Is Gawker's "Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt" Illegal?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TweeterClubs Lets You Track And Share Twitter Conversations

While Twitter is an incredible platform for tapping into the conversations that are taking place on the web, the real-time stream can be crowded. It’s hard to keep track of back-and-forth communication between users or to keep track of subject-related Tweets based on hashtags. Recently launched TweeterClubs aims to create a real-time conversation around the Tweets that are broadcast to the web.

Once you log into the site with your Twitter account, you can enter the tweet on the TweetUp tab. Your tweet will appear in both the club and on Twitter automatically. TweeterClubs will only show the tweets that come from the club members and when you log in, you are automatically a member. At the moment, the site only shows one club, the “Tweetheart Club,” which includes the Tweets of the six women profiled in the controversial Vanity Fair article. But TweeterClubs’ founder Jeff Whitehead says the site is planning to open up so allow anyone to create their own clubs.

Those who are participating in clubs who Tweet with a club-specific hashtag can Tweet from any third party Twitter client, and their Tweets will be aggregated into their Tweeter Club. Users will be able to manage specific clubs by banning members, deleting messages and also seeing statistics on clubs, including the number of members and number tweets per day. Whitehead says that TweeterClubs will also offer an Android app and will open up its API for Twitter clients to incorporate its functionality into their own platforms.

Of course, users can also participate in conversations on Twitter by just adding a specific hashtag to Tweets and then searching for that hashtag. Other startups that help make sense of specific conversations on the web are TweetGrid, and TweetConvo and Bettween.

Awful dance music remixes of Strawberry Fields Forever

Robot Uses 'Chaos Control'

What Is Slowing The Biodegradation Of Valdez Oil?

Haiti: Photos from the ground, by AIDG's Catherine Lainé

Catherine Lainé of the sustainable tech non-profit AIDG, who was featured in this Boing Boing Video interview on Friday, is in Haiti and has begun uploading photos of what she's witnessing there, as connectivity permits.

House are FLATTENED. Coming in to Port Au Prince, about 1 in 20 had collapsed, then 1 in 10. In Delmas 33 where we were earlier, it's 1:5. People are sleeping outside in makeshift settlements b/c either 1) their house was destroyed 2) their house had significant damage and is visibly unsafe or 3) they are not sure of their home's structural integrity and with all the aftershocks, they are taking no changes. Everyone has lost someone close to them or someone they knew... you can hear gunshots at night though. Daytime seems really safe.

Haiti: A call to "peoplefinder" site builders - open your data!

An open letter from Christopher Csikszentmihalyi, Director of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, concerning the sites set up by news organizations to help find people in Haiti. Chris has a suggestion for making these efforts more effective. A post on the New York Times says they've made their data available to Google. No word from CNN. Christopher writes:

In the response to the earthquake in Haiti, many organizations worked to create sites where people could find one another, or least information about their loved ones. This excellent idea has been undermined by its success: within 24 hours it became clear that there were too many places where people were putting information, and each site is a silo. The site Haitianquake.com began "scraping" -- mechanically aggregating -- the most popular such sites, like koneksyon.com and American Red Cross Family Links.

As people within the IT community recognized the danger of too many unconnected sites, and Google became interested in helping, they turned their work over to Google which is now running an embeddable application at haiticrisis.appspot.com.

We recognize that many newspapers have put precious resources into developing a people-finder system. We nonetheless urge them to make their data available to the Google project, and standardize on the Google widget. Doing so will greatly increase the number of successful reunions. Data from the google site is currently available as "dumps" in the standard PFIF format (on this page), and an API is being developed, and licensed through Creative Commons. I am not affiliated with Google -- indeed, this is a volunteer initiative by some of their engineers -- but this is one case where their reach and capacity can help the most people.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the reasoning behind this request. Any questions about the widget or its functionality or features are best directed to Google.

Christopher P. Csikszentmihalyi

Director, MIT Center for Future Civic Media

csik at media dot mit dot edu

(via Mark Fest, of the Knight Foundation -- the MIT Center for Future Civic Media is a Knight Foundation grantee).

Should you dump Internet Explorer, NOW? - BetaNews

Telegraph.co.uk

Should you dump Internet Explorer, NOW? BetaNews Yesterday, ZDNET blogger Ed Bott asserted that "it's time to stop using IE6." I soooo disagree. For many organizations and all consumers, it's time to stop using any version of Microsoft's browser ... Microsoft's Week Involved Haiti Earthquake, Mobile 7, China Cyber-AttackseWeek German government warns against using MS ExplorerBBC News IE exploit code released on the InternetCNET PC World -PC Magazine -BusinessWeek all 287 news articles »

Lacking Buyers, NASA Cuts Prices On Shuttles and Old Engines

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gravel beaches trapping oil from 1989 Exxon spill - Washington Post

Boston Globe

Gravel beaches trapping oil from 1989 Exxon spill Washington Post AP ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An engineering professor has figured out why oil remains trapped along miles of gravel beaches more than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Prince William Sound. An estimated 20000 gallons of ... Study: Gravel beaches trapped oil spilled by Exxon tanker in 1989TopNews United States Scientists explain persistence of oil from Exxon Valdez spillThe Money Times Exxon spill oil persistence may be explainedAnchorage Daily News Fort Worth Star Telegram -Science Daily (press release) -Reuters UK all 250 news articles »

Google Phone Could Drive Apple Into Allegiance With Microsoft

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NSFW: Nobody suspects the Spanish politician

What do we know about Gaspar Llamazares? For a start, we know he’s a Spanish politician, a former Communist party member and leader of the leftist coalition Izquierda Unida. We know he has a Masters in Public Health from the University of Havana. We know he once attacked the Pope for his stance on contraception in the developing world.

And now, thanks to the FBI, we also know that he bears more than a passing resemblance to a 53-year-old Osama Bin Laden.

This most recent fact about Llamazares came to light this week when the bureau published a computer generated photograph of what Osama Bin Laden – 9/11 mastermind; cave-dweller; last remaining user of audio cassettes -  might look like today. The photograph, we were told, was produced using the FBI’s special digital aging software, the technical brilliance of which we could only dream about.

One is led to imagine gigantic whirring super-computers, surrounded by federal agents in white coats, feeding in old Bin Laden family snapshots, screen-grabs from his video messages; perhaps even trimmings from his beard. Then, when the miracle machines have done their work – after weeks of computation, burning through enough energy to light the whole of Holland – a printer whirs into life, rendering a single wanted poster-sized image. The current face of evil.

No wonder the bureau was proud of the photograph, posting it on their website and distributing it to the world’s media, from Minnesota to Madrid. And no wonder Gaspar Llamazares was shocked – no, terrified – when one of his friends pointed out that the resulting photo was his spitting image. What were the odds? A million to one? A billion?

Well, not quite.

In fact, as the FBI were later forced to admit, one of the things their super-computers aren’t very good at drawing is beards. Or hair. Or noses. Or faces, really. So the poor agent tasked with producing the image did what any of us would do when faced with an impending deadline and a multi-million dollar operating budget: he fired up his laptop, went to Google images, found a photo of someone who looked a bit Bin Laden-y, copied his features onto the photograph, added a few wrinkles and hit ‘print’. Unfortunately for all concerned, the face donor turned out to be a high profile Spanish politician – a politician who is now, quite rightly, worried that he’ll be lynched if he ever sets foot in the USA.

It goes without saying that the incident raises a couple of pretty serious questions. For a start, what precisely did the FBI agent type into Google image search to find someone with similar features to an older Bin Laden? ‘Sinister middle-aged guy’? ‘Swarthy foreigner’? Presumably not, as the former brings up a photo of Liam Neeson while the latter returns Borat. More worryingly if the FBI’s cutting-edge photo aging technology is nothing more than a kid with a laptop, an Internet connection and a copy of Microsoft Paint, then what else are they lying to us about?

It’s bad enough that we have the ‘CSI Effect‘ – the phenomenon, resulting from the popularity of TV shows like CSI, where the public and criminals have unrealistically high expectations of what crime-fighting technology is capable of. But TV shows are supposed to lie to us. Finding out that the government is playing the same game – massively exaggerating their technical abilities in order to give us comfort and to terrify our enemies – is just  weird. Particularly when they’re doing it using our tax money.

And so, in the interests of investigative journalism, I contacted TechCrunch’s source in the intelligence community (the same guy who got us hooked on Spymaster). I asked him, simply, “how much of the technology that we’re told is keeping us safe from evil-doers is in fact total bullshit – and how can we avoid falling foul of it like Gaspar Llamazares?”. His answers, given on the condition of total anonymity, make fascinating reading…

• Myth: New-style full body scanners at airports are capable of showing passengers naked

  Fact: Civil rights campaigners can relax. We’re told that the scanners’ operators are hidden away in a special room to protect our privacy – but according to our source, the reality behind the curtain – as with the Wizard of Oz – is far less exciting. There are no full-body scanners, just one very pervy dude watching CCTV and using his warped imagination to sketch the people he sees, sans clothes. Yes, it’s still freaky – but for an entirely different reason.

  How to avoid being unfairly caught: Be one of the Osmonds. No one wants to imagine the Osmonds naked.

• Myth: Electronic passports contain a tiny microchip which aids the detection of terrorists

  Fact: We’ve all stood at immigration while the TSA agent takes our passport and swipes it through their special scanner. But, with the monitor facing away from us, we’ve all wondered precisely what information is being displayed about us. Our police records? Details of where we’ve travelled? Perhaps our name is being checked against some kind of terrorist watch list (see below). Wrong on all counts. In fact the scanners simply are simply accessing our Facebook profile to check whether we’re friends with Osama Bin Laden. If no, welcome to America. If yes, next stop Cuba.

  How to avoid being unfairly caught: Don’t accept a friend request from Gaspar Llamazares.

• Myth: ‘No-fly’ lists ensure that known terrorists aren’t allowed to board planes to the US

  Fact: The FBI, NSA and CIA have all tried to build relationships with their foreign intelligence counterparts to build up an accurate list of international terrorists. Unfortunately, America’s aggressive foreign policy has driven much of the middle east into a sort of diplomatic sulk, with many Arab countries either refusing to pass on data or even occasionally creating fake names for their own amusement (the latter resulting in the arrest last month of Messrs ‘Pat Downe’ and ‘Ben Dover’ at Chicago O’Hare airport). In  fact the government’s current no-fly list was compiled simply by buying the subscription lists of ‘Jihad Monthly’, ‘Death To America! Digest’ and the Guardian.

  How to avoid being unfaily caught: Only buy your copy of Jihad Monthly at the newsstand.

• Myth: Specially trained dogs are capable of sniffing out explosives

  Fact: Bombs just happen to smell like Snausages.

  How to avoid being unfairly caught: Avoid smelling of Snausages. (Also a good tip for life generally)

Stay safe, America!

Top 10 Gamertell posts for the week of January 10, 2010

FROM GAMERTELL - Haven’t caught all of the Gamertell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles…
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Ushahidi Urging Haitians and Humanitarian Workers to Text Information to 4636 Free of Charge

Greenroads

Wilder Weather Exerts Stronger Influence On Biodiversity

NSB: Science And Engineering Indicators 2010

AT&T, Verizon In Price War

Bing Gaining Market Share By The Day

Alibaba Slams Yahoo's 'Reckless' Support Of Google

McAfee Calls Operation Aurora A “Watershed Moment In Cybersecurity”, Offers Guidance

Computer and software security company McAfee last week identified a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer as a key vector in the cyberattacks that hit Google and over 30 other companies in a high-profile, multi-staged and concentrated effort to hack into specific computer systems in order to obtain intellectual property.

Redmond has since issued a security advisory and later published its own risk assessment of the zero-day threat. This morning, McAfee announced that it is offering consumers and businesses further guidance on what it refers to as ‘Operation Aurora’.

And it’s bringing out the superlatives to describe the attacks.

George Kurtz, McAfee’s worldwide chief technology officer, has been blogging about how the browser vulnerability was exploited for the cyberheist and is now quoted in this morning’s press release as saying that it is the “largest and most sophisticated cyberattack we have seen in years targeted at specific corporations”.

Kurtz stops short of saying that the planet nearly stopped spinning, but refers to the attack as a “watershed moment in cybersecurity” that has “changed the world”.

McAfee, of course, has a commercial interest in spreading the word about the attack and how its security products can guard consumers and businesses from exploitation of the aforementioned Internet Explorer vulnerability, but the company is doing a service too, considering the fact that the code used to exploit the security hole has made its way to the public domain already.

Needless to say, this increases the risk of further, more widespread attacks significantly.

Detailed guidance is available at McAfee.com/OperationAurora.

Ending Our Advertising Relationship With BigDeal

A lot of readers noticed that we’ve been running advertisements for BigDeal, a website that lets users pay to bid on low priced items. In addition to running the ads, BigDeal also created a special cobranded version of their service at techcrunch.bigdeal.com. That page used our logo (with the permission of our sales team), and we received a percentage of revenue generated from that site.

We’ve now ended that relationship and have removed all BigDeal ads from our site. And we have asked them to take down the cobranded version of the service at techcrunch.bigdeal.com.

BigDeal offers a service that is completely legal, and is backed by very well known venture capitalists. On the surface we shouldn’t have any issues with working with them.

But the service is, in my opinion, at best misleading and at worst little more than a scam. Users are encouraged to bid for items, and are told that the “winners of guaranteed auctions get a huge discount, typically 65%-90% off retail.” But the way the service works is extremely complicated. In fact a few of us here at TechCrunch debated exactly how it worked for a half hour after reading the tutorial, and never quite understood it. It took winning an auction and then actually buying the item to understand just how unattractive the whole scheme is.

If your service is so complicated that users have to be mislead to use it, it’s probably not all that great of a deal.

Users must pay $0.75 every time they bid, and to win an auction generally requires quite a few bids. In one auction I won yesterday I had to bid 12 times to win. I spent $9 for those bids. Others bidding against me also paid $0.75/bid, and there were at least 25 total bids on that item. That’s $18.75 in revenue to BigDeal, with no costs.

After the auction, all the money from the bids is gone. Vanished. Poof. That’s the confusing part of the “deal.” Even as the winner, I then had to pay the price I bid for the item, on top of all the bids. Plus shipping. The losers get the option of buying the item at normal retail plus shipping, and can use their lost bids as part of the price. But BigDeal’s retail prices range about 25% higher than the same items on Amazon, so there isn’t much of a deal there.

Confused? That’s the point. At the end of the day, as the auction winner, I paid $19.84 for an item I can get for as little as $25.70 (new) on Amazon. That’s not much of a discount. And the losers would pay $41.99 for the item if they wanted it, plus shipping. That’s 63% MORE than the Amazon price.

BigDeal makes much out of the other side of their service, which lets users get gift cards at a variety of merchants for whatever they’ve spent on bids. But those gift card sales are set up so that only 25% of the price can be paid in credit. So if I spend $100 on bids and I want to convert that to gift cards, I have to shell out another $300 for them. That’s not much of a deal, either.

BigDeal is very similar to other services like Swoopo, and there’s no reason to call them out specifically. I have no real problem with the service other than the extremely confusing tutorial which I believe misleads people into thinking that the service works differently than it actually does.

But I don’t want to send TechCrunch users to that site to potentially waste money on something they don’t understand. And I don’t want our brand associated with theirs on techcrunch.bigdeal.com. So we’re ending the relationship. And we will donate any money we’ve received from them to charity.