•
Israel today lifted its ban on the iPad . After two weeks of banning the popular tablet computers, the Ministry of Communications is allowing them in and returning the confiscated tablets. Moses Kahlon, the Minister of Communications, announced the lift in a press release . The original decision to ban the iPad was made without the minister's knowledge, inspiring a governmental squabblefest in Israel. Sponsor iPads were initially banned out of fear that the the tablet's wireless would interact improperly with communications frequencies because they did not adhere to Israeli Wi-Fi standards. Technical tests carried out by both the ministry and an international lab proved that this was not so. The Ministry is allowing the importation of only one iPad per person.There is no information explaining this restriction in the press release. If there is no risk, it does not immediately make sense. Discuss
Read this article:
Israel Lifts iPad Ban
Tags:
Communications,
iPad,
ipads,
minister,
Ministry,
popular-tablet,
press,
press-release,
restriction,
technical tests,
tests-carried,
the-confiscated
•
"Everybody's on Twitter !" You hear that more and more often as Twitter gains adherents. Why, even the dead and the fictional (and the fictional dead ) are on Twitter. Not to mention celebrities. (Let's not.) Despite having over 100 million registered users, it's still small beer compared to other services. Facebook, for instance, has over 400 million. What's surprising are the ways people, companies and organizations find to use the service. And who those folks are. Here are five Twitter accounts you might find surprising. Sponsor Library of Congress . Although the LoC has upwards of 53,000 followers, they themselves only follow one. The Law Library of Congress . They have books down pat. Not sure about electronic communications.However, as ReadWriteWeb reported earlier today, they've acquired the entire Twitter archive, so maybe they'll pick up a thing or two. Federal Bureau of Investigation . Not too surprising that it's the Press Office that's Twittering. Fox Mulder might be off-putting to some, though possibly not as much as J. Edgar Hoover. At least these folks follow, although only a tenth as much as they are followed. NASA . Lori Garver, deputy director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Twitters. And she does it right, mixing NASA news, issues of interest to space buffs and personal information. Well, mostly right. Honestly, Lori, there's no one worth following but for two other NASA Twitter accounts? NASA as an organization Twitters its brains out. The Tower Bridge . Inanimate objects Twittering is non-hilarious. This account, for a busy draw bridge in olde Londone towne seems on the level. However, it makes up for the unexpectedness of the account by the sheer almost operatic boredom of its Tweets. To wit: "I am closing after the Maintenance lift has passed upstream." We can tell from the few accounts it's following that the bridge has a real telescope fetish, though. Unseemly. Ivy Bean . Ivy has one unusual quality that makes her an unexpected Twitterer to most. She's 104. Yes, years old. Participation of the elderly in social media communications is not that unusual. The young and the old are less fearless than the middle aged in experimenting with different ways to communicate. But 104. Holy Toledo. Some have suggested Ivy's account was originally set up by journalists seeking "Digg bait." Who cares? Ivy rocks the keyboard a year after her "story" was first reported. I hope I'm 104 when I'm her age. For more, check out ReadWriteWeb's Twitter coverage . Of course, there's always @rww . Discuss
Excerpt from:
5 Unexpected Twitterers
Tags:
account,
Bridge,
congress,
federal-bureau,
Ivy,
Ivy Bean,
J. Edgar Hoover,
library,
Lori,
Lori Garver,
maintenance,
microcontent,
NASA,
national,
national aeronautics and space administration,
press,
Social Media,
space,
space buffs,
tenth-as-much,
Toledo,
tower-bridge,
Twitter,
unexpectedness
•
When we first looked at the conviction of three Google employees by an Italian judge in late February, we agreed with Google's stance that the conviction attacked the very ideals of the Internet as we know it. The comments in reaction to this article were many and varied, often speculating on the reasoning behind the conviciton. Today, a CNet article identifies profit as the judge's reasoning behind the decision. Sponsor As Google stated when the convictions were first handed down, the case was concerned with a video of "students at a school in Turin, Italy [who] filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police." According to the Associated Press translation of the court document (pdf), the judge said Google's profiting off of the video was the reason behind the conviction. "In simple words, it is not the writing on the wall that constitutes a crime for the owner of the wall, but its commercial exploitation can," wrote Judge Oscar Magi, continuing to say that the Internet was no longer an "unlimited prairie where everything is permitted and nothing can be prohibited". Profit, especially that profit which is made from completely automated advertising systems, seems like an odd reasoning to hold a content provider responsible for the content uploaded by its users. The oft-quoted statistic to keep in mind here is that YouTube has more than 20 hours of video uploaded every minute to the service. Judge Magi, however, argues that "the overwhelming speed of technical progress will allow, sooner or later, ever more stringent controls on uploaded data on the part of Web site managers". Google gave CNET the following statement in response to the news: "We are reading the full 111-page document from the judge. But as we said when the verdict was announced, this conviction attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. If these principles are swept aside, then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear. These are important points of principle, which is why we and our employees will vigorously appeal this decision." We have to say, we still agree with Google on this one, as far as the spirit of the conviction goes. Holding the content host, YouTube in this case, liable for the content of its users attacks the very foundation of the Web. If, as some claim, Google knowingly allowed the content to stay on the site, then its a different story. But if the company immediately responded to official requests to remove the video, it should not be held responsible for its users' content. Discuss
See the article here:
Italian Judge Says "Profit" Behind Google Convictions
Tags:
article,
case,
content,
conviction,
convictions,
Google,
italian,
Italy,
judge,
Judge Magi,
Judge Oscar Magi,
Judge Says,
news,
overwhelming,
overwhelming speed,
press,
the-conviction,
Turin,
turin italy,
video,
writing,
YouTube
•
Associated Press initially reported that three foreign journalists and one analyst have seen their email accounts hacked into today. The New York Times subsequently reported that there were "at least a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China," including the author Andrew Jacobs. AP: "They were greeted with messages saying, 'We've detected an issue with your account' and were told to contact Yahoo, they said Tuesday. Yahoo technicians told one of the four that his account had been hacked and restored his access, but it was not clear if the other instances were related." Sponsor Jacobs reported that "hackers altered (his) e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address." Among those affected were Clifford Coonan of Variety magazine and Kathleen McLaughlin, a freelancer. Agence France Presse reported that Yahoo! was avoiding directly addressing the hacks, saying only that it "condemns all cyberattacks regardless of origin or purpose." Yahoo! was roundly condemned for hurriedly turning over user information on reporter Shi Tao to the Chinese security forces in 2005. Their actions resulted in a long prison term for Shi for sharing Chinese media coverage policy with foreign sources. The late U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos called CEO Jerry Yang a "moral pygmy" for his collusion and subsequent slippery excuse-making. Earlier today, intermittent blocking of Google was reported in the country. China has the most sophisticated and widespread online censorship regime in the world, dovetailing social measures, criminal statutes and electronic measures. Additionally, some believe that government-sponsored, or at least encouraged, hackers have been behind multiple attacks on the properties of foreign companies, like the one that occasioned Google's surprising announcement of its intended withdrawal from China in January. Discuss
Link:
Yahoo Hacked in China: Journalists, Others Affected
Tags:
account,
agence-france,
Andrew Jacobs,
CEO Jerry Yang,
China,
chinese,
chinese security forces,
Clifford Coonan,
congressman tom lantos,
country,
e mail address,
france,
government,
hackers-altered,
Kathleen McLaughlin,
press,
properties,
security-forces,
social-measures,
today,
Tom Lantos,
tuesday-yahoo,
U.S.,
yahoo
•
We trust services like Last.fm or Pandora to learn our musical tastes and serve up custom radio stations, so why not the same for the numerous streams that bombard us daily? My6Sense , a recommendation engine for your social streams and news feeds, is releasing its functionality today in its " Attention API " at the DEMO conference. Sponsor The company released an iPhone app last summer, which uses the company's "digital intuition" to determine the particular stories and status updates that are most relevant to you according to what you've clicked on and spent time with in the past. The system learns from you, becoming more familiar with what you are interested in as time goes on. According to the press release, "the service is content/stream agnostic and can automatically rank information from all types of sources -- including social streams like Twitter, news streams, RSS, vertical content providers, open whiteboards and more. The solution is optimized for mobile platforms, where digital clutter is the most prominent, and can be successfully used on non-mobile sites and applications as well." With services like Pandora, you need to let the program know when you like or dislike something. The "Attention API", on the other hand, simply requires that the site making use of it report back user activity in order to learn the user's habits and preferences. While this sounds great, and we can see it filtering out some of the noise, we have the same concerns about it as we do about Google customizing our search - that we will end up in an echo chamber of like-minded thought. As our own Frederic Lardinois pointed out when reviewing the My6Sense iPhone app, you may want to step outside the recommendations once in a while for a breath of fresh air. If you are a real news junkie, you will probably still sometimes want to switch to the regular timeline mode that organizes items chronologically. After all, the items you don't usually think you would be interested in can sometimes really grab your attention (which is, to be honest, a problem that all recommendation systems have to grapple with). On the company's API page , it mentions that the API will provide "No fear of bombardment" as "Developers and publishers can broadcast any amount of information and content to a widespread audience, which reaching individual consumers with messages that are uniquely relevant to them." We would hope that, in reality, any service using the API would notify its users that it was doing so and even offer the ability to step outside of the service's recommendations. Discuss
Read more:
My6Sense Releases API: 'Digital Intuition' for the Real-Time Web
Tags:
api,
attention,
content stream,
demo,
demo conference,
like-or-dislike,
mobile platforms,
news,
Pandora,
press,
Read,
recommendation engines,
Sense,
simply-requires,
using-the-api