Larry Weidman Reading Material

~ Tuesday, February 22 ~
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Future of Search: Aditi Muralidharan, Ph.D. student UC-Berkeley (via OreillyMedia)

“

In the following video, Aditi Muralidharan (@silverasm), a Ph.D. student at UC-Berkeley, explains the core problem that catalyzes her research: We need tools that can help people have their ideas faster.

Or, as Muralidharan puts it: “Simply searching for it isn’t enough anymore.”

Toward that end, Muralidharan and her colleagues have developed WordSeer, a text analysis tool that examines and visualizes language use patterns.”


~ Sunday, February 20 ~
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Self-Induced Panic And The Financial Crisis | The Physics arXiv Blog | Technology Review “Panicky behaviour can trigger stock market collapses. Now researchers say there could be a way of spotting it in advance One idea in the world of finance is that the volatility of a market is a good measure of the risks it represents. So it’s easy to imagine that volatility should also be a good predictor of financial crises, when the biggest corrections occur. That’s not the case, say Dion Harman at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, MA, and a few buddies. They say that while volatility increases at the beginning of a crisis, it is unreliable as a leading indicator of trouble ahead. Instead, they’ve found a better predictor of trouble—the presence of sheer, unadulterated panic.” Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1102.2620: Predicting Economic Market Crises Using Measures Of Collective Panic Dion Harmon, Marcus A. M. de Aguiar, David D. Chinellato, Dan Braha, Irving R. Epstein, Yaneer Bar-Yam

Self-Induced Panic And The Financial Crisis | The Physics arXiv Blog | Technology Review

“Panicky behaviour can trigger stock market collapses. Now researchers say there could be a way of spotting it in advance

One idea in the world of finance is that the volatility of a market is a good measure of the risks it represents. So it’s easy to imagine that volatility should also be a good predictor of financial crises, when the biggest corrections occur.

That’s not the case, say Dion Harman at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, MA, and a few buddies. They say that while volatility increases at the beginning of a crisis, it is unreliable as a leading indicator of trouble ahead.

Instead, they’ve found a better predictor of trouble—the presence of sheer, unadulterated panic.”

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1102.2620: Predicting Economic Market Crises Using Measures Of Collective Panic

Dion Harmon, Marcus A. M. de Aguiar, David D. Chinellato, Dan Braha, Irving R. Epstein, Yaneer Bar-Yam


~ Friday, February 18 ~
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Apple, Google and online subscriptions: Paying the internet’s pipers | The Economist by M.G. “GETTING consumers to cough up for electronic newspapers, magazines, videos and other content has become much easier thanks to the spread of smartphones, tablet computers and other such revolutionary gadgets. Apple’s new subscription service for digital media, based on its iTunes platform, gives 70% of the revenue generated from sales to publishers, whereas Google’s new “One Pass” system lets them keep 90%. Apple also insists that prices publishers charge the same price (or less) for their in-app offerings as they do for those offered via other channels. Google, on the other hand, says publishers will be free to set their own prices and terms in One Pass. (Some in the publishing industry speculate that Apple’s determination to influence pricing of subscriptions outside the app store, as well as within it, could attract the attention of anti-trust watchdogs.) “

Apple, Google and online subscriptions: Paying the internet’s pipers | The Economist

by M.G.

“GETTING consumers to cough up for electronic newspapers, magazines, videos and other content has become much easier thanks to the spread of smartphones, tablet computers and other such revolutionary gadgets.

Apple’s new subscription service for digital media, based on its iTunes platform, gives 70% of the revenue generated from sales to publishers, whereas Google’s new “One Pass” system lets them keep 90%. Apple also insists that prices publishers charge the same price (or less) for their in-app offerings as they do for those offered via other channels. Google, on the other hand, says publishers will be free to set their own prices and terms in One Pass. (Some in the publishing industry speculate that Apple’s determination to influence pricing of subscriptions outside the app store, as well as within it, could attract the attention of anti-trust watchdogs.) “


~ Saturday, February 12 ~
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Khan Academy and BitTorrent Partner to Distribute Educational Videos | Hack Education by AUDREY  “There’s a new app in BitTorrent’s recently released App Studio today, one that really exemplifies the importance of the BitTorrent technology — the ability to distribute large files to people with low-bandwidth: Khan Academy, The Khan Academy app will bring over 2000 educational videos to the BitTorrent community. Users can freely download and share the educational videos, whose subjects range from statistics to algebra to organic chemistry.” Audrey Watters is a technology journalist, freelance writer, ed-tech advocate, recovering academic, rabble-rouser, and single mom.

Khan Academy and BitTorrent Partner to Distribute Educational Videos | Hack Education

by AUDREY 

“There’s a new app in BitTorrent’s recently released App Studio today, one that really exemplifies the importance of the BitTorrent technology — the ability to distribute large files to people with low-bandwidth: Khan Academy,

The Khan Academy app will bring over 2000 educational videos to the BitTorrent community. Users can freely download and share the educational videos, whose subjects range from statistics to algebra to organic chemistry.”

Audrey Watters is a technology journalist, freelance writer, ed-tech advocate, recovering academic, rabble-rouser, and single mom.


1 note
~ Thursday, February 10 ~
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3 mobile payment products hint at the future - O’Reilly Radar by David Sims | @ndwoods A new O’Reilly/PayPal report on web-native payment platforms, “ePayments: Emerging Platforms, Embracing Mobile and Confronting Identity,” is now available for download. Among the topics covered in the report are the rise of payment platforms, the mobilization of money, and the advent of contactless payment in mobile commerce. The following excerpt looks at three early mobile payment applications and what they might mean for mobile payment’s widespread adoption. Additional excerpts from the report will be featured here on Radar throughout the week. Related: Report excerpt: Big data thwarts fraud Open question: Will you use mobile payment? Starbucks mainstreams mobile payment Thoughts from the front lines of payment’s big shift

3 mobile payment products hint at the future - O’Reilly Radar

by David Sims | @ndwoods

A new O’Reilly/PayPal report on web-native payment platforms, “ePayments: Emerging Platforms, Embracing Mobile and Confronting Identity,” is now available for download. Among the topics covered in the report are the rise of payment platforms, the mobilization of money, and the advent of contactless payment in mobile commerce.

The following excerpt looks at three early mobile payment applications and what they might mean for mobile payment’s widespread adoption. Additional excerpts from the report will be featured here on Radar throughout the week.

Related:


~ Monday, February 7 ~
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my boss is a robot — crowdsourced journalism Posted by Jim Giles MacGregor Campbell and Jim Giles “created this blog to chronicle [their] attempt to answer a question: can unskilled, crowdsourced labor be used to create a product that require skills, experience and insight? (They are) both journalists [who chose] a product we’re familiar with: the news story. [They] want to create a high-quality piece that could run in a reputable news magazine or newspaper. [They] assign[ed] this job to the workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an outsourcing website…to do the reporting, writing, editing and fact-checking — all the parts of the editorial process. This blog is the work of MacGregor Campbell and Jim Giles who are San Francisco-based science and technology journalists. But most of the hard work of designing and running the experiment is being done by (their) collaborators: Niki Kittur and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University. See the about us page for more.

my boss is a robot — crowdsourced journalism

Posted by Jim Giles

MacGregor Campbell and Jim Giles “created this blog to chronicle [their] attempt to answer a question: can unskilled, crowdsourced labor be used to create a product that require skills, experience and insight?

(They are) both journalists [who chose] a product we’re familiar with: the news story. [They] want to create a high-quality piece that could run in a reputable news magazine or newspaper. [They] assign[ed] this job to the workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an outsourcing website…to do the reporting, writing, editing and fact-checking — all the parts of the editorial process.

This blog is the work of MacGregor Campbell and Jim Giles who are San Francisco-based science and technology journalists. But most of the hard work of designing and running the experiment is being done by (their) collaborators: Niki Kittur and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University. See the about us page for more.


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Could the Feds take down Google for linking to illegal material? |  Marketplace from American Public Media Posted by John Moe US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday that it recently shut down 10 websites, that it says were linking to other websites that hosted pirated material like pay-per-view entertainment and streaming sports coverage. Here’s an audio recording of the call:

Could the Feds take down Google for linking to illegal material? |  Marketplace from American Public Media

Posted by John Moe

US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday that it recently shut down 10 websites, that it says were linking to other websites that hosted pirated material like pay-per-view entertainment and streaming sports coverage.

Here’s an audio recording of the call:


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The Virtual Twitterverse That Can Forecast The Real Thing  | Technology Review Vijay Erramilli, Xiaoyuan Yang, Pablo Rodriguez Researchers have built a synthetic network that can recreate the behaviour of Twitterverse. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1102.0699: Explore What-If Scenarios Wwith SONG: Social Network Write Generator

The Virtual Twitterverse That Can Forecast The Real Thing  | Technology Review

Vijay Erramilli, Xiaoyuan Yang, Pablo Rodriguez

Researchers have built a synthetic network that can recreate the behaviour of Twitterverse.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1102.0699: Explore What-If Scenarios Wwith SONG: Social Network Write Generator


~ Tuesday, February 1 ~
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Morgan Stanley Mary Meeker's Mobile Internet Report

by Henry Blodget

“Here’s Mary Meeker’s amazing 424-page Mobile Internet Report.  If you don’t feel like reading all of it, check out the 92-slide “setup” or the 694-slide “key themes”.

If you just want the gist, meanwhile, check out the 4.5-word version.”



~ Sunday, January 30 ~
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90% of Y Combinator Startups Have Already Accepted The $150k Start Fund Offer Michael Arrington | TechCrunch “Late last night the 43 startups in the most recent Y Combinator class got quite a surprise.Start Fund, a new fund created by DST’s Yuri Milner as an individual and SV Angel, offered each of the companies a $150,000 investment in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount. Most of these companies are still in stealth mode, and Start Fund hasn’t seen them. They made the offer based on the Y Combinator stamp of approval.”

90% of Y Combinator Startups Have Already Accepted The $150k Start Fund Offer

Michael Arrington | TechCrunch

“Late last night the 43 startups in the most recent Y Combinator class got quite a surprise.Start Fund, a new fund created by DST’s Yuri Milner as an individual and SV Angel, offered each of the companies a $150,000 investment in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount.

Most of these companies are still in stealth mode, and Start Fund hasn’t seen them. They made the offer based on the Y Combinator stamp of approval.”


~ Friday, January 28 ~
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6 Ideas For Those Needing Defensive Technology to Protect Free Speech from Authoritarian Regimes and 4 Ways the Rest of Us Can Help | Surveillance Self-Defense International | Electronic Frontier Foundation Peter Eckersley, pde@eff.org “Introduction: The Internet remains one of the most powerful means ever created to give voice to repressed people around the world. Unfortunately, new technologies have also given authoritarian regimes new means to identify and retaliate against those who speak out despite censorship and surveillance. Below are six basic ideas for those attempting to speak without falling victim to authoritarian surveillance and censorship, and four ideas for the rest of us who want to help support them.” Also Available as a PDF

6 Ideas For Those Needing Defensive Technology to Protect Free Speech from Authoritarian Regimes and 4 Ways the Rest of Us Can Help | Surveillance Self-Defense International | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Peter Eckersley, pde@eff.org

“Introduction: The Internet remains one of the most powerful means ever created to give voice to repressed people around the world. Unfortunately, new technologies have also given authoritarian regimes new means to identify and retaliate against those who speak out despite censorship and surveillance. Below are six basic ideas for those attempting to speak without falling victim to authoritarian surveillance and censorship, and four ideas for the rest of us who want to help support them.”

Also Available as a PDF


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LivingSocial Is Giving Groupon a Run for Its Money, Thanks to Amazon by Ben Parr | mashable.com “Before last week, LivingSocial had one-tenth of the web traffic of Groupon. Thanks to Google’s $6 billion offer and Groupon’s subsequent rejection of that offer, the deal-a-day service has been experiencing a new wave of growth. The second largest competitor in the space, LivingSocial, experienced an uptick in traffic as well, but nothing as dramatic as Groupon’s rise. New data from Hitwise Intelligence shows that last week was a major inflection point for LivingSocial, though. It garnered 0.018% of all U.S. visits on the web, an 80% increase from 0.010%. Groupon, on the other hand, actually dropped by 20% to 0.035% market share of U.S. visits. Why the sudden spike in traffic? The answer’s simple: Amazon. The e-commerce giant made a strategic investment of $175 million in LivingSocial last month to counteract a potential Google-Groupon combination. Last week, LivingSocial offered 50% off of Amazon.com, which resulted in more than 1 million Amazon vouchers sold. It was the biggest group-buying deal in history.”

LivingSocial Is Giving Groupon a Run for Its Money, Thanks to Amazon

by Ben Parr | mashable.com

“Before last week, LivingSocial had one-tenth of the web traffic of Groupon. Thanks to Google’s $6 billion offer and Groupon’s subsequent rejection of that offer, the deal-a-day service has been experiencing a new wave of growth. The second largest competitor in the space, LivingSocial, experienced an uptick in traffic as well, but nothing as dramatic as Groupon’s rise.

New data from Hitwise Intelligence shows that last week was a major inflection point for LivingSocial, though. It garnered 0.018% of all U.S. visits on the web, an 80% increase from 0.010%. Groupon, on the other hand, actually dropped by 20% to 0.035% market share of U.S. visits.

Why the sudden spike in traffic? The answer’s simple: Amazon. The e-commerce giant made a strategic investment of $175 million in LivingSocial last month to counteract a potential Google-Groupon combination. Last week, LivingSocial offered 50% off of Amazon.com, which resulted in more than 1 million Amazon vouchers sold. It was the biggest group-buying deal in history.”


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WikiLeaks alternative OpenLeaks goes live By Jacqui Cheng | ars technica “OpenLeaks, the alternative whistleblower site created by WikiLeaks defectors, has officially gone live, though it’s not yet fully operational. The organization confirmed that it doesn’t plan to publish information itself, but rather help third parties (such as nonprofits and news orgs) get access to leaked documents in order to convey them to the public. The launch of OpenLeaks was spoiled somewhat by, ironically, a leaked PDF of its site contents published onCryptome.org. The OpenLeaks news page seems to welcome this leak, but warns that not all parts of the site are complete yet and that it’s still operating in an alpha phase. OpenLeaks plans to enter into beta in the second half of 2011, when it will begin working with NGOs, media, unions, and others to publish relevant information. “OpenLeaks will not accept or publish documents on its own platform, but rather create many ‘digital dropboxes’ for its community members, each adapted to the specific needs of our members so that they can provide a safe and trusted leaking option for whistleblowers,” reads the site. There’s also an informational videoon Vimeo that spells out the OpenLeaks process visually.”

WikiLeaks alternative OpenLeaks goes live

By Jacqui Cheng | ars technica

“OpenLeaks, the alternative whistleblower site created by WikiLeaks defectors, has officially gone live, though it’s not yet fully operational. The organization confirmed that it doesn’t plan to publish information itself, but rather help third parties (such as nonprofits and news orgs) get access to leaked documents in order to convey them to the public.

The launch of OpenLeaks was spoiled somewhat by, ironically, a leaked PDF of its site contents published onCryptome.org. The OpenLeaks news page seems to welcome this leak, but warns that not all parts of the site are complete yet and that it’s still operating in an alpha phase. OpenLeaks plans to enter into beta in the second half of 2011, when it will begin working with NGOs, media, unions, and others to publish relevant information.

“OpenLeaks will not accept or publish documents on its own platform, but rather create many ‘digital dropboxes’ for its community members, each adapted to the specific needs of our members so that they can provide a safe and trusted leaking option for whistleblowers,” reads the site. There’s also an informational videoon Vimeo that spells out the OpenLeaks process visually.”


~ Thursday, January 27 ~
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NYC BigApps 2.0 For the second year, the City of New York is improving the way it provides information and transparency to citizens. But delivering great information requires great tools. The NYC BigApps Competition will reward the developers of the most creative, best implemented, and impactful applications for delivering information from the City of New York’s NYC.gov Data Mine to interested users. Software developers will compete for $20,000 in cash, wide exposure for their work, and a meeting with the Mayor. Submissions may be any kind of software application, be it for the web, a personal computer, a mobile handheld device, SMS, or any software platform broadly available to the public. Check out the recent submissions in the Application Gallery!!

NYC BigApps 2.0

For the second year, the City of New York is improving the way it provides information and transparency to citizens. But delivering great information requires great tools. The NYC BigApps Competition will reward the developers of the most creative, best implemented, and impactful applications for delivering information from the City of New York’s NYC.gov Data Mine to interested users. Software developers will compete for $20,000 in cash, wide exposure for their work, and a meeting with the Mayor. Submissions may be any kind of software application, be it for the web, a personal computer, a mobile handheld device, SMS, or any software platform broadly available to the public.

Check out the recent submissions in the Application Gallery!!


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NY Times considers creating an ‘EZ Pass lane for leakers’ | Yahoo! News By Michael Calderone “The New York Times is considering options to create an in-house submission system that could make it easier for would-be leakers to provide large files to the paper. Executive editor Bill Keller told The Cutlinethat he couldn’t go into details, “especially since nothing is nailed down.” But when asked if he could envision a system like Al Jazeera’s  Transparency Unit, Keller said the paper has been “looking at something along those lines.”“ “Like WikiLeaks, the Al Jazeera Transparency Unit allows users to submit files through an encrypted system that does not record any of their personal information. Al Jazeera launched the initiative earlier this month, but it’s been getting a lot more attention since the network began reporting Sunday on more than 1,700 classified files in the network’s possession, part of the biggest classified leak related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadourian — who profiled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange before theAfghanistan, Iraq and State Dept. megaleaks — asked Monday whether Al Jazeera had ”taken the first step in a journalism arms race to begin acquiring mass document leaks.”“

NY Times considers creating an ‘EZ Pass lane for leakers’ | Yahoo! News

By Michael Calderone

“The New York Times is considering options to create an in-house submission system that could make it easier for would-be leakers to provide large files to the paper.

Executive editor Bill Keller told The Cutlinethat he couldn’t go into details, “especially since nothing is nailed down.” But when asked if he could envision a system like Al Jazeera’s  Transparency Unit, Keller said the paper has been “looking at something along those lines.”“

“Like WikiLeaks, the Al Jazeera Transparency Unit allows users to submit files through an encrypted system that does not record any of their personal information. Al Jazeera launched the initiative earlier this month, but it’s been getting a lot more attention since the network began reporting Sunday on more than 1,700 classified files in the network’s possession, part of the biggest classified leak related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadourian — who profiled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange before theAfghanistan, Iraq and State Dept. megaleaks — asked Monday whether Al Jazeera had ”taken the first step in a journalism arms race to begin acquiring mass document leaks.”“