AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance

AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance | Threat Level from Wired.com

From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.

An AT&T research paper published in 2001 and unearthed today by Andrew Appel at Freedom to Tinker shows how the phone company uses Hancock-coded software to crunch through tens of millions of long distance phone records a night to draw up what AT&T calls "communities of interest" -- i.e., calling circles that show who is talking to whom.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/att-invents-pro.html

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Find your friends on a cell phone: Pelago introduces Whrrl

Whrrl is a new service that allows mobile phone users to chronicle every social activity in their lives -- writing reviews of movies or restaurants or uploading photos from concerts and sporting events. It then plots that information on a map and combines it with similar content from friends, creating a personal mobile city guide. It also provides the real-time locations of people as they wander from place to place in a city, tracking chosen friends as dots on a map.

Whrrl -- not to be confused with a competing service called Whirrl -- is the first offering from Pelago, a Seattle startup that scored $7.4 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Trilogy Equity Partners last year.

Led by Jeff Holden and Darren Erik Vengroff, both of whom previously held high-ranking positions at Amazon.com, Pelago is one of a number of companies trying to tap the emerging arena of location-based services. The idea is that mobile phone users will want to locate friends -- who may be at a nearby restaurant -- or at the very least get a review that a friend wrote of the restaurant from a few weeks ago. The service is also accessible on a PC.

 

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archives/124189.asp

Mixing GPS and IM...

Google, Jaiku and Being Connected: Red Alert or Blue Heaven? on Compiler

Last week, we posted a few items here on Compiler and on Wired News about Google's recent purchase of Jaiku, the presence aware address book and communication service. Jaiku lets users keep their friends up to date about where they are and how they can best be reached at any given time. Some see Google's acquisition as the next step towards a living social web, one where our phones and our physical place become part of an ever-expanding social network. Some see it as the unequivocal death of privacy, making everyone reachable at all times.

Life is harder now, experts say - Gut_Check - MSNBC.com

Life is harder now, experts say - Gut_Check - MSNBC.com:

Bankruptcy law expert and Harvard University Professor Elizabeth Warren spent a lot of time crunching consumer spending numbers for her popular books, 'The Fragile Middle Class” and “The Two-Income Trap.” In both, she makes this point: Despite all those $200 sneakers you hear about and the long lines at Starbucks, consumers are actually spending less of their income — much less — on discretionary items like clothing, entertainment and food than their parents did. In fact, after taking care of essentials like housing and health care, today’s middle class has about half as much spending money as their parents did in the early 1970s, Warren says.

The basics, according to Warren, now take up close to three-fourths of every family's spending power (it was about 50 percent in 1973), leaving precious little left over at the end of the month — and leaving many families with no cushion in case of a job loss or health crisis.

Note: Fantastic table in this article, marked "Generational shift - Comparing budgets for two typical, four-member families". It shows the information for two fictional families, "Tom and Susan," single-income family, mid-1970s (adjusted to 2004 dollars), and "Kimberly and Justin," dual-income family, 2004.

Archaeologists see signs of clambake and makeup from 164,000 years ago

Life was a beach for early humans - Science - MSNBC.com:

In one of the earliest hints of 'modern' living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show. Call it a beach party for early man. But it's a beach party thrown by people who weren't supposed to be advanced enough for this type of behavior. What was found in a cave in South Africa may change how scientists believe Homo sapiens marched into modernity.

Google says working to solve health record dilemma - MSNBC Wire Services - MSNBC.com

Google says working to solve health record dilemma - MSNBC Wire Services - MSNBC.com:

Google Inc aims to apply Web search technology to a general set of health information problems and remains committed to the market despite slow initial progress, an executive said on Wednesday.

'We do have a broad interest in this area,' Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of Search Products & User Experience, told Internet industry leaders at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. 'It will start with search.'

Mayer said engineers stumbled onto Google's potential role in the field by noticing the number of searches users perform with its Web search services for hard-to-diagnose health problems, often simply by typing symptoms into a Web browser.

First Radiohead...now Nine Inch Nails bids adieu to music label | Crave : The gadget blog

First Radiohead...now Nine Inch Nails bids adieu to music label

Posted by Greg Sandoval to Crave on Oct 9, 2007

Less than a month after publicly calling executives at his music label unprintable names, rocker Trent Reznor has signaled that his days of working for a record company are over.

The only official member of the band Nine Inch Nails, Reznor announced Monday that the group is now "free of any recording contract with any label." Representatives from Reznor's music label, Universal Music Group, were unavailable for comment.

Reznor provided few details in a note on the band's Web site about how the group plans to proceed, but his announcement raised hopes among fans that he will follow the lead of British band Radiohead, which last week announced it would handle sales and distribution for its upcoming album, In Rainbows without the backing of a label.

Two well-known bands taking to the Internet to sell their own albums is not yet a trend, but it certainly must be a cause for concern in the halls of the four major music companies. The question raised by the defections is whether well-established performers need big music conglomerates in the digital age.

It costs relatively little to distribute songs over the Web. So why can't bands do it themselves from their own Web sites?

Groups like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails already have established followings. So promoting their music may require little more than posting an announcement online. (That is all Radiohead did to trigger enormous demand for In Rainbows.)

Who needs middlemen?

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9793541-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

Google and Jaiku

We’re joining Google

October 9th, 2007 - Jaiku Blog

Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.

What does that mean? First and foremost, we’re of course continuing to support our existing users. So fear not: your Jaiku phone, the Web site, IM, SMS, and API will continue to work normally.

That said, new user sign-ups have been limited for the time being. The idea here is to enable our team to get right to work with Google’s engineers on delivering a new, better service to you as quickly as we can instead of spending our efforts on optimizing the current back-end. Existing users will still be able to invite their friends, and those who are not yet on Jaiku can send us a request for an invitation to join.

We’ve put together a short FAQ about the acquisition, and we’ll continue to provide support on the #jaiku channel. But we’re eager to go beyond what’s there today, and build something completely new for you to enjoy. Take this as an invitation to join us on a journey to reinvent how you communicate and stay in touch with the people you care about.

Jyri, Petteri, and team

Posted by Jyri | Permalink | 310 Comments

 

 

O’Reilly Radar on Jaiku and iPhone

October 1st, 2007 - Jaiku Blog

Tim O’Reilly’s got a lovely a post titled I love my iPhone, but…bah, no Jaiku! on O’Reilly Radar.

Tim writes that as he switched from a Nokia S60 phone to an iPhone, he found himself missing Jaiku’s presence-enabled phonebook for the Nokia handsets.

“This is the way a phone address book ought to work. I continue to think that the address book is one of the great untapped Web 2.0 opportunities, and that the phone, even more than email and IM, and certainly more than an outside-in, invitation-driven “social networking application” represents my real social network. On the series 60 phone, Jaiku was able to embrace and extend the address book. That’s just not possible on the iPhone.”

It’s a great read, and a nice nudge towards Apple.

Posted by Jyri | Permalink | 5 Comments

OLPC video review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM33EEAszHA

[itvt] Bloggit: LiveHive's NanoGaming Two-Screen Interactive TV Platform Penetrates US

--Company Signs Deals with Turner Sports, ESPN     (posted October 16, 2007)

LiveHive Systems, an Ontario-based company that specializes in two-screen interactive TV solutions, says that its flagship Web-based NanoGaming platform--which is available in conjunction with US broadcasts of NASCAR racing and NFL football, and with Canadian broadcasts of "Big Brother" and Major League Baseball--is on track to reach a North America-wide audience of over 100 million viewers. "Three major shifts are taking place in the behavior of traditional TV viewers," LiveHive co-founder and president, Dave Bullock, said in a prepared statement. "First, people are multi-tasking and watching TV at the same time that they're on their laptop or wireless network. Second, televised fantasy sports is growing rapidly. And third, viewers want to interact and be engaged. The result? TV networks and advertisers now realize the impact of the changing television viewer, which is why they're flocking to NanoGaming."

http://blog.itvt.com/my_weblog/2007/10/livehives-nanog.html

Deal with cable companies good news for TiVo

"Consumers are now ingrained with the idea they get a DVR for free. But with
TiVo, it's pay up front and then $12 to $15 month," said Jeff Schreiner, an
analyst with American Technology Research. "This new model fits TiVo better
because they don't have to sell the hardware to the individual to get them
to use the product."

The other good news is the continuing patent battle with satellite
television provider EchoStar Communications Corp. TiVo originally sued
EchoStar for patent infringement in 2004 and won an $89.6 million judgment
last year. In oral arguments last week in EchoStar's appeal, a three-judge
panel seemed to suggest it would rule at least partially in favor of TiVo.

A final decision is not expected for several months and could still be
appealed to the Supreme Court. But analysts say TiVo is in a good position
to win and reap a potential windfall, depending on the extent of the court's
ruling.

If all goes TiVo's way, it could take in money from EchoStar and also go
after other DVR-makers, demanding licensing fees for its technology. Or it
could go straight to other television providers who sell DVRs and secure
deals for its TiVo software.

"If they win it, this could be really big for TiVo," said Kunal Madhukar, an
analyst with Bear Stearns & Co. "The EchoStar settlement alone could mean 5
to 6 dollars more per share."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/13/BUORSP7UP.DTL

TiVo To Offer Its DVR Software On Comcast Machines

TiVo To Offer Its DVR Software On Comcast Machines
by Wayne Friedman, Monday, Oct 15, 2007 7:45 AM ET
MediaPost Publications

ONE OF TIVO'S MAJOR AGREEMENTS has finally comes to fruition--that of
placing its highly touted DVR software on non-TiVo made machines.

TiVo, the struggling DVR machine and service company, has finally seen its
software put on DVRs installed in some of Comcast's New England homes.

This comes after TiVo and Comcast agreed to a deal in March 2005 where
Comcast would use the TiVo software--which critics say is the best of all
DVRs--on all Comcast DVR machines. Motorola manufactures the DVR machines
that are in those New England subscriber homes.

All this took longer than expected because of the complexity of merging
TiVo's software. Deals in place will also allow Comcast to put TiVo software
on DVR boxes made by Scientific Atlanta, a unit of Cisco Systems Inc. TiVo
has traditionally made its own DVR boxes integrated with its own software.

Comcast, which has over 24 million subscribers, will be the first U.S. cable
operator to offer TiVo software on their DVR machines. TiVo made a similar
deal with Cox Communications in August 2006.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleH
omePage&art_aid=69141

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Damn script-kiddies

He's No Genius
 

BitDefender, a Bucharest-based data security provider, stated that Calin Mateias, the young Romanian recently indicted by a California Grand Jury for hacking into the online ordering system of Ingram Micro Inc. and placing more than 2,000 orders over a period of four years, is nothing more than a script-kiddy, with a stroke of luck.
 

Fwd: Home computers targeted by hackers '50 times a day'

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23370087-details/Home+computers+targeted+by+hackers+'50+times+a+day'/article.do

Fwd: Another interesting technology piece

http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2006/10/there_is_no_pri.html



 *** Suffice it to say, Big Brother is Everywhere.

A day on the Surface: a hands-on look at Microsoft's new computing platform

By Jeremy Reimer | Published: September 30, 2007 - 11:42PM CT

It's not often that one gets a chance to attend a demonstration of a new method of human-computer interaction. Having been too young to witness the development of the command line in the 1950s or the modern graphical user interface at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, it was a genuine thrill to visit Microsoft's campus for a personal demo of "surface computing." While future computer historians are unlikely to view this technology as being anywhere near as groundbreaking as the CLI or GUI, the multi-touch interface nonetheless serves as an innovative way of interacting with the personal computer.

 

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/surface.ars