Owner: techwag URL:http://www.techwag.com Join Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:38:47 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: geek e-zine talking about all the web 2.0 goodness and other general IT stuff that we can find Site statistics:Click here
Iphone in secondary infringement row 2007-07-17 11:21:58 Bob Tur, the guy who filmed such greats as the OJ Simpson low speed car chase, the beating of a trucker during the LA Riots, and a bunch of other fun car chases, and other information is thinking about taking on Apple because the Iphone will play his videos that have been uploaded to YouTube without his permission. While the case of secondary liability has been an issue in the past with Zune paying money out to the music industry for every Zune sold to cover copyright infringement
, the idea of holding apple liable for playing YouTube Videos has a much bigger audience than is immediately apparent.
On Bob’s line of thinking, the Apple Iphone plays youtube videos and is thus liable for secondary infringement of copyrighted works. The interesting part is that just about any media player, any flash player, and any web browser embed will also do the same thing. Let alone the other mobile devices like Motorola, and others. Realistically Bob’s line of thinking is that realistically any de
Harry Potter on Bittorrent 2007-07-17 07:37:12 The last book of the HarryPotter
series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has appeared on Bittorrent as a file with a JPG (picture) of each page. While this will make it annoying to read, but easy to print out, the intellectual property folks have been busy with fake torrents and other ways of mitigating the damage of the pre-release of the book.
The final book in the Harry Potter series has been leaked to BitTorrent. A torrent with photographs of each page of the American edition of “Deathly Hallows” has shown up on multiple BitTorrent sites. Source: Torrent Freak
The not surprising part is that the file showed up on BitTorrent, the interesting part is what kind of data is going to be embedded in with the JPG files, from what kind of camera, to what the resolution of the lens was, to a host of other information except the owner of the camera. At least they will be able to narrow it down a bit to learn about the type of equipment used.
The other thing will be the first orig
Coglets for the Iphone 2007-07-16 19:20:10 As people hack and extend the Iphone beyond what came default from Apple, the group Coghead who we wrote about here has come up with coglets. The video below shows the Iphone coglet working, and what someone can do with it.
There are some other examples of what can be done with Coghead as a larger application, that can then be turned into a mobile application. We are thinking that sales teams should be able to do some interesting stuff with the system as provided. Although a room full of sales folks furiously thumbing or texting into their blackberries would be annoying.
Otherwise, worth checking out the site, and checking out the examples, and the cool things you can do.
---Related Articles at TechWag:No Related Posts
An interview with Kevin Burton 2007-07-16 19:09:16 After we did the Tail Rank DOA article KevinBurton
was kind enough to get hold of us and let us know some things that are upcoming with Tail Rank, and his new project Spinn3r. Below is the QA conducted by e-mail, we prefaced our questions with Techwag and put them italics, and Kevin’s responses with KB. We decided to leave the last question in line because we here at techwag didn’t get the full idea of what was in the broadcast that we had watched, and Kevin corrected what we were talking about.
Techwag: Tell us about Spinn3r, what are your goals for the web site?
KB: Spinn3r is more of a data indexing service than a website. When we built Tailrank we had a number of clients request access to our crawler. Instead of just setting these up on a ad hoc basis for individual customers we just decided to productize it and make it available to everyone.
We’re planning on releasing Spinn3r 2.0 in the next couple of weeks. We’ve been obviously spending a lot of time impro Read more:interview
Peter Moore Xbox Departure Theories 2007-07-19 07:30:27 There are a number of conspiracy theories running around the internet this morning about why PeterMoore
of Xbox
fame decided to depart. Well beyond the standard HR response of “We are sorry to see him go” the speculation on the departure as either an accountability measure, or as part of a long range plan to move back to California, or some other reason about the 1 Billion dollar charge that Xbox is going to take to fix the Red Rings oh Death, it all adds up to a great morning.
On the Mini Microsoft/MSFT Extreme Make over.
The conspiracy theory runs around the idea of accountability
Of course, even if Mr. Moore was asked to head for the nearest exit, we wouldn’t want to piss him off over at EA. So, I’m marking this up as how it was presented, with zero amount of accountability being exhibited. Source: Mini Microsoft
The focus of my initial post on the latest Xbox fiasco was primarily on the seemingly endless trail of management incompetence. In thinking about the iss Read more:Departure
, Theories
Click on the Buy it now button 2007-07-18 18:18:51 The boffin Ulrike Malmendier, who is an economist over at the University of California at Berkeley has taken a deep look at eBay auctions, and discovered they are all a bunch of uncontrolled bidders who rack up the price well past the “Buy it Now!” button
price.
Hint: Click
on the buy it now button and lock in the savings offered.
Confused, the team tried a larger sample – this time observing thousands of iPod auctions. In that case, 45 to 50% of eBay auctions exceeded the “buy it now” price, she says. Expanding the pool again, they found that the quirk affects expensive and cheap items, men’s cologne and women’s perfume, and books by liberal Sen. Barack Obama and by conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly. The Romans had a term for this auction-house “curse,” Malmendier says, “They called it calor licitantis – bidder’s heat.” Source: USA Today
This is great for people who are selling things on eBay, bad for folks w
Did Fake Steve Jobs set us up 2007-07-18 18:01:33 This is just one of those things, if you emulate a high profile tech business person like Steve
Jobs, then call yourself Fake Steve Jobs
, then odds are pretty good that people are going to want to know about you. This is not like Mini-Microsoft, they/he/she is an anonymous person in Microsoft who has something to say. No, we are talking about fake Steve Jobs, and he/she/they might have just lost it a bit.
We don’t really know what is going on, or has gone on, would lay odds though that someone either hacked the Google account, or attempted to pull some kind of information out of the system to find out who was posting. This could have been done by just about any exploit out there if there is any vulnerability in blogger, known or unknown. If there is a vulnerability in blogger, odds are most likely it is floating around in the underground hacker community, the question is going to be, how did Fake Steve Jobs find out?
I don’t want to get into details but let’s just say i
Its all about location 2007-07-18 13:14:23 As the Semantic web struggles along, and people still try to figure out the full use of a Resource Description Framework (RDF), people are speculating that Web 2.5 is going to be all about location, and the delivery of highly local information and advertising.
We could have used this the last time we traveled, knowing how much it costs to get a taxi from JFK to Manhattan and who is the taxi service that goes from Manhattan to JFK would have saved hours. Traffic reports would have been cool from a passenger in a taxi viewpoint when the taxi driver decides to detour through queens and no one knows why that is happening either.
This raises a number of questions though that no one so far is asking, do I really want a GPS in my phone to tell me the traffic report in New York, that also allows someone who is interested in tracking me down to know that I am stuck in traffic on the way to the airport? Do I want my boss to track me down wanting to know where I am because my cell phone gives m
XP Sales still strong 2007-07-22 10:45:00 Now that vista is getting ready for its first service pack, meaning that most people who wait until the first service pack to purchase Microsoft software, the interesting part is that Microsoft is still expecting strong sales in windows XP. Not good for vista, or the confusion surrounding the Operating system with 6 different versions to choose from.
During a conference call with analysts following the earnings results release Thursday afternoon, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said the company has changed its fiscal year 2008 forecast from an 85/15 split in sales between Vista and XP to a 78/22 split. Windows XP sales will, in other words, be nearly 50 percent higher in the next 12 months than Microsoft had estimated earlier. Source: PCWorld
The idea that XP sales are still strong, with even Dell offering XP on some of their systems rather than a full Vista based choice, it still seems interesting that XP sales are not decreasing, rather they are increasing over time, and the Read more:Sales
OLPC students surf porn 2007-07-22 10:19:09 So much for helping students learn about computing and the neat things that a computer can do to enhance creativity. Nope, the Nigerian news agency is reporting this morning. Nothing better than giving a bunch of children a computer so they can surf porn on the internet in a developing country, without any kind of filtering component. The OLPC folks are busy trying to work out the scenario for damage control.
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian schoolchildren who received laptops from a U.S. aid organization have used them to explore pornographic sites on the Internet, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported Thursday. Source: Reuters
Not to mention that this has a high amusement factor, what do you do when you introduce computing systems to people who are still learning that the internet is both good and bad. Let alone that the internet is really an adult environment in a lot of ways to go along with that.
Filtering software probably ever even entered into the equation for OLPC, n
Streaming Video and Bittorrent Sites 2007-07-21 10:37:14 If you have been watching what is happening in the Bittorrent world, many of the sites are starting to open up their own streaming video sites to go along with the basic Bittorrent tracking systems. The Pirate Bay has their own streaming video site here that is not safe for work, and news from Torrent Freak is that Mininova is also opening up their own streaming video site over here.
Streaming
video as an alternative to Bittorrent, or Joost/Veoh type systems for content delivery takes a lot of the waiting out of the equation. It also takes a lot of the misnaming and false file issues out of the equation as well. With streaming video, you basically see what you are getting before you devote the bandwidth to watch it, no surprise porn.
Depending on what is uploaded, the copyright folks might not be breathing down folks necks to shut it down either.
Techwag is seeing this as both a business opportunity and a survival mechanism for the pirate bay and for Mininova. On one side, you make Read more:Sites
, Streaming Video
Smoking Gun gets Video 2007-07-20 17:49:18 Some of the funniest videos ever, need to know about “Sex Education for trainables” (We don’t know either) or a documentary system for fat people in Italy? Oh they got that and more, with editors picks, most popular, and the short and sweet bit as well. Some of it is not safe for work, but it is funny watching videos of people in the 1960’s screaming the word penis, and coming up with many other names for the last chicken in shop (which they did not have either).
In general though, this is well worth checking out, the smoking gun rocks as is, but the addition of video’s that look like they are the best from archive.org just makes the site much more fun. Some stuff we cannot play at work, but most of it is worth just letting play and looking back at the whole way life was lived a very long time ago.
Although we could have lived with out the VD videos, the rest of it is well worth checking out.
Check out the smoking gun video collection right here.
---Related Articles at Te Read more:Smoking
Ask eraser good idea not implemented yet 2007-07-20 10:07:34 One of the things that is going to tick off people is setting off a press release that says we are going to do this great thing, please stand by. This is what Ask has done with their brand spanking new Ask Eraser, and while we are all about at least some form of privacy, why set us up wanting it when the delivery date is not committed to?
Ask about the announcement. Here’s a rundown on some of the technical and other issues relating to Ask Eraser. The press release says that records will be destroyed “at the time of the search,” for those that opt-in. How exactly will that be done? Ask is still figuring it out. Source: Search Engine Land
Realistically though, while we have no clue as to when Ask will commit to the Ask Eraser, there are a number of problems here.
If people opt out of having their info captured then forensics, legal discovery, search history, and other law enforcement needs will be quietly killed off. This does not mean though that the web server rec Read more:implemented
Digg not quite DOA 2007-07-20 09:42:49 For folks who use Digg
, we have been seeing this screen more and more on submit. We will submit many articles in a day, and finding that for the first time ever, that more and more of the submissions is quickly followed by the OOPS screen. But when we look at the profile page, the system took the article.
When we did the Tail Rank DOA article, we figured that this was a good public service issue. The key to this though is that while tail rank exists, there is a new system coming on line. We draw the similar issue here, Digg made Rose a millionaire, and he started doing Pownce, and now Digg is having problems much like tailrank is having problems.
The idea is that as the original site is what makes the person’s name gets put on autopilot in favor of the new system being developed, that the old system starts showing issues. We saw this with tailrank, and now we are seeing this with Digg.
We also doubt that Kevin Rose is going to dump Digg, but if his attention is focused on Pownce
Valleywag cracks us up 2007-07-24 20:23:22 Ok, what to do on a slow night, take one power outage in San Francisco that has gutted everyone interested in Web 2.0 and oh basically the power players on the internet, and see what kind of mayhem can be created.
In case you didn’t know, chunks of Silicon Valley were out this afternoon because of a power outage, either caused by a Squirrel, a Drunk worker on a bender, act of God, or otherwise.
A whole number of other incredibly wonderful Web sites shared our fate today and there is a whole lot of blogging documenting the rather peculiar impacts of the power outage and the failure of a popular co-location facility to provide back-up power. TechCrunch, ValleyWag, Mashable and others have their takes on the mini-disaster. Ironically, a bunch of us here at Technorati relied on a distinctly 19th-century technology (radio) and our reliable friends at KCBS radio to find out what-in-the-sam-hill was going on; they were very helpful! Source: Technorati Blog
Bring on the mayhem, and this Read more:cracks
Boo Yah P2P legislation Pulled 2007-07-24 19:55:35 Nothing speaks louder than legislation proposed by Senator Harry Reid. Originally he wanted to make colleges clamp down on P2P technologies, by tying their policies and processes to funds from the US Government. Reports now that he has pulled that request as noted by news.com.
Updated Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has withdrawn anti-file sharing legislation that had drawn yowls of protest from universities this week. Reid, without explanation, on Monday nixed his own amendment that would have required colleges and universities–in exchange for federal funding–to use technology to “prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property.” Source: News.com
The problem with the original proposal was that federal funds could be withheld from US colleges if they failed to take solid action against P2P technologies. So systems like Bittorrent.com, Veoh and Joost would have been hammered by this because they use P2P technologies, they
29000 sex offenders and counting 2007-07-24 19:06:55 MySpace is reporting that they have culled the profiles of some 29,000 sex offenders off their web site. This has to be tweaking everyone from parents, to law enforcement, to the states attorney generals who have been wondering what is happening at MySpace. The problem is that they found 29,000 sex offenders; the good part is that they have detected and deleted the profiles.
The bad part is that where people are, the sites are going to draw from all forms of life, all social classes, and all offender types. It is not surprising that MySpace has attracted sex offenders; it is a good thing that they have been detecting and deleting the profiles. Even if they have made mistakes along the way as they did with Jessica Davis.
The bad part is that MySpace is not the only one, Orkut was in a huge row with the Brazilian government a few years back over a similar issue with people using the system to hunt people and share images and material that is just about illegal everywhere in the world.
Apple Fanboys yell show me the code 2007-07-23 12:16:08 The anonymous blogger who has claimed to have developed a Mac OSX worm for money has raised a ruckus in the Apple
Mac world with people saying “Show me the Code”. Really, an anonymous blogger states they have code, being developed that is a worm, against an exploit that was patched last month. Not a big deal, depending on how often Apple folks update their system against exploits. Just like with any other operating system, updates are important, but should we believe the blogger?
That is the real question, it is great that this guy has developed code, but without seeing it, knowing how it works, it really puts belief at a disadvantage. We do not know anything other than claims, although security focus has said that they have seen or developed something similar as a boundary condition error in Mac OSX.
The other really fun issue is the polarization of the two sides of the fence, one that adamantly refuses to believe that Apple could have flaws (hint: that is why they push security
Google as your ISP 2007-07-23 10:59:55 With all the news about Google
ramping up a purchase want on airwave bandwidth, folks are asking is this a smart move for Google to be buying Telco infrastructure. We here at Techwag think that it is not only a smart idea, but in the longer run brilliant as a way to hedge bets against what is eventually going to be a system comparable to ATT, Qwest, and others. Here is why we think this.
Google already has a number of systems in place, as well as outright purchasing of fiber in the ground. With News, Mail, Usenet via the Web, personalized home pages, and all the other things that portals have today, Google is already to take on MSN and Yahoo at their own game.
Value add that Yahoo and MSN do not have is Google office, think about this being a value added service for folks who use the Google ISP system
Not yet available, but it would be a logical next step to bundle DSL/Cable service with Google services, pay for cable, get all these great Google services to boot like Qwest does with
Credit Crunch Might kill technology M and A activity 2007-07-27 08:06:50 The steep sell off in the market yesterday, and the availability of money to fund M&A activity might just have an unexpected tech bonus. If the tech company can not get hoovered because the cost of money leads to lower M&A activity, then we might just see the IPO start to pick up and drive those technology company paydays. This is what your stock options were all about.
The ability to fund merger activity like we have seen over the last 3 years in web 2.0, with major buy out’s from bigger companies like the Microsoft deal, the Google YouTube deal, the Yahoo Flickr deal and a host of others have all boded well for those companies getting hoovered by bigger companies. Most of this was driven by the ability to barrow money at a cheap enough interest rate, and backed by the value of the stock, or other asset that the bigger company had.
Once banks starting tightening credit, it will get harder for a company to obtain the funds to drive M&A meaning that the willingness for l Read more:Crunch
, Credit Crunch
In Game social research 2007-07-27 07:33:45 If you are wondering whom you are talking to in the bar in second life and trying to hit up, they might just be a researcher looking into how humans interact. In other words, you just ended up being someone’s research project, and the bioethics regulations that people sign do not apply to a virtual world. Welcome to your own personal hell in second life.
Maybe not that bad, but researchers are running around game worlds like WOW, Second life and others that have large populations that interact on a regular basis. Alternatively, groups that have to do cooperative work to get the prize are also part of the human social and technological dynamic. How groups coalesce to work in a loosely connected manner, to gain a prize that will benefit only one person or a small subset of the group.
Online worlds offer great potential to social scientists because they overcome some of the problems these researchers encounter when gathering subjects in the real world, Dr William Bainbridge, head of
Natalie Portman Lifecaster 2007-07-27 07:01:09 Valleywag is reporting that NataliePortman
is seriously considering lifecasting, and letting us all into her life as voyeurs. This should be interesting, she is probably more able to handle this kind of attention and public scrutiny than say, Brittany Spears or Lindsay Lohan, although Lohan might be good for a couple of laughs as we watch her go through rehab, if not jail. That might also be interesting, Lohan lifecasting from jail, we can see if she is a player or not.
We digress though, the NY Post goes on to state:
Natalie Portman
. In search of funding, “Star Wars” former Queen Padmé Amidala has proposed a project that would be a continuous feed of her life professionally and personally. She’s already met with one investor who’s already asking does anyone think Natalie Life-casting would attract numbers. And people are saying it would. And the minute it does, others will follow the lead. And then the novelty will wear off. Source: NY Post
Which raises the
Linked In pushes a patch maybe 2007-07-26 15:21:51 Mario Sundar tells us that Linked In has made a patch available for the security error reported yesterday. The interesting part is that it is not written about in the linked in blog, there are no notes on the site that they patched the security flaw; there is nothing in the Help & FAQ to say that they fixed a security bug.
There is also nothing in their press releases, nothing in Google news, or any other news source that we looked at for this article. Nor is there anything at Mario’s internal linked in site, or his own private blog to say that there is a patch, please come download it.
Come on Linked in, what is the publicity here, really need to learn how to get the word out that there are updates that need to happen.
We have no idea if this really happened, the only suggestion that we can make is that you download the toolbar again hoping that this is the patch, but Linked In needs to learn how to get the word out. While I am glad to push out the word, the whole blog commun
Did the Joost Beta Testers Stick around 2007-07-26 14:42:15 Good question, and one that CNet is asking, and while we can only answer for ourselves, no we really didn’t stick around, nor did we really try out anything else when it came to P2P based streaming TV. Although we should try out Veoh just to have a good comparison, it is long past due since we poked our heads in and saw what Joost
was up to.
The founders of online television start-up Joost, who also count Skype and Kazaa as bullet points on their resumes, have announced that the service now has one million users. Still in beta and technically invite-only (though invitations are now easy to find), Joost was one of the most-talked-about tech products of last year. Originally known by the Bond-worthy codename “The Venice Project,” Joost was widely touted as a “YouTube killer” before people really knew what it was–in truth, the service is a slick interface for free, ad-supported video content on-demand. No cat videos there. Source: CNet
The reason for us b Read more:Stick
Professional Game Cheating 2007-07-25 15:22:05 With on line gaming, and the ability to middle market goods, money, gil or gold to other people, a small and robust group of folks have been diligently working on building out game cheats. These game cheats allow them to build out characters, get money, or goods at a much quicker pace than if they did it the good old-fashioned way of working through the game to get the goods. Game cheating extends from World of Warcraft (WOW) through Final Fantasy, to easy to hack games like Vanguard.
In an interview with Forbes, Gary McGraw talks about cheats, theft, and other problems that are besetting on line worlds from Second Life to WOW.
If you were a hacker and you wanted to make money, there are any number of ways to do it. You could hack into someone’s site and blackmail someone and threaten to shut down their business. But then you could go to jail.
On the other hand, if you go into one of these games and steal someone’s Vorpal Sword of Heinosity, how much trouble can you real Read more:Cheating
The Food Antenna 2007-07-25 14:42:47 On the lighter side of Geekdom, we all have our ability to sort out, hunt, and scavenge for food on a regular basis. So when there is a big training session underway anywhere in the company, usually there is food that is left over and dumped in the local community area for everyone to use once the trainees have moved on.
What special skills do true Geeks have in that they can usually hunt down and gather this sustenance even if they do not know something is going on?
The Geek Food Antenna
is the answer.
This highly sought after skill and ability is only found in true geeks, sometimes in geek wannabe’s because some major geek found the food first. Consider this almost a training session in its own right. The food antenna is a skill that is learned, and passed down amongst generations of geeks much like the hunter gatherer skills of African Bushmen.
It takes years to fully develop the “Geek Food Antenna” hunter gathering skill set. Not for the weak, or the otherwise non commit
Rejecting Social Networking 2007-07-29 09:14:30 The blogosphere is debating the relative merits of social networks, and the amount of time that they consume to use them at all. While governments are busy banning the use of social networks while on the job. The ultimate time wasters and ways to communicate with millions of people you didn’t know are facing a backlash that will have a major impact on future social networks.
We are basically seeing the results of what happens when you give people the ability to communicate with anyone about anything, and letting this happen on a global basis. With people pulling back from the whole thing being lead by the same techno-literati that started the whole shooting match, the future of social networking has no choice but to become more splintered.
With Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and other systems like Twitter and Jaiku, and the influx of systems snipping at the heels of those systems, the ability to become overloaded is really simple. All you have to do is use them, use them a lot, and l Read more:Social
400 Hours of BBC Programming 2007-07-28 17:41:49 The BBC has put 400 hours of video for people in England to download for the BBC Iplayer. The problem for everyone else, is that it really is only for people in the UK, while the rest of the world can just stand by and pray that some of it will be shown in other countries.
The service, launched Friday, will give viewers a choice from 70 per cent of the British broadcaster’s output, including popular programs such as EastEnders and Doctor Who. Programs from the previous week will be made available.
“Our vision is for BBC iPlayer to become a universal service available not just over the internet, but also on cable and other TV platforms, and eventually on mobiles and smart hand-held devices,” said the BBC’s Ashley Highfield, director of future media and technology. Source: CBC
It should not take very long before they show up on Bittorrent sites, or better yet, they are probably already available for international consumption via sites like TV Links and others. Read more:Hours
, Programming
What is the point in declaring bankruptcy 2007-07-28 17:05:42 Modern business runs on the accessibility of people, people to make deals, people to talk to, people to buy and sell stuff to. Jason Calacanis joins the ranks of folks trying to shut down the idea of keeping up with modern communications, in particular the ability of people to answer back on his blog.
We have only answered one article on his blog, the link baiting exercise, and that was well worth the effort that we put into it, you can read our link bait right here.
In the mean time, it really seems that at some point
people tinker with the idea of shutting down e-mail, blog comments, or other stuff, e-mail because of a time commitment, blog comments because the comments get nasty, evil, or just plain old vile.
While the time commitment for e-mail is one thing that people either can or can not give out to answer bits of fluff from the internet. The way to do a lot of the time commitment is to keep things public in the public realm, like our e-mail suggest@techwag.com then keeping o Read more:bankruptcy
SilverLight hits RC 1 2007-07-28 15:41:54 SilverLight hits the streets today in what could be a make or break competition with the well established Flash from Adobe. As we are busy downloading it, the ability to do neat things with SilverLight is an important step to making some wiz bang sites, and might also help out dot net to increase its adoption in the market place.
The whole kit for Windows and for MAC can be downloaded here.
The expected has also happened, with people who were building things in the early beta versions of the code, they are going to break. Tim Sneath states:
Inevitably (given that this release isn’t 100% compatible with the previous one, particularly as regards the object activation model), a lot of the samples out there today are broken. We’ve worked with a few folk that we know to help them prepare for this release, but if you have a Silverlight sample or site out there today based on the existing beta release, you’ll want to pick up the new silverlight.js and work through the bre
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