SF Chronicle's blog supremo Al Saracevic, senior bus. editor over at SFGate.com's new tech blog The Tech Chronicles has a very nice scoop hot off the server!
It is Adios to Avadis "Ave" Tevanian, Apple Computer's Chief Technology Officer and operating system expert. He is heading out of the Infinite Loop for unknown pastures and his last day is March 31st. Bang on the April 1st 30 year anniversary for Apple.
Wikia, formerly called Wikicities, announced a $4 million Series A round today. The financing was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, and had participation from angel investors Dan Gillmor, Reid Hoffman, Joichi Ito, and Mitch Kapor. David Cowan of Bessemer also wrote about this on his personal blog.
Wikia is a for profit venture by Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia. It hosts topic based wikis on a number of subjects, and anyone can add new ones.
Current traffic for Wikia is fairly non-existent, although Jimmy Wale’s wikipedia is one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web and I’m sure that the investors are assuming that he’ll be able to drive a similar level of user loyalty. Fighting against that will be the less-compelling subject matter and the fact that this is a for-profit company.
I’d love to see an overhaul of the wikipedia and wikia writing interface, however. They have plenty of great examples to borrow from.
Max Skibinsky knows javascript. He knows it so well, that he was working on applications in what he “double-channel javascript.” Thank god, that didn’t catch on and instead we ended up with a more friendly Ajax acronym. Anyway the end result is pretty much the same - a more nimble, faster, easier and better web.
It worked out for Skibinsky as well, who failed to raise money for his proposed online multiplayer game. Instead, he ended up starting Hive7, with angel funding from Naval Ravikant (CEO of Vast.com) and Gaurav Dhillon, who has started Informatica. Hive7 has developed an AJAX-based virtual online community that has many of the elements you normally find in an immersive environment like Linden Labs’ Second Life.
Robert Scoble made the argument that Second Life is an OS, while others nodded their head in agreement. That might be the case, but increasingly, I believe that this will give way to a more web-based virtual world. It happened with AOL, and now its going to happen in multi-user environments.
Web is the ultimate platform, and I think in the end it wins. Hive 7 is just the first example of the next generation web possibilities. It was nearly two years ago when I met the Linden Labs founder Philip Rosedale and understood his vision of the virtual spaces. For nearly half its life, Linden was kept going by angels, and before it got the money from professional investors.
I think, Hive7 is in the same place. It will be sometime before the world catches on to its true potential. Skibinsky says that his big breakthrough was in 2004, when he realized that “instead of building a closed online game it’s possible to do the reverse.” In other words, he had an epiphany that web is the ultimate API. He put together a virtual universe which has rooms where folks can meet, meet, chat, exchange resources and items. What got me excited about Hive7 was that it allows anyone to customize the whole experience. You can take the code, and tweak it.
Looking at what Hive7 has built, I have just realized that the web has now gone 3D. Virtual worlds have a new meaning, and collaboration just got easier. I would let you figure it out for yourself, but I think this is the first step in realizing Ajax’s full potential. (I have some screen shots in the extended entry. Check out the one where Max and I are doing collaborative browsing. A browser inside a browser - now that’s cool!)
The group that controls Bluetooth's evolution decided to favor the WiMedia Alliance's flavor of ultrawideband (UWB): UWB offers speeds of 110 Mbps to 480 Mbps over distances of 10 down to 1 meters in its current incarnation. Two incompatible versions are backed by separate alliances. The WiMedia Alliance includes Intel and a number of other semiconductor makers, computer technology manufacturers, and consumer electronics firms. The other alliance--UWB Forum--is Freescale with just a few significant companies in the mix, including former parent Motorola.
The Bluetooth SIG had earlier signaled that it would support development of Bluetooth profiles and technology--such as object exchange (file transfer) and other widely supported and implemented higher-level modules for action--on top of the classic UWB that Freescale will release shortly to its manufacturing partners and the MB-OFDM flavor developed by WiMedia. (Freescale has talked about production silicon for years, but still lacks a single product on the market; July is the target for two partners for a USB 2.0 hub that uses UWB.)
Now, WiMedia is the only dance partner for the Bluetooth SIG. In an article in ExtremeTech, the SIG's head, Mike Foley says that the trade group's members heavily favored the WiMedia version of UWB. Freescale's head Martin Rofheart said in the same article that the company's short-term focus reamins USB 2.0 replacement given that Bluetooth-based high-speed applications won't be ready until some time in 2007 in the revised scheduled announced today.
A year ago, Rofheart said:
Fast Bluetooth may beat Wireless USB to the market, said Rofheart, since the high-level protocols are in place, and Freescale’s silicon is further ahead: “The pieces are more mature, and can be wed together more quickly, rolling into the market faster.”
This has proven not to be true. A demonstration last October showed Bluetooth operating over the Freescale flavor of UWB. Freescale and a few other firms that back its flavor are members of the Bluetooth SIG. Motorola was an original promoter and founder of the SIG. Freescale and Motorola have enormous product portfolios, however, and this Bluetooth SIG decision might not cause either company to leave the trade group.
The Bluetooth SIG is pursuing several different paths to make its applications continue to be relevant given the slow speed of its current paired radio technology--just 3 Mbps with Bluetooth 2.0+SDR. The applications allow for wide interoperability and leverage legions of developers who have written Bluetooth support. Changing the radio out from underneath Bluetooth is relatively straightforward compared with the adoption of an entirely new specification from top to bottom, which is why Bluetooth appears to have legs as it follows UWB, Near Field Communications (a form of very close proximity communication), and even Wi-Fi.
ABI Research put out a statement that this choice by the Bluetooth SIG puts WiMedia UWB makers in an superb position for unit volumes. "From a UWB perspective, this potentially opens up a vast market for products; we forecast over one billion Bluetooth radio shipments per annum by the end of the decade, and in the worst case -- should the UWB PHY be included in only a small percentage -- the market will still represent massive volumes of shipments that are unlikely to be encountered in other UWB implementations in the same time period," the statement said.
Alereon, a UWB chipmaker, issued its support for the decision in a statement, and trumpeted the fact that its technology was used for a demonstration at the Bluetooth SIG's meeting at which the choice of WiMedia technology was announced.
An interesting note at the end of the ExtremeTech article says that SIG head Foley didn't "rule out a merger" between the Bluetooth SIG and the WiMedia Alliance, which is the result of a merger itself of the original WiMedia Alliance (focused on higher-level protocols) and the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA), which dealt with radio/physical-layer issues.
2hotspot goes public with its community-organizing Wi-Fi software: The company's software joins a growing array of tools that provide Internet connect sharing and community features, such as discussion boards and chats. The trend I've spotted is that the network is slowly assuming as much importance as the Internet: that is WLAN power is just as great as LAN power in the right place. (Cf., Pulse Point, PlaceSite.)
2hotspot offers a Windows (2000/XP/2003) software package that handles the community features. The setup works with several configurations, although the easiest is either to use a built-in wireless card to create the hotspot or to use a two-port Ethernet card to pass through a broadband modem connection and allow the software to facilitate its insertion into the process.
The software is free, but they've raised funding. Their model? Advertising on community content pages.
Verizon, which powers MSN's Yellow Pages and had listings in Google local, announced they are to sell Google AdWords.
Google and Verizon SuperPages.com have signed a deal under which the classified ad provider will help its tens of thousands of marketers get ads onto Google search result pages, the companies said Monday.
Google, the company that everyone thought was going to be different, has decided to play, or pay, big in DC:
Update: I am going to be on CNBC’s On The Money show to discuss Google Finance @ 7pm EST/ 4pm PST along with Paul Kedrosky and David Vise.
The much awaited launch of Google Finance service finally happened - in beta of course. And in one word, it is simply disappointing. Its like watching Al Pacino in a stinker like Two for the money. Tony Montana was so long ago!
But back to Google Finance. After playing around with it for about 15 minutes, it is obvious that it will be a long time, and I mean long time in Internet years that is, before Google Finance really catches up to Yahoo Finance, which in fact is the gold standard. (Just by the virtue of lack of competitors, as it might be.)
My inner cynic says that the reason Google launched this service this quickly is because it wants to capture those high CPM/CPC dollars from stock and mortgage brokerages. Yahoo Finance is like an ATM for guys in Sunnyvale, and Google till recently had nothing to capture the “exuberant enthusiasm in the stock and real estate markets.”
I did a quick stock quote look-up on Apple, and found that most of the information of Google Finance Company Tearsheet was pretty much the same as Yahoo - except there was a section dedicated to blog entries related to Apple. That indeed is welcome news! And while, I applaud them for including the blog posts in the company tear sheets, I bemoan the lack of more timely and recent blog posts. After all when it comes to market data, two-hour-old information, might as well be dead bytes.
The other feature which I liked about the company tear-sheets is how stock charts, and certain news stories are tied together using AJAX Flash. Full marks to Google for making it easier to find and correlate news events with stock performance.
But that’s all. There is nothing else which even remotely impressed me. I totally disagree with Charlene Li of Forrester Research, who offers the most politically correct quote to San Jose Mercury News. “It is definitely an improvement…It’s not a mind-blowing improvement … which is actually an advantage. You already know how to use it.” John Battelle offers an equally benign reportage on what clearly is a me-too move. Paul Kedrosky is being kind when he clearly states, “All Whiz, No Bang.”
Given how entrenched Yahoo Finance is in people’s lives, Google cannot be incrementally better. A couple of ajax widgets will not make me switch from Yahoo Finance to Google Finance. Despite the beta-tag, I find Google Finance downright tiresome and plain ugly. Just like Al Pacino in … Two for the Money.
A german study suggests that "enforced jolliness on the job" isn't good for you.
They cite flight attendants, sales personnel, call centre operators, waiters and others in contact with the public for extended periods of time as being at risk of seriously harming their health.
Psychologists at Frankfurt University said the fake friendliness led to depression, stress and a lowering of the immune system itself, which in turn can trigger more serious ailments.
Sorry about the duplicate post...
So soon Sun is going to launch its utility computing grid, open to all for rent. In Jonathan's post covering the launch here, I wonder, really, truly - isn't Google the clear competitor here? Oh, wait, no, it's already Amazon. I'm pinging Jonathan to ask about this. Google is Sun's partner, but will they also be fundamental competitors? (Thanks, James)
I've had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There's already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt, Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I'm going to answer this in a different way.
Warning: This is long and not terribly flattering stuff that's been under mild pressure for a few years now.
You see, I started at Yahoo! back in 1999 as an engineer working on Yahoo! Finance. It was one of the sites I used most often back then, so it was a privilege to get my hands on it and really contribute in a meaningful way. I spent roughly the next three years working with the good folks in our group, including Katie Stanton, who announced Google Finance a few days ago.
Katie was one of the best people we had in Yahoo! Finance. I was disappointed when she left Yahoo a few years back. I remember chatting with her a few times when she decided to go back to work. Trying to choose between Yahoo and Google, she asked for opinions.
How time flies...
Last year I teased her a few times about Google Finance. Of course, she denied that any such thing was in the works. Since I knew it was in the works, I wasn't surprised when it finally came out. Nor was I surprised to see her affiliated with the product.
It clearly has a Yahoo! Finance feel in several areas but with a distinctly Google flavor to it. I have minor complaints about it, but I think it's a good start aside from the fixed width home page.
So why does this make Jeremy sad?
It makes me sad because I end up thinking about how Yahoo! Finance has stagnated for a long time. It never really recovered from the pain of the dotcom crash. So many of my old Finance coworkers have either left the company or moved on to other groups (several moved into Search last year). Heck, I encouraged many of them to get out!
There was a lack of leadership and, even more importantly, a serious LACK OF VISION. It really disappointed me.
It makes me sad because virtually all of the new/innovative/cool features in Google Finance are things we talked about YEARS ago. Many of them I'd lobbied for repeatedly. Some were even prototyped.
Who's gonna get "credit" for all that now?
I'm not gonna name names (virtually none of them are around anymore anyway), but there was a real lack of leadership in Finance for long time and it really sucked the life out of the group. Users noticed. Finance employees noticed. Other Yahoos noticed. We all knew it. And, frankly, I was glad to be out when I moved on (and the next time and the time after that).
Over the years since leaving, I've made pleas to numerous people in the Finance organization: engineers, product managers, engineering managers, editorial, and so on--veteran employees and newbies alike.
Push into community more. Get more into personal finance, not just the high-end Wall Street stuff. Adopt blogging and syndication. Get around to those chart improvements we'd talked about. Fix up the message boards. (Remind me to tell the story of how they freaked out when I snuck RSS feeds out back in 2002. It took another TWO YEARS before someone re-did that work and finally shipped it. But the RSS train had already left the station by that time.)
Radio silence.
Last year I started talking about Google Finance and they got a little excited. They talked more about all the stuff they could maybe do. Asked for some input (again). My hope was renewed for a while.
During all that time, I purposely didn't write anything here about my frustration and disappointment. I've been accused of using my writing in public as a instrument to instigate internal change at Yahoo. I've been accused of complaining in public before talking to folks internally. So I tried to be a good Yahoo and give my suggestions to anyone who'd listen.
On the other hand, people tell me they like reading my stuff because it's not sanitized corporate PR speak and I'm not always painting a rosy picture of what goes on. Instead, I tell it like it is--from my point of view, of course.
Well, here we are.
As a company, we need to get better about facing this stuff, dealing with it, and get back to kicking ass. But I have no idea how to make that happen. Maybe this will result in some useful discussion somewhere.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel. All hope is not lost. Unlike a small number of Google product launches, this one didn't blow the doors off. It's no Gmail or Google Maps. Yahoo! Finance isn't out of the game. But I sure as hell hope this is a wake-up call!
On the flip side, Katie's a kick-ass product manager and knows the Finance world very well. I can only imagine what else they're cooking up. The clock is ticking.
(Remember: I'm not speaking for my employer... yada, yada, yada. See the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.)
(comments)
extremely detailed map of the North American Internet backbone including 134,855 routers. the colors represent who each router is registered to: red is Verizon, blue AT&T, yellow Qwest, green is major backbone players like Level 3 & Sprint Nextel, black is the entire cable industry put togethe, & gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S.
this map demonstrates that although AT&T & Verizon own a lot of Internet pipes, they currently do not dominate the Internet infrastructure (yet).
see also opte project & ddos attack visualization.
[cio.com (PDF/1.1MB) & cio.com]
Originally posted by infosthetics from information aesthetics, ReBlogged by Yury Gitman on Mar 23, 2006 at 09:19 AM
It appears that a small electrical component company near Boston has figured out how to get electricity out of trees. MagCap Engineering is pretty sure they’ve come up on the next renewable energy revolution. By pounding a nail into the trunk and a conductor into the ground, a faint but consistent charge is detected in a wire running from the tree to the earth. They are now charging NiCad batteries and illuminating LEDs off the current. MagCap is applying for a patent while MIT tests the phenomenon in the blistering Cambridge cold. A company spokesperson told The Boston Globe they hope to be able to charge hybrid batteries this way, but they also propose lighting roads. Makes sense, I suppose. Everything living is running on electric current. Just ask your friendly neighborhood Taoist. :: MagCap via The Boston Globe (Image credit: David Inshaw Note: It's a painting)
Originally from Treehugger, ReBlogged by Yury Gitman on Mar 22, 2006 at 09:45 AM
Tom Foremski writes: "Wyse Technology, the leading thin-client manufacturer, told SVW that it is in talks with both Google and Yahoo, for the design and production of powerful low-priced computers integrating data, voice, and broadband connectivity."
The growth of Internet users in developing countries could be dramatically accelerated if GOOG and YHOO were to subsidize the hardware and communications platform.
nd Amazon, could provide their trading platforms to massive new markets in the developing world.
Prices could be further reduced if the computers used Linux instead of Microsoft Windows to run a web browser-the only user interface required to access online services. And the use of Intel-compatible chips from AMD and others, could further reduce prices.
The internet rivals would be competing for hundreds of millions of new users within a hot demographic: the young middle classes forming in the developing world, primarily in India and China.
By making the PC and internet technology significantly more affordable, such moves would help bridge a massive digital divide: 84 percent of the world's population has no Internet access.
When organizations all around the political spectrum can agree a law is broken, you'd think that would lead to quick passage of the bill to fix it. Unless that law is the DMCA's anticircumvention.
The Libertarian Cato Institute has released a terrific report (PDF link) documenting ways the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hinders innovation.
Why won't iTunes play on Rio MP3 players? Why are viewers forced to sit through previews on some DVDs when they could have fast-forwarded through them on video? Why is it impossible to cut and paste text on Adobe eBook? In a just released study for the Cato Institute, Tim Lee, a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, answers these questions and more.
The new legislation’s most profound effects will be on the evolution of digital media technologies. We have grown accustomed to, and benefit from, a high-tech world that is freewheeling, open-ended, and fiercely competitive. Silicon Valley is a place where upstarts like Apple, Netscape, and Google have gone from two-man operations to billion-dollar trendsetters seemingly overnight. The DMCA threatens to undermine that competitive spirit by giving industry incumbents a powerful legal weapon against new entrants.
Sound copyright policy has obvious attractions for advocates of small-government and deregulation. Copyright has become more regulatory, and more market-crippling, as it expands, and the DMCA is a case in point. As Lee describes, the DMCA has been (ab)used to prevent competitive development of audio and video players, cable boxes, and even, for a time, printer cartridges. Instead of a free-market rush toward the best technology to meet public demand, we get a trickle of major-label "approved" devices that must be bug-compatible: region-coded DVD players and can't-record cable boxes.
I don't agree with Cato on everything, but this report is spot-on. Let's hope it inspires more in Congress to join Reps. Boucher, Doolittle, and Barton in support of the DMCRA.
The fists haven’t stopped flying over the Huffington Post’s bad move in reprinting George Clooney’s statements in other venues as blog postings, and Arianna Huffington’s mea culpa is not placating the critics. The more I learn about what happened, the more I agree that this was an egregiously bad move on her part.
It all raises a question about a practice that is utterly routine in traditional journalism: the ghost-written op-ed piece. I recognize that although there are some similarities (Clooney’s representatives were at least partly complicit in the words’ republication), the situations are not the same — but I don’t consider it especially ethical of publications and the “writers” of these op-ed pieces to be passing off their words as authentic, either.
Such essays, usually under the bylines of politicians or celebrities, amount to deception. They are written by staffers or others, not by the big names themselves.
I hope that the newspapers now carving Huffington up for her transgression will take a long look at their own shops. Because the ghost-written op-ed piece is somewhat fraudulent, too.
"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," [Cecilia Fire Thunder] said to [Lakhota Times editor Tim Giago] last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."Link to Native Times article (subscription required), or read excerpt on indybay website here. (Thanks, drogheda, Ryan and others!)
Reader comment: For those wishing to donate cash for the project, or extend messages of support, BoingBoing reader Lampbane says, " Contact info for president Fire Thunder can be found here."
Reader comment: A.V. says,
Careful with the Sioux abortion clinic donations. Although it's a great idea for the clinic, be careful about donations which may not actually go towards the desired destination.... definitely read that post before blindly sending money: Link.
A new Firefox plugin rewrites all the US prices in the pages you load into the equivalent cost in barrels of crude oil.
Link
(via CNet Blog Esoterica)
Apple condemned the proposal as "state-sponsored piracy" and warned that it would result in its customers filling their iPods with "pirate" videos and music. This is intensely hypocritical. Apple ships millions of iPods holding up to 10,000 songs. Most customers for 60GB iPods have fewer than 10,000 songs' worth of CDs and no one is buying $10,000 worth of iTunes. While there's a certain amount of public domain and Creative Commons music likely to end up on iPods, and some video these days, there's no question that Apple's iPod business is built on the average customer's need for a way to take her/his unauthorized music downloads on the road.
What's more, as Steve Jobs explained to Rolling Stone in 2003, iTunes DRM doesn't stop people from making and sharing unauthorized copies of their music:
None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content. . . . . [There is] this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet --- and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it -- puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.If Apple doesn't think iTunes stops "piracy," then why include it? Because it lets them send legal threats to competitors like Real when they make players for their own DRMed music that run on Apple devices. Real's effort to put a Real player on the iPod wouldn't have helped anyone commit "piracy" -- nor would the French law. All it would do is give iPod owners the option to buy their crummy DRM-crippled music from someone other than Apple, maybe getting a better price or better features or both.
In a response issued after the law won initial approval, Apple said: "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers.", Herve, Dave and Peanutbutter13!)But, it added, the law could prove a boon for Apple and its popular iPod music players.
Said Apple: "iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with "interoperable" music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy."
My grandfather came from Belarus -- I'm just glad he got out when he did, otherwise this might be the themesong of my homeland. nks, Brendan!)Well-set and slim
He won't teach you evil
Father can bridle anyone
Father is stronger than the restHe will settle conflicts
He is reliable and calm
He just throws a glance - and you see
Who is the master in the house
ef="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/boingboing/iBag?a=4DdCLp">In her book, Cheney travels from coast to coast, tracking the fates of the tens of thousands of dead bodies that end up in the "cadaver trade" each year. The corpses -- including those donated for medical research and those left unclaimed at morgues -- "are cut up into parts, not unlike chickens, and distributed through a complex network of suppliers, brokers and buyers," Cheney writes.
In Miami, she watches urological surgeons learn how to remove kidneys by poking into torsos in the Ocean Room of the Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort. In Gainesville, Florida, she takes a tour of a factory where crushed human bone is turned into precision-tooled orthopedic tools. And throughout, she finds plenty of people in the body-part business who really wish she'd go away.
Gamasutra reports that a group of U.S. senators including Democrats Joseph Lieberman, Hillary Clinton ad Dick Durbin and Republicans Rick Santorum ad Sam Brownback have managed to convince a Senate committee to initially approve a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that would examine video game ad other electronic media use. Lieberman first introduced the bill in 2003, saying "For one thing, we should know whether games like Grand Theft Auto that celebrate violence against women, beyond being sick and offensive, are actually leading to more violence against women." That first bill allocated some $90US for the study, but no figure has been confirmed for this new study.Santiago Sierra is known for his provocative performances, which have included paying refugees from Chechenia to remain inside cardboardboxes, giving money to young Cubans for the priviledge of tattooing their backs, dying the hair of Africans blonde to make them look European, and spraying 10 Iraqis immigrant workers with insulating foam. But the Spanish artist provoked outrage among Jewish groups in Germany yesterday with his latest installation - a homemade gas chamber set up in a former synagogue.
