Clipmarks | wildcat's internet collection

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:15:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves. Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they’re trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

On Sept. 5, 2006, Mark Zuckerberg changed the way that Facebook worked, and in the process he inspired a revolt.

Pundits predicted that News Feed would kill Facebook, but the opposite happened. It catalyzed a massive boom in the site’s growth. A few weeks after the News Feed imbroglio, Zuckerberg opened the site to the general public (previously, only students could join), and it grew quickly; today, it has 100 million users

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

Tags: brave new world, digital intimacy

16 Websites to Super Charge Your English Vocabulary

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:35:15 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dumblittleman.com

It won't be an exaggeration if I say that English is the language of this world. Although Mandarin (Chinese) tops the list of most widely spoken languages in the world, we know that it's English which connects people around the world. Hence it won't harm to get a deeper understanding of this ubiquitous language and work towards improving your grammar and vocabulary.

Visuwords
Visuwords is an awesome visual tool to find new words and improve your vocabulary. When you look up a word in this tool, it shows a neat graph which connects that word to various other words based on different relationships between them. You can hover over each word to get its definition and also zoom-in and zoom-out using your mouse wheel. It's certainly an excellent dictionary plus thesaurus.

Dictionary.com

Thesaurus.com

Definr

Merriam-Webstar Online

MetaGlossary

Thsrs

Wordsmith

BBC Learning English

ESL Quizzes

Ninjawords

About.com's Quizzes

Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus

AskOxford

Urban Dictionary

Alpha Dictionary

Tags: language, english, vocabulary

The Future Of Code, Digital And Genetic Continued

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:15:56 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Simonyi talked about his “intentional software” concept. If the human genome can be encoded in a program that takes up less than 1 gigabyte, he asked, why does Windows require 15 or 16? So, instead of building software according to elaborate blueprints that detail every programming step, Simonyi is following what he called a recipe approach. His team at Intentional Software creates a set of programming tools, writes a very specific description of the problem they are attempting to solve, and then uses the tools to generate a software solution. It sounds like a software version of the directed self-assembly techniques used in chemistry and nanotechnology.

Over on the in vivo side of the house, Harvard’s George Church, biotechnologist and founder of the Personal Genome Project; Drew Endy, of Stanford University and a founder of the BioBricks Foundation; and Rodney Brooks, of MIT and iRobot, discussed what’s being called synthetic biology or synthetic life research.

Tags: future, code, digital, genetic

Is the End of Unlimited Internet Near?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:04:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.abcnews.go.com

Get ready to say goodbye to unlimited Internet access.

Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, says it would set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month.

Last week, Comcast -- the second-largest Internet service provider in the country -- announced that starting Oct. 1 it would officially set a threshold for monthly Internet usage.

In an online announcement, the service provider said that although it already contacts residential customers who use excessive amounts of bandwidth, it had never provided a specific limit. Now, Comcast said it will amend its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of monthly usage.

The company emphasizes that its cap is generous and will only affect about 1 percent of its 14.4 million customers. Experts say these customers might include heavy gamers and those who use a significant amount of bandwidth for creating or uploading video.

Tags: end, unlimited, internet

Google Chrome is here

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:15:27 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

Clip Source: googleblog.blogspot.com

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

Tags: google chrome, browser, opensource

The era of the American Internet is ending.

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:45:18 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending.

Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.

Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.

And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.

“Because of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge,”

Tags: net, traffic, routing, us

Revealed: The Internet's Biggest Security Hole

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:29:30 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Two security researchers have demonstrated a new technique to stealthily intercept internet traffic on a scale previously presumed to be unavailable to anyone outside of intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency.

The tactic exploits the internet routing protocol BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) to let an attacker surreptitiously monitor unencrypted internet traffic anywhere in the world, and even modify it before it reaches its destination.

The demonstration is only the latest attack to highlight fundamental security weaknesses in some of the internet's core protocols. Those protocols were largely developed in the 1970s with the assumption that every node on the then-nascent network would be trustworthy. The world was reminded of the quaintness of that assumption in July, when researcher Dan Kaminsky disclosed a serious vulnerability in the DNS system. Experts say the new demonstration targets a potentially larger weakness.

Tags: internet, security hole

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:39:40 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.theatlantic.com

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial »

brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think

I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy.

Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages

Tags: google

The Web's Perspective Diversity Paradox

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:13:26 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Paradoxically, even as the daunting array of information sources grows, we seek comfort by consuming narrow views that support our own interests and biases.

Clip Source: www.technewsworld.com

The Internet has brought an unprecedented amount of diversity to the news and viewpoints readily available to the everyday reader. Sitting at your desk, you can immediately read the same story reported by Fox News, Al Jazeera, or any point of view in between. The paradox is that despite this diversity, many readers remain tightly focused on news sources that merely echo their own world views, writes Timothy J. McNulty.

For all the potential of the Internet, there are times when I consider it a cesspool of misinformation, ignorant opinion and faked imagery. I also find it confusing and untrustworthy.

Then someone reminds me how valuable it is to have checks and balances, not only on the government but also on the media. They remind me how glorious it is to enjoy another worldview and to examine what we think through others' eyes.

'What the Government Wants You to Know'

Base-Level Trust

Limiting access to information is routine around the world

BBC vs. CNN

Tags: diversity, opinions

Experts: Internet Addiction Growing

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:14:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.redorbit.com

The author of a book on Internet addiction says that 5 to 10 percent of the U.S. population is hooked with larger percentages in other countries addicted.

Kimberly Young, clinical director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, told Medill News Service that many addicts are hooked on one particular aspect of the Internet. The major ones include online gambling and gaming, sex sites, compulsive surfers and even addiction to eBay.

Coleen Moore of the Illinois Center for Addiction Recovery said that she has seen young adults who spend 14 to 18 hours a day at their computers. At that point, the Internet is keeping them from work, family life and friendships outside the virtual world.

Young compared the Internet to alcohol. Many people can use it and then turn to something else but some lose control. She said that treatment is in its early stages, depending on therapy.

Tags: net, addiction

The future of reputation

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:54:12 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Full Text

The full text of The Future of Reputation is now available online for free. Click on the links below to download PDFs of each chapter. The front matter to the book is at the beginning of each chapter.

Clip Source: docs.law.gwu.edu

Synopsis

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

Longstanding notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance among privacy, free speech, and anonymity, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free

Tags: reputation, net, privacy, gossip

Mark Shuttleworth: life on Mars, Ubuntu in emerging markets

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:07:39 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: A great visionary, a shrewd business-human

Clip Source: arstechnica.com

He also shared his views about the future of the space program and the importance of reaching for the stars. Although he believes that manned research efforts in space are too costly and less efficient than more automated approaches, he contends that humanity's experience in space will be essential for shaping a future in which society extends beyond earth's sphere.

"A majority of our space research should be unmanned," he remarked. "But fundamentally, [experience in space] is our life boat—that's what the dinosaurs didn't have, so it's essential research."

Shuttleworth is particularly emphatic about the need to conduct more extensive research on Mars, and the potential for Mars to sustain life—a possibility that he regards as "profound" in significance.

After returning from his trip into space, he decided that he wanted to turn his attention to efforts that could have a broader positive impact.

I wanted to be sure that anything I devoted time to would potentially have a global impact

Tags: mark shuttleworth, mars, ubuntu, emerging markets

Google opens Knol website, a wiki with bylines

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:10:11 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Knol is a hybrid of the individual, often opinionated entries found in blogs and the collective editing relied on by Wikipedia and other wiki sites.

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc opened its website Knol to the public on Wednesday, allowing people to write about their areas of expertise under their bylines in a twist on encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows anonymity.

"We are deeply convinced that authorship -- knowing who wrote what -- helps readers trust the content," said Cedric DuPont, product manager for Knol.

The name of the service is a play on an individual unit of knowledge, DuPont said, and entries on the public website, knol.google.com, are called "knols". Google conducted a limited test of the site beginning in December.

Knol has publishing tools similar to single blog pages. But unlike blogs, Knol encourages writers to reduce what they know about a topic to a single page that is not chronologically updated.

"What we want to get away from is 'this last voice wins' model which is very difficult if you are a busy professional," DuPont said.

Tags: google, knol, knowledge

The Death of HAL –the Evolving Digital Ecosystem

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:07:58 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

One of the greatest fears of many is the underlying knowledge that, all the wonderful advances of technology, the internet and robotics is simply bringing us closer to being subservient to our robotic overlords. It is essentially a historical imperative, and we can see it coming a mile away.

However British Computer Society President and ECS Professor of Artificial Intelligence Nigel Shadbolt, believes differently.

Instead of intelligence that is a “brain in a box”, we are seeing intelligence that is assistive, adaptive and flexible. They are helping us “drive our cars, diagnose disease and provide opponents in computer games.”
In other words, instead of an intelligence that is “…agonizing about their existence or whether we are about to switch them off” we are seeing the growth of intelligence that, in years to come, will immerse us and center around humans, rather than feel the need to enslave humans.

“What is emerging now is a digital ecosystem,’

Tags: ai, evolution, digital ecosystem, the net, the grid

Artificial Intelligence under the spotlight at BA Festival

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:34:25 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: ‘Computers are now one million times more powerful than when I started my research career – no field has come close to this rate of development,’ he says. ‘If transport had progressed at the same rate we would be flying from London to New York in less than a tenth of second.’

Clip Source: www.ecs.soton.ac.uk

Although Hollywood often likes to present us with a world full of self-aware and destructive robots in the style of I Robot, this is not the way the science of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is headed, says British Computer Society President and ECS Professor of Artificial Intelligence Nigel Shadbolt.

Speaking at the BA Festival of Science in York tomorrow (Tuesday 11 September), Professor Shadbolt will outline how developments in the speed and power of computers, the emergence of the World Wide Web, and our deeper understanding of human and animal intelligence is producing a different but no less exciting future.

‘AI has had a huge influence on the past and present of computer science – it will be a large part of the future but not in the way you might think,’ says Professor Shadbolt, an AI expert in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

Tags: ai, the net, robotics