Another Shutdown Averted As Deal Reached
26 minutes ago
Commentary on the intersection of technology, society, politics, higher ed, and value creation
Databases and search engines provide instantaneous access to endless information about anyone or anything, but the search results often include as many misses as hits. To generate more-relevant answers, organizations including the federal government are using topic maps to index their data.
Topic maps are smart indices that improve search capabilities by categorizing terms based on their relationships with other things. For example, William Shakespeare is a topic that would be mapped to essays about him, his plays and his famous quotes.
Tallies released last week by Dutch Web traffic analyst OneStat.com showed that IE had dipped below the 90 percent market share mark for the first time in years, confirming a downward trend seen in other surveys released since millions of Web surfers started trying out Firefox. OneStat's survey indicated that Firefox has picked up what market share IE has lost.I've been using Firefox for several months now. It is a solid performer. Recommended.
Bill O'Reilly still doesn't understand that the Internet is a no-weenie zone. Apparently, even journalists who (at best) recklessly report stories based on unchecked fake documents are too important to be criticized by the 'little people' on the Internet.O'Reilly's attempt to justify Dan Rather's behavior is baffling, at minimum. At best, this defense of Rather affords an interesting portal into the standards by which O'Reilly desires to be held accountable.
UPDATE: Carol Platt Liebau blogged on Target as Scrooge more than a week ago. Wagonboy blogged on it tonight. And I am told that by tomorrow, www.dontshoptarget.com will be up and running. Here is another take on the effects of the target decision. It isn't just lost donations:
Fred Barnes on The Beltway Boys and Kate O'Beirne on The Capital
Gang both "knocked Target tonight for exiling the Salvation Army. There's still time to change your mind, Mr. Ulrich.
But still a healthy sum to share among the likes of Apple's iTunes, Napster, Virgin Digital, Wal-Mart, Tesco and co., surely? Well, not quite. That figure represents not only sales of digital downloads and subscription revenue, but CDs purchased from Amazon and co.
Digital downloads will account for half of the total - $3.1bn.
That amounts to 7.7 per cent of total music sales, leaving CD, DVD and their successor physical formats taking 92.3 per cent of the market.
Those figures look to a market five years off. Closer to today - next year, in fact - sales of digital downloads will total $422.7m, more than double the $179.5m that will be spent this year, IMG reckons. Subscription revenue in 2004 will total $103.7m, the researcher estimates, rising to $191.7m next year. For the two methods of delivery, those figures represent growth of 135.5 per cent and 84.9 per cent, so clearly IMG believes that punters will increasingly prefer one-off downloads over tethered subscription packages.
NEW YORK, Nov 26 (Reuters) - More U.S. 'Black Friday' shoppers were turning to the Internet for discounts this year to avoid long lines and crowded parking lots as the holiday shopping season got underway after Thanksgiving.
Online retailers reported steady or surging traffic on Friday and with the strong start were poised to grow sales by 20 or 30 percent this season compared with a year ago.
Computer criminals are making phishing more potent by automating attacks. Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) analysts reckon fraudsters are using automated tools and botnets to ramp up attacks. It estimates attacks grew by an average of 36 per cent a month between July and October.I'm so sick of this stuff. More than 800 pieces of uninvited email flood my inbox daily.
Scam emails that form the basis of phishing attacks often pose as 'security check' requests from well-known businesses. These messages attempt to trick users into handing over their account details and passwords to bogus sites. The details collected this way are used for credit card fraud and identity theft. First seen more than a year ago, phishing emails are becoming increasingly sophisticated, directing users to bogus websites which accurately reproduce the look and feel of legitimate sites.
RALEIGH, N.C. — Everyone likes a nice Thanksgiving spread on the table, but not everyone has the time — or culinary skill — to cook the traditional turkey, dressing, veggies and desserts. Enter the grocery store.While I welcome the option of take-out Thanksgiving meals, I find this very sad.
More people are buying complete Thanksgiving meals to take home, according to retailers and food-trend experts. Nearly every grocery store with a deli now offers the meals, which consumers can order in advance and pick up on Thanksgiving eve.
Last year, Fresh Market's (search) 44 stores from Florida to Virginia sold a few hundred complete meals.
"This year, we sold several thousand. We actually sold out," said Eric Blaesing, spokesman for the Greensboro-based chain.
by Paul Anderson and Adam Blackwood.
In recent years there has been a phenomenal growth in the number and technical sophistication of what can loosely be termed 'mobile devices' such as PDAs, mobile phones and media players. Increasingly these devices are also internet-enabled. This JISC report reviews the current state of the art, explores the potential uses within education and discusses some of the trends in technological development such as wireless networking, device convergence and 'always-on' connectivity.
Staff in HE/FE are likely to need training and awareness in mobile and PDA technologies. Staff who are less technically aware may have little, if any, comprehension of what is possible with newer mobile devices. As an example, experience from the University of South Dakota suggested staff training was a key issue to the successful use of PDAs (Smith, 2003). Pressure for adoption is likely to come from the student body, who will increasingly be handling such devices and using them as support tools in an ad hoc fashion during courses.PDAs were distributed in our shop. No training was provided. Approximately 25% of the devices were never unboxed. Each term I observe more students using wireless devices in class. Either we integrate these tools into the classroom experience or loose relevance.
While Amazon has been indirectly skirmishing with traditional retailers since they started, their new move in Japan is tantamount to a direct declaration of war.Hat tip: Smart Mobs. See also this article.
Their "Amazon Scan Search" product allows users to download a free application onto their camera-enabled mobile phone. This allows them to scan barcodes of ordinary products and then search Amazon.co.jp for it.
Not only does this allow them to make an instant price comparison, but they can decide to purchase the product instantly, from Amazon via their phone.
Washington: NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanksfor His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.Hat tip: Blogs For Bush
Lincoln: I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.Yep, that Declaration of Independence is one scary document, all right. This example reinforces why the left's "censorship is the solution" is such a weak position.
A decade-old toasted cheese sandwich said to bear an image of the Virgin Mary has sold on the eBay auction website for $28,000.Hmm ... a decade-old?
ALBANY, Ore. A man sick of speeders zipping through his neighborhood has found a novel way to slow the leadfoots down.Ya gotta love it! This puppy must be driving nuts the guys with their Valentines and Escorts.
Rick Pyburn has set up a decoy deputy that sits in a painted plywood cruiser stuck in some bushes near his house in Albany, Oregon.
The pretend patrolman is so effective, Pyburn says, he plans to market copies of the car for residents in both city neighborhoods and rural areas.
The Benton County Sheriff's Office doesn't mind the imposter.
But they do say they would like to have more deputies on duty so residents don't have to resort to such ingenuity.
According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.What other forms of identification technologies are built into devices that we use daily and we haven't yet discovered?
In a recent NY Times Sunday Magazine article (Box Office in a Box Nov. 14, 2004), I was struck by just how much DVDs have moved from playing a supporting role in driving revenues for studio released feature films to playing the leading role. I had no idea DVDs now claim 63% of a film’s revenue (as generated through wholesale DVD sales to retailers) while box office receipts only account for 21% of a feature film’s revenue.
Other interesting takeaways from this article include:
- For consumers buying DVDs, 30% saw the movie in the theater, 30% saw it on cable, and 40% have never seen the film.
- Despite being a critical purchase factor for consumers, the DVD extras (actor commentary, behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, alternative endings, etc.) are only viewed by 20% of DVD buyers.
- ‘Eventize’ is the marketing idiom du jour being used in Hollywood. Eventize … as in, “We need to eventize the hell out of this release.”
- Studios generate around $9.00 cash flow per DVD sold. [COST BREAKDOWN: Studios incur about $6.00 in costs (from production to marketing to royalty fees) to produce one DVD and they charge retailers a wholesale price of approx. $14.95 … leaving slightly more/less than $9.00 as positive cash flow per DVD sold.]
- Given the profitability of DVDs, an unnamed Hollywood executive referred to DVDs as being, “… the corporate A.T.M. machine.”
- Mega retailers dominate the consumer sales of DVDs with Wal-Mart capturing 22% of all DVD sales in the US. Best Buy, Target, Costco, Sam’s Club, Circuit City, and Blockbuster combined are responsible for 42% of DVD sales.
- With greater frequency, more films are receiving only a two-week theatrical run and then disappear only to reappear on the DVD market to exploit the ‘home-cinema’ market.
- The emergence of the ‘home-cinema’ market is having a profound effect on how consumers experience motion pictures. Mark Rance, a DVD producer, explained this effect by saying, “What we’re used to is the 19th century theatrical experience: you go to a theater with a large group of people, you see a movie and enjoy it with a crowd. That’s being replaced now by, like, 20 people in your living room, like a book club watching a film they might not have heard of.”
“Seeker Wireless have developed capabilities that use existing GSM, CDMA and 3G handsets to enable the location of a mobile subscriber to be made available as an opt-in, permission based service to help drive the adoption of mobile marketing and mobile content offerings”, said Dr. Drane.
According to The Korea Times, police are expanding an investigation into what appears to be 'the largest cheating scandal involving high school seniors after securing evidence suggesting about 100 students allegedly used cell phones to cheat during the national college entrance exam held on Wednesday'. (Hat-tip: SmartMobs.com)What will they think of next. Sigh.
"I told the president, 'There is a great difference between politicians and dissidents. Politicians are focused on polls and the press. They are constantly making compromises. But dissidents focus on ideas. They have a message burning inside of them. They would stand up for their convictions no matter what the consequences.'
"I told the president, 'In spite of all the polls warning you that talking about spreading democracy in the Middle East might be a losing issue — despite all the critics and the resistance you faced — you kept talking about the importance of free societies and free elections. You kept explaining that democracy is for everybody. You kept saying that only democracy will truly pave the way to peace and security. You, Mr. President, are a dissident among the leaders of the free world.'"
take part in the worlds first interactive reconstruction of John F. Kennedys assassination.This leaves me speechless.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing 761 people for alleged illegal filesharing. University students are a particular focus of the legal action with 25 people named for using university networks to distribute music. The individuals are accused of copyright infringement for using peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa and eDonkey to share music.
Cary Sherman, RIAA president, said there had been positive developments in partnerships between colleges and legitimate file sharing services. He said: "During the fall, we have seen a flurry of additional agreements between schools and legal online music providers. That’s exciting news for the university, students, and all those involved in the creative chain of making and distributing music.
"The lawsuits are an essential educational tool. They remind music fans about the law and provide incentives to university administrators to offer legal alternatives."
What is IMsmarter?I'm off to www.imsmarter.com to check it out.
It’s a new kind of IM enhancement. Go to www.IMSmarter.com to check it out. Geeky people would call it a “proxy”, but the easiest way to think about it is as a secretary that helps you out by sitting between you and the rest of the world, letting you know about things that are interesting and taking notes of your meetings so you can recall what was said later. In the same way that you don’t need to change your phone or mail systems when you get a secretary, IM Smarter doesn’t require you to change anything about your current IM habits - after a thirty-second configuration (not requiring you to install any software), you’re good to go. You just keep on using your favorite client on your favorite OS: AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, iChat, Trillian, whatever! It works on Windows, OS/X, and Linux!
Give us some example of IM Smarter in action.
It’s 4pm; you’re at work and you remember you were going to meet your buddy for dinner tonight, but you’ve forgotten where. He’s not online, but you had IMmed with him last night from home to discuss where you’d meet up. Without IM Smarter, you’d be screwed - with IM Smarter you just log in to the web site, click on your buddy’s name, and see the chat you had last night.
or…
You’ve got a lot going on and are feeling a bit scatterbrained; you’ve just put the clothes in the wash and need to remember to move them over to the dryer in 40 minutes, plus the casserole needs to come out of the oven in 30 minutes. You’re doing a million other things and you know you’ll forget when you need to do what. A “calendar” is the wrong tool here. With IM Smarter, you just send two IMs:
bug me in 40 minutes about the clothes in the wash
bug me in 30 minutes about the casserole
And presto! Even if you log off and log back in, you’ll get an IMmed reminder - even if you log on from a different location and with a different screen handle! And even if you sign on with a different protocol!
Yahoo! News reports Internet buzz that perhaps the exit polls were correct and the actual returns might be flawed grew louder this week when sociology graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley went public with an analysis arguing that Florida results in counties using electronic ballots differed from historical voting patterns.What makes this especially rich is that these "graduate students" are so convinced their conclusion is correct that they don't realize that their data suggest otherwise.
One national survey of more than 1,000 profs shows that Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 7 to 1 in the social 'sciences' and humanities.I wonder why the author(s) of this study excluded professional schools from their study. Do they assume that colleges of business house hoards of Republicans? My experience as an academic suggests that faculty at colleges of business mirror this blue pattern. As one that subscribes to a rosier view of the world, the dominance of blue perspectives makes my day to day professional life rather interesting.
The Boca Raton News reported last week that more than 30 distraught Kerry supporters in South Florida contacted the non-profit AHA following their candidate’s Nov. 3 concession to President Bush. AHA officials have diagnosed the disorder as Post Election Selection Trauma (PEST) and have scheduled the first of several free group therapy sessions for just after Thanksgiving.Folks like this give psychothreapy a bad name.
"HURRICANE FRANCIS was on its way, barreling across the Caribbean, threatening a direct hit on Florida's Atlantic coast. Residents made for higher ground, but far away, in Bentonville, Ark., executives at Wal-Mart Stores decided that the situation offered a great opportunity for one of their newest data-driven weapons, something that the company calls predictive technology."Who'd a guessed that beer and strawberry poptarts are best sellers in anticipation of a hurricane?
Lexmark, makers of printers and scanners, has been caught monitoring users’ printer, scanning, and ink cartridge usage. Apparently, users on the comp.periphs.printers newsgroup found that the Lexmark installation software embeds itself in the registry and monitors printer activity via a file located at c:\program_files\lexmark500. While Lexmark originally denied the allegations, the reality of the spyware is pretty straight-forward, and they have come forward to admit their wrongdoing. Better late than never? It’s not clear what they are monitoring, though: Lexmark say they’re just tracking printer and cartridge usage, but the registration information and packets being sent say otherwise.
The young cell phone crowd backs Kerry for president, according to a novel poll taken exclusively over mobile phones.Digging deeper C|Net reports
Among 18- to 29-year-old likely voters, 55 percent favored Democratic candidate John Kerry, while 40 percent preferred incumbent George Bush, according to the study, conducted by polling firm Zogby International and nonprofit group Rock the Vote.That is an interesting spin. The real story is that 40% of this presumably democraticlly inclined sample plans to vote for Bush.