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Monday, November 1, 2010

Broadcasters busy with online tie-ins for election (AP) : Technet

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Broadcasters busy with online tie-ins for election (AP) : Technet

Broadcasters busy with online tie-ins for election (AP)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 12:19 PM PDT

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer David Bauder, Ap Television Writer – Mon Nov 1, 3:19 pm ET

NEW YORK – After losing viewers to cable news networks on recent election nights, television's biggest broadcasters are fighting back hard for the midterm contest.

ABC, CBS and PBS will each stream part of their election-night coverage on the Web on Tuesday, and NBC and ABC plan six hours of results lasting into early Wednesday morning. The networks will involve some of the biggest and most popular websites — Google, Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo! — in delivering their versions of the news.

Their moves are in marked contrast to recent big political nights, when network producers had to fight for limited time while looking jealously at CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, and their abilities to stay on stories 24 hours a day.

"It's a full-time effort to reach as many people in as many places as possible and still have the big event on television at 9:30," said Jon Banner, executive producer of ABC's "World News" and in charge of ABC's special events coverage.

ABC will air election coverage from 9:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET in prime time, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. From 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., the two anchors will stream a live program on ABC's website, on Facebook and the ABC News iPad application.

A separate ABC Web-only newscast, anchored by John Berman and Claire Shipman, will be streamed on Hulu, mobile platforms and Yahoo! beginning at 7 p.m.

ABC and CBS, in particular, have moved aggressively toward the Web because, unlike NBC, they don't have a cable outlet for their reporting. It's an effort likely to continue.

"We're going to be in more places and more devices two and four years from now than we are this year," Banner said.

CBS' Katie Couric has done frequent webcasts over the past couple of years and that's being incorporated in the network's plans this season. CBS will be on the air live for one hour in prime time, starting at 10 p.m. ET. Couric will anchor a live webcast for an hour after that.

For an hour before the TV network's telecast, CBS' "Washington Unplugged" will give election results and analysis online.

CBS will make some of its material available on YouTube and has a partnership with Google Inc. for access to the company's analysis of the political races.

"The future is here," said Rick Kaplan, "CBS Evening News" executive producer. "You can sit here and say, 'I'll dabble,' but that's silly. There's so much that you can do now."

At some point, viewing habits for events such as election night will become nonlinear, with viewers not distinguishing between what they see on television or computer screens, Kaplan said. The 2008 election was considered a milestone in "two-screen" viewing: Viewers following returns on TV screens but looking up information at the same time online, said Mark Lukasiewicz, head of special events coverage for NBC News.

"There will be a point at which this kind of coverage is offered to people who want it, as opposed to shoving it down the throat of people who are more interested in watching a movie," Kaplan said. Couric will be joined in her coverage by Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer, senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield and congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Election night two years ago was a record day for the Internet and many of its news and social sites, a strong signal to many news executives of its potential.

Even while watching TV, many people used websites for "digging down" into results, checking how national trends affected elections in their hometowns. People went on social networks to talk about the results; Twitter set a record for its messaging that night; and news aggregator Digg had its greatest traffic.

Executives will be watching to see how many people make use of smart phones or tablets like the iPad for following results this year. ABC's iPad app lets viewers play a "what if" interactive game, using their predictions to illustrate how they might affect the balance of power.

NBC comes on the air for two hours, starting at 9 p.m. ET, for a broadcast anchored by Brian Williams. His predecessor as anchor, Tom Brokaw, and "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory, will join him. After a local news break, the NBC News team will be on the air for four hours after that.

"We're up late because that's when the story is going to fully unfold," Lukasiewicz said.

NBC's live election coverage will be embedded on Twitter, allowing computer owners to watch it at home or send copies of videos to their friends online.

The network will also be active on social networks, hosting live chat sessions on its website and asking viewers to send in pictures of their polling places. The latter can be used to make a mosaic of the country on Election Day, and help journalists spot problems that may produce stories.

If the Super Bowl is a chance for advertisers to show off their creativity, election night is seen by networks as a place to display whiz-bang technology. NBC is using iPads, touch screens and virtual reality technology to tell its story. CNN, which offered a hologram two years ago as part of its coverage, will quadruple the size of the "data wall" that John King pioneered and display exit polling data with three-dimensional graphics.

PBS will use the Web, too, simulcasting its one-hour television special with Jim Lehrer on the Web at 11 p.m. Lehrer will do a one-hour webcast before going on television. On its website, PBS said it was doing a "social media stream," highlighting comments made by people on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Fox News Channel and MSNBC are also planning coverage sure to please the ideological camps that both networks attract.

The experiments going on with the broadcast networks, however, are important moments in determining the future of their election night telecasts and for the operations of their news divisions as a whole.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org

Blekko launches human-driven search engine (AP)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 01:03 PM PDT

By DANA WOLLMAN, AP Technology Writer Dana Wollman, Ap Technology Writer – Mon Nov 1, 4:03 pm ET

NEW YORK – If Google and Wikipedia were to procreate, their offspring might look something like Blekko, a new search engine with results culled by people, not computer algorithms.

The site's users are in charge of assigning tags such as "colleges," "autos" and "recipes" to Web pages indexed by Blekko, much the way Wikipedia users keep the online encyclopedia up to date by adding and changing entries as needed. If a tag doesn't already exist, a user can create it.

The search engine, which launched in public beta testing on Monday, claims improvement over competitors such as Google Inc. in that it's designed to weed out spam — sites whose owners have gamed the system so they appear at the top of search results, even if their content isn't relevant to the search keywords used.

Blekko also strips out results from content farms, which research trendy topics and then pay writers to pen short posts about them. These pages, which live on large sites such as eHow.com and Answers.com, rank highly on engines like Google, even if the content itself is too brief to be useful.

The company expects that the quality of search results will improve as more people add more tags — and remove irrelevant ones — to organize the Web pages.

All told, Blekko has 3 billion Web pages in its index; industry leader Google has more than a trillion.

Users can narrow their searches by, say, asking Blekko to report back only on products sold at Best Buy Co. Inc. As with Google, people can also filter out certain types of results, such as images, that won't be useful to them. The search engine's intelligence has its limits, though; users will need to know to distinguish "Best Buy" from "bestbuy."

The company has received $24 million in funding from U.S. Venture Partners and CMEA Capital, as well as angel investors including Marc Andreessen, who was instrumental in developing the Web's first commercial browser, Netscape. In the future, the site plans to make money through ads that appear next to results for certain tags, just as Google sells ads tied to search keywords.

Its founder, Rich Skrenta, has been developing the site since 2007. Before beginning work on Blekko, he created the Open Directory Project, which similarly relied on more than 80,000 volunteer editors to organize Web pages into more than 1 million categories. Ironically, before he set out to build a spam-free search engine in Blekko, he gained notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a personal computer virus — a quarter century ago as a ninth grader.

Blekko isn't the first search engine that attempts to let volunteer editors organize search results. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, launched Wikia in 2008, only to shut it the following year, saying it wasn't as successful as hoped. When Wikia launched, it indexed between 50 million and 100 million websites, a fraction of what even Blekko searches.

Other search engines have also attempted to compete with Google. Search engines such as Delver, Silobreaker and Cuil, the brainchild of ex-Google engineers, never took off. Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. recently merged their search efforts to better compete, with Microsoft's Bing service handling the back-end work for both companies.

Nissan shows tiny electric concept vehicle (AP)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 03:57 AM PDT

By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama, Ap Business Writer – Mon Nov 1, 6:57 am ET

YOKOHAMA, Japan – Nissan showed a two-seater electric vehicle resembling a go-cart Monday that isn't ready for sale but spotlights the Japanese automaker's ambitions to be the leader in zero-emission cars.

Nissan Motor Co. is planning to produce 250,000 electric vehicles a year, starting with the Leaf electric car set for delivery in Japan and the U.S. in December, and next year in Europe.

Its alliance partner Renault SA of France is planning to produce another 250,000 electric vehicles a year.

The two companies together will produce 500,000 batteries for EVs a year, said Nissan, which makes batteries with Japanese electronics maker NEC Corp.

"We don't want EVs to be a niche product," Corporate Vice President Hideaki Watanabe told reporters at the company's headquarters southwest of Tokyo.

He said Nissan boasts 18 years of development experience in lithium-ion batteries, which will power the Leaf, and the company developed its first electric vehicle in 1947. Lithium-ion batteries are common in devices like laptops but will be relatively new for autos.

Then Watanabe zipped around — smoothly and silently as is characteristic of electric vehicles — Nissan's showroom in the tiny electric vehicle called "Nissan New Mobility CONCEPT."

It has a range of a 100 kilometers (62 miles), and maximum speed of 75 kilometers (47 miles) per hour. The EV system was developed by Renault, but the car's design was by Nissan.

Some analysts are skeptical about the practicality of electric vehicles, noting they will make up only a tiny fraction of the overall auto market for some years to come.

Watanabe did not give a price for the concept car. He said uses were still being studied, such as amusement parks and Yokohama city's green mobility projects.

Nissan said it is setting up charging stations for electric vehicles, and forging partnerships with governments and companies, now climbing to more than 80 around the world from 30 last year in an effort to make the move to electric successful.

"That shows how interest in zero-emissions is growing," said Watanabe.

Nissan dealers in Japan will be equipped with battery rechargers with the goal of having 2 million chargers, and an additional 5,000 that recharge quicker, around Japan by 2020, according to the manufacturer of the March subcompact and Infiniti luxury models.

Nissan has set up a company to recycle used EV batteries to reuse and repackage, as well as reselling for back-up and storage.

Logitech keyboard powered by solar rays, indoor lights (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 09:23 AM PDT

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Mon Nov 1, 12:23 pm ET

Wireless keyboards are incredibly convenient when it comes to tapping away free of  constricting USB cables -- until their batteries go dead. But a new solar-powered keyboard from Logitech promises to keep you typing long after traditional batteries have run out.

Available this month for $80, Logitech's K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard looks pretty much like your standard-issue keyboard. It is jet black; boasts a full complement of concave QWERTY keys, numeric keypad and function buttons; and measures just a third of an inch thick.

Look closer, though, and you'll see twin solar panels flanking the Logitech logo above the main keypad. The panels soak up light from the sun and even indoor light, according to Logitech—meaning, theoretically, that the keyboard could work indefinitely in a well-lit office.

Logitech stopped short of claiming that the K750 will keep you typing forever given enough light, but it did say that the fully charged keyboard will work up to three months in complete darkness. (Cool. But I can't imagine there'd be too many people willing to test that particular specification.)

You'll be able to keep track of the keyboard's charge with help from an integrated light, and a downloadable desktop app will tell you if there's enough ambient light to keep the keyboard powered up.

But Bluetooth fans will be disappointed to learn that the K750 connects to your desktop or laptop using a USB dongle over a 2.4GHz RF connection—so no, you won't be able to type on your iPhone with this solar keyboard. Bummer.

At least you'll be able to type away secure in the knowledge that your keystrokes are protected by 128-bit AES encryption.

Another potential downside: The minimum requirements for the K750 listed on Logitech's website list only Windows XP, Vista and 7—no Mac. I've got a query in to Logitech for clarification, and will update this post when I hear back. Update: The keyboard and its RF-enabled dongle will work on Macs, a Logitech spokesperson tells me; however, there's still no word on whether there will be a Mac OS version of the keyboard desktop app.

Still, I like the overall concept of the K750. Now all we need is a solar-powered mouse to go with it.

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

Follow me on Twitter!

European iPhone users get late start thanks to daylight-time glitch (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 08:49 AM PDT

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Mon Nov 1, 11:49 am ET

iPhone users across Europe unlucky enough to depend on the alarm in Apple's Clock app to rouse them got a rude surprise Monday morning, thanks to a glitch in how the alarm handled the end of daylight saving time. (Europe ends daylight time on the last Sunday of October; most of the U.S. ends it on the first Sunday of November.)

Grumpy European iPhone users took to Twitter in droves Monday to complain about being an hour late to work, according to the Daily Telegraph. Apparently, the normal iPhone clock didn't skip a beat in the wee hours Sunday, when the European Union's official switch to standard time occurred -- but someone forgot to tell the iPhone's alarm app to fall back an hour, as untold numbers of sleepy European iPhone users learned Monday when their alarms went off an hour late.

[Five alternative alarm apps for the iPhone]

Engadget narrowed down the problem to recurring alarms on the iPhone—specifically, alarms that are set to go off at any frequency other than every single day of the week (such as every Monday, weekdays or weekends). Alarms set to go off only once weren't affected by the glitch.

How does one fix the errant iPhone alarm? Well, for now at least, Engadget advises that anyone in a standard time zone who needs to use a recurring iPhone alarm (besides those set to go off each and every day) should set the alarm to go off an hour early.

Making the daylight saving time bug all the more galling is the fact that it already hit in New Zealand back in September and in Australia just a few weeks ago. Apple told ZDNet Australia at the time that it had "developed a fix which will be available to customers in an upcoming software update."

Well, there hasn't been an iPhone update since early September—and meanwhile, the end of daylight savings time in the U.S. is set to hit this coming Sunday, Nov. 7.

Word to the wise for anyone who relies on the iPhone's alarm for getting up in the morning: Have a backup alarm (like that old Dream Machine that's buried in the closet) ready next Monday, even if Apple does issue a patch before Sunday's DST switch.

Either that, or make sure to test the iPhone's recurring alarm sometime before your usual Monday wake-up hour. Unless, that is, you don't mind being an hour late to work.

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

Follow me on Twitter!

Apple releases iOS 4.2 GM, solicits apps from developers (Macworld)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 04:57 PM PDT

David Chartier David Chartier – Mon Nov 1, 7:57 pm ET

On Monday, Apple offered up a final release candidate of iOS 4.2 to developers and begun soliciting apps built for it, suggesting that the company is close to hitting its promised mark of releasing the update in November. Apple previewed iOS 4.2 for iPhone and iPad at its September media event.

On its developer portal, Apple posted a message Monday asking developers to get their apps ready for iOS 4.2. This is important because, until now, developers could only submit app updates designed for the currently shipping versions of iOS—4.1 for iPhone and iPod touch, 3.2 for iPad.

Apple also issued iOS 4.2 GM for developers, a "Gold Master" version of the OS which is the version that will ship to end users like you and me.

Once it's released, iOS 4.2 will mark the first time that all three of Apple's mobile devices unite under the same version of iOS. Working against one version of the OS across all devices should simplify things at least somewhat for developers, but it will also bring the OS's latest and greatest tricks to all devices as well.

iOS 4.2 will also require iTunes 10.1, a beta of which has been available to developers for a couple weeks.

Guitar tab companies trying to strike chord online (AP)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 11:57 AM PDT

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – Mon Nov 1, 2:57 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Fans of band-simulation games such as "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" have few excuses not to seek out legitimate sheet music these days if they hope to graduate to playing real guitars.

A growing number of websites may help reverse a decline in sheet music sales last year. Trade magazine Music Trades, which compiles sales data, showed it was the first drop in eight years.

The most popular site is Ultimate-Guitar.com, which was founded by a Russian student in 1998. It offers guitar tablatures for popular songs — shorthands for explaining where your fingers go on a fret board, as transcribed by the site's users.

The site became a pariah of music publishers, which claimed the site had no permission to post transcriptions to their songwriters' music, even though some were inaccurate.

Even inaccurate transcriptions require licenses, an easily misunderstood concept that may have slowed Ultimate Guitar's path to legitimacy, said Jonathan Kehl, who handles licensing and business development for the company. In recent years, the site has obtained numerous licenses from music publishers including Sony/ATV, EMI and Alfred Music Publishing.

The site lets visitors, mostly amateurs, submit guitar tabs. These are then ranked and sometimes improved upon by other users. The site is free and shows ads to its more than 10 million visitors per month worldwide. The site, based in San Francisco, shares ad revenue with publishers to ensure that songwriters get paid, although Kehl didn't say how much.

"We're wearing the white cowboy hats now," Kehl said.

Other sites offer professionally produced transcriptions for download for 99 cents to more than $5. Among them: MusicNotes.com, GuitarInstructor.com and SheetMusicDirect.com.

UnitedWeTab.com, which launched in April, has put nearly 40 musicians to work transcribing songs, checking their accuracy with music publishers and making videos. The tabs sell for at least 99 cents each. The site's catalog has grown 15 percent since its launch and now boasts 14,000 songs, including ones transcribed by music publisher Hal Leonard Corp.

It takes two or three musicians about five days to get each new song right. UnitedWeTab's chief executive, Todd Gilman, said that makes the price of professional content worth it.

"We're giving people no excuse," he said. "You can actually get the songs you want, it's extremely accurate, and more importantly, especially for some of our younger users, it's cheap."

New Startup Seeks to Turn Your Mobile Phone into a Wallet Replacement (Mashable)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 04:34 PM PDT

Jennifer Van Grove Jennifer Van Grove – Mon Nov 1, 7:34 pm ET

This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Cimbal

Quick Pitch: Cimbal is an electronic payment network using software-based contact-free communication technology to turn a smartphone into a payment tool in-store, online and person-to-person.

Genius Idea: Thanks to a slew of startups pushing the mobile payment space forward, mobile phones are fast-becoming an acceptable form of payment tender and are serving as convenient replacements for credit card terminals.

Square helps merchants and consumers accept credit card payments via mobile devices, PayPal's Mobile Checkout Express powers Starbucks' QR code mobile payment pilot program and Venmo enables friends to exchange funds via iPhone or SMS.

Newly launched startup Cimbal seeks to be the best of a bunch by satisfying all the aforementioned purposes with a consumer- and merchant-friendly software-only approach to mobile payments.

Cimbal produces a unique 2-dimensional barcode (otherwise known as a QR code) for each transaction. The payee can initiate payment from their mobile device by scanning the QR code via the Cimbal app. Codes are scannable on the web, in stores, on print materials (like invoices) and on other mobile devices.

Merchants can integrate these codes into their point-of-sale software to accept mobile payments via iPhone or Android -- no hardware required. There's also no license fee for merchants, but they do pay per transaction at rates that vary based on the volume of transactions.

Consumers can use the mobile apps to pay for retail goods, or exchange funds with friends instantaneously. Cimbal users will, for the time being, find the most value in the person-to-person payment options. Should you wish to collect on an IOU (and your Cimbal account has been authenticated), you can use the mobile app to request payment. Cimbal will generate an invoice with the code to send via e-mail.

There's also a proximity payment option for users wishing to exchange funds with friends in the same place at the same time. The seller will request payment and Cimbal will generate the code as usual, but the payee can simply scan the code from the seller's mobile phone to initiate payment.

One way Cimbal stands out is in its ability to speedily authorize payments and settle transactions in real time. What this means is that merchants or consumers who accept a mobile payment via Cimbal will find those funds deposited into their accounts instantly.

CEO Christopher Boone tells Mashable that the startup is currently working with department stores and grocery retailers and could make Cimbal's mobile payment solution available at these merchants as soon as Q4 of 2010.

Cimbal is operating on an undisclosed amount of angel funding and is currently pursuing a substantial Series A round with interested investors, says Boone. Because Cimbal only works if both parties in the payment exchange use the service, it faces the same challenges as Venmo around user adoption.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

ViewSonic Will Offer Tablet with Android and Windows 7 (NewsFactor)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 02:34 PM PDT

Adam Dickter, newsfactor.com Adam Dickter, newsfactor.com – Mon Nov 1, 5:34 pm ET

The tablet-computer war is heating up as Black Friday nears, with Samsung rolling out its Android-based Galaxy Tab on several wireless carriers next week and ViewSonic unveiling two new devices Monday -- including one that runs both Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows 7 Home Premium operating systems.

After its debut in Europe last month, T-Mobile will be the first in the U.S. to get the Tab, which is essentially a larger version of the Samsung Galaxy 5 phones available in variations on all four top wireless carriers. T-Mobile's price, beginning Nov. 10, will be $399 with a two year contract. Sprint Nextel will charge the same price, also with a two-year contract, beginning Nov. 14, while Verizon Wireless as of Nov. 11 will sell the Tab for $599 without a contract, although a data plan is available. Consumers can also put the Tab on their tab at Best Buy stores.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in an Oct. 18 earnings call, took a calculated jab at the Tab and others like it, saying, "The seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad." He also noted that Google was advising tablet makers that the current 2.2 version of Android is not well suited for tablets, and that was the reason given by Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha for his company's slow entry into the tablet market.

Dual Boot

But Walnut, Calif.-based ViewSonic, best known for computer displays, evidently has no such reservations about Android as it unveiled seven-inch and 10.1-inch ViewPad tablets. But the larger model seems to be hedging bets by allowing users an option to boot up in Windows 7.

The smaller ViewPad, equipped for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3.5G data, will be available later this year for $479 and packs front and back cameras, although the front-facing camera is only 0.3 megapixels, compared to three megapixels on the back. It has a 800x480 WVGA LCD display and, ViewSonic says, it's the only seven-inch Android-powered tablet to feature Google's Mobile Services applications, which include Gmail, maps, picture-based searches, voice searches, and more.

The larger ViewPad has a 1024x600 LED backlit capacitive multi-touch screen, but only runs Android 1.6 rather than its sister's 2.2. It also has only one 1.3-megapixel camera. It will sell for $629 in the first quarter of next year. Distributors were not announced.

"Leveraging our 20-year display heritage, these new ViewPad solutions provide users with anytime anywhere connectivity," said Jeff Volpe, vice president and general manager for ViewSonic Americas. "With access to the universe of Android apps, our new ViewPads are perfectly suited for enjoying digital entertainment and social media. Office productivity is also a snap with robust web-browsing functionality."

No iPad Threat Yet

"There is no shortage of media-tablet announcements this year, " said Jeff Orr, the principal mobile-devices analyst for ABI Research. "But there has been a lack of commercially available competitors to Apple's iPad introduced in April and the lesser-known vendors offering media-tablet products since mid-2009."

Orr said that because the form factor is still new, it remains to be seen whether businesses will take to them.

"The rumors of people ditching laptops and smartphones in favor a single converged device are exactly that -- rumors," Orr said. "Until more IT-friendly devices are available, enterprises are merely toying with the possibilities of media tablets. If anything, this examination is increasing consideration for tablet PCs to be reconsidered for industrial applications and kiosks."

"Dual-boot capabilities ... are not new," he added. "There are laptops and netbooks with this capability today, but typically suggest a very sophisticated user that wants to get the best from different OS platforms. Some models are available pre-installed with two operating systems, while users also have the ability to format their hard drives in this way."

New Website Helps You Find Out If Political Tweets Are 'Truthy' (PC World)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 04:41 PM PDT

David Daw David Daw – Mon Nov 1, 7:41 pm ET

Feeling overwhelmed by the uproar of political messages clamoring for your attention online? Finding it difficult to distinguish political fact from political fiction?

A new Website called Truthy--started by researchers at Indiana University--hopes to help you.

Truthy searches through the tens of thousands of political tweets that are posted each day, looking for new political memes--ideas that spread and replicate like genes on the Internet. Once it has identified a meme, Truthy tracks it back to its source to determine how it spread. It also collects data on the meme's variations and spinoffs.

Once it has collected all this information, Truthy feeds all the data through specially designed classifier software that attempts to evaluate whether the meme is true or merely "truthy." The site's name is derived from "truthiness" a word coined by Comedy Central's Steven Colbert, in his comedic role as a blowhard conservative pundit, to refer to knowledge drawn intuitively without regard to factual evidence, logic, or intellectual rigor. The word now appears in the New Oxford American Dictionary, with an attribution to Colbert.

The Truthy site defines itself this way: "We are a non-partisan research group. The memes we track are the results of automatic detection algorithms based on a large and comprehensive set of keywords including the names of all candidates, districts, and other terms related to the upcoming elections. The mix of the thousands of memes that you can see on the site is simply a reflection of the active chatter in the Twittersphere." More information is available on Truthy's FAQ page.

What Truthy Tells You

The data that the site collects also helps Truthy to compile various statistics about each meme, such as the number of users who've tweeted about it, the number of tweets per user, and even the emotional content of the meme. [Listen to a Truthy researcher explain how the analysis works.]

Dr. Fillipo Menczer, head of IU's Center for Complex Networks & Systems Research works on Truthy with a team of three other professors and five graduate students.

What are the attributes a suspicious meme? Menczer points out one specific example found on Truthy's gallery site: "We have these roughly ten [Twitter] accounts that are all traced back to one person. They all point to particular Web pages all on one Website. Some of the tweets generated by these accounts are to attack Chris Coons [the Democratic candidate to replace retiring Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman; his chief opponent is Republican candidate Christine O'Donnell]. Saying for instance 'here's how Chris Coons will make millions on cap and trade.' If you click on [the links], you go to this Website that has no attribution..."

Menczer stresses that his team can't say for certain whether the messages about candidate corruption constitute an orchestrated smear, but he argues that the retweeting pattern of the accounts, discovered by graduate student Jacob Ratkiewicz, renders the meme suspect. [Follow Truthy on Twitter.]

How Truthy Started

The original idea for Truthy arose in reaction to an attempt by a group called the American Future Fund to influence the Massachusetts special Senatorial election to fill the late Senator Edward Kennedy's seat through an organized Twitter misinformation campaign, according to a story in the Boston Globe.

The Globe report focused on findings by researchers at Wellesley College that the American Future Fund appeared to be responsible for setting up nine accounts that sent 929 tweets over the course of about 2 hours attacking and spreading misinformation about Democratic candidate Martha Coakley's record--a method that the researchers called a "Twitter-bomb."

The messages would have reached about 60,000 people before Twitter realized they were spam and shut them down, according to the Wellesley researchers. The retweeting was so widespread that--at one point--the meme popped up on the first page of Google search results on Coakley.

What's Next for Truthy?

"In the short run, we're focusing on the [November] elections," Says Dr. Menczer, "In the long term, we're looking into automatically detecting truthy memes." Truthy currently analyzes the truthiness of memes by crowdsourcing them, but the IU team has some concern that sophisticated online operatives might game this system, thereby decreasing the value of Truthy as a fact-finding tool.

Once the kinks have been worked out, the team hopes to extend the tools that Truthy uses to other domains. Michael Conover, another graduate student in the team, would like to investigate tweets made immediately after natural disasters--circumstance where rumors are likely to start quickly.

The team is also trying to see whether Truthy can help answer some general questions about how information propagates through social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Menczer says that the Truthy team is currently seeking funding for research aimed at determining what makes people retweet some things but not others. "We'd like to see if we can make predictions about what's going to be popular," he says.

For additional election-related tech news stories, see "E-Voting Concerns Overblown, Officials Say" and "Change in Congress: Business as Usual for Tech."

Ford bets big in digital marketing departure (Reuters)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 03:11 PM PDT

By Bernie Woodall Bernie Woodall – Mon Nov 1, 6:11 pm ET

DETROIT (Reuters) – Forget the Super Bowl: Ford's marketing chief Jim Farley says he can get more for less on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

If Farley is right, millions of hits for Ford Motor Company on social media websites will dwarf the impact of ads broadcast during the National Football League's February championship game -- high-profile space selling for $3 million for 30 seconds.

"Customers are spending as much time with the mobile smart phone or online as they are watching TV now, so our advertising dollars have to flow to where the people are," Farley told Reuters in an interview.

Under Farley, 48, who joined Ford from Toyota Motor Co in 2007, the No. 2 U.S. automaker has bet bigger on the emerging category of digital advertising including websites and social media than any of its rivals.

Farley has taken the approach credited with the early success of the youth-oriented Scion brand he launched at Toyota and applied it to the makeover of an established auto brand.

He is betting Ford can use Facebook and Twitter to accelerate the word-of-mouth recommendations long familiar to the auto industry and help the blue-oval brand connect with younger and richer people.

Farley said he learned at Scion that the only way to push past consumer skepticism is "to break into their world."

"You have to shove your way in there. The way we do that is to break down myths. The great thing about Americans is they are always hungry for something new," he said.

Ford's U.S. sales are up almost 22 percent so far this year, twice the growth rate of the industry overall.

Farley's term at Ford has coincided with a sharp turnaround in its image. ALG, a firm that tracks consumer perceptions, said in a report issued on Monday that Ford cars and trucks lead all brands in gains in perceived quality since 2008.

FORD SEEKS FACEBOOK FRIENDS

Farley, who is seen as a potential successor to Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally, called the Super Bowl, "a fantastic advertising opportunity" -- for unknown brands.

"If you are a company that wants to launch a new product that no one has ever seen before, it's a great venue."

Under Farley, Ford has spent 25 percent of its advertising budget on digital media in 2010, the same proportion as in 2009. That ratio is twice what J.D. Power and Associates says will be the average digital media spend in 2012.

Farley would not disclose the dollar amount of that spending.

One of the first experiments in Ford's new approach was its 2009 move to recruit Web-based "agents" who would help promote its launch of the Fiesta subcompact. In a follow-up, Ford used Facebook to reveal key aspects of the Explorer SUV rather than wait for an established auto show.

Now, Ford is seeking "bloggers, social media mavens and Facebook friends" to submit video applications to be one of 100 who will drive the 2012 Focus around southern France or Spain early next year, ahead of the car's launch.

The effort, called "Ford Focus Global Test Drive" seeks to create buzz ahead of the launch of a vehicle central to Mulally's vision for a streamlined product lineup.

Farley said that the Fiesta campaign had boosted consumer awareness of the Ford subcompact over direct competitors like the Honda Fit or the Toyota Yaris. At the same time, Ford only spent one tenth of what it would have through traditional media, including television, he said.

Farley's moves mark something of a contrast with the approach by cross-town rival General Motors Co.

Under its new marketing chief Joel Ewanick, GM is pushing back into advertising at the kinds of high-profile, high-cost events like the Super Bowl that it had abandoned in its slide toward bankruptcy.

In one example, last week GM rolled out a campaign for Chevrolet that plays to its base -- patriotic Americans with memories of the days when Chevy dominated.

By contrast, Ford is playing up the new elements in its product line-up, both new vehicles and new technology like the MyFord Touch system for navigation, entertainment and communications in campaigns that include videos for Google's YouTube.

Charlie Vogelheim, executive editor of Intellichoice, a consumer auto consultant, said Ford had pushed beyond its rivals in the way that it is building online buzz.

"Everyone is involved in digital marketing. The extent that Ford is doing it, wrapping it around events and utilizing the media with its launches, that is where Ford is taking leadership," he said.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

Facebook Testing "Popular Places" Module (Mashable)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 12:17 PM PDT

Jolie O'Dell Jolie O'dell – Mon Nov 1, 3:17 pm ET

Some folks are seeing a new, Places-based, checkin-focused module on Facebook.

"Popular Places" shows locations at which friends in your network frequently check in. It appears for some users on the right column of the web interface, where you might normally see events, advertisements or the increasingly irrelevant "poke" list.

Ideally, this new feature could help you find interesting, personally relevant destinations in your area. It will also be one of the first ways Facebook is singling out and surfacing checkins aside from having them appear in the news feed.

The module was first spotted in the wild by Inside Facebook, which publication reported in September that a "Recent Checkins" module had also been spotted on the site.

Facebook launched Places, its location-based checkin service, in August. A developer API was launched the same day. The API was read-only; The functionality of a "recent checkins" or "popular places" app is the kind of thing that would be enabled by a read-only API.

Facebook released write and search APIs to a limited number of private beta partners, including such companies as Foursquare and Yelp, back in August.

However, from the point of view of the businesses operating at those locations, Popular Places also acts as a bit of free advertising -- all the more reason for SMBs (that's small and medium-sized businesses) to start using Places, in conjunction with Facebook Pages, now.

While there are rumors about Facebook Places-based advertising deals in the works, nothing has yet been confirmed by Facebook. Businesses' best bet for the time being is organic marketing -- encouraging visitors to check in and hoping those checkins pop up frequently in the stream and in Places-focused modules.

Have you seen Popular Places or other Places-based modules randomly popping up on Facebook.com? Let us know in the comments!

Image courtesy of Inside Facebook.

Best free iPad apps of all time (Appolicious)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 02:00 PM PDT

ViewSonic Introduces Two Tablets (PC World)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 02:25 PM PDT

Melissa J. Perenson Melissa J. Perenson – Mon Nov 1, 5:25 pm ET

ViewSonic is jumping into the tablet game. Although the company is best known for its monitors, a tablet isn't a huge stretch--after all, ViewSonic is used to dealing with displays, and it also puts out netbooks under its brand. The latter is a key reason why the company's dual-operating-system, 10-inch tablet comes as less of a surprise.

Details on the new tablets remain a bit sparse, in spite of the fact that one of them--the ViewPad 7--is due out in late November or early December, in time for holiday shoppers willing to drop about $479 (street) on an Android tablet.

The ViewPad 7 will run Android 2.2 and carry a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor; unlike some tablets, however, this one will feature Google's services (including the Android Market). It also has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and is 3G-ready (meaning, you can pop in the SIM card of your choice for 3G data).

Although the unit has an IPS display, its resolution sounds low. Offering an 800-by-480-pixel, WVGA-resolution, capacitive multitouch screen, the ViewPad 7 supports video playback only up to 480p. It comes with two cameras--a VGA front-facing camera and a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera--plus a MicroSD Card slot for expanding storage up to 32GB. The battery is rated to last about 10 hours (under what usage conditions is unclear). Interestingly, it powers up via its mini-USB link, a contrast to competitors such as the iPad and the Galaxy Tab, both of which need extra power from a connector other than USB. Dimensions and weight remain a mystery, as does what other ports might complement the mini-USB.

The ViewPad 10, due in the first quarter of 2011, will be a dual-boot device with both Windows 7 Home Premium and Android 1.6 on board. If the product does indeed ship with Android 1.6, however, that OS will make the device feel woefully outdated before it even leaves the gate. Worse, ViewSonic says that because of the dual-boot setup, upgrading just the Android portion (whether through ViewSonic's own update or a hack) will be harder. As of now, ViewSonic plans no user control over upgrading the OS.

The larger tablet is really pursuing users who want a netbook's functionality, with the keyboard. The ViewPad 10 will pack a 1.66GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of memory, 16GB of user-accessible flash storage, a MicroSD Card slot, and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera (but no rear-facing camera). The screen is 1024 by 600 resolution, and LED-backlit. As with its 7-inch cousin, the ViewPad 10's weight, dimensions, and ports remain undisclosed.

Microsoft Clarifies Silverlight Role (PC World)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 04:30 PM PDT

Joab Jackson Joab Jackson – Mon Nov 1, 7:30 pm ET

Silverlight still has a bright and promising future with Microsoft, the company's servers and tools division chief, Bob Muglia, wrote in a blog post on Monday, aiming to quell rumors to the contrary.

"Make no mistake; we'll continue to invest in Silverlight and enable developers to build great apps and experiences with it in the future," Muglia wrote.

With the post, Muglia was responding to the reaction to an earlier interview he had done with ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley, in which he described Silverlight primarily as a development platform for Windows Phone 7. He downplayed its cross-platform capabilities, characterizing HTML5 as the tool of choice for cross-platform developments instead.

"Our strategy has shifted," he said in that interview.

Microsoft had originally developed Silverlight as a platform for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). An alternative to Adobe Flash and Flex, Silverlight could be used to build applications that would run, with the aid of a plug-in, across different browsers, and would offer capabilities that HTML itself could not provide.

But Foley, and others, had noted Silverlight's low profile at the company's Professional Developers Conference (PDC), held last week in Seattle. There, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer only mentioned it once during his keynote speech, while at the same time praising HTML5's cross-platform capabilities. Also, the PDC itself did not have that many sessions devoted to Silverlight.

For many, this lack of a presence was just the latest and most definitive sign that Silverlight's future itself was in jeopardy.

Not helping matters was the fact that Microsoft has not announced a release date for the next version of Silverlight, version 5. In a series of widely read blog posts and Twitter updates, Web designer Scott Barnes, a former Silverlight product manager, has speculated that Silverlight is losing favor within Microsoft itself, perhaps due to the fact that its cross-platform compatibility could be a threat to the Windows dominance of the desktop.

Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond said the reaction to the ZDNet interview was "a tempest in a teapot." On Twitter, within a matter of a few hours, "It went from 'our strategy is shifting' to 'Silverlight is dead,'" he said.

In his blog post, Muglia attempted to dispel the gloomy rumors. He described Silverlight as Microsoft's platform for building Web-based applications that can run across different Microsoft platforms, either on the desktop or on a mobile device. "The purpose of Silverlight has never been to replace HTML, but rather to do the things that HTML (and other technologies) can't, and to do so in a way that's easy for developers to use," he wrote.

Even before Muglia's blog posting, analysts were skeptical of the idea that Microsoft was killing off Silverlight.

"Silverlight is extremely important for Microsoft, because it may be Microsoft's best way to take the native client development for Windows forward to a Web architecture," said IDC analyst Al Hilwa, who oversees application development software.

Hilwa noted that when Microsoft released Silverlight, the company did not expect that such a wide range of mobile platforms would be available within a few years. "We have a world with many more platforms and form factors," he said. Now, Microsoft would probably not be interested in porting Silverlight to all these platforms, though Silverlight still makes sense for bridging different Windows platforms, Hilwa said.

"There are still a lot of Web applications deployed inside of enterprises that are running on Windows platforms," Hammond said. "Those organizations that have large libraries of .NET applications will continue to use Silverlight, because it represents an easier way to deploy those applications compared to a full .NET client."

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Search engine Blekko launches; eliminates spam (Digital Trends)

Posted: 31 Oct 2010 10:57 PM PDT

Laura Khalil Laura Khalil – Mon Nov 1, 1:57 am ET

The result is an improved search experience that delivers results from high quality sites, leaving behind spammers, aggregators and content farms.

Blekko bases its technology on a simple tool called a slashtag. Slashtags are curated sets of web sites organized around a particular topic. These cover topics as broad as health, money, and autos, and as narrow as gluten-free and neurotechnology. Slashtags are added to search queries and limit search results to only the curated sets of sites.

With the launch of the public beta, Blekko is also automatically applying slashtags to improve results in seven initial search categories: health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels. For example, searching "cure for headaches" on Blekko will provide results only from the top quality sites in the health category.

For searches that don’t fall within one of Blekko’s pre-defined categories, Blekko uses its proprietary ranking algorithms to deliver relevant results from its 3 billion page web crawl. As users create and refine more slashtags, Blekko plans to expand “auto-slashing” to improve results in more categories.

"Today is the first step in a process of building a volunteer army at Blekko that will eventually slash spam from search and deliver the most relevant results," said Rich Skrenta, CEO of Blekko. "As the number of URLs on the web increases from billions to trillions, it will take a layer of human oversight to separate the trusted content from the spam."

Also new to the public beta is a community platform that allows users to work together as they create slashtags. This includes group editing of slashtags and collaborative communication tools. The expectation is that as the number of quality slashtags grows, so too will Blekko’s auto-slashing of queries.

Blekko has been available on a very limited basis in private beta that began in July, 2010. More than 8,000 users from around the world joined the beta. During the beta period, users created more than 3,000 slashtags.

Nokia gets its own Wordpress app (Digital Trends)

Posted: 31 Oct 2010 08:20 PM PDT

Laura Khalil Laura Khalil – Sun Oct 31, 11:20 pm ET

nokia n8Wordpress wants to make it easier for smartphone users to blog remotely. The popular blogging platform has been putting time and energy into making mobile applications to do just that. Wordpress recently launched mobile apps for both Android and Blackberry users and have just announced that an open source Wordpress app for Nokia phones is here.

As mentioned in their blog post announcing the public beta, “We are very excited to share with all of you that in the coming weeks we'll be opening up a beta test for the official Open Source WordPress for Nokia app. For developers who are interested in getting involved, we just opened-up a dev blog with details, links to the source code and trac tickets, and an early alpha build. We'll be leveraging the Qt framework which means will be able to support both the S60 and Maemo platforms.”

While it is surprising to see WordPress continue to support S60, considering that even Nokia dropped Symbian, the support for Maemo is reassuring. Maemo could be the next big competitor to other smartphone platforms such as Android, iPhone and Blackberry.

Since the project is open source anyone can feel free to go in and hack on the code to make modifications. The application currently supports Wordpress version 2.7, but we can expect to see it updated with the newest version and more bells and whistles in the near future.

Similar to the Wordpress mobile applications for iPhone, Blackbery and Android, the Nokia app is offered free of charge. Unfortunately, it is not yet compatible with Symbian3 devices like the N8, C6, C7, but can be used on the N97 Mini and X6.

Remains of the Day: Help me help myself (Macworld)

Posted: 01 Nov 2010 04:30 PM PDT

Dan Moren Dan Moren – Mon Nov 1, 7:30 pm ET

We all think can we can improve our lot in life. Whether it's a former Apple honcho speculating on future directions, a search engine that thinks it can topple the king of the hill, or even an influential engineer jumping ship from one high-tech company to another. For my part, I'm pretty sure I can top the remainders for Monday, November 1, 2010, but you'll have to keep tuning in.

Apple's Next Macintosh OS (Monday Note)

Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée opines that all modern operating systems are terminally ill. The cure for the Mac OS? An injection of iOS. And, naturally, more cowbell.

A new search engine, where less is more (New York Times)

It may sound like a missing Marx brother, but Blekko is a new search engine whose goal is to provide more useful results by having human editors skim out spam and material generated by huge content farms. Soooo, is there anything else left on the Web at that point?

Why I quit Google to join Facebook: Lars Rasmussen (Sydney Morning Herald)

One of the lead developers of Google Wave has left to join Facebook, thanks in part to a "compelling personal pitch" from co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. This can only mean one thing: the rise of the unholy offspring of Google Wave and FarmVille, as foretold in the prophecies!
at 9:16 PM

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