockton face high rates of teenage street violence edging up to an increased number of murders. Despite unfavorable precedents, the authorities aim to halt the sale of violet games to teens, which, they claim, might be adding to the overall street crime.
Teen video gamers and industry react angrily against a possible ruling. They say it is up to parents to decide whether teens should play Grand Theft Auto, for example, and not up to authorities.
In a precedent judgment, Judge James Brady, of Louisiana, said video games are “as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature.”
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iPhone users to suffer consequences of Apple’s discontent with Flash
March 5, 2008
Apple seems to leave out Adobe’s Flash application at its upcoming iPhone software presentation, writes Dan Frommer in a Silicon Alley Insider story. He brings about a report by Dow Jones which quotes Steve Jobs saying that “Adobe hasn’t created a version of Flash that’s suitable for the iPhone.”
Dropping a flash application in iPhone software suit would mean that “iPhone users [will] have to settle for a less-complete version of the Web,” Frommer writes, unless Apple finds a substitute.
Yet, some users see the time for mobile Flash “battery-sucking ad banners” far-fetched. “It is in Apple’s DNA to only go with good technology,” a reader comments, referring to an alternative to Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight, “not to compromise user’s experience. Having said that, I’m in no hurry for Flash, either. CPU (and battery)-sucking banner ads? No thanks,” the comment reads.
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Google revives wiki web publishing - more user-friendly and less customizable
March 4, 2008
Google continues to expand its Apps, adding a team web publishing tool to the bulk. Google had acquired JotSpot wiki service back in October 2006, and now, after 16 months, launched it as a new Google App, naming it Google Sites.
Michael Arrington writes on techcrunch.com “Google Sites looks absolutely nothing like Jotspot, other than the fact that both are hosted wikis. All of the structured data templates launched by Jotspot in July 2006 have been stripped out.”
The new Google App added user-friendliness but took away from functionality, lacking an application program interface (API), and having limited backward scalability, writes Juan Carlos Peres on arnnet.com.au, summarizing the mixed feelings incumbent Jotspot users have voiced.
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Flow-based search architecture promises flawless
February 24, 2008
Bill Burnham, an early beta-tester of a, what he calls, flow-based search engine, predicts bright future for SkyGrid and even its ability to predict it; the future, that is.
Mr. Burnham writes on alwayson.goingon.com that when the flow, filter, analyze search architecture correlates to the “observed movements in things like … stock markets, company sales […] it should ultimately be able to theoretically predict, with reasonable accuracy, many of those changes. Yes, I said it: SkyGrid and its new search architecture may ultimately predict the future,” the author writes.
Mr. Burnham contrasts the “flow/filter/analyze” SkyGrid architecture to the “traditional” “crawl, index, query,” and the verdict to the latter sounds pessimistic. He calls SkyGrid “a radical new architecture” which ‘holds the potential to actually predict the pattern and influence of idea/meme propagation throughout the internet and from there into the financial markets and beyond.” To support his claims, the author breaks the flow-based architecture description in a series of logical steps that he had, as an early beta-tester, identified.
As to the danger of having the new, “revolutionary” search architecture getting beaten by the sharks of the business, Google, for instance, Mr. Burnham has the answer to that. “Moving from a traditional crawl/index/query architecture to a flow/filter/analyze one is a decidedly non-trivial undertaking, one that would require an entire re-architecture of their core services and thus one highly unlikely to be made.”
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Russian blogs on uprise on the eve of presidential elections
February 20, 2008
The Russian blogs are seemingly trying to outplay mainstream media, by harshly criticizing the main Presidential candidate, Medvedev, AP reports, quoted by editorandpublisher.com.
“The postings by Web commentators, professionals and amateurs alike,” the website reads, “are sometimes barbed, frequently satirical and always unfiltered — a marked contrast to most of Russia’s major media, where many reporters, editors and producers are wary of angering the Kremlin.”
Yet there are alleged and real limitations to Russia’s blogosphere watchdog effort. “There are also allegations the Kremlin has organized teams of its own bloggers to attack or rebut critics of the government through Web postings.” The natural limitation is access to Internet, which is scarce and slow, oftentimes.
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Nuclear power flashes light at tunnel end
February 20, 2008
It seems that nuclear power is gaining ground on the energy market, or so the report of a “London-based World Energy Council” maintains. James Kanter, writes on a Business of Green blog, how Europe seems to be investing its hopes into the fission reactors.
“Nuclear energy technology, its proponents say, already works and can supply a huge base load of power to keep national grids supplied,” Mr. Kanter writes. “By contrast, renewable sources of power like wind and solar are intermittent and less able — at least for the moment — to deliver the quantity of electricity needed to drive modern, industrial nations.”
Yet, the author writes, “[t]he question of how developed economies will keep the lights on without burning more fossil fuels seems unlikely to go away anytime soon.”
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Replacing paper in direct mail by stuff
February 20, 2008
Getting a weird hookadoo in your mailbox may not be such a remote thing, if Matter project works well, Community Mobilization blog implies.
“Matter is taking an unconventional approach to direct marketing by sending out boxes of ‘interesting stuff’ instead of paper,” following the historically successful model of Direct Mail.
“[The project] is a collaboration between Artomatic and Royal Mail, and it targets consumers in the UK only. If US based companies and philanthropies adopt this method who knows what kind of interesting stuff we may get in the mail, or how much junk we will be contributing to our landfills.”
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Full-fetched mobile networking might stand out as commodity
February 20, 2008
Christian Kreutz comes up with the natural question, “When is the collaborative mobile web coming?” on his crisscrossed.net blog.
“It is clear that the mobile will sooner or later bypass the personal computer by Internet usage,” he writes. But, “will it work? By this I mean that I can interact with all sorts of tools via my mobile phone — edit a wiki, build a mashup, writing a blog post, and finally network more effectively.”
Of course, Mr. Kreutz also sees other shortcomings of the mobile networking. “There are still many limitation to the phone: the screen, keyboard, connection. However this is just a matter of time, and recent devices already make a difference. I wonder why so little has been developed in order to interact and collaborate via the mobile phone in the social web.”
Place all the eggs in one basket: SDSN
February 20, 2008
It appears that the abundance of social networks gives headaches to busy guys. Several IT blokes from South Africa came up with a unified account, Simple Distributed Social Network (SDSN). “Their concept is simple,” whiteafrican.com reports, “create a standardized way for people to own their own profiles, so they’re not tied into (and recreated) on every social website (like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, etc…).”
The rationale behind the services is also simple. “If you think about it, the way we’re handling profiles online is a little crazy. Having my profile duplicated multiple locations, for each site, is neither efficient or a good long-term solution,” Whiteafrican reads.
Although the idea is not new, it has some important innovative features, the website writes. “To be honest, a couple other services are trying to tackle some of these same issues (OpenID, Microformats, Google’s OpenSocial, etc…). SDSN compliments these services, from what I can tell, and simplifies it for anyone who has their own website.”
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Social annotation comes handy in online research
February 20, 2008
The “proverbial” quest for “needle in the haystack” finds application in social bookmarking, Rebecca seems to imply on wildapricot.com.
Without leaving out the benefits of social bookmarking, Rebecca wonders whether “the usual social bookmarking services really are the best possible tool for organizing that flood of online information, [when it] comes to online research and collaboration?”
“Diigo.com takes social bookmarking to a new level of usefulness,” Rebecca writes. “It’s all about social annotation. Highlight text or leave a note, right on the web page itself.”
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