Social Networking is Hot

more about "Siva Vaidhyanathan on "Trendspotting"", posted with vodpod

onderschikt in:1s EN, Social Network, Social Web , Sociaal Netwerk

Google tips and tricks: find definitions and define price ranges

Permalink, 31 March 2009

In a previous article we showed that Google is rather refraining the development of search technology instead of advancing it. But there is more. Google seems also to hide some undocumented search options. When you go to ‘advanced search’ you can use options like ’site:’ , ‘filetype:’, ‘allintitle:’ when you want to specify that you only want results from a specified domain, in a specified file type or only those who have your search term in the title. There is another undocumented option: ‘define:’

Its quite simple just type

define: adhd

define: swaps

define: schizophrenia

or another word you want the definition of and Google will return 10 to 20 definitions from trusted sites like Wikipedia, princeton.edu, Stanford.edu etc. You can even get those definitions in other languages like French, Italian, German or Russsian.

It’s a quick way to find a definition when you do not have the time to read the article in the Wikipedia.

onderschikt in:1s EN, 2b News, Google, Google Watch, Googling , Google Tips and Tricks

Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp

Published by the New York Times
Jeffrey D. Allred for The New York Times

At the University of Utah, Prof. Juliana Freire is working on DeepPeep, an ambitious effort to index every public database online.

onderschikt in:1s EN, 2b News, Cyberculture, I T , Deep Web

Is Citizenship Being Diluted by Globalization? by Leslie Evans

Published at UCLA

Author Leslie Evans

Sociologist Saskia Sassen proposes that international business at one end and poor immigrants at the other are shaping a new status of individual rights no longer tied to citizenship in a national state.

“I do not see us going back to deeply nationalized forms of citizenship.”

Is citizenship going the way of the nation-state in our new globalized world? Saskia Sassen thinks so. The University of Chicago sociologist told a UCLA audience why at a March 25 talk sponsored by the International Institute. She began by acknowledging that there have been no really dramatic changes in the laws defining the standing of citizens in recent years. But that can be misleading, she said, because the legalities of who is a citizen and who is an alien have always had rough edges that are being redefined without the need to draft new legislation. “Their very incompleteness contains the possibility of change, and they must be incomplete to retain flexibility.” Professor Sassen’s talk reported on the research for her forthcoming book Denationalization: Economy and Polity in a Global Digital Age to be published this year by Princeton University Press.

Sassen’s central point was that legal rights that used to be given only to citizens are more and more being claimed by large groups of people who rest their claims on international rather than national law or on relatively new legal concepts such as human rights vested in individuals rather than governments. These changes, which weaken governments but are good for individuals who change states or travel internationally, are a consequence of globalization, which moves more people longer distances more often than the societies in which nation-states were first forged and their legal systems constructed.

For Sassen, the clear definition of a citizen is being eroded at the high and low end: at the top of society by growing numbers of employees of companies with a global reach, staff members of United Nations-type organizations, and people with dual citizenship. At the bottom by growing de facto legal rights of undocumented immigrants.

onderschikt in:1s EN, 2b Analysis, About Culture, About Politics, Democratie, Globalisation, Intercultureel , A-Nationaliteit, Anti-Nationalisme, Globalisatie, nationalisme, Nationaliteit

Change the Web Challenge

Calling all web developers! Create a web application by April 3, 2009 that draws on Social Actions’ open database of 60,000 + actions for a chance to win cash prizes:

1st place: $5,000
2nd place: $3,000
3rd place: $2,000

Social Actions currently aggregates opportunities to make a difference from over 40 online platforms such as VolunteerMatch, Kiva.org, DonorsChoose.org, Idealist.org, and Change.org. We’re looking for applications that will share these opportunities to take action on the websites, blogs, and social networks that people visit every day.

To be eligible to win, all submissions must: (1) be fully functional by the time community voting begins on April 6, 2009, (2) include an open-source license, and (3) make use of the Social Actions API. A panel of expert judges will choose the top 3 applications based on innovation, usability, and potential for impact. Winners will be announced at the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco, CA, on April 28, 2009.

As part of the Challenge, Social Actions is hosting the Change the Web Conversation Series for developers, nonprofits workers, activists, philanthropists, and anyone who wants to use technology for social change. These online chats will discuss how to use specific technology platforms like Mozilla, Facebook, the iPhone, OpenSocial, Twitter, Ning, and OpenConvio for good.

How to apply

• Create a web application with the Social Actions API.
• Register and/or Login on NetSquared.org.
• Click on your Username in the top right hand corner of the screen.
• Click on “Submit a Project Idea”
• Select ChangetheWeb from the Prize Tag menu located below Additional Cause Area Tags on the submission form.
• Application Deadline: April 3, 2009, 3:00 PM PST.
• Questions? Contact Joe@SocialActions.com.

Developer Resources:

• Join the Social Actions Developers Google Group
• Check out the latest API documentation (in the Google Group)
• Check out the Developer Resources Page
• Go to the Social Actions Idea Hub for inspiration
• Check out apps already powered by Social Actions’ API + the Change the Web Project Gallery

Got an idea, but need the help of a developer?

Here are some tips for how to find a volunteer web developer.

Join us

• Join Change the Web on Facebook
• Join Change the Web on Twitter

Timeline

• February 23, 2009 – Submission Period Begins 11:00 AM PT
• March 16, 2009 SXSW Party! Convio Nonprofit Technology Bash Featuring Change the Web
• April 3, 2009 – Application deadline 3:00 PM PT
• April 6, 2009 – Community Voting Begins 11:00 AM PT
• April 10, 2009 – Community Voting Closes 3:00 PM PT
• April 13, 2009 – Top Twenty Finalists Announced 11:00 AM PT
• April 28, 2009 – Winners announced at NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco

FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions.

onderschikt in:1s EN, 2b News, Cyberculture, Resistance

Cuil Search Engine

First Published on the Googlizarion of Everything

I spent most of yesterday playing around with Google’s newest competitor, .

I did a series of searches on Cuil and compared them with Google. The results, when I could get past the server crashes cause by the rush of others trying it out on its debut day, were very different. Some were better for me on Cuil. Others were better for me on Google. But the experiences (and results) were so different that it’s clear to me that the very familiarity and comfort with the Google experience has a major effect on users — even me. This is beyond “network effect.”

onderschikt in:1s EN

Google’s one-way mirror: a business model for privacy invasion and abuse by Daniël Verhoeven [Google Watch series, episode 02]

Permalink Author: Daniël Verhoeven

The main Google paradox

One way to define contextual information search would be intelligent search. In this article we explore one of the origins of human intelligence: mirror neurons. As to prominent linguists like Arbib  and Lakoff mirror neurons explain the adaptive evolution of the human language faculty and the development of conceptual knowledge (Arbib, 2005; Gallese, Lakoff, 2007). The problem is our easy and accepting relationship with Google. We are geesing at Google and engage with it more and more every day, uncritically unthinkingly.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is concerned about the fact that:

“….we do not properly understand the nature of the nature of the transaction between us and Google. …into our relationship with Google we do not grasp that we are not really Google’s costumers. Google calls us users, but in fact we are Google’s products. Our attention is what Google sells to its customers, which are the advertisers.” (BBC interview)

The thesis I want to develop here and in the articles to come is that by using Google we stop developing our conceptual knowledge. Googling is not an intelligent information search strategy. But we are always communicating something. In using Google we express our intentions and the cleverness of Google is to incorporate our intentions in its advertising system and giving us the feel we are finding what we are looking for, but  for all this is what Google wants us to look at. One of the things that intrigues me why Google does not disclose to its users their personal user profile, though it shares it with third parties:

• We may use personal information to provide the services you’ve requested, including services that display customized content and advertising.
• We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services.
• We may share aggregated non-personal information with third parties outside of Google.
• When we use third parties to assist us in processing your personal information, we require that they comply with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
• We may also share information with third parties in limited circumstances, including when complying with legal process, preventing fraud or imminent harm, and ensuring the security of our network and services.
• Google processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America and in other countries. In some cases, we process personal information on a server outside your own country.” ((http://www.google.be/intl/en/privacy_highlights.html)

The stunning paradox is that Google says that it wants to use our personal data for “research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services”, but is far to slow in improving search technologies. What about improvement? Google only recently (24 March 2009) implemented “a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search” as to ‘The Official Google Blog’. It was about time Google implemented this because this feature was implemented earlier in the search results of Google’s main competitors. Ask displays ‘Related Searches’ next to the page results and formulates additional relates Questions and Answers about the topic. Cuil lets you explore answers by category and subcategory. Ask and Cuil didn’t only offer associations and concepts earlier they offer more than Google does. Yahoo’s  versions of concepts is comparable with the one of Google, only it was implemented much earlier. and Wikia Search doesn’t only offer conceptual associations it is also letting the user add suggestions interactively. So it looks rather like Google felt the heat from its competitors than it implemented a novel improvement. (see Search Engine History);

Is Google stupid or does it thing we are stupid? I’m afraid the latter is the case. Google has collected the best research brains and is funding top research at universities worldwide but the use of this knowledge conflicts with its business model. If a Google search would deliver only relevant results, it would reduce the opportunities to show pay-per-click advertisements. These ads are the main income of Google.

About Mirror neurons

Mirror Neurons were discovered in 1994 in the macaque brain by Galese and Rizzolatti. What do Mirror Neurons do? They mirror observed actions:

“The observation of an object-related hand action leads to the activation of the same neural network active during its actual execution. Action observation causes in the observer the automatic activation of the same neural mechanism triggered by action execution.” (Galese, 2005).

In the years that follow, Galese and others (also called the Parma Group because they all work at the university of Parma in Italy) explore the Mirror Neuron system. The Mirror Neuron system is also demonstrated in the human brain. What is special about this is that the neural system for action execution is triggered but the execution of the action is inhibited. It’s not mere a system that is mirroring action it also performs simulations. When a given action is planned, its expected motor consequences are forecast. This means that when we are going to execute a given action we can also predict its consequences. The action model enables this prediction. Since the Mirror Neurons uses the same neuronal circuits this mechanism allows us also to predict actions of others.

onderschikt in:1s EN, 2b Analysis, Privacy , Google Watch

What about Google’s anti-social practices?

Publised at 2bloggen.org
Author: Daniël Verhoeven

When Google announced its integrated phone service called Google Voice Thursday, it said something very loud. Google is saying it wants to be the world’s communication hub, and hundreds of companies – ranging from mobile phone operators to Skype to Microsoft better be listening. Google wants it all.

Well lets first congratulate  Tim Berners-Lee and  Robert Calliau today at the 20th anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web. Most people seem to have forgotten that it was originally designed as a collaborative tool at the CERN in Switserland. Tim Berners-Lee (see video) called it a Grassroot movement at the time. Today, if we let Google and other usurpators do,  it is threathened to become a gigantic billboard along a deserted highway. We want Internet to be more intelligible and re-conquer the public space on the Net to stop the privatization of communication. That’s why I want to spread a critical note ont the 20th birttday of the Web. Because the ad industry is blocking the Open Society on the Net

onderschikt in:1s EN, 2b News, ICTI, Internet , Google Watch, World Wide Web, WWW

Les backdoors dans Skype

Publié par  newsoft

Un récent article au titre racoleur prétend qu’il existe des backdoors dans Skype, permettant aux forces de police d’écouter les conversations.

Au delà du FUD, il me semble évident (compte-tenu des informations disponibles publiquement) qu’il est possible d’écouter une conversation Skype.

Parmi les arguments qui plaident en faveur de cette hypothèse:

• La présence de failles exploitables à distance dans le logiciel. Dont la nôtre

onderschikt in:1s EN, 1s FR, 2b News, About Communication, ICTI, Privacy, Verhalen , achterdeuren, Skype

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onderschikt in:1s EN, I T, ICTI, Internet , Internet Security