Building onto Facebook’s Platform

Facebook Platform, an application program interface (API) that developers can use to build applications within the social-networking site Facebook, has created a Silicon Valley gold rush. The API gives developers a great deal of access to Facebook’s social resources. Developers can build applications that fit in several slots on users’ profile pages; have access to information from users’ profiles, friend lists, and friends’ profiles; publish information through the News Feed on Facebook; and send alerts and requests. Users can add and remove applications with the click of a button. Since the launch of Facebook Platform in May, more than 2,000 applications have been made available on Facebook.
Source: Erica Naone, Technology Review, July 31, 2007

Online criminals are more sophisticated these days

A worldwide group of criminals has infiltrated the Internet in recent years. Using computer automation, they find unprotected personal computers and zap them with software that turns infected PCs into law-breaking zombies - without their owners’ being aware. [...] “We have identified over 1 million compromised computers as part of a larger investigation,” said Shawn Henry, deputy director of an FBI Cyber Crime task force that recently busted three of these alleged cyber bad guys.
Source: Tom Abate, San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 2007

Web-host company fully embraces solar

While large companies such as Microsoft and Google have gingerly plugged in to the sun’s energy, a newly announced Web host called Greenest Host is fully basking in it. Following the lead of long-standing green Web host AISO.net, Greenest Host is a 100 percent solar-powered. Based in San Diego, Calif., the company’s 2,000-square-foot datacenter is located in the inland desert of Southern California, where its solar panels soak up the sun.
Source: Ted Samson, InfoWorld, July 30, 2007

Are people more polite in virtual worlds?

Do people behave better in virtual worlds than on blogs, forums and chat rooms on the Web?
A group of virtual world advocates say “yes.” They just can’t prove it yet. “Character rancor is much different on blogs, Twitter, (etc)…It can get very petty,” Jaron Lanier, scholar-in-residence at U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, said here Wednesday at the Always On technology conference.
His theory is that people behave better in virtual worlds because they can be economically tied to their property, for example, and have “more to lose if they’re creepy,” he said. Lanier’s other theory is that seeing people, even in the form of an avatar, evokes empathy.
Source: Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com, August 1, 2007

Senate panel backs development of super V-chip

The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation Thursday asking the Federal Communications Commission to oversee the development of a super V-chip that could screen content on everything from cell phones to the Internet.
Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., the sponsor of the Child Safe Viewing Act, claims that the new law is necessary because content is no longer confined to the TV or radio, and he contends the same technology that allows content to increasingly migrate from device to device also can be used to empower parents.
Source: Reuters/Hollywood Reporter, August 2, 2007

Teacher Resigns After Internet Blog Insults

A French teacher accused of calling pupils “thick” in an internet blog has resigned from her post at Chesham High School. The resignation comes after controversy surrounded an internet blog by Julie Bois who taught languages at the grammar school in White Hill.
Source: Ann-Marie Canavan, Buckinghamshire Free Press, August 3, 2007

Nissan gets testy with drunk drivers

Beer-breaths beware. A new concept car with breathalyzer-like detection systems may provide even greater traction for Japanese efforts to keep impaired drivers off the road. Nissan’s alcohol-detection sensors check odor, sweat and driver awareness, issuing a voice alert from the navigation system and locking up the ignition if necessary. Odor sensors on the driver and passenger seats read alcohol levels, while a detector in the gear-shift knob measures the perspiration of the driver’s palm when starting the car.
Source: Dan Sloan, Reuters, August 3, 2007

New program color-codes text in Wikipedia entries to indicate trustworthiness

The online reference site Wikipedia enjoys immense popularity despite nagging doubts about the reliability of entries written by its all-volunteer team. A new program developed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, aims to help with the problem by color-coding an entry’s individual phrases based on contributors’ past performance.
The program analyzes Wikipedia’s entire editing history — nearly two million pages and some 40 million edits for the English-language site alone — to estimate the trustworthiness of each page. It then shades the text in deepening hues of orange to signal dubious content. A 1,000-page demonstration version is already available on a web page operated by the program’s creator, Luca de Alfaro, associate professor of computer engineering at UCSC.
Source: UC Santa Cruz Press Release, August 2, 2007