Week11
From Technolotics
Folksonomy rankings, the future of search?
- Ok what is a folksonomy [1]
- A new search engine for social bookmarking, entitled collaborative rank [2], has launched.
- Site is a research project by a student of the University of New South Wales [3] in Australia
- It enables search of taggers posts to del.icio.us [4] weighing search results by user importance, for the specific tag searched [5]
- User rank is calculated based on the originality and subsequent popularity of a users posts to del.icio.us [6]
- Does this 'improve on pagerank' by rewarding taggers?
- The genius of del.icio.us [7] is that it provides an incentive for the grind of tagging, bookmark collection..But are other users tag choices and bookmarks useful?
- Could this lead to sites currying favour with top taggers?
- Or what about folksonomy spam?
RIAA sues a child
- Although the RIAA's case against 14 (then 13) year old Brittany Chan was dimissed with prejudice. They are continuing the persecution by suing her [8]
- The four major record labels are demanding that the court appoint a legal guardian so a case may be taken against her
Anonymous Bittorrent
- Users of the i2p anonymizer layer [9] now have the option to run anonymous bittorrent software
- Although it is possible to use onion routing (Tor) with bittorrent already [10], this is not what Tor was design to do, and is strongly discouraged
- Now users have the option of using the i2p network to anonymize Peer to Peer, with with azureus [11] (recommended), or custom I2P-BT torrent software [12]
Pod0matic Podcast Portal adds iTunes Support
- Great services which should hopefully Apples insane demand for a US credit card before adding a podcast to the iTunes store [13]
- Podomatic also provide 250megs of space for podcast hosting, and automatically create iTunes compatible RSS feeds for you. Making it an excellent beginner service
- Whats needed is a service which would provide for adding your cast into iTunes, without tying you to a single podcasting hub - allowing for expansion and more professional podcasts
The new private library
- Just like Google [14], yahoo is planning on scanning and developing a searchable online library of printed books [15]
- Unlike Google, yahoo are planning on making the complete texts of copyrighted works readable
- The Open Content Alliance, which is part financed by Yahoo, will synthesise the digital collections of several leading research librarys of research papers and historical works [16]
- This collection will not include copyrighted works without permission from publishers
- Scanning and hosting will be done by the Internet Archive [17], and works will be available under Creative Commons liscences [18]
- It remains to be seen how much publishers support they will recieve for this effort
- Several authors, such as BoingBoing's [19], Cory Doctorow [20] have demonstrated that open source / creative commons literature can still be commercially viable
The UnGoogleable
- All it takes is one link to your blog or darknet to get crawled, but some people are managing to stay off Googles radar [21]
- Some take this further, living completely off the grid, with no bank account, no credit cards, and no phone line - although clearly, being completely off grid and hense untaxable and untraceable would be illegal [22]
No you cannot have children
- The Indiana state legislature has proposed legislation which will require a licence to procreate by means other than sexual intercourse [23]
- Women wishing to use invetro fertilization, sperm donation etc will have to apply for a licence - a licence for which only married women will be considered
- The new law will make insemination without the "gestational certificate" a class B misdemeanor
- Under Indiana law this means that those convicted are liable for a 'Fine up to $1000 and up to 180 days in jail'
- A married couple requesting assisted reproduction..
- Must provide a description of the family lifestyle of the intended parents, include a description of individual participation in faith-based or church activities, hobbies, and other interests.
- Are subject to fingerprint and criminal history checks
- This is reminicent of Margaret Atwoods dystopian novel 'The Handmaids Tale' [24]
Make your own Web Application
- New social software Ning [25] allows you to develop your own social / folksonomy software!
- The service already includes templates of clones for a host of popular web applications like flickr [26], del.icio.us [27], thefacebook [28] etc
- Developers can clone existing apps, or make their own in PHP
- Although developers are restricted from running thirdparty adds, they are free to charge for the services they create
- Ning provides plenty of plug in services and APIs to make the creation of web apps easier, as well as built in (limited) storage space
- Current quotas for app content are - 1GB limit for public content, a 100MB limit for private content, and a 10MB limit for the developer file system where your PHP, HTML and other application files are stored
Steve Balmers Visit to Trinity
- Steve Balmer visited Trinity on Friday [29], and Jason was there reporting for us!
- PDF of proposed legislation [30]
Most sound recording are out of public reach
- A study by the library of congress [31] has concluded that a majority of sound recordings are unavailable [32]
- This is due to a combination of factors from changes in technology making old recordings unreadable to copyright holders lacking insentives to reissue them
How to pick up girls
- 'The Game' New book released on the blossoming PPA (Professional Pickup Artists Scene), which teaches how to use Neuro Linguistic Programming [33] to increase your conquests [34]
