Blog2 (tm) / High-Performance Blog

Blog2, a RIA and Web2.0 technology information blog.
Providing a daily dose of news and features from the world of second-generation of Internet-based service and AJAX for both the consumer and developer.

Internet Congestion During A Severe Emergency

Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months, unlike a disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake.

"Such network congestion could prevent staff from broker-dealers and other securities market participants from teleworking during a pandemic," reads the GAO report.

"Because the key securities exchanges and clearing organizations generally use proprietary networks that bypass the public Internet, their ability to execute and process trades should not be affected by any congestion."

[ PDF ] Internet Congestion During A Severe Emergency

Ever-Present Surveillance Rankles the British Public

It has become commonplace to call Britain a “surveillance society,” a place where security cameras lurk at every corner, giant databases keep track of intimate personal details and the government has extraordinary powers to intrude into citizens’ lives.

A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore.

But the intrusions visited on Jenny Paton, a 40-year-old mother of three, were startling just the same. Suspecting Ms. Paton of falsifying her address to get her daughter into the neighborhood school, local officials here began a covert surveillance operation. They obtained her telephone billing records. And for more than three weeks in 2008, an officer from the Poole education department secretly followed her, noting on a log the movements of the “female and three children” and the “target vehicle” (that would be Ms. Paton, her daughters and their car).

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

FCC Commissioners Support Open Internet Rule

U.S. communications regulators voted unanimously Thursday to support an open Internet rule that would prevent telecom network operators from barring or blocking content based on the revenue it generates.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Online Retailers Anticipate a Dreary Christmas

The leaves are just beginning to change color, but e-commerce companies are already starting to think about Christmas. So far, it looks like a dreary one. Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore, the Web analytics firm that tracks e-commerce spending, predicted that online sales this holiday season might be flat. “I’d be delighted if the growth was around 5 percent, but I am worried that we’ll see it continue to go sideways for a while,” he said.

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

FTC: Bloggers must disclose payments for reviews

Advertisers, celebrity endorsers and even some internet bloggers will be held liable for false statements they make about products as part of a crackdown by US regulators on deceptive advertising practices.

The new rules on the use of testimonials in advertising, released by the Federal Trade Commission on Monday, also say that anyone who endorses a product, including celebrities and bloggers, must make explicit the compensation received from companies. In an effort to hold companies and endorsers accountable, the FTC guidelines state that businesses and reviewers will be liable for any false statements made about a product. If a blogger receives a free sample of skin cream and untruthfully claims it cures eczema, for example, the company and the blogger could be held liable for false advertising.

» FTC GOV - FT [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

FCC To Support 'Net Neutrality' And Open Internet

The U.S. government plans to propose broad new rules Monday that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, seeking to give consumers greater freedom to use their computers or cellphones to enjoy videos, music and other legal services that hog bandwidth.

The move would make good on a campaign promise to Silicon Valley supporters like Google Inc. from President Barack Obama, but will trigger a battle with phone and cable companies like AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., which don't want the government telling them how to run their networks.

Treating Web traffic equally means carriers couldn't block or slow access to legal services or sites that are a drain on their networks or offered by rivals.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
» Wall Street Journal
» Washington Post

Behemoth Blogs Taking Over The Web

In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing articulates a point made so often about the Web that it's nearly catechismal. Blogs, he says, have torn down the power structure of old media. "Decentralization and democratization" are the law of the land, offering “a podium to Americans of all ages and backgrounds to contribute.” This is a notion that bloggers and web gurus have been touting for years. In his 2006 book, An Army of Davids, for example, “Instapundit” blogger Glenn Reynolds argued that “markets and technology” empowered “ordinary people to beat big media.” And this June, internet sage Clay Shirky assured an audience at a TED event that the old model, where “professionals broadcast messages to amateurs,” is “slipping away.”

» The Atlantic [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?

Just about everyone, from the general public to news executives, has an opinion about the future of journalism. Now, the Federal Trade Commission is stepping into the debate.

The commission is planning two days of workshops in December — titled “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” — to examine the state of the news industry.

More often, the F.T.C. tends to organize workshops related to consumer protection issues like mortgage fraud. But Jon Leibowitz, the F.T.C. chairman, says the agency has taken a look at other industries, through workshops on hospital competition, food marketing and the patent system. Journalism’s future falls in the agency’s purview, he said.

» NY Times - FTC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Startup: reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program

The reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program is specifically oriented towards launching tech dependent youth and adults back into the real world. Our individually tailored program is designed to assist participants with an internet and/or computer based behavioral addiction to break the cycle of dependency. Our 45-day abstinence based recovery program exposes participants to a variety of activities and everyday life skills which are often avoided or underdeveloped as a result of ongoing computer, video game play and internet abuse.

» reSTART [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

FOE "feed over email" - U.S. tests system to break foreign Web censorship

The U.S. government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet.

The "feed over email" (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Read it quick: this article will self-destruct in eight hours.

Computing and communicating through the Web makes it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview; a lost or stolen laptop can expose personal photos or messages; or a legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating or just embarrassing details from the past.

Vanish is a research system designed to give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service.

For example, using the Firefox Vanish plugin, a user can create an email, a Google Doc document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment — specifying that the document or message should "vanish" in 8 hours. Before that 8-hour timeout expires, anyone who has access to the data can read it; however after that timer expires, nobody can read that web content — not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data. That data — regardless of where stored or archived prior to the timeout — simply self-destructs and becomes permanently unreadable.

» Vanish / Washington edu [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Help test "caffeine" google's next-generation search

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Some parts of this system aren't completely finished yet, so we'd welcome feedback on any issues you see. We invite you to visit the web developer preview of Google's new infrastructure at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and try searches there.

Right now, we only want feedback on the differences between Google's current search results and our new system. We're also interested in higher-level feedback ("These types of sites seem to rank better or worse in the new system") in addition to "This specific site should or shouldn't rank for this query." Engineers will be reading the feedback, but we won't have the cycles to send replies.

Here's how to give us feedback: Do a search at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." Click on that link, type your feedback in the text box and then include the word caffeine somewhere in the text box. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

» Google [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Beyond Newspapers v Bloggers

Blogging has gone beyond the snip-it-and-comment approach that riffs on the journalism of others while doing no conventional reporting of their own in the sense of gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. The commentary has broadened into a concern with subjects that newspapers are no longer interested in.

» Public Opinion [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

US file-sharer gets $700,000 fine

A US student has been ordered to pay $675,000 (£404,000) to four record labels for breaking copyright laws after sharing music online.

On the stand, Mr Tenenbaum admitted that he had downloaded more than 800 songs since 1999 and that he had lied in pre-trial proceedings when he suggested that other family members of friends may have been responsible for downloading songs to his computer.

» BBC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

A Hollywood Blogger Feared by Executives

“Did you see what Nikki just wrote?” That would be Nikki Finke, a well-traveled newspaper reporter who has found her moment as a digital-age Walter Winchell.

In the three years since she started Deadline Hollywood Daily, a daily blog about the entertainment business, her combination of old-school skills — she is a relentless reporter — and new-media immediacy has made her a must-click look into the ragingly insecure id of Hollywood.

“I really don’t see covering Hollywood as all that different from covering the Kremlin or the federal government,” she said. “I’m always fascinated by closed societies that don’t want prying eyes.”

» New York Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Apple: Secrecy Does Not Scale

Apple is justifiably revered in the worlds of technology and culture for creating one of the most powerful brands in the world based on the combination of some key elements: Great user experience and design, and an extraordinary secrecy punctuated by surprising reveals. But the element of secrecy that's been required to maintain Apple's mystique has incurred an increasingly costly price. Apple must transform itself and leave its history of secrecy behind, not just to continue being innovative and to protect the fundamentals of its business, but because the cost of keeping these secrets has become morally and ethically untenable.

» Anil Dash [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Google Engineering Director Spells Out Vision for the Future of Digital Books

Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy spelled out the vision at a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Clancy stressed the importance of making it possible to buy the digital books in traditional bricks-and-mortar bookstores, as well as online.

"Right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem," he said. "A huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. It's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model."

Dan Clancy comments:

People look at the settlement [with the Authors Guild and the AAP] and think that that is Google's vision for what the future looks like for books. And in fact the settlement is what we figured out for these predominantly out-of-print books, so it's more about the past. And in fact we've done a lot of thinking about what is the role we want to play going forward in a digital book world, for new books.

There are [three] things we put as requirements.

One is I believe people want their books stored in the cloud.... For most people, your library is something that you don't pull books off all that often, but when you need it, you want it to be there. That's where a cloud really works. You're not going to actively manage it, but you want to make sure that five years from now, [it's there].

Number two, I think it's critical that there's diversity of choices in terms of retailers that you work with.

Now one of the things with the cloud is that the consumer needs to trust that the person who's providing the cloud will be there. So you don't trust the cloud to some new startup that you've never heard of, or some small local bookstore, that you love to go to.

But right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem. And in fact a huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. And I think it's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model.

So part of our model is to figure out we're going to syndicate for our partner program all of the books we sell that are new, so that any bookstore can sell a Google edition and find a way that people can buy them in bricks and mortar stores as well.

And then finally, our model is you should be able to read on any device.... Our model is some people will read [our books] on a laptop, some will read them on the phone, some people will read on their netbook, and some people will read on their e-reader. And we'll work with any reader provider that wants to make it so they can get their books from the Google cloud....

So the principles of our future world is trying to build this world where there's lots of retail players, read on any device, but it's still stored in the cloud. And as we talk with publishers and booksellers, I think this is the right model, because we're trying to make what would be an open model that encourages competition

» Blog2 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Venture Capital Firms Plan New Funds, Survey Shows

Although the venture capital industry is having a hard time convincing endowments, pension funds and other limited partners to invest new capital in the asset class, the majority of venture firms still plan to raise a new fund in the next 12 months - if a new survey from Pepperdeine University is to be believed.

» WSJ [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.

» NYT [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Event: Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference

Focus is on how technology companies, content creators and other institutions can thrive in the recession, and help lead the way to a new era of global prosperity.

The agenda is based on 4 content pillars:

Renewal and Recovery
Technology must strengthen the global economy, renew confidence and speed a recovery that establishes new business traditions.

Technology and Social Transformation
We believe that the transformational power of software, the Internet and technology is often underplayed in thinking about social issues.

The 21st Century Consumer
It’s a mobile, downloaded, Twitter world, and the way people are using technology in their every day lives has huge implications for the biggest media and technology companies on the planet.

Business Innovation
Great innovations and business practice always have emerged from chaotic times, and the smartest companies are already thinking about what they will look like when order is restored.

» Time Inc./Fortune July 22-24, 2009 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Microsoft offered Robert Scoble his old job back

He helped break the old equation of PR + Journalists = Consensus Of Wisdom and that, in the final analysis, has probably been a good thing.

On the importance of corporate blogging. "I feel stronger about it now than ever. If you look at the Net, many, many companies use blogs. Even Apple Computer has soemthing similar. The best blogging is done when you're under pressure. You win customers over when you have to bite your lip [and admit to failings].

On the next web era. "Web 2.0 is almost eight years ago and the 2010 Web, New Web or Now Web will be about the real-time web."

» CIO UK [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Will anyone pay for anything?

The idea for Revenue Bootcamp held on the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, Calif., developed earlier this year after some people realized that upcoming conferences focused only on "social media . . . basically gathering eyeballs, but nobody was talking about monetizing people . . .," Guy Kawasaki explained in his opening remarks.

» Revenue Bootcamp
» Building43 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Barry Diller Calls Free Web Content a 'Myth'

“It is not free, and is not going to be,” Diller said today at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Pasadena, California. Diller, joined a group of media chiefs, from John Malone to Robert Iger, who are challenging the accepted model that consumers pay for Internet access and then content is free. Diller predicted there will be three revenue streams: advertising, subscriptions and transactions.

“We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience,” Iger said. “And they are willing to pay for what they perceive as value.”

» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

SKYPE singled out as threat to Russia's security

Russia's most powerful business lobby moved to clamp down on Skype and its peers this week, telling lawmakers that the Internet phone services are a threat to Russian businesses and to national security.

In partnership with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's political party, the lobby created a working group to draft legal safeguards against what they said were the risks of Skype and other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Workshop on Data Mining in Web 2.0 Environments

Users feel very attracted by currently emerging Web 2.0 environments, that allow to provide content in a simple, unrestricted, and ad hoc way. Providing annotations (such as tags) in a Web 2.0 like way is applicable to a wide range of resources and data types, such as web pages, images, multimedia, etc. There is, however, a disadvantage: the freedom to provide arbitrary (personal) content and tags in ubiquitous, uncoordinated ways results in very large amounts of poorly structured information. Behind the current hype around Web 2.0 applications, this raises several important challenges for future data and web mining methods.

The workshop aims to bring together researchers and professionals in the areas of data and web mining, information systems and collaborative systems to discuss challenges and solutions of applying data mining to highly unstructured, user created data. Such challenges include the analysis of loosely-coupled snippets of information, such as overlapping tag structures, homonym or synonym tags, blog networks etc. Other challenges arise from scalability issues or new forms of fraud and spam. They demand, for instance, innovative methods of tag clustering, filtering, aggregation, personalization and visualization. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• analysis of blogs
• tag clustering and visualization
• synonym and homonym resolution in tags
• visual and textual information extraction
• temporal analysis
• data streams, trend detection, and concept drift
• application of web and text mining to wiki content
• discovering social structures and communities
• evolution of online social networks
• predicting user behavior
• analysis of dynamic networks
• discovering misuse and fraud
• combining the web with data from other sources, mining with mashups
• deriving profiles from usage
• personalized delivery of information
• applications, case studies

International Workshop on Data Mining in Web 2.0 Environments held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2007) on October 28, 2007 in Omaha, United States.

[ PDF ] call for papers » uni-kassel.de [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Web 2.0 hype is making web firms neglect the basics of good design

Describing Web 2.0 as the "latest fashion", Mr Nielsen said many sites paying attention to it were neglecting some of the principles of good design and usability established over the last decade. Good practices include making a site easy to use, good search tools, the use of text free of jargon, usability testing and a consideration of design even before the first line of code is written.

Sadly, said Mr Nielsen, the rush to embrace Web 2.0 technology meant that many firms were turning their back on the basics. "They should get the basics right first," he said. "Sadly most websites do not have those primary things right."

» bbc.co.uk [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Shaping the future [Charlie Stross discussion at TNG Technology Consulting]

A fascinating analysis of where technology is going in the next 10-25 years. Instead of envisioning outlandish future developments, Charlie Stross looks at what the impact might be on society from very reasonable iterations of today's SOTA.

"10Tb is an interesting number. That's a megabit for every second in a year -- there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. That's enough to store a live DivX video stream -- compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution -- of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry -- a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send -- onto that chip, while I'm awake ... Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it's all indexed and searchable. 'What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?' Think of it as google for real life."

» antipope.org [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing

Mayer-Schönberger lays out his idea in a faculty research working paper called "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing," where he describes his plan as reinstating "the default of forgetting our societies have experienced for millennia."

Why would we want our machines to "forget"? Mayer-Schönberger suggests that we are creating a Benthamist panopticon by archiving so many bits of knowledge for so long. The accumulated weight of stored Google searches, thousands of family photographs, millions of books, credit bureau information, air travel reservations, massive government databases, archived e-mail, etc., can actually be a detriment to speech and action, he argues.

"If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved, they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves," he writes in the paper. "Afraid how our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context, the lack of forgetting may prompt us to speak less freely and openly."

[ PDF ] Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing

Blogger's Code of Conduct - Tim O'Reilly's Draft

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
   We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we'll delete comments that contain it.
   
   We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
   - is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
   - is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
   - infringes upon a copyright or trademark
   - violates an obligation of confidentiality
   - violates the privacy of others
   
   We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
   
2. We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
   
3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.
   When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.
   
4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
   When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible--see above) and ask them to publicly make amends.
   If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.
   
5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
   We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
   
6. We ignore the trolls.
   We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them--"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it." Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

» Tim O'Reilly / radar.oreilly.com

über bloggers

It's no secret that bloggers are becoming increasingly influential. But Arrington is part of an emerging crowd of writers who use their narrowly focused blogs, such as hyperlocal real estate reports, green guides, or Web 2.0 startup reviews, to establish themselves as thought leaders. These new influencers are taking a page from the blog networks Gawker and Weblogs Inc. and turning rapid-fire, around-the-clock blog patter that makes and shapes the news into a hot new online media model.

Companies are directing more efforts toward buttering up these New Media players, often feeding them exclusives that play well with their targeted audiences. And for marketers who are increasingly comfortable with spending money on blogs, advertising with these opinion leaders provides instant cachet.

Think of these as the digital version of potent, passionate trade press writers. They swarm every novelty in areas like tech, creating problems and buzz for companies and innovations. They report news and publish it alongside analysis of newspaper stories and company releases. These posts are salted with strong doses of personality, sparking discussions across the Web. By melding their own insights and opinions with the aggregated views of others, they're starting to gain leverage. "In a time-starved world, people—especially decision-makers—have very little time, but do not want to miss being in the know," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer at advertising firm Publicis Groupe Media.

» Business Week