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IBM BeginsDevelopmentof the Watson Question Answering System2007

David Ferrucci, leader of the Semantic Analysis and Integration Department at IBMs T.J. Watsons Research Center, and his team begin development of Watson, a special-purposecomputer system designed to push the envelope on deep question and answering, deep analytics, and the computer's understanding of natural language.

The First One Terabyte Hard Disk DriveJanuary 4,2007


"Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is first to the mat with an announcement of a 1-terabyte hard disk drive. Industry analysts widely expected a 1TB drive to ship sometime in 2007; Hitachi grabbed a head start on the competition by announcing its drive today, just before the largest U.S. consumer electronics show starts next week. "According to Hitachi, the drive ships in the first quarter of 2007, and will cost $399--less than the price of two individual 500GB hard drives today. The drive, called the Deskstar 7K1000, will be shown this weekend in Las Vegas at the 2007 International CES, also known as the Consumer Electronics Show, as well as at the Storage Visions storage conference" (http://www.pcworld.com/article/128400/hitachi_introduces_1terabyte_hard_drive.html, accessed 06-042009).

12,000,000 U.S. BlogsFebruary2007


According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project about 12 million Americans now maintain a blog.

It Would Take 1800 Years to Convert the Paper Records . . . .March 10,2007
According to an article in The New York Times entitled History Digitized (and Abridged), which points out that economic and copyright considerations require the digitization of library and archival collections to be very selective, the U.S. National Archives estimates that at the current rate of digitization of its 9 billion text records, it could take 1800 years to convert the paper text records in the National Archives to digital form.

The iPhoneJune 29,2007


Apple introduces the iPhone, an internet-connected multimedia smartphone with a virtual keypad and a virtual keyboard.

The World Wide Telecom Web for Illiterate PopulationsAugust2007


Arun Kumar and others at IBM India Research Library publish "WWTW: The World Wide Telecom Web", an Internet designed for illiterate populations: "our vision of a voice-driven ecosystem parallel to that of the WWW. WWTW is a network of interconnected voice sites that are voice driven applications created by users and hosted in the network. It has the potential to enable the underprivileged population to become a part of the next generation converged networked world. We present a whole gamut of existing technology enablers for our vision as well as present research directions and open challenges that need to be solved to not only realize a WWTW but also to enable the two Webs to cross leverage each other."

DROIDSeptember 27,2007
"An innovative tool to analyse and identify computer file formats has won the 2007 Digital Preservation Award. DROID, developed by The National Archives in London, can examine any mystery file and identify its format. The tool works by gathering clues from theinternal 'signatures' hidden inside every computer file, as well as more familiar elements such as the filename extension (.jpg, for example), to generate a highly accurate 'guess' about the software that will be needed to read the file. . . . "Now, by using DROID and its big brother, the unique file format database known as PRONOM, experts at the National Archives are well on their way to cracking the problem. Once DROID has labelled a mystery file, PRONOM's extensive catalogue of software tools can advise curators on how best to preserve the file in a readable format. The databaseincludes crucial information on software and hardware lifecycles, helping to avoid the obsolescence problem. And it will alert users if the program needed to read a file is no longer supported by manufacturers. "PRONOM's system of identifiers has been adopted by the UK government and is the only nationally-recognised standard in its field."

Amazon.com introduces the Kindle.This unconventially-named e-book reader differs from other e-book readers because it incorporates a wireless service for purchasing and delivering electronic texts without a computer. The 6 inch electronic-paper screen is limited to grayscale at 167ppi resolution. 90,000 titles are available for download to the 10 oz. device at its introduction. The device can store about 200 books.

21 BillioninRevenue from Google AdWords2008


The revenue from AdWords, Google's flagship advertising product, is $21,795,550,000 in2008. "AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, andinternational distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several differentInteractive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes" (Wikipedia article on AdWords, accessed 06-09-2009).

The Thinnest NotebookComputerJanuary 15, 2008


At the Macworld Conference and Expo Apple introduces the Macbook Air with a tapered design just 0.16 in. thick at the front, weighing 3 lb. and with an optional solid-state drive. The MacBook Air was pitched as a laptop for frequent travelers.

Game-Based Learning for Virtual PatientsMarch 2008


Imperial College London Medical School develops Phase I - Game-based learning for Virtual Patients in Second Life. "The four-dimensional framework described by De Freitas and Martin (2006), plus the learning types described by Helmer (2007), as well as the different aspects of emergent narrative described by Murray (1997) have provided the basis for the design of these game-based learning activities for virtual patients under two different categories: context and learner specification, and narrative and modes of representation. Phase I of this project focused on the delivery of a virtual patient inthe area of Respiratory Medicine following a game-based learning model in Second Life."

You can watch the video of Phase 1 on YouTube at this link.

Cyber Storm IIMarch 10 March 14, 2008


"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is conducting the largest cyber security exercise ever organized. Cyber Storm II is being held from March 10-14 in Washington, D.C. and brings together participants from federal, state and local governments, the private sector, and the international community. "Cyber Storm II is the second in a series of congressionally mandated exercises that will examine the nations cyber security preparedness and response capabilities. The exercise will simulate a coordinated cyber attack on information technology, communications, chemical, and transportation systems and assets. " 'Securing cyberspace is vital to maintaining Americas strategic interests, public safety, and economic prosperity,' said Greg Garcia, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Communications. 'Exercises like Cyber Storm II help to ensure that the public and private sectors are prepared for an effective response to attacks against our critical systems and networks.' "Cyber Storm II will include 18 federal departments and agencies, nine states (Calif., Colo., Del., Ill., Mich., N.C., Pa., Texas and Va.), five countries (United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom), and more than 40 private sector companies. Theyinclude ABB, Inc., Air Products, Cisco, Dow Chemical Company Inc., Harris Corporation, Juniper Networks, McAfee, Microsoft, NeuStar, PPG Industries, and Wachovia" (http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1205180340404.shtm, accessed 08-09-2009).

Encyclopedia WillInclude Wiki-Style CollaborationJune 2008


Encyclopaedia Brittanica, first published in 3 volumes in 1771, announces in its blog that it will include wiki-style collaboration from users in it's online edition. At Britannica, readers and users will also be invited into an online community where they can work and publish at Britannicas site under their own names. The core encyclopedia itself "will continue to be edited according to the most rigorous standards and will bear the imprimatur Britannica Checked to distinguish it from material on the site for which Britannica editors are not responsible.

SupercomputerBuilt from Video Gaming

ComponentsJune 2008

The American military supercomputer called the Roadrunner, designed and built by scientists at I.B.M. and Los Alamos National Laboratories from components originally designed for video game machines, has processed more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. "To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. DAgostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day."

21.9% of the World's People Use theInternetJune 30, 2008

According to World Internet Stats , 1,463,632,361 people now use the Internet, out of a total world population of 6,676,120,288.
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Over One Trillion Unique URLsJuly 2008


Google announces in its blog that it is indexing over one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs.

The iTunes App Store OpensJuly 10, 2008


Apple opens its online iTunes App Store. At launch it contains 522 Apps including 135 free programs.

181,277,835 Active WebsitesSeptember 2008


According to a Netcraft survey there are 181,277,835 active websites on the Internet.

The First Android-Powered PhoneSeptember 23, 2008


T-Mobile announces the first cell phone powered by the Android operating system,developed by Google in association with the Open Handset Alliance.

More than 110,000,000 Active UsersOctober 2008


Facebook, founded in February 2004, has more than 110 million active users worldwide.

Authors, Publishers and Google Reach "Landmark Settlement"October 28, 2008


The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google announce a groundbreaking settlement agreement "on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search. The agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, would resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of the AAPs membership. The class action is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"If approved by the court, the agreement would provide:

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More Access to Out-of-Print Books Generating greater exposure for millions of in-copyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online; Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books Building off publishers and authors current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many incopyright books;

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Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the worlds most renowned libraries; Free Access From U.S. Libraries Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries; and Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will also locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project."

Three Billion ImagesNovember 2008


Flickr, the photo and video sharing and photo and video social networking site founded inDecember 2004, claims to to host more than three billion images.

PC Magazine Becomes an Online-Only PublicationNovember 19, 2008


PC Magazine announces that the January 2009 issue (Volume 28, Issue 1) will be the last printed edition of this "venerable publication," after which it will move to an online only format. "While most magazines make most of their money from print advertising, PC Magazine derives most of its profit from its Web site. More than 80 percent of the profit and about 70 percent of the revenue come from the digital business, Mr. Young said, and all of the writers and editors have been counted as part of the digital budget for two years." quoted from NY Times online 11-19-08)

The Wikipedia Attracts 684,000,000 Visitors YearlyDecember 28, 2008


In 2008 the Wikipedia attracted "at least 684 million visitors yearly."

"There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages. As of today, there are 2,674,551 articles inEnglish. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia. (See also:Wikipedia:Statistics)" (Wikipedia:About, accessed 12-28-2008).

YouTube Surpasses 100 Million Viewers2009


"Internet users watched 14.8 billion online videos in January 2009, while YouTube surpassed 100 million viewers for the first time, according to data from comScore. "Web video viewership was up 4 percent from December, with Google leading the way. "People watched 6.4 billion videos on Google sites. About 99 percent of that occurred on YouTube, which now has 43 percent of the online video market share. The site logged just over 100 million unique viewers, with the average person watching about 62 videos over the course of the month for an average of 3.5 minutes" (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342533,00.asp, PCMAG.com, 03-05-2009)

China Becomes the Top User of theInternetJanuary 14, 2009


"BEIJING, China (CNN) -- China surpassed the United States in 2008 as the world's top user of the Internet, according to a government-backed research group. "Nearly 91 percent of China's Internet users are surfing the Web with a broadband connection. "The number of Web surfers in the country grew by nearly 42 percent to 298 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center's January report. And there's plenty of room for growth, as only about 1 in every 4 Chinese has Internet access. "The rapid growth in China's Internet use can be tied to its swift economic gains and the government's push for the construction of telephone and broadband lines in the country's vast rural areas, the report says. "The Chinese government wants phone and broadband access in each village by 2010. "Nearly 91 percent of China's Internet users are surfing the Web with a broadband connection -- an increase of 100 million from 2007. Mobile phone Internet users totaled 118 million by the end of 2008" (http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/14/china.internet/index.html, accessed 01-13-2010).

Google EarthIncorporates Historical ImageryFebruary 2, 2009


Google launches Google Earth 5.0. Among the most significant features are Historical Imagery, Touring, and 3D Mars. " Historical Imagery: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth intime to reveal imagery from years and even decades past, revealing changes over time. Try flying south of San Francisco in Google Earth and turning on the new time slider (click the "clock" icon in the toolbar) to witness the transformation of Silicon Valley from a farming community to the tech capital of the world over the past 50 years or so. " Touring: One of the key challenges we have faced in developing Google Earth has been making it easier for people to tell stories. People have created wonderful layers to share with the world, but they have often asked for a way to guide others through them. The Touring feature makes it simple to create an easily sharable, narrated, fly-through tour just by clicking the record button and navigating through your tour destinations.

" 3D Mars: This is the latest stop in our virtual tour of the galaxies, made possible by a collaboration with NASA. By selecting "Mars" from the toolbar in Google Earth, you can access a 3D map of the Red Planet featuring the latest high-resolution imagery, 3D terrain, and annotations showing landing sites and lots of otherinteresting features" (Official Google Blog, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/dive-into-new-google-earth.html, accessed 11-29-2010).

Higher Resolution Map of Knowledge Than Can be Produced from Citation AnalysisMarch 11, 2009
Johan Bollen of Los Alamos National Laboratory and six co-authors publish "Clickstream Data Yields High Resolution Maps of Science" in the open access online journal Plos ONE. The map was based on clickstream data collected when online readers switched from one journal to another, allowing the collection of about one billion data points -- a far greater number and presumably more reflective of actual reading patterns than the prior method of citation analysis developed by the Institute for Scientific Information (Now Thomson Scientific's Web of Science) which traces the relationship of footnotes in scholarly journals. "Maps of science derived from citation data visualize the relationships among scholarly publications or disciplines. They are valuable instruments for exploring the structure and evolution of scholarly activity. Much like early world charts, these maps of science provide an overall visual perspective of science as well as a reference system that stimulates further exploration. However, these maps are also significantly biased due to the nature of the citation data from which they are derived: existing citation databases overrepresent the natural sciences; substantial delays typical of journal publication yield insights in science past, not present; and connections between scientific disciplines are tracked in a manner that ignoresinformal crossfertilization. "Scientific publications are now predominantly accessed online. Scholarly web portals provide access to publications in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. They routinely log the interactions of users with their collections. The resulting log datasets have a set of attractive characteristics when compared to citation datasets. First, the number of logged interactions now greatly surpasses the volume of all existing citations. This is illustrated by Elsevier's announcement, in 2006, of 1 billion (1109) article downloads since the launch of its Science Direct portal in April 1999.In contrast, around the time of Elsevier's announcement, the total number of citationsin Thomson Scientific's Web of Science from the year 1900 to the present does not surpass 600 million (6108). Second, log datasets reflect the activities of a larger community as they record the interactions of all users of scholarly portals, including scientific authors, practitioners of science, and the informed public. In contrast, citation datasets only reflect the activities of scholarly authors. Third, log datasets reflect scholarly dynamics in real-time because web portals record user interactions as soon as an article becomes available at the time of its online publication. Incontrast, a published article faces significant delays before it eventually appears incitation datasets: it first needs to be cited in a new article that itself faces publication delays, and subsequently those citations need to be picked up by citation databases. "Given the aforementioned characteristics of scholarly log data, we investigated a methodological issue: can valid, high resolution maps of science be derived from clickstream data and can clickstream data be leveraged to yield meaningful insights inthe structure and dynamics of scholarly behavior? To do this we first aggregated log datasets from a variety of scholarly web portals, created and analyzed a clickstream model of journal relationships from the aggregate log dataset, and finally visualized these journal relationships in a first-ever map of science derived from scholarly log data" (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004803#pone.0004803-Brody1, accessed 03-192009).

Robot Scientist becomes the First Machine to Discover New Scientific KnowledgeApril 3, 2009
Ross D. King, Jem Rowland and 11 co-authors from the Department of Computer Science at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge, publish "The Automation of Science," Science 3 April 2009: Vol. 324. no. 5923, pp. 85 - 89 DOI: 10.1126/science.1165620.

They describe a Robot Scientist which the researchers believe is the first machine to haveindependently discovered new scientific knowledge. The robot, called Adam, is acomputer system that fully automates the scientific process. "Prof Ross King, who led the research at Aberystwyth University, said: 'Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists working together in laboratories'. The scientists at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge designed Adam to carry out each stage of the scientific process automatically without the need for further human intervention. The robot has discovered simple but new scientific knowledge about the genomics of the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an organism that scientists use to model more complex life systems. The researchers have used separate manual experiments to confirm that Adam's hypotheses were both novel and correct" (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/babsrsb032709.php). "The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method and the recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enable reproducibility. We report the developmentof Robot Scientist "Adam," which advances the automation of both. Adam has autonomously generated functional genomics hypotheses about the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and experimentally tested these hypotheses by using laboratory automation. We have confirmed Adam's conclusions through manual experiments. To describe Adam's research, we have developed an ontology and logical language. The resulting formalization involves over 10,000 different research units in a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relates the 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description. This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientific knowledge" (Abstract in Science).

The WARC Format as anInternational File Preservation StandardJune 1, 2009


The International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC), netarchive. org publishes the WARC file format as an international standard: ISO 28500:2009, Information and documentationWARC file format. "For many years, heritage organizations have tried to find the most appropriate ways to collect and keep track of World Wide Web material using web-scale tools such as web crawlers. At the same time, these organizations were concerned with the requirement to archive very large numbers of born-digital and digitized files. A need was for a container format that permits one file simply and safely to carry a very large number of constituent data objects (of unrestricted type, including many binary types) for the purpose of storage, management, and exchange. Another requirement was that the container need only minimal knowledge of the nature of the objects. "The WARC format is expected to be a standard way to structure, manage and store billions of resources collected from the web and elsewhere. It is an extension of theARC format , which has been used since 1996 to store files harvested on the web. WARC format offers new possibilities, notably the recording of HTTP request headers, the recording of arbitrary metadata, the allocation of an identifier for every contained file, the management of duplicates and of migrated records, and the segmentation of the records. WARC files are intended to store every type of digital content, either retrieved by HTTP or another protocol" (http://netpreserve.org/press/pr20090601.php).

Piracy ofInternet Filtering Software?June 13, 2009


Solid Oak Software Inc, developer of CyberSitter, alleged that an Internet-filtering program called Green Dam Youth Escort produced in China and mandated by the Chinese government, contains stolen portions of the company's code. "Solid Oak Software, the developer of CyberSitter, claims that the look and feel of the GUI used by Green Dam mimics the style of CyberSitter. But more damning, chief executive Brian Milburn said, was the fact that the Green Dam code uses DLLsidentified with the CyberSitter name, and even makes calls back to Solid Oak's servers for updates" (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2348705,00.asp, accessed 06-13-2009).

Solid Oak Software Inc. said it will try to stop PC makers from shipping computers with the software. "Solid Oak said Friday that it found pieces of its CyberSitter filtering software in the Chinese program, including a list of terms to be blocked, instructions for updating the software, and an old news bulletin promoting CyberSitter. Researchers at the University of Michigan who have been studying the Chinese program also said they found components of CyberSitter, including the blacklist of terms. "Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., the Chinese company that made the filtering software, denied stealing anything. "That's impossible," said Bryan Zhang, Jinhui's founder, in response to Solid Oak's charges. "The allegations come as PC makers such as Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are sorting through a mandate by the Chinese government requiring that all PCs sold inChina as of July come with the filtering software. Representatives of the two big U.S. companies said they are working with trade associations to monitor newdevelopments related to the Chinese software" (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124486910756712249.html, accessed 06-13-2009).

Virtual Reunification of the Codex SinaiticusJuly 6, 2009


"To mark the online launch of the reunited Codex Sinaiticus, the British Library is staging an exhibition, From Parchment to Pixel: The Virtual reunification of Codex Sinaiticus, which runs from Monday 6 July until Monday 7 September, 2009 in the Folio Society Gallery at the Library's St Pancras building. Visitors will be able to view a range of historic items and artefacts that tell the story of the Codex and its virtual reunification, along with spectacular interactive representations of the manuscript and a digital reconstruction of the changes to a specific page over the centuries. In addition, they will see on display inthe Treasures Gallery, for the very first time, both volumes of Codex Sinaiticus held at the British Library. "The virtual reunification of Codex Sinaiticus is the culmination of a four-year collaboration between the British Library, Leipzig University Library, the Monastery of St Catherine (Mount Sinai, Egypt), and the National Library of Russia (St Petersburg), each of which hold different parts of the physical manuscript. "By bringing together the digitised pages online, the project will enable scholars worldwide to research in depth the Greek text, which is fully transcribed and cross-referenced,including the transcription of numerous revisions and corrections. It will also allow researchers into the history of the book as a physical object to examine in detail aspects of its fabric and manufacture: pages can be viewed either with standard light or with raking light which, by illuminating each page at an angle, highlights the physical texture and features of the parchment. " 'The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures,' said Dr Scot McKendrick, Head of Western Manuscripts at the British Library. This 1600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the bible was transmitted from generation to generation. The project has uncovered evidence that a fourth scribe along with the three already recognised worked on the text; the availability of the virtual manuscript for study by scholars around the world creates opportunities for collaborative research that would not have been possible just a few years ago.' "The Codex Sinaiticus Project was launched in 2005, when a partnership agreement was signed by the four partner organisations that hold extant pages and fragments. A central objective of the project is the publication of new research into the history of the Codex. Other key aims of the project were to undertake the preservation, digitisation and transcription of the Codex and thereby reunite the pages, which have been kept in separate locations for over 150 years. "Professor David Parker from the University of Birmingham's Department of Theology, who directed the team funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which made the electronic transcription of the manuscript said: 'The process of deciphering and transcribing the fragile pages of an ancient text containing over 650,000 words is a huge challenge, which has taken nearly four years. " 'The transcription includes pages of the Codex which were found in a blocked-off room at the Monastery of St Catherine in 1975, some of which were in poor condition,' added Professor Parker. 'This is the first time that they have been published. The digital images of the virtual manuscript show the beauty of the original and readers are even able to see the difference in handwriting between the different scribes who copied the text. We have even devised a unique alignment system which allows users to link the images with the transcription. This project has made a wonderful book accessible to a global

audience.' To mark the successful completion of the project, the British Library is hosting an academic conference on 6-7 July 2009 entitled 'Codex Sinaiticus: text, Bible, book'. A number of leading experts will give presentations on the history, text, conservation, palaeography and codicology of the manuscript. See: http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/project/conference.aspx"http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=31895, accessed 07-07-2009)

Bing Will Power Yahoo! SearchJuly 29, 2009


Microsoft and Yahoo! announce 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine, currently second-largest in terms of query volume, will be replaced by Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell advertisements on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing" branding.

WerebuildJuly 30, 2009


Werebuild, "a decentralized cluster of net activists who have joined forces to collaborate on issues concerning access to a free Internet without intrusive surveillance," issues is First through Fourth "Communiqu of the Internets."

The First College Journalism Course Focused on TwitterSeptember 1, 2009


"This fall, DePaul University journalism alumnus Craig Kanalley will teach what is believed to be the first college-level journalism course focused solely on Twitter and its applications. Kanalley is a digital intern at the Chicago Tribune. "It is one of several innovative courses offered by DePauls College of Communication to help prepare students to work in the burgeoning digital landscape. Other journalism courses include niche journalism, reporting for converged newsrooms, backpack reporting and entrepreneurial journalism. "Kanalley said his course, 'Digital Editing: From Breaking News to Tweets, is really about learning how to make sense of the clutter of the Web, particularly in situations of breaking news or major developing stories, and how to evaluate and verify the authenticity of reports by citizen journalists.' 'Thousands share information about these stories and how theyre affected through Twitter every day, and theres a need to sift through this data to find relevant information that provides story tips and additional context for these events,' Kanalley said. "Students will especially focus on the social networking platform Twitter and apply concepts discussed in class to Kanalleys live journalism Web site Breaking Tweets (www.breakingtweets.com ), which integrates news and relevant Twitter feedback to create a one-of-a-kind Web experience for readers by providing eyewitness accounts of breaking news stories from around the world" (http://media-newswire.com/release_1098001.html, accessed 09-01-2009).

Google CEO Eric Schmidt On Newspapers & JournalismOctober 3, 2009

The following are quotations from Google CEO Eric Schmidt selected from his interview with Danny Sullivan of searchengineland.com, representing Schmidt's view of present problems and possible future solutions for newspapers and journalism impacted by theInternet: "The number of readers for newspapers is declining. The market is becoming more specialized. There will always be a market for people who read the newspaper on a train going into New York City. There will always be a market for people who sit in inthe afternoon in a cafe in the city and read the newspaper in the sunshine. The term killing is a bit over[blown]. Newspapers face a long-term secular decline because of the shift in user habits due to the Internet." "In the case of the newspapers, they have multiple problems which are hard to solve. If you think about it there are three fundamental problems. One is that the physical cost of things is going up, physical newsprint. Another one has been the loss of classifieds. And a third one has been essentially the difficulty in selling traditional print ads. So, all of them have online solutions. And weve come to the conclusion that the right thing to do is to help them with the online." "We think that over a long enough period of time, most people will have personalized news-reading experiences on mobile-type devices that will largely replace their traditional reading of newspapers. Over a decade or something. And that that kind of news consumption will be very personal, very targeted. It will remember what you know. It will suggest things that you might want to know. It will have advertising. Right? And it will be as convenient and fun as reading a traditional newspaper or magazine. "So one way one to think about it is that the newspaper or magazine industry do a great job of the convenience of scanning and looking and understanding. And we have to get the web to that point, or whatever the web becomes. So we just announced, the official name is Google Fast Flip. And thats an example of the kind of thing were doing. And we have a lot more coming." "I specifically am talking about investigative journalism when I talk about this. Theres no lack of bloggers and people who publish their opinions and faux editorial writers and people with an opinion. And I think that one of the great things about the internet is that we can hear them. We can also choose to ignore them. So its not correct to say that the internet is decreasing conversation. The internet is clearly increasing conversation at an incredibly rapid pace. The cacophony of voices is overwhelming as you know. "Well-funded, targeted professionally managed investigative journalism is a necessary precondition in my view to a functioning democracy. And so thats what we worry about. And as you know, that was always subsidized in the newspaper model by the other things that they did. You know, the story about the scandal in Iraq or Afghanistan was difficult to advertise against. But there was enough revenue that it allowed the newspaper to fulfill its mission" (http://searchengineland.com/google-ceo-ericschmidt-on-newspapers-journalism-27172)

eBook Sales Represent 1.6% of Book SalesOctober 7, 2009


"According to a report being released Wednesday by Forrester Research, e-reader sales will total an estimated 3 million this year, with Amazon selling 60 percent of them and Sony Corp. 35 percent." "According to the Association of American Publishers, e-books accounted for just 1.6 percent of all book sales in the first half of the year. But the market is growing fast. E-book sales totaled $81.5 million in the first half, up from $29.8 million in the first six months of 2008. "And [Jeff] Bezos said Amazon sells 48 Kindle copies for every 100 physical copies of books that it offers in both formats. Five months ago it was selling 35 Kindle copies per 100 physical versions. "Bezos said that increase is happening faster than he expected. " 'I think that ultimately we will sell more books in Kindle editions than we do in physical editions,' Bezos said in the interview, which was held in the Cupertino offices of Lab126, the Amazon subsidiary that developed the Kindle" (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/07/business/AP-US-TEC-Amazon-Kindle.html)

Google Represents 6% of AllInternet TrafficOctober 19, 2009


According to the report by Arbor Networks' 2009 Atlas Observatory Report Google accounts for 6 percent of all Internet traffic of every type. "And how many would have heard of a company called Carpathia Hosting? Its MegaUpload, MeaErotik, MegaClick and MegaVideo services have turned it into a company that now accounts for 1 percent of all Internet traffic, says Arbor, and this will doubtless grow. The important takeaway is that few of these companies had even been heard of two years ago, and very few of them are big telcos. To put all this into perspective,in 2007 Arbor found that the overwhelming majority of Internet traffic was accounted for by 30,000 entities, with fifty percent of traffic accounted for by around 10,000 companies. "Only two years later that same fifty percent now runs through only 150 top 'content delivery networks' (CDNs), an astonishing consolidation made more remarkable by the fact that Internet traffic has grown significantly during that time. " 'Up to 2007, The Internet meant connecting to lots of servers and data centres around the world,' notes Arbor's chief scientist, Craig Labovitz. Now there are barely 100 companies that matter. Traffic patterns tend to be hidden, mainly because the companies losing out - the traditional telcos and ISPs - don't exactly have an interest in advertising their waning status. The reason for their decline in importance is that Internet traffic is being driven by huge providers with access to content such as video. " 'For 150 years, they [BT and other telcos] have had the same business model. Now everyone is trying to get away from being a dumb pipe.' Arbor's Atlas Internet Observatory report crunched traffic from 100 of the Internet's largest entities, accounting for 12 Terabytes of peak throughput, equivalent to about a quarter of the Internet's total at any one moment, said Labovitz.The importance of this is not simply that a small number of companies will account for a lot of traffic, but that these companies are increasingly what the Internet actually is. The Internet up to around 2007 was dominated by a hierarchy of companies, cooperating with one another to allow traffic to be passed from one to the other, regardless of size. The new Internet superpowers, in stark contrast, bypass a lot of this and use direct connections from one to the other. If a company is not part of this new core, it could find itself increasingly passed to the 'long tail', a polite way of saying they will be shoved to the fringe. Video, including video that runs over web/http, now accounts for an estimated 10 percent of all Internet traffic, and is one reason all these direct connections between large data centres are now necessary. IPv6 traffic remains tiny at only 0.03 percent of traffic, but is showing sudden and possibly rapid growth in recent months thanks to deployments by named hosters. "Interestingly, P2P is in rapid decline, falling from around 3 percent of all traffic in 2007 to only half a percent now. Again, downloaders appear to prefer direct connectivity for downloads, mostly through port 80 and the web" (http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/10/14/internet-now-dominated-traffic-superpowers)

David Hockney's iPhone ArtOctober 22, 2009


Lawrence Wechler publishes "David Hockney's iPhone Passion," New York Review of Books LXVI, no. 16, 35. Hockney has a history of exploiting new technologies in his art: "Hockney continued to explore other media besides painting, most notably photography. From 1982-86, he created some of his best-known and most iconographic work his joiners, large composite landscapes and portraits made up of hundreds or thousands of individual photographs. Hockney initially used a Polaroid camera for the photos, switching to a 35 mm camera as the works grew larger and more complex. In interviews, Hockney related the joiners to cubism, pointing out that they incorporate elements that a traditional photograph does not possess namely time, space, and narrative. "Always willing to adopt new techniques, in 1986 Hockney began producing art with color photocopiers. He has also incorporated fax machines (faxing art to an exhibition in Brazil, for example) and computer-generated images (most notably Quantel Paintbox, a computer system often used to make graphics for television shows) into his work" (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/david-hockney/the-colors-of-music/103/, accessed 01-09-2010).

More than 2 Billion DownloadsNovember 4, 2009


More than 100,000 apps are now available for download from Apple's App Store, making it the largest such retailer in the world. "The App Store launched in July 2008 with just 500 applications. The store is now available in 77 countries, which has contributed to what Apple said Wednesday is well over 2 billion downloads" (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-1039045437.html)

Bing Will Encorporate Wolfram Alpha SearchInformationNovember 12, 2009


Microsoft announces a deal that will bring the Wolfram Alpha search tool to its Bing search engine. "The company said that the deal will allow users to take advantage of the Wolfram Alpha algorithms and search tools within Bing queries. "The initial partnership, which is expected to bear fruit within a few days, will focus on providing nutritional information to users as well as certain mathematical tools. When users search for foods or recipes, the engine will display a small tab containing nutritional information. "Along with increasing traffic to the Bing service, Microsoft hopes that the features will allow users to better monitor their diet and exercise plans. " 'This notion of creating and presenting computational knowledge in search results is one of the more exciting things going on in search (and beyond) today, and the team at Bing is incredibly fired up to bring some of this amazing work to our customers,' " programme managers Tracey Yao and Pedro Silva said in a blog posting. "The Wolfram Alpha partnership is one of several campaigns Microsoft has embarked on to drum up traffic for Bing. Other recent additions include visual search results and the ability to search within a user's Hotmail archives" (http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2253013/microsoft-gives-further-updates)

Google Announces Real-Time SearchDecember 2009


"First, we're introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we'll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page. Try searching for your favorite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it's an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it's published on the web. . . Our real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it's happening, even if it's not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn't know about it beforehand. For example, in the screen shot, the big story was about GM's stabilizing car sales, which shows under "News results." Nonetheless, thanks to our powerful real-time algorithms, the 'Latest results' feature surfaces another important story breaking just seconds before: GM's CEO stepped down. Click on 'Latest results' or select 'Latest' from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google. You can also filter your results to see only 'Updates' from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie right when you're in line to buy tickets.

And, as part of our launch of real-time on Google search, we've added 'hot topics' to Google Trends to show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in real-time. With this improvement and a series of other interface enhancements, Google Trends is graduating from Labs. "Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we're announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago" (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/relevance-meets-realtime-web.html, accessed 05-06-2010).

Google Living StoriesDecember 8, 2009


Google announces the Living Stories project, which provides a new, experimental way to consume news, developed by a partnership between Google, the New York Times, and theWashington Post. "The announcement of the 'living stories' project shows Google collaborating with newspapers at a time when some major publishers have characterized the company as a threat. Google has also taken steps recently to project an image of itself as a friend to the industry. "Living stories is a much-enhanced version of what some newspaper Web sites already do by grouping material by subject matter. In the case of The Times, the papers Web site has thousands of topic pages. But those efforts have not yielded heavy reader traffic or much advertising. "The Google project, presented without ads, is now at livingstories.googlelabs.com, part of Google Labs, where the company tries out experimental products. If it is judged a success, it would eventually reside on the site of any publisher that wanted to use it. Those publishers could also sell ads on those pages. "Googles dominant search engine sells ads alongside search results that often include news articles, leading some newspaper industry leaders particularly executives of the News Corporation, led by Rupert Murdoch to cry foul. Other publishers say that, on the contrary, they owe much of their Internet traffic and revenue to search engines. "Google executives argue that the tools their company has developed, including search, make them the papers ally, a case made by Eric E. Schmidt, Googles chairman and chief executive, in an opinion piece published last week in The Wall Street Journal. Also last week, Google announced changes in the way its search function interacts with news sites, giving publishers more flexibility in limiting the material readers can see before encountering demands for payment or registration. The changes were relatively minor, but reinforced the message that the company wanted to help news sites. " 'Theres been a series of steps to work with and mollify news publishers, to improve the P.R., and you can see the living page in that same vein,' said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with the analysis firm Outsell. The project is a genuine step forward, he said, because 'on most news sites, site search, looking for a lot on one subject, is awful.' "Google worked for months on the project with journalists and Web staffs at The Times and The Post. For now, it covers just eight broad topics, like health care reform and the Washington Redskins. At the top of each subject page is a summary, a timeline of major events and pictures, followed by the opening sections of a series of articles, inreverse chronological order. A set of buttons allows the reader to narrow the topic. 'Its an experiment with a different way of telling stories,' said Martin A. Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company. 'I thinkin it, you can see the germ of something quite interesting.' "A reader can call up an entire article without navigating away from the subject page, reading one piece after another without using the 'forward' and 'back' buttons. Josh Cohen, business product manager for Google News, said that having all the material appear on a single page would help the page rank higher in Internet searches than newspapers subject pages do now. "In various ways, the experiment duplicates or improves on what can now be done on publishers own sites, through a search engines news function or even on Wikipedia. Mr. Cohen said that if it worked well, Google would make the software available free to publishers, much as those publishers now use Google Maps and YouTube functions on their sites" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/technology/companies/09google.html?hpw).

Google introduces Google Goggles image recognition and search technology for theAndroid mobile device operating system. If you photograph certain types of individual objects the program will recognize them and automatically displace links to relevant information on the Internet. If you point your phone at a building the program will identify it by GPS and identify it. Then if you click on the name of the building it will bring up relevant Internet links. On May 7, 2010 you could watch a video describing the features of Google Goggles at this link: http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text

The Film Avatar and Our Vision of Virtual RealityDecember 10, 2009
Avatar, an American science fiction epic film written and directed by film director, producer, screenwriter, editor, and inventor James Cameron, and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen Lang, is first released in London. "The film is set in the year 2154 on Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Humans are engaged in mining Pandora's reserves of a precious mineral, while theNa'via race of indigenous humanoidsresist the colonists' expansion, which threatens the continued existence of the Na'vi and the Pandoran ecosystem. The film's title refers to the genetically engineered bodies used by the film's characters tointeract with the Na'vi. "Avatar had been in development since 1994 by Cameron, who wrote an 80-page scriptment for the film. Filming was supposed to take place after the completion ofTitanic, and the film would have been released in 1999, but according to Cameron, 'technology needed to catch up' with his vision of the film. In early 2006, Cameron developed the script, as well as the language and culture of the Na'vi. He said sequels would be possible if Avatar was successful, and in response to the film's success, confirmed that there will be another two. "The film was released in traditional 2-D, as well as 3-D, RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, and IMAX 3D formats. Avatar is officially budgeted at $237 million; other estimates put the cost at $280310 million to produce and $150 million for marketing. The film is being touted as a breakthrough in terms of filmmaking technology, for its development of 3D viewing and stereoscopic filmmaking with cameras that were specially designed for the film's production. "Avatar premiered in London, UK on December 10, 2009, and was released on December 18, 2009 in the US and Canada to critical acclaim and commercial success. It grossed $27 million on its opening day domestically (in the United States and Canada) and $77 million domestically on its opening weekend. It opened two days earlier internationally and grossed $232 million worldwide in its first five days ofinternational release. Within three weeks of its release, with a worldwide gross of over $1 billion, Avatar became the second highest-grossing film of all time worldwide, exceeded only by Cameron's previous film, Titanic" (Wikipedia article on Avatar (2009 film), accessed 01-16-2010). From my perspective the most significant aspect of Avatar, apart from its breathtakingcomputer graphic animation, and the fascinating artificial culture and language of the Na'vi, was the convincing portrayal of a total virtual reality experience. The film presented a vision of a reality that I could not have imagined before viewing. In its presentation of a new view of reality it is reminiscent of the 1982 film, Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott. Another aspect of the film that is highly timely is its depiction of the struggle between destructive exploitation of natural resources versus living in harmony with nature.

3 Billion iPhone and iPod Apps Have Been DownloadedJanuary 5, 2010


Apple announces that more than three billion apps have been downloaded from its App Store by iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide. " 'Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 monthsthis is like nothing weve ever seen before,' said Steve Jobs, Apples CEO. 'The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon ' " (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/05appstore.html, accessed 01-05-2010).

"The World's First Full-Size Robotic Girlfriend"January 9, 2010


Artificial intelligence engineer Douglas Hines of TrueCompanion.com introducesRoxxxy at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. " 'She doesn't vacuum or cook, but she does almost everything else,' said her inventor, Douglas Hines, who unveiled Roxxxy last month at the Adult Entertainment Expo inLas Vegas, Nevada. "Lifelike dolls, artificial sex organs and sex-chat phone lines have been keeping the lonely company for decades. But Roxxxy takes virtual companionship to a new level. Powered by a computer under her soft silicone ;skin,; she employs voice-recognition and speech-synthesis software to answer questions and carry on conversations. She even comes loaded with five distinct 'personalities,' from Frigid Farrah to Wild Wendy, that can be programmed to suit customers' preferences. " 'There's a tremendous need for this kind of product,' said Hines, a computer scientist and former Bell Labs engineer. Roxxxy won't be available for delivery for several months, but Hines is taking pre-orders through his Web site, TrueCompanion.com, where thousands of men have signed up. 'They're like, 'I can't wait to meet her,' ' Hines said. 'It's almost like the anticipation of a first date.' Women have inquired about ordering a sex robot, too. Hines says a female sex therapist even contacted him about buying one for her patients. "Roxxxy has been like catnip to talk-show hosts since her debut at AEE, the largest porn-industry convention in the country. In a recent monologue, Jay Leno expressed amazement that a sex robot could carry on lifelike conversations and express realistic emotions. 'Luckily, guys,' he joked, 'there's a button that turns that off.' Curious conventioneers packed Hines' AEE booth last month in Las Vegas, asking questions and stroking Roxxxy's skin as she sat on a couch in a black negligee. " 'Roxxxy generated a lot of buzz at AEE,' said Grace Lee, spokeswoman for the porn-industry convention. 'The prevailing sentiment of everyone I talked to about Roxxxy is 'version 1.0,' but people were fascinated by the concept, and it caused them to rethink the possibilities of 'sex toys.' ' "Hines, a self-professed happily married man from Lincoln Park, New Jersey, says he spent more than three years developing the robot after trying to find a marketable application for his artificial-intelligence technology. Roxxxy's body is made from hypoallergenic silicone -- the kind of stuff in prosthetic limbs -- molded over a rigid skeleton. She cannot move on her own but can be contorted into almost any natural position. To create her shape, a female model spent a week posing for a series of molds. The robot runs on a self-contained battery that lasts about three hours on one charge, Hines says. Customers can recharge Roxxxy with an electrical cord that plugsinto her back. "A motor in her chest pumps heated air through a tube that winds through the robot's body, which Hines says keeps her warm to the touch. Roxxxy also has sensors in her hands and genital areas -- yes, she is anatomically correct -- that will trigger vocal responses from her when touched. She even shudders to simulate orgasm. When someone speaks to Roxxxy, her computer converts the words to text and then uses pattern-recognition software to match them against a database containing hundreds of appropriate responses. The robot then answers aloud -- her prerecorded "voice" is supplied by an unnamed radio host -- through a loudspeaker hidden under her wig. " 'Everything you say to her is processed. It's very near real time, almost without delay,' Hines said of the dynamics of humanRoxxxy conversation. 'To make it as realistic as possible, she has different dialogue at different times. She talks in her sleep. She even snores.' (The snoring feature can be turned off, he says.) Roxxxy understands and speaks only English for now, but Hines' True Companion company is developing Japanese and Spanish versions. For an extra fee, he'll also record customizable

dialogue and phrases for each client, which means Roxxxy could talk to you about NASCAR, say, or the intricacies of politics in the Middle East" (http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/01/sex.robot/, accessed 02-06-2010).

Google'sComputersinChina

Come Under Attack,Initiating a Review of the Company's OperationsinChinaJanuary 12,

2010
"Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different. "First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including theInternet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities. "Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves. "Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers. //We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this Report to Congress (PDF) by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (see p. 163-), as well as a related analysis (PDF) prepared for the Commission, Nart Villeneuve's blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident. "We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China's economic reform programs and its citizens' entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today. "We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort inagreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that 'we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.' "These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China" (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html, accessed 01-16-2010).

Exploit Code for Attacks on Google Released on theInternetJanuary 15, 2010


"Exploit code for the zero-day hole in Internet Explorer linked to the China-based attacks on Google and other companies has been released on the Internet, Microsoft and McAfee warned on Friday. "Meanwhile, the German federal security agency issued a statement on Friday urging its citizens to use an alternative browser to IE until a patch arrives. " 'We still only see limited targeted attacks affecting Internet Explorer 6,' Jerry Bryant, senior security program manager lead at the Microsoft Security Response Center, said in a statement. 'While newer versions of Internet Explorer are affected by this vulnerability, mitigations exist that make exploitation much more difficult.' "McAfee researchers have seen references to the code on mailing lists and confirmed that it has been published on at least one Web site, the company's Chief Technology Officer George Kurtz wrote in his blog. 'The exploit code is the same code that McAfee Labs had been investigating and shared with Microsoft earlier this week,' he said. " 'The public release of the exploit code increases the possibility of widespread attacks using the Internet Explorer vulnerability,' Kurtz wrote. 'The now-public computer code may help cybercriminals craft attacks that use the vulnerability to compromise Windows systems. Popular penetration testing tools are already being updated to include this exploit.' Microsoft issued a warning on Thursday about the new hole and said it was working on a patch. The vulnerability affects IE 6, 7 and 8 on all the modern versions of Windows, including Windows 7, according to Microsoft's advisory. Microsoft said IE 6 was the browser version being used on the computers that were targeted in the attacks. Google disclosed the attacks targeting it and other U.S. companies on Tuesday and said the attacks originated in China. Human rights activists who use Gmail also were targeted, Google said. "The company said it discovered the attacks in mid-December and while it did not specifically implicate the Chinese government, it says that as a result of the incidents, it may withdraw from doing business in China. Sources familiar with the attack code say the attacks are similar to previous attacks on U.S. corporations that were linked to the Chinese government or proxies operating for the government. Source code was stolen from some of the more than 30 Silicon Valley companies targeted in the attack, sources said. Adobe has confirmed that it was targeted by an attack, and sources have said Yahoo, Symantec, Juniper Networks, Northrop Grumman, and Dow Chemical also were targets. "McAfee says references in the IE-related attack code it analyzed indicate that the attackers called the operation 'Aurora' and that the attack was extremely sophisticated" (http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10436083-245.html, accessed 01-16-2010).

In

troduction of Apple's iPadJanuary 27, 2010

Steve Jobs of Apple introduces the iPad, one-half inch thick, with a 9.7 inch, high resolution color touchscreen (multi-touch) diagonal display, powered by a 1-gigahertz Apple A4 chip and 16 to 64 gigabytes of flash storage, weighing 1.5 pounds and capable of running all iPhone applications, except presumably, the phone. The battery life is supposed to be 10 hours, and the device is supposed to hold a charge for 1 month instandby. The price starts at $499.00. "The new device will have to be far better than the laptop and smartphone at doing important things: browsing the Web, doing e-mail, enjoying and sharing photographs, watching videos, enjoying your music collection, playing games, reading e-books. Otherwise, 'it has no reason for being.'" (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/live-blogging-the-apple-productannouncement/?hp, accessed 01-27-2010). Link to iPad on Apple website: http://www.apple.com/ipad/

Facebook has 400,000,000 UsersFebruary 4, 2010


On the sixth anniversary of the founding of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg announces that it has 400,000,000 users: "Today we're celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we've made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected. "Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better. We hoped Facebook would improve people's lives in important ways. So it's rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about. "For me personally, this has meant being able to remain close and connected to schoolmates, family and colleagues while working hard at building Facebook over the past six years. It has also been especially meaningful to me and to everyone at Facebook to see people using Facebook to seek help, share news and lend support during crises. "Whether in times of tragedy or joy, people want to share and help one another. This human need is what inspires us to continue to innovate and build things that allow people to connect easily and share their lives with one another. "So to celebrate six years of Facebook and the 400 million people on the service, we're doing what we like doing mostbuilding and launching products for people. Tonight we'll host a celebration at Facebook headquarters, and we'll release a handful of new things that will improve people's Facebook experience, including a couple that people have requested a lot. We'll post more details to our blog in a few hours. "After the launch we're going to celebrate with a Hackathonan event where all of us stay up all night coding and building out our new ideas for our next wave of products for you" (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=287542162130, accessed 02-102010).

Modifiable eBook Editions of TextbooksFebruary 22, 2010


Macmillan announces that it is introducing new software called DynamicBooks, which will let college professors curate e-books for their own courses. They can add paragraphs, bring in extra sources, links, and updateswithout having to consult with the original author. According to the New York Times, students will be able to purchase the books at their local university stores, as well as dynamicbooks.com and through CourseSmart, an e-textbook seller. The company is also working with Apple so students can access the books on the iPad. In August, they will offer 100 titles. "The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks. Psychology, for example, which has a list price of $134.29 (available on Barnes & Nobles Web site for $122.73), will sell for $48.76 in the DynamicBooks version. Macmillan is also offering print-on-demand versions of the customized books, which will be priced closer to traditional textbooks. "Fritz Foy, senior vice president for digital content at Macmillan, said the company expected e-book sales to replace the sales of used books. Part of the reason publishers charge high prices for traditional textbooks is that students usually resell them in the used market for several years before a new edition is released. DynamicBooks, Mr. Foy said, will be semester and classroom specific, and the lower price, he said, should attract students who might otherwise look for used or even pirated editions" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/business/media/22textbook.html?scp=1&sq=publishing%2002/22/2010&st=cse, accessed 02-23-2010).

The First Brain-ComputerInterface Product Offered for SaleMarch 2 March 6, 2010


At the CeBit exhibition in Hannover, Germany, Christoph Guger of Guger Technologies (g.tech) of Graz, Austria, offers intendiX, "the world's first personal BCI speller" for sale at the retail price of 9000. "The worlds first patient-ready and commercially available brain computer interface just arrived at CeBIT 2010. The Intendix from Guger Technologies (g*tec) is a system that uses an EEG cap to measure brain activity in order to let you type with your thoughts. Meant to work with those with locked-in syndrome, or other disabilities,Intendix is simple enough to use after just 10 minutes of training. You simply focus on a grid of letters as they flash. When your desired letter lights up, brain activity spikes and Intendix types it. As users master the system, a few will be able to type as quickly as 1 letter a second. Besides typing, it can also trigger alarms, convert text to speech, print, copy, or email" (http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/07/intendix-the-braincomputer-interface-goes-commercial-video/, accessed 03-16-2010). You can watch a video of intendiX in operation entitled Select words by thinkingworld record on YouTube at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlUPFpZswJk, accessed 03-16-2010).

Google Pulls its Search Engine Out of Mainland ChinaMarch 22, 2010
Google announced in its blog that it stopped censoring search services on Google.cn, and moved its Chinese search business from Google.cn to Google.com.hk. "Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users inmainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over" (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-tochina-update.html, accessed 03-22-2010)

The First Pulitizer Prizes forInternet JournalismApril 12, 2010


Sheri Fink, MD, PhD of ProPublica.org receives the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for her story, The Deadly Choices at Memorial. The story was published on the Propublica website on August 27, 2009 and co-published in the New York Times Magazine on August 30, 2009. Political cartoonist Mark Fiore, whose work appears on SFGate.com, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. Fiore produces animated editorial cartoons for publication on theInternet. These were the first Pulitzer Prizes awarded for Internet-based journalism.

Google Announces "Replay" for TwitterApril 14, 2010


"Since we first introduced real-time search last December, weve added content from MySpace, Facebook and Buzz, expanded to 40 languages and added a top links feature to help you find the most relevant content shared on updates services like Twitter. Today, were introducing a new feature to help you search and explore the public archive of tweets. "With the advent of blogs and micro-blogs, theres a constant onlineconversation about breaking news, people and places some famous and some local. Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into whats happened and how people have reacted. We want to give you a way to search across this information and make it useful. "Starting today, you can zoom to any point in time and 'replay' what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter. To try it out, click 'Show options' on the search results page, then select 'Updates.' The first page will show you the familiar latest and greatest short-form updates from a comprehensive set of sources, but now theres a new chart at the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from that specific time period. . . ." (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/replay-it-google-search-across-twitter.html, accessed 05-06-2010).

The Library of Congress to Preserve All "Tweets"April 14, 2010


Twitter announces in its blog that it will donate its archive of 10,000,000,000 text messages (tweets) accumulated since the founding of the company in October 2006: "The Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and it is the largest library in the world. The Library's primary mission is research and it receives copies of every book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registeredin the United States. Recently, the Library of Congress signaled to us that the public tweets we have all been creating over the years are important and worthy of preservation. "Since Twitter began, billions of tweets have been created. Today, fifty-five million tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply. A tiny percentage of accounts are protected but most of these tweets are created with theintent that they will be publicly available. Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the worldfrom historic elections to devastating disasters. "It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research. It's very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history. It should be noted that there are some specifics regarding this arrangement. Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation. "The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact. This is something we firmly believe and it has driven many of our decisions regarding openness. Today we are also excited to share the news that Google has created a wonderful new way to revisit tweets related to historic events. They call it Google Replay because it lets you relive a real time search from specific moments in time. "Google Replay currently only goes back a few months but eventually it will reach back to the very first Tweets ever created. Feel free to give Replay a tryif you want to understand the popular contemporaneous reaction to the retirement of Justice Stevens, the health care bill, or Justin Bieber's latest album, you can virtually time travel and replay the Tweets. The future seems bright for innovation on the Twitter platform and so it seems, does the past!"

GoogleIntroduces Translation Feature for Google GogglesMay 6, 2010


Google announces a translation feature for Google Goggles, image recognition and search feature available on Android-based mobile devices. "Heres how it works: "Point your phone at a word or phrase. Use the region of interest button to draw a box around specific words Press the shutter button "If Goggles recognizes the text, it will give you the option to translate "Press the translate button to select the source and destination languages." "Today Goggles can read English, French, Italian, German and Spanish and can translate to many more languages. We are hard at work extending our recognition capabilities to other Latin-based languages. Our goal is to eventually read nonLatinlanguages (such as Chinese, Hindi and Arabic) as well."

Cell Phones Are Now Used More for Data than SpeechMay 13, 2010
According to The New York Times, people are now using their cell phones more for text messaging and data-processing than for speech. This should not come as a surprise to anyone with teen-age children. ". . . although almost 90 percent of households in the United States now have a cellphone, the growth in voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated, according to government and industry data. "This is true even though more households each year are disconnecting their landlinesin favor of cellphones. "Instead of talking on their cellphones, people are making use of all the extras that iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones were also designed to do browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, play games and send e-mail and text messages. "The number of text messages sent per user increased by nearly 50 percent nationwide last year, according to the CTIA, the wireless industry association. And for the first time in the United States, the amount of data in text, e-mail messages, streaming video, music and other services on mobile devices in 2009 surpassed the amount of voice data in cellphone calls, industry executives and analysts say. 'Originally, talking was the only cellphone application,' said Dan Hesse, chief executive of Sprint Nextel. 'But now its less than half of the traffic on mobile networks.' "Of course, talking on the cellphone isnt disappearing entirely. 'Anytime something is sensitive or is something I dont want to be forwarded, I pick up the phone rather than put it into a tweet or a text,' said Kristen Kulinowski, a 41-year-old chemistry teacherin Houston. And calling is cheaper than ever because of fierce competition among rival wireless networks. "But figures from the CTIA show that over the last two years, the average number of voice minutes per user in the United States has fallen (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/technology/personaltech/14talk.html?hp, accessed 05-14-2010).

There are 400,000,000 Active Users of Facebook.May 16, 2010


According to the "Facebook Factsheet" in the Press Room of Facebook, as accessed on 05-16-2010) Facebook has "Over 400 million active (users who have returned to the site inthe last 30 days)."

After Five Years More Than Two Billion Views Per DayMay 16, 2010
"Five years ago, after months of late nights, testing and preparation, YouTubes founders launched the first beta version of YouTube.com in May, with a simple mission: give anyone a place to easily upload their videos and share them with the world. Whether you were an aspiring filmmaker, a politician, a proud parent, or someone who just wanted to connect with something bigger, YouTube became the place where you could broadcast yourself. "Over time, these aspirations have created a vibrant and inspiring community that helped transform a murmur of interest into something far greater than any of us ever could have imagined. Today, thanks to you, our site has crossed another milestone: YouTube exceeds over two billion views a day. Thats nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined. "What started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3D, broadcasts entire sports seasons live to 200+ countries. We bring feature films from Hollywood studios and independent filmmakers to far-flung audiences. Activists document social unrest seeking to transform societies, and leading civic and political figures stream interviews to the world" (http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/, accessed 05-17-2010).

Spam Declines from 90% of Email Traffic to Only 72.9%July 2010 June 2011
"The high water mark for spam was reached in July 2010 when approximately 230 billion spam messages were in circulation each day, accounting for 90% of all email traffic. This has now declined to 39.2 billion messages per day, accounting for only 72.9% of all email. The question is why? "There are many different factors that appear to be working together to make sending spam more difficult and less profitable for criminal gangs. In September 2010 the Spamit web site announced that it was ceasing operation due to numerous negative events. Spamit provided affiliate marketing services, allegedly helping to pay spammers for promoting many spam advertised web sites, notably the Canadian Pharmacy operation which was one of the most spam advertised brands. "The demise of Spamit corresponded with a large drop in spam volumes, from approximately 100 to 75 billion spam per day from the end of September to mid November 2010. It is not known exactly what the negative events are referred to by Spamit, but it is thought that these may be associated with increased attention by regulatory bodies and law enforcement in the activities of the group. "Nevertheless, spam had been dropping before this event. It may be that increased surveillance of spammers by authorities had pursuaded spammers to seek other economic activities legitimate or illicit. Or it may be that the peak of spamming in July 2010 was unsustainable for the spamming industry, there just weren't the number of customers to warrant such a high level of activity. "A few months later, in December 2010, the largest botnet at the time, Rustock suddenly stopped sending spam. At the time, this single botnet was responsible for 47.5% of all spam, sending approximately 44.1 billion spams per day. The botnet soon resumed its activity in January in 2011, but in March it ceased operation entirely and was dismantled due to concerted action by a partnership of industry and law enforcement. Since then, the other botnets have not significantly increased their spamming activity to maintain the same total levels of spam. Indeed, one of the largest botnets, Bagle, has decreased the amount of spam that it sends from 8.31 billion spam per day in March 2011 to 1.60 billion spam per day in June 2011. "This decrease in spamming activity may be evidence that increased investigation of the spam underworld has both disrupted the affiliate networks, such as Spamit, that pay for spam campaigns, and led to botnet controllers looking to keep their heads down to avoid the attention of the legal authorities. Interestingly, during the same period there has been a reported rise in distributed denial of service attacks, which can also be undertaken by botnets. It may be that the botnet owners are

looking to other modes of operation to maintain their revenue, while moving away from the now less profitable and more risky business of spamming" (http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/why-my-email-went, accessed 07-04-2011).

For the First Time E-books Outsell Digital Books on Amazon.comJuly 19, 2010
During the months of April, May, and June 2010 sales of ebooks (e-books) exceeded sales of hardcover physical books at Amazon.com. "In that time Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition." The New York Times online, which reported this information, did not compare Amazon's sales of e-books versus their sales of paperback books during the same period, butindicated that "paperback sales are thought to still outnumber e-books." "Book lovers mourning the demise of hardcover books with their heft and their musty smell need a reality check, said Mike Shatzkin, founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, which advises book publishers on digital change. 'This was a day that was going to come, a day that had to come,' he said. He predicts that within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions. "Still, the hardcover book is far from extinct. Industrywide sales are up 22 percent this year, according to the American Publishers Association." The shift at Amazon is "astonishing when you consider that weve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months," Amazon's chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, said in a news release, published in Amazon.com's Media Room.

Facebook has 500,000,000 Users.July 21, 2010


According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has 500 million users.

Data on Mobile Networks is Doubling Each YearAugust 1, 2010


"The volume of data on the worlds mobile networks is doubling each year, according to Cisco Systems, the U.S. maker of routers and networking equipment. By 2014, it estimates, the monthly data flow will increase about sixteenfold, to 3.6 billion gigabytes from 220.1 million" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/technology/02iht-NETPIPE02.html? src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/business/global/index.jsonp, accessed 08-01-2010)

GoogleIntroduces "GoogleInstant"September 8, 2010

At a Google press event at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Google founder Sergey Brin and Google vice president for search products and user experience Marissa Mayer introduce Google Instant "which predicts Internet search queries and shows results as soon as someone begins to type, adjusting the results as each successive letter is typed." "Google, which already handles more than a billion searches a day and has a billion users a week, had to figure out how to manage the load when suddenly each letter typed was a separate search query. The solution includes storing frequent searches and sending common ones, like 'Barack,' back more quickly than ones that are nearly impossible to predict, like 'Bill.' " (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/technology/techspecial/09google.html?hpw, accessed 09-09-210).

Twitter Has 175 Million UsersOctober 30, 2010


The social networking and brief messaging site, Twitter, has 175 million registered users, up from 503,000 three years ago and 58 million just last year. It is adding about 370,000 new users a day. "It has helped transform the way that news is gathered and distributed, reshaped how public figures from celebrities to political leaders communicate, and played a role in popular protests in Iran, China and Moldova. It has become so muscular and ubiquitous that it now competes with the likes of Google and Facebook for users and is beginning to compete with them for advertising dollars" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/technology/31ev.html?hp, accessed 10-30/2010).

8,900,000 Robots are Operating World WideNovember 2010


There are approximately 8,900,000 robots operating in the world, according toBloomberg Businessweek.

$1,300,000,000 VerdictinSoftware CopyrightInfringement SuitNovember 23, 2010


In U.S. Federal Court in Oakland, California Oracle Corporation wins a $1,300,000,000 copyright infringement judgment against SAP AG. The judgmentan indication of the size and scale of the software industry was a result of a lawsuit filed by Oracle in 2007 claiming that a unit of SAP U.S. made hundreds of thousands of illegal downloads and several thousand copies of Oracles software to avoid paying licensing fees, and in an attempt to steal customers. "The verdict, which came after one day of deliberations, is the biggest ever for copyright infringement and the largest U.S. jury award of 2010, according to Bloomberg data. The award is about equal to SAPs forecasted net income for the fourth quarter, excluding some costs, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. . . . "The verdict is the 23rd-biggest jury award of all time, according to Bloomberg data. The largest jury award in a copyrightinfringement case previously was $136 million verdict by a Los Angeles jury in 2002 in a Recording Industry Association of America lawsuit against Media Group Inc. for copying and distributing 1,500 songs by artistsincluding Elvis Presley, Madonna and James Brown, according to Bloomberg data" (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-24/oracle-wins-1-3-billionfrom-sap-in-downloading-case.html, accessed 11-24-2010).

Google Earth 6: Enhanced 3D, 3D Trees, Enhanced Historical ImageryNovember 30,


2010
Google Earth 6 enables the user to "fly from outer space down to the streets with the newStreet View and easily navigate. . . . Switch to ground-level view to see the same location in3D." The program also introduces 3D trees in locations all over the world, and a more user-friendly interface for the historical imagery enabling comparison of recent and historical satellite imagery when available.

The Google Earth EngineDecember 2, 2010


Google introduces the Google Earth Engine. (http://blog.google.org/2010/12/introducing-google-earth-engine.html) "Google Earth Engine brings together the world's satellite imagerytrillions of scientific measurements dating back more than 25 yearsand makes it available online with tools for scientists, independent researchers, and nations to mine this massive warehouse of data to detect changes, map trends and quantify differences to the earth's surface" (http://earthengine.googlelabs.com/#intro).

The Google eBookstore OpensDecember 6, 2010


Google opens its online digital bookstore, Google ebooks. "Google executives described the e-bookstore as an 'open ecosystem' that will offer more than three million books, including hundreds of thousands for sale and millions free. "More than 4,000 publishers, including large trade book companies like Random House, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, have made books available for sale through Google , many at prices that are identical to those of other e-bookstores. " 'We really think its important that the book business have this open diversity of retail points, just like it does in print,' Tom Turvey, the director of strategic partnerships at Google, said in an interview. 'We want to make sure we maintain that and support that.' Customers can set up an account for buying books, store them in a central online, password-protected library and read them on personal computers, tablets, smartphones and e-readers. A Web connection will not be necessary to read a book, however; users can use a dedicated app that can be downloaded to an iPad, iPhone or Android phone. "A typical user could begin reading an e-book on an iPad at home, continue reading the same book on an Android phone on the subway and then pick it up again on a Web browser at the office, with the book opening each time to the place where the user left off. "The Google eBookstore could be a significant benefit to independent bookstores like Powells Books in Portland, Ore., that have signed on to sell Google e-books on their Web sites through Google the first significant entry for independents into the e-book business. " 'This levels the playing field,' said Oren Teicher, the chief executive of the American Booksellers Association. 'If you want to buy e-books, you dont just have to buy them from the big national outlets' (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/media/07ebookstore.html?hp

3D Maps for Android Mobil DevicesDecember 16, 2010


Google announces Google Maps 5.0 for Android, with two significant new features: 3Dinteraction and offline reliability. "In order to create these features, we rebuilt Maps using vector graphics to dynamically draw the map as you use it. Building a vector graphics engine capable of achieving the visual quality and performance level you expect from Google Maps was a major technical challenge and enables all sorts of future possibilities. So we wanted to give you a closer look under the hood at the technology driving the next generation of mobile maps. ". . . . Previously, Google Maps downloaded the map as sets of individual 256x256 pixel 'image tiles.'Each pre-rendered image tile was downloaded with its own section of map imagery, roads, labels and other features baked right in. Google Maps would download each tile as you needed it and then stitch sets together to form the map you see. It takes more than 360 billion tiles to cover the whole world at 20 zoom levels! Now, we use vector graphics to dynamically draw the map. Maps will download 'vector tiles' that describe the underlying geometry of the map. You can think of them as the blueprints needed to draw a map, instead of static map images. Because you only need to download the blueprints, the amount of data needed to draw maps from vector tiles is drastically less than when downloading pre-rendered image tiles. Google Maps isnt the first mobile app to use vector graphicsin fact, Google Earth and our Navigation (Beta) feature do already. But a combination of modern device hardware and innovative engineering allow us to stream vector tiles efficiently and render them smoothly, while maintaining the speed and readability we require inGoogle Maps" (The Official Google Blog, 12-17-2010).

eBooks Represent 9-10% of Trade-Book SalesDecember 23, 2010


According to an article in The New York Times, ebooks now represent 9 to 10 percent of trade-book sales.

The Smartphone Becomes the CPU of the LaptopJanuary 2011


Motorola introduces the Atrix 4G smartphone powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2 dual-core processor and Android 2.2, with a 4-inch display, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of on-board storage, front- and rear-facing cameras, a 1930 mAh battery and a fingerprint reader. Motorola will also sell laptop and desktop docks that run a full version of Firefox, powered entirely by the phone. What is significant about this smartphone is that the phone does the information processing for the laptop or even the desktop interfaces.

The First Independently Published Magazine Exclusively for the iPadJanuary 2011
London-based Remi Paringaux and his company, Meri Media, publish the first issue ofPost, the first independent magazine published exclusively for the iPad. It is offered for sale as an iPad app for $2.99. The New York Times characterized the publication as "A Magazine that Won't Smudge."

Postmatter.com describes the project in this way: "Post is a project born of love for magazines, and one dedicated to taking that love beyond paper and physical matter. A new frontier and paradigm in publishing, Post looks beyond the traditional rules of how and what magazines 'should be', in favour of speculating upon what magazines could be. It is about fashion, art, architecture, cinema, music, culture. It is about what's exciting now and tomorrow. "Post is an only child, born of the iPad, with no printed sibling to imitate or be intimated by. Liberated from the imposing heritage of print culture, Post exists an entirely virtual realm, yet is intimately connected to material through the medium of touch. Inherently interactive Post presents a truly multimedia, mult-sensory journey from the first frame to the last, where the advertisements all built for Post by Post are immerse, tactile experiences. "Post is not a thing. It is an idea. A non-surface whose pages dissolve and reform at your touch. It is material for the mind, the eyes, and sometimes the ears. An entire world existing only with a plane of smooth glass, tangibly alive, but cool to the touch. Let Post be your guide" (accessed 05-25-2011).

Voice-Activated Translation on Cell PhonesJanuary 12, 2011


Google introduces an improved Google Translate for Android Conversation Mode: "This is a new interface within Google Translate thats optimized to allow you to communicate fluidly with a nearby person in another language. You may have seen an early demo a few months ago, and today you can try it yourself on your Android device. "Currently, you can only use Conversation Mode when translating between English and Spanish. In conversation mode, simply press the microphone for your language and start speaking. Google Translate will translate your speech and read the translation out loud. Your conversation partner can then respond in their language, and youll hear the translation spoken back to you. Because this technology is still in alpha, factors like regional accents, background noise or rapid speech may make it difficult to understand what youre saying. Even with these caveats, were excited about the future promise of this technology to be able to help people connect across languages" (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-look-for-google-translate-for.html? utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/MKuf+(Official+Google+Blog), accessed 0114-2011.

Probably the Largest Digital ImageJanuary 13, 2011


The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III (SDSS-III) releases the largest digital color image of the sky assembled from millions of 2.8 megapixel images, and consisting of more than a trillion pixels. This may be the largest digital image produced to date.

More than Ten Billion Apps are Downloaded from the Apple App StoreJanuary 22, 2011
The Apple App Store completed its countdown for its Ten Billionth App downloaded from the Apple App Store.

42.3% of the U.S. Population Uses FacebookFebruary 2011


"A new report from eMarketer finds that most adult Americans with Internet access use Facebook at least once a month, and a full 42.3% of the entire American population was using the site as of this month. "By contrast, Twitters penetration rate was much lower, sitting at around 7% of the total population and 9% of the Internetusing population, according to the report" (http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/facebook-twitter-number/? utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

4.3 Billion IP Addresses Have Been AllocatedFebruary 3, 2011


The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icann.org) announces that the last remaining IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) Internet addresses from the central pool of about 4.3 billlion have been been allocated. The next Internet protocol, IPv6, will open up a pool of Internet addresses that is a billion-trillion times larger than the total pool of IPv4 addresses--a supply that should be sufficient for the foreseeable future.

AOL Buys The Huffington PostFebruary 7, 2011


The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news sites in the country will be acquired byAOL for $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. "Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOLs editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOLs national, local and financial news operations, but also of the companys other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefonea' (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/business/media/07aol.html?_r=1&hp). "The company that brought dial-up Internet to millions of people is dead. In its place is a massive media empire that refuses to be ignored. "With its blockbuster acquisition of The Huffington Post, AOL has catapulted itself back into relevancy. It has sent a clear signal to the rest of the world that it is a media company and it is in this game to win. "AOL has been on a content acquisition spree recently, not only acquiring the technology blog network TechCrunch, but also snagging up Thing Labs, Brizzly and most recently About.me in the past few months" (http://mashable.com/2011/02/07/aolhuffington-post/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+Mashable+(Mashable), accessed 0207-2010).

Worldwide Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute InformationFebruary 10, 2011
Social scientist Martin Hilbert and information scientist Priscilla Lopez publish "The World's Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information," Science, 332, 60-64. Notably, the authors do not attempt to address the information processing done by human brains--possibly impossible to quantify at the present time, if ever. "We estimated the worlds technological capacity to store, communicate, and compute information, tracking 60 analog and digital technologies during the period from 1986 to 2007. In 2007, humankind was able to store 2.9 10 20 optimally compressed bytes, communicate almost 2 10 21 bytes, and carry out 6.4 10 18 instructions per second on general-purpose computers. General-purpose computing capacity grew at an annual rate of 58%. The worlds capacity for bidirectional telecommunication grew at 28% per year, closely followed by the increase in globally stored information (23%). Humankinds capacity for unidirectional information diffusion through broadcasting channels has experienced comparatively modest annual growth (6%). Telecommunication has been dominated by digital technologies since 1990 (99.9% in digital format in 2007), and the majority of our technological memory has been in digital format since the early 2000s (94% digital in 2007)" (The authors' summary). "To put our findings in perspective, the 6.4 10 18 instructions per second that humankind can carry out on its general-purpose computers in 2007 are in the same ballpark area as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second (10 17 ). The 2.4 10 21 bits stored by humanity in all of its technological devices in 2007 is approaching an order of magnitude of the roughly 10 23 bits stored in the DNA of a human adult, but it is still minuscule as compared with the 10 90 bits stored in the observable universe. However, in contrast to natural information processing, the worlds technological information processing capacities are quickly growing at clearly exponential rates" (Conclusion of the paper). "Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. (Yes, that's a number with 20 zeroes in it.) "Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that's a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That's 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it's still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being. 2002 could be considered the beginning of the digital age, the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity. As of 2007, almost 94 percent of our memory is in digital form. "In 2007, humankind successfully sent 1.9 zettabytes of information through broadcast technology such as televisions and GPS. That's equivalent to every person in the world reading 174 newspapers every day. On two-way communications technology, such as cell phones, humankind shared 65 exabytes of information through telecommunications in 2007, the equivalent of every person in the world communicating the contents of six newspapers every day. "In 2007, all the general-purpose computers in the world computed 6.4 x 10^18 instructions per second, in the same general order of magnitude as the number of nerve impulses executed by a single human brain. Doing these instructions by hand would take 2,200 times the period since the Big Bang. "From 1986 to 2007, the period of time examined in the study, worldwide computing capacity grew 58 percent a year, ten times faster than the United States' GDP. Telecommunications grew 28 percent annually, and storage capacity grew 23 percent a year" (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110210141219.htm)

Two Billion People Now Use the Internet RegularlyFebruary 17, 2011
According to an article in The New York Times, two billion people in the world use the Internet regularly. In rural America only 60% have broadband connections. "Over all, 28 percent of Americans do not use the Internet at all."

A Three-Dimensional Printer Kit for only $1299.00March 2011


MakerBot Industries introduces the Thing-O-Matic, a 3-D (3D) printer kit selling for $1,299. 3D printing, a type of additive manufacturing, evolved from from rapid prototyping, which began in the 1980s.

Steve Jobs and Apple Introduce the iPad 2March 2, 2011


Steve Jobs and Apple Computer Introduce the iPad 2. Nearly 15 million iPads were sold in 2010, generating revenue of more than $9.5 billion, about 15 percent of Apple's total revenue during that time frame. iPad sales in 2010 represented 85% of tablet PC (tablet personal computer) sales. "Apple overhauled the iPad in hopes of staying ahead of rivals who have introduced competing tablet computers. The iPad 2 includes front and rear facing cameras that allow video conversations, and it comes in black and white versions. It will be available on March 11 in the United States at the same prices as the original version, which range from $499 to $829. It will be available in more than two dozen other countries on March 26, Mr. Jobs said." "The new iPad is built around a new chip that Apple designed, called A5, which is far faster than its predecessor. Mr. Jobs said video performance would be nine times faster. At 8 millimeters, the new iPad is one third thinner than the original. Mr. Jobs said that at 1.3 pounds, it is two ounces lighter than its predecessor, yet it has the same, 10-hour battery life" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/technology/03apple.html?hp, accessed 03-02-2011)

Google Processes 1,000,000,000 Search Queries Per DayMarch 5, 2011


Google currently processes 1,000,000,000 search queries per day. " . . . the future of search engines like Google and Microsofts Bing, according to computer scientists, will be to exploit advances in machine learning and language processing to become answer machines to take a page from Watson, but as a consumer service. Both companies are already headed in that direction" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/weekinreview/06lohr.html?pagewanted=2&hpw, accessed 03-06-2011)

A Program for Signing and Inscribing EbooksApril 2011

Author and inventor T. J. Waters develops a program for signing and inscribing ebooks called autography. Because the inscription is sent over the Internet the inscription can be done remotely or in person.

Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.5 BillionMay 2011


In its acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion Microsoft acquires a company founded in 2003, which never made money, changed hands many times, and comes with substantial debt. The purchase price was roughly ten times the $860 million revenue of the company in 2010. Skype's debt was $686 million not a problem for Microsoft. Microsoft paid such a premium for the company because at the time of purchase it was growing at the rate of 500,000 new registered users per day, had 170 million connected users, with 30 million users communicating on the Skype platform concurrently. Volume of communications over the platform totaled 209 billion voice and video minutes in 2010. "Services like Skype can cut into the carriers revenues because they offer easy ways to make phone calls, videoconference and send messages free over the Internet, encroaching on the ways that phone companies have traditionally made money" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/technology/16phone.html?hpw, accessed 05-16-2011).

Ebooks Outsell Physical Books on Amazon.comMay 19, 2011


Since April 1, 2011 Amazon reported that it sold 105 books for its Kindle ebook (e-book) reader for every 100 hardcover and paperback physical books. At this time ebook sales represented 14% of of all general consumer fiction and nonfiction books sold, according to Forrester Research. Amazon introduced the Kindle on November 19, 2007.

FaceBook Serves a Trillion Page ViewsJune 2011


According to Google's doubleclick ad planner list of The 1000 most visited sites on the web, Facebook, the most visited website in the world, served 1 trillion page views to 860,000,000 unique visitors in June 2011.

New Corporation Sells MySpace for $545 Million LossJune 29, 2011

News Corporation sells social media website MySpace to advertising network Specific Media for "roughly $35 million." New Corporation purchased MySpace in 2006 for $580 million. "The News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, had been trying since last winter to rid itself of the unprofitable unit, which was a casualty of changing tastes and may be a cautionary tale for social companies like Zynga and LinkedIn that are currently enjoying sky-high valuations. . . . "Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the News Corporation said that it would retain a minority stake. Specific Media said it had brought on board the artist Justin Timberlake as a part owner and an active player in MySpaces future, but said little else about how the site would change. "The sale closes a complex chapter in the history of the Internet and of the News Corporation, which was widely envied by other media companies when it acquired MySpace in 2005. At that time, MySpace was the worlds fastest-growing social network, with 20 million unique visitors each month in the United States. That figure soon soared to 70 million, but the network could not keep pace with Facebook, which overtook MySpace two years ago" (http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/news-corp-sells-myspace-to-specific-media-for-35-million/?hp, accesse d 06-30-2011).

IBM Announces Phase-Change MemoryJune 30, 2011


IBM announces that it has produced phase-change memory (PCM) chips that can store two bits of data per cell without data corruption problems over extended periods of time. This significant improvement advances the development of low-cost, faster and more durable memory applications for consumer devices, including mobile phones and cloud storage, as well as highperformance applications, such as enterprise data storage. "With a combination of speed, endurance, non-volatility and density, PCM can enable a paradigm shift for enterprise IT and storage systems within the next five years. Scientists have long been searching for a universal, non-volatile memory technology with far superior performance than flash todays most ubiquitous non-volatile memory technology. The benefits of such a memory technology would allow computers and servers to boot instantaneously and significantly enhance the overall performance of IT systems. A promising contender is PCM that can write and retrieve data 100 times faster than flash, enable high storage capacities and not lose data when the power is turned off. Unlike flash, PCM is also very durable and can endure at least 10 million write cycles, compared to current enterprise-class flash at 30,000 cycles or consumer-class flash at 3,000 cycles. While 3,000 cycles will out live many consumer devices, 30,000 cycles are orders of magnitude too low to be suitable for enterprise applications" (http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/11/pcm.html, accessed 07-01-2011). Like high-density NAND flash memory used in solid state drives (SSDs). phase-change memory is nonvolatile. However, unlike NAND flash, PCM memory does not require existing data be marked for deletion prior to having new data written to it a process known to as an erase-write cycle. Erase-write cycles slow NAND flash performance and, over time, wear it out, giving it a lifespan that ranges from 5,000 to 10,000 write cycles in consumer products, and up to 100,000 cycles in enterprise-class products. "As organizations and consumers increasingly embrace cloud-computing models and services, ever more powerful and efficient, yet affordable storage technologies are needed, according to Haris Pozidis, manager of memory and probe technologies at IBM Research" (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218031/IBM_announces_computer_memory_breakthrough? source=CTWNLE_nlt_wktop10_2011-07-01, accessed 07-01-2011).

Google Agrees to Acquire Motorola MobilityAugust 15, 2011

Google announces that it has agreed to acquire the smart-phone manufacturer Motorola Mobility for $12,5 billion. This is Google's largest acquisition to date. "In a statement, Google said the deal was largely driven by the need to acquire Motorola's patent portfolio, which it said would help it defend Android against legal threats from competitors armed with their own patents. This issue has come to the fore since a consortium of technology companies led by Apple and Microsoft purchased more than 6,000 mobile-device-related patents from Nortel Networks for about $4.5 billion, in early July. Battle lines are being drawn around patents, as companies seek to protect their interests in the competitive mobile industry through litigation as well as innovation. "However, as people increasingly access the Web via mobile devices, the acquisition could also help Google remain central to their Web experience in the years to come. As Apple has demonstrated with its wildly popular iPhone, this is far easier to achieve if a company can control the hardware, as well as the software, people carry in their pockets. Comments made by Google executives hint that Motorola could also play a role in shaping the future of the Web in other areasfor instance, in settop boxes. Motorola is by far Google's largest acquisition, and it takes the company into uncertain new territory. The deal is also likely to draw antitrust scrutiny because of the reach Google already has with Android, which runs on around half of all smart phones in the United States. "Motorola, which makes the Droid smart phone, went all-in with Google's Android platform in 2008, declaring that all of its devices would use the open-source mobile operating system. "Before his departure as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt had begun pressing Google employees to shift their attention to mobile. Cofounder and new CEO Larry Page seems determined to maintain this change of focus. In a conference call this morning, he told investors, 'It's no secret that Web usage is increasingly shifting to mobile devices, a trend I expect to continue. With mobility continuing to take center stage in the computing revolution, the combination with Motorola is an extremely important event in Google's continuing evolution that will drive a lot of improvements in our ability to deliver great user experiences.' " (http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38320/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-08-16, accessed 08-17-2011). Tweet
Filed under: Computers & Society, eCommerce, Indexing & Seaching Information,Internet & Networking , Law / Copyrights / Patents, Telecommunications, Telephone |Bookmark this entry

Free Online Artificial Intelligence Course Attracts 58,000 StudentsAugust 15, 2011
Sebastian Thrun, Research Professor Computer Science at Stanford and a leading roboticist, and Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, Inc., in partnership with the Stanford University School of Engineering, offer a free online course entitled An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. According to an article by John Markoff in The New York Times, by August 15, 2011 more than 58,000 students from around the world had registered for this free course nearly four times Stanford's entire student body. "The online students will not get Stanford grades or credit, but they will be ranked in comparison to the work of other online students and will receive a 'statement of accomplishment.' "For the artificial intelligence course, students may need some higher math, like linear algebra and probability theory, but there are no restrictions to online participation. So far, the age range is from high school to retirees, and the course has attracted interest from more than 175 countries" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/science/16stanford.html?hpw, accessed 08-162011). One fairly obvious reason why so many studients signed up is that Norvig is famous in the field as the co-author with Stuart Russell of the standard textbook on AI, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (first edition: 1995), which has been translated into many languages and has sold over 200,000 copies. Tweet
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Computers & Society, Education / Reading / Literacy,Internet & Networking , Robotics / Automata | Bookmark this entry

Interactive Reading and Spelling on the iPadAugust 18, 2011


"Word Wizard ($3.99) turns your iPad into a talking typewriter, and a powerful language-learning tool that is ideal for a child learning to read.

"To build a word, you simply touch a letter and drag it next to another letter. It snaps into place and pronounces the result in clear speech. This is an important breakthrough in reading instruction, because it leverages the iPads size, powerful speech synthesis abilities and touchscreen, so that every letter can be a building block of phonetically accurate sound. "There are two modes: Movable Alphabet, for free exploration of word combinations; and Spelling Quiz, a talking spelling test with 173 built-in word lists (e.g., nature words, or 1,000 most frequently used words). In the spelling tests, you hear the word, and must spell it using the same alphabet strip used in the Movable Alphabet. Because the letters are arranged alphabetically, this is not good for typing or fast text entry. Theres a British voice mode, plus the ability to change the speed or tone of the voice, uppercase or lowercase letters, and two backgrounds. And yes, even vulgarities are read out loud, in clear speech. Consider yourself warned" (http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/speak-n-spell-for-the-ipad-generation/? nl=technology&emc=cta3, accessed 08-18-2011). Tweet?
Filed under: Education / Reading / Literacy, Publishing | Bookmark this entry

Toward Cognitive Computing SystemsAugust 18, 2011


"IBM researchers unveiled a new generation of experimental computer chips designed to emulate the brains abilities for perception, action and cognition. The technology could yield many orders of magnitude less power consumption and space than used in todays computers. "In a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBMs first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing. "Called cognitive computers, systems built with these chips wont be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Rather, cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember and learn from the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity. "To do this, IBM is combining principles from nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing as part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative. The company and its university collaborators also announced they have been awarded approximately $21 million in new funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project. "The goal of SyNAPSE is to create a system that not only analyzes complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment all while rivaling the brains compact size and low power usage. The IBM team has already successfully completed Phases 0 and 1. " 'This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century,' said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research. 'Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture. These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government.' " (http://www03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/35251.wss, accessed 08-21-2011).

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