New Fruit Announced at MacWorld

New fruit just announced at MacWorld.

Women in Video Games

Have you ever wondered if it is possible to design into a video game "a strong female character without the requisite augmented body and sexual references. 1UP.COM does .

What Do YOU Know about Ripping and Encoding Tunes?

How much do you REALLY know about ripping & encoding music? Read this guide guide to find out.

NPR Magic Creates the Signature NPR Sound

Brand Autopsy reveals what happens behind the curtain at the land of NPR:

Have you wondered how everyone on National Public Radio (NPR) sounds so smooth, so perfect … and so amazingly articulate?

I have.

And thanks to John Solomon of NPR’s On the Media, we now know the dark room magic tricks NPR uses to make everyone sound so smooth, so perfect, and so articulate. [You can stream the audio (real media file) or read the transcript.]

Whew! I don't feel so inarticulate now.

Attention as a Social Fact

Many2Many provides a nice primer on Attention as a Social Fact.

NYT Makes Another Shocking Discovery: Frat Boys Drink. Oh, my!

Show casing the journalistic excellence characteristic of the NYT's post Jason Blair era, Benoit Denizet-Lewis discovers frat boys (and girls) still drink. Hmm ... call me stunned.

SMS Addiction: The next "it must be caused by the genes" disorder?

A front page headline in today's NYT proclaims: Young Cell Users Rack Up Debt, a Message at a Time (link requires free reg). I have to wonder: is it just a matter of time before SMS Addiction becomes the next "major" genetic disorder?

Does Internet-Connectedness Drive serendipity?

From SocialSoftwareWebLog;

In an latimes.com article dated January 9, 2005, Lynell George quotes Friendster’s Jonathan Abrams as saying that Friendster offers ways to “proactively influence serendipity.”

Hm, not my experience of Friendster but, Jonathan goes on to say: “You can be manipulating serendipity to make more efficient use of your social time…. Instead of looking for women who are this height and are ‘equally comfortable in jeans as in a cocktail dress,’ you can stumble upon people by their interests. You can drive serendipity.”

Drive serendipity?

Judith is sanguine, suggesting that our internet-connectedness is constrained by our email address book, buddy list, virtual office connectees, etc. I suppose. This suggests that a degree of membership openness is necessary for externally infused serendipity. Yet, I think Judith under-estimates (or is so embedded in that she can't see) the power of our various social networks running through the same medium. I IM with students, other faculty, friends, my wife, and my kids. Each of those networks is often active on my desktop simultaneously. That yields the potential for me to experience serendipitous connections.

Microsoft Product Announcement Bigfoots Symantec and McAffee Share Prices

While I take it as good news that Microsoft is offering Anti-sphere Tool:

The biggest software company in the world made a trial version of its free anti-spyware tool available on its website in a bid to increase the security of its dominant Windows operating system. Next week, it was expected to release a virus-removal program to round out the security package.

The anti-spyware software eliminates programs that generate unwanted pop-up ads and secretly record a computer user's activities, often crippling computer performance. The program was developed by Giant Company Software Inc., which Microsoft acquired last month.

Shares of the two largest computer-security-software vendors, Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., fell sharply after Microsoft released details of its plans.

I am less excited about Microsoft entering the antivirus market. On the one hand, they can't afford not to, given the myriad weaknesses of MS Windows and Office. OTOH, by entering the anti-virus space, Microsoft furthers the mono-culture that has proven so suspectible to compromise. Put that way, maybe it isn't such a good idea for Microsoft to enter the anti-spyware space either.

UPDATE: MotleyFool echos my concerns:

Ultimately, the irony would run thick if Microsoft does manage to make a splash in the antivirus space. Not only is its operating system more susceptible to virtual misdeeds than Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL), but now it finds ways to profit from those deficiencies.

Ouch. That inoculation needle hurts!

Ouch, indeed! Ironically, by offering anti-virus software with update subscriptions Microsoft has incentive to make its operating system and other software even more vulnerable.

CNNMoney hits the nail in raising possible resistence by consumer and business markets:

But will consumers pony up to buy anti-virus software from the same company whose own operating system is so vulnerable to security lapses in the first place?

"For more sophisticated users, it's a small price to pay to get security that you know works from a vendor who has been doing it for 15 to 20 years. It's a different ball game for Microsoft who is not known for security," said Gregg Moskowitz, an analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group.

Kevin Trosian, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, adds that large business customers will be skeptical of a Microsoft security software product because of the high number of security problems that have plagued corporate networks during the past few years.

"The disdain and contempt that enterprise customers have for the security lapses means it is likely they will not be rabid adopters of a Microsoft anti-virus product," Trosian said.

UPDATE 2: Flexbeta compares MS's new toy against Spy-Bot and Ad-Aware and concludes:

Though still in beta, Microsoft AntiSpyware was able to detect more infected files than the current leading anti-spyware applications in the market today, Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D. AntiSpyware’s user interface is better looking than both SpyBot and Ad-Aware, not to mention much easier to use than SpyBot. Though Microsoft AntiSpyware was able to use better detection than both Ad-Aware and SpyBot, there is still the difference of cost between the three. Ad-Aware and SpyBot offer great performance for free, yet when Microsoft debuts its AntiSpyware application, it will require a subscription fee. Is Microsoft AntiSpyware really worth the subscription fee when there are currently good spyware removal applications out there that will do it for free? My answer to that question would be, if you can afford the fee, it is absolutely worth it; however, if you chose to use Microsoft AntiSpyware as your spyware removal tool, you will still need to run other tools such as Ad-Aware and SpyBot.

Blogs Replace Static Newsletters

What a great idea! Georgia State University Library reports on their use blogs to replace static newsletters:

To deliver information about library news, services and resources to the science faculty and students at Georgia State University, several librarians developed a blog, Science News. Despite the increasing popularity of blogs (or weblogs), few libraries have taken advantage of what they offer. Blogs can be updated easily, frequently and continuously, making them an appealing alternative to static newsletters. This article summarizes the librarians? rationale for moving to this dynamic format, how the technology was balanced with the needs of the librarians and patrons, and the issues and challenges that are being addressed to ensure that this will be a viable and successful newsdelivery system.' Article by Teri M. Vogel and Doug Goans will appear in Volume 10, Issue 1 of Internet Reference Services Quarterly, expected publication in March 2005.

Blog as newsletter substitute could generalize to all sorts of applications.