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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Filed under: Internet & Networking | Bookmark this entry
o o
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;
o o o
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."
"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).
" 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).
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).
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)
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)
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 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.
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
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).
In
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/
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)
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).
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.
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).
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).
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.
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."
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.
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).
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
"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