In Japan Half The Top Selling Books Are Written On Mobile Phones

With all the talk about Amazon’s Kindle, there’s a bigger revolution taking place and those who studied classic literature will be horrified. In Japan, half of the top ten selling works of fiction in the first six months of 2007 were composed on mobile phones. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, mobile phone novels (keitai shousetsu) have become a publishing phenomenon in Japan, “turning middle-of-the-road publishing houses into major concerns and making their authors a small fortune in the process.”
Source: Duncan Riley, TechCrunch, December 2, 2007

New airport metal detector is a shoe-in

When it comes to gentility and airline security, we may have something to learn from Nairobi International, where they have the decency, and the equipment, to allow you to keep your shoes on. Nairobi joins Madrid, Prague, and Budapest in deploying the MagShoe, a “high-speed, shoes-on, portable footwear weapons detection system,” at their respective airports.
Source: Mark Rutherford, CNET News Blog, December 3, 2007

Early Voters Hold Most Power in Primaries

As voters in Iowa and New Hampshire prepare to head to the polls for the 2008 presidential primary season, new research by two Brown University economists shows just how much power these early voters hold. In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff demonstrate that early voters have up to 20 times the influence of voters in later states when it comes to candidate selection.
Source: Brown University news release, December 5, 2007

Brain Sensor for Market Research

A startup claims to read people’s minds while they view ads. [...] Market researchers have long sought people’s assessments of not-yet-released advertisements and products. But when people recall how they felt during a commercial, for instance, they often can’t accurately describe what their reactions were at each moment in the 30-second spot. Now a San Francisco startup called Emsense claims that it has the tools needed to monitor a person’s true reactions during an entire commercial or video game.
Source: Kate Greene, Technology Review, December 7, 2007

Thanks to OpenID and OAuth, the Open Social Web is Beginning to Emerge

Two fast growing standards in the world of identity management are paving the way for the open social web of the future. Earlier this week the final draft spec for OpenID 2.0 was released and, with the release of OAuth 1.0 last month, the open social web now has both a secure, centralized means of identifying yourself and a way to control who knows what about you.
Source: Scott Gilbertson, Wired News, December 6, 2007

IBM System to Scan Streets in Beijing, New York

When the 2008 Olympic Games kick off in Beijing next year, organizers will be using a sophisticated computer system to scan video images of city streets looking for everything from troublemakers to terrorists. The IBM system, called the Smart Surveillance System, or S3, uses analytic tools to index digital video recordings and then issue real-time alerts when certain patterns are detected.
Source: Robert McMillan, IDG News Service, December 6, 2007

Radio has picture perfect future

Digital radio means more stations have the ability to broadcast extra information alongside the audio. But some experts are looking at providing some pretty controversial extra radio content — pictures.
[There are already lots of experiments with "visual radios." But wait, isn't TV? Read more.]
Source: Spencer Kelly, BBC News, Click presenter, December 9, 2007