Is Google Making us E-tards?

Chances are you had to look something up recently, so you Googled it. As simple as that may seem, some people argue Google is changing the way we think and remember. Why does this happen? How does it impact the brain? Follow this link to the explanatory infographic.

Hands Off, Mom and Dad. This Tablet Is for Children.

Created specifically for children, Nabi is a $200 Android tablet from Fuhu that doesn’t kid around when it comes to things like the ability to plug into a HD screen, by way of a mini-HDMI port, or a multitouch screen that plays “real” apps like Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja.

Available in time for the holidays, it starts up in Kid Mode — a password-protected gated community of sites, apps, music and videos of your choosing. Unlike an iPad, this tablet runs Flash, so your bookmarks can include sites like PBS Kids. There’s a front-facing camera that can be used to Skype with a grandparent, and accelerometers that let you steer a race car in Need for Speed Shift — one the 15 apps that were preloaded on the unit I tested. The sound is so-so; stereo headphone jacks supplement the audio.    Full article

Quietly, Google Puts History Online

PARIS — When the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, home to the Dead Sea Scrolls, reopened last year after an extensive renovation, it attracted a million visitors in the first 12 months. When the museum opened an enhanced Web site with newly digitized versions of the scrolls in September, it drew a million virtual visitors in three and a half days.

The scrolls, scanned with ultrahigh-resolution imaging technology, have been viewed on the Web from 210 countries — including some, like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria, that provide few real-world visitors to the Israel Museum.

“This is taking the material to an amazing range of audiences,” said James S. Snyder, the museum’s director. “There’s no way we would have had the technical capability to do this on our own.”

The digitization of the scrolls was done by Google under a new initiative aimed at demonstrating that the Internet giant’s understanding of culture extends beyond the corporate kind. The Google Cultural Institute plans to make artifacts like the scrolls — from museums, archives, universities and other collections around the world — accessible to any Internet user.      Full article

The Beginning of American Internet Censorship: SOPA Bill

The Stop Internet Piracy Act or SOPA is a bill being voted on soon (or voted on yesterday?) and is one of two pieces of legislature being introduced which threatens the very foundation of the internet. I’m sure that you have already ready plenty of rantings online, but let me tell you a one more time. The internet is under attack!

The SOPA and Protect IP Act will enable the American government with the power to censor international websites that have users who post copy righted content. The type of censorship method proposed is the same used in countries like Iran, China and Syria. A very interesting and informative data visualization video about the Protect IP Act can be found here.  Article with graphic

Google Tries Again With Google TV

Google TV arrived last fall to lukewarm reviews. Its remote control was big and complicated, its software was clunky and confusing, and it didn’t live up to the promise of Internet-connected TV’s — that they would allow us to cut the cable cord and watch whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.

Google redesigned the YouTube app so it feels more like TV.

Now Google is trying again. On Friday, it will introduce the second version of its Google TV software. The hardware, which is made by Sony and Logitech, will stay the same for now. New devices, including from Samsung and Vizio, are scheduled to arrive next year.

This time, Google TV has a simpler user interface, smarter tools for searching, and is open to developers to build TV apps. It also has much humbler goals. Google no longer has visions of cord-cutting. Instead, it says it wants to complement what is already available on TV by offering new channels.  Full story

Stanford Researcher Finds Lots of Leaky Web Sites

The Web is porous. Remarkable information trickles in from everywhere. It also sometimes spills out without its users knowing exactly where or how.

Take for instance these findings, released on Tuesday by computer scientists at Stanford University.  If you type a wrong password into the Web site of The Wall Street Journal, it turns out that your e-mail address quietly slips out to seven unrelated Web sites. Sign on to NBC and, likewise, seven other companies can capture your e-mail address. Click on an ad on HomeDepot.com and your first name and user ID are instantly revealed to 13 other companies.

These findings, released by the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, are among the leaks found on 185 top Web sites. They serve to buttress what privacy advocates have long warned of: Your online travel — your clickstream, as it’s poetically known — is not always anonymous. It can often be traced right back to rather precise parts of you, including your name and e-mail address. The study was released at an event organized by the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington. Full story

LinkedIn’s Social-Ad Misstep

Move over Facebook. It’s time to pay attention to privacy on LinkedIn.

That was is the message of last week’s mini controversy over LinkedIn’s quiet effort to introduce a new type of advertising on the site that would commandeer users’ names and pictures for product endorsements.

LinkedIn first announced the new “social ads” in an upbeat blog post in late June. The ads would include the names and photos of people’s LinkedIn contacts if they were connected to the advertiser in some way and the company had changed its privacy policy. At the end, it mentioned that users may opt-out of the ads.

Full story.

A Call to Rethink Internet Search

“We could soon view today’s keyword searching with the same nostalgia and amusement reserved for bygone technologies such as electric typewriters and vinyl records.”

So declares Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, in an essay published Thursday in the science journal Nature. (Available online to subscribers or for a single copy purchase of $32.)

The missing ingredients, he writes, are mainly the necessary investments in money and science by leading technology companies and universities. The better world of search, according to Mr. Etzioni, will be services that field spoken or typed questions and generate useful answers. Or, as he writes, “natural-language searching and answering, rather than providing the electronic equivalent of the index at the back of a reference book.”  Full story.

China Steps Up Web Monitoring, Driving Many Wi-Fi Users Away

BEIJING — New regulations that require bars, restaurants, hotels and bookstores to install costly Web monitoring software are prompting many businesses to cut Internet access and sending a chill through the capital’s game-playing, Web-grazing literati who have come to expect free Wi-Fi with their lattes and green tea.

The software, which costs businesses about $3,100, provides public security officials the identities of those logging on to the wireless service of a restaurant, cafe or private school and monitors their Web activity. Those who ignore the regulation and provide unfettered access face a $2,300 fine and the possible revocation of their business license.

“From the point of view of the common people, this policy is unfair,” said Wang Bo, the owner of L’Infusion, a cafe that features crepes, waffles and the companionship of several dozing cats. “It’s just an effort to control the flow of information.”    Full story.

Happy IPv6 Day

Get out the confetti. Wednesday is World IPv6 Day.  If you are unaware of the event, you’re hardly alone. Few people know about it and if it is a success, it should stay that way. The day nevertheless marks an important step in the Internet’s evolution. The event is intended as a “test flight” for a successor to the current Web address system that – if successful – will help to ensure that the Internet runs smoothly into the future.

IPv6, as the Web address system is known, is intended to relieve the strain on a system that has been used since the Internet’s inception. IPv4, the original address system, was devised without consideration for how big the Internet would eventually become as a means for buying diapers, downloading music and sending risqué photos.

The problem is that IPv4 addresses are nearly all taken. The last batches were made available in February and are expected to be claimed by the end of the year.  Full story.