Google to harness satellite power for an Amazon tribe
When the Brazilian government failed to defend his tribe against loggers and miners, the leader found a high-tech ally. [...] “The Amazon rain forest and its indigenous peoples are disappearing rapidly, which has serious consequences both locally and globally,” said Google Earth spokeswoman Megan Quinn. “This project can raise global awareness of the Surui people’s struggle to preserve their land and culture by reaching more than 200 million Google Earth users around the world.”
This is not the first time Google Earth has helped environmental or humanitarian causes. Last year, the Mountain View company joined with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to map out destroyed villages in Darfur, with the Jane Goodall Institute to follow chimpanzees in Tanzania, and with the U.N. Environment Program to illustrate 100 areas around the world that have been severely deforested.
Source: Jack Epstein, San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2007
The founder of one of the first online payment systems has launched a new way for people to buy goods over the Internet or via their cell phones. The new service, called Voice Pay, uses biometric voice analysis to authenticate users. The company says its technology is so reliable that it will guarantee all payments. According to founder Nick Ogden, who also set up the World Pay scheme in 1994 (a predecessor of PayPal), Voice Pay should make it much easier to buy items online or on the go, while dramatically reducing fraud.
Source: Duncan Graham-Rowe, Technology Review, June 11, 2007
Editor’s departure captured in just a Flicker
Call it a bit of a “video killed the radio star” moment, circa 2007: John Curley, who had been a deputy managing editor of The San Francisco Chronicle, announced that he was let go from the newspaper by posting the news on Flickr, the photo-sharing Web site. “I leave with great sadness, but not a trace of bitterness,” Curley wrote in his entry on Tuesday, which included a picture of his desk at the newspaper before he packed. “We all know what is happening to the newspaper industry, and it is not pretty.”
Source: Lia Miller, The New York Times, June 10, 2007
Boston-based startup EveryZing has launched a search engine that it hopes will change the way that people search for audio and video online. Formerly known as PodZinger, a podcast search engine, EveryZing is leveraging speech systems developed by technology company BBN that can convert spoken words into searchable text with about 80 percent accuracy. This bests other commercially available systems, says EveryZing CEO Tom Wilde.
Source: Kate Greene, Technology Review, June 12, 2007
Text messengers to fight crime in Boston
Boston’s police, facing an upsurge in murder and other violent crimes, have set up a system to allow witnesses to tip them off to crime by sending anonymous text messages. Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said the “Text a Tip Program,” announced on Friday, appeared to be the first in the nation to combine cell phone text messaging with an anonymous police tip line.
Source: Reuters, June 15, 2007
Bush administration attacks ’shield’ for bloggers
The Bush administration on Thursday blasted a congressional proposal that would shield a broad swath of news gatherers, including some bloggers, from revealing their confidential sources. The latest draft of the Free Flow of Information Act would pose a grave threat to national security and federal criminal investigations by protecting far too large a segment of the population, a U.S. Department of Justice official told Congress.
Source: Anne Broache, CNET News.com, June 14, 2007
The 5 dimensions of online gifts
Every day, more and more people join online communities, such as MySpace, FaceBook, and Second Life, and use file sharing systems like BitTorrent. In these virtual spaces they can reinvent themselves, make new friends, and share information and resources with others. Understanding how people give and receive digital gifts online is key to understanding the successes and failures of these communities. Now, computer scientist Jörgen Skågeby of Linköping University in Sweden writing in the International Journal of Web Based Communities, explains how there are five dimensions to the way people give and receive gifts online.
Source: Inderscience Publishers, June 13, 2007
Google to harness satellite power for an Amazon tribe
When the Brazilian government failed to defend his tribe against loggers and miners, the leader found a high-tech ally. [...] “The Amazon rain forest and its indigenous peoples are disappearing rapidly, which has serious consequences both locally and globally,” said Google Earth spokeswoman Megan Quinn. “This project [...]
