While the Associated Press has talked a lot about adapting to a new internet-centric world, there's still very little evidence that it's doing anything different. It's still trying to act like a gatekeeper rather than an enabler. However, it appears that Reuters is actually experimenting with something interesting. It has a new project, called OpenCalais, designed to help any information provider extract useful metadata from written content. In other words, it's an automated system that you can run an article or a blog post through, and it will return useful data in a structured manner. For example, if you wrote an article about Google's earning report, it would note that the article was about Google, that it had to do with an earnings report, and maybe connect some important other points. The idea, then, is that the more useful semantic data that's there, the more useful things that can be done on top of it. For those who believe that better use of semantic data is the key opportunity for newspapers to jump to the internet age, this could represent a very big deal. Of course, there's a very big "if" in that statement. The service actually needs to work well and be useful. It also needs to attract users. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here, as the really useful apps built on top of that data won't come unless the data itself is available. Having Reuters behind the project suggests a strong initial base of content, but it remains to be seen how much adoption can actually be driven through this system. Some of it may depend on how much in the way of resources Reuters has put behind this project to jumpstart it (and whether that commitment continues after Reuter's acquisition by Thomson Financial closes). Either way, it's an experiment worth following, and one a lot more interesting than simply demanding that people pay more money.

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Shepard Fairey, the artist behind "Andre The Giant Has A Posse," created this poster to show his support of Barack Obama. Apparently, the limited edition prints sold out in moments. It appears that Obama has a posse too.
Link

We Make Money Not Art has a post up about DIY tractors in rural Poland, photographed by ?ukasz Sk?pski. ?ak Gallery in Berlin is currently showing prints of Sk?pski's photos, and there's video of interviews with the farmer-tinkerers circulating somewhere, too. Snip:

In the '60s Poland it was almost impossible to acquire a tractor in Poland. Agricultural machines produced by the country were available mainly for state-owned enterprises. For private farmers these tractors were too expensive and they weren't even robust or efficient enough for the mountain region. Out of necessity they constructed their own machines using spare parts and bits and pieces from whatever machines they could find. Including decommissioned army vehicles and pre-WWI German machines.

Link.

iandoh writes "A team of scientists at Stanford University has tracked the movement of carbon nanotubes through the digestive systems of mice. They've determined that the nanotubes do not exhibit any toxicity in the mice, and are safely expelled after delivering their payload. As a result, the study paves the way toward future applications of nanotubes in the treatment of illnesses. Previous research by the same team demonstrated that nanotubes can be used to fight cancer. The nanotubes do this in two ways. One method involves shining laser light on the nanotubes, which generates heat to destroy cancer cells. Another method involves attaching medicine to the nanotubes, which are able to accurately 'find' cancerous cells without impacting healthy cells."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"RoBo," an ordinary nerd dude who likes to tinker with wearable computing in his free time, goes to a sex products expo in Hollywood. Hijinks ensue.

Link to BBtv post with video and discussion.

RoBo previously appeared, mit wearable gizmos, in the BBtv episode "Wearable Computing / Sensors and Sensibility."

You may have noticed a little advertising spot over in the sidebar there. SimpleBits is pleased to have joined The Deck, which is described perfectly as:

The premier advertising network for reaching creative, web and design professionals, The Deck serves up millions of page views each month and is uniquely configured to connect the right marketers to a targeted, influential audience.

I’d never slap just any ol’ ad up here. And that’s why I’m excited to join a network that is picky about the advertising it accepts. My latte addiction has hope now.

Special thanks to Jim Coudal and the rest of my fellow Deckians.

And you thought NTP getting RIM to shell out $612.5 million was excessive? It seems that other patent holding companies are shooting much higher. About a year ago, we noted that some private equity firms were so thrilled with the outcome of various patent hoarding lawsuits that they were raising funds solely to buy up patents, stick them in shell companies, and sue businesses that actually made products. We're seeing more and more of those types of lawsuits, with the latest one being pretty impressive. Private equity firm Fortress Investment Group has backed a patent holding firm IP-Com, who is now suing Nokia for patent infringement to the tune of $17.77 billion (yes, billion with a b). At that rate, a mere $600 million seems like pocket change. Expect to see a few more of these types of lawsuits, as well. With so much money going into these patent hoarding firms, combined with fears that we may finally seem some legitimate patent reform (either via Congress or the Supreme Court), many patent holders may be scrambling to squeeze whatever they can as fast as they can -- and starting off with ridiculous numbers is one way to push for a faster settlement.

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I thought it was silly when a TSA agent at the Oakland airport asked me with concern in her voice to remove my thin cotton sweater before walking through the metal detector this afternoon, but it sounds like things are even sillier at San Francisco Airport. Scott Beale reports:

Wow, flying out of SFO just became much worse. While traveling this morning I surprised to find out that TSA is now requiring that you remove all electronic devices from your carry-on bags, including cables etc. and place them in a separate bin to be scanned at the security checkpoints. Along with slowing down the line to a crawl, this will undoubtedly lead to people losing expensive equipment, not to mention the possiblity for your stuff to be accidentally taken by someone else or even stolen.

Of course none of this information is mentioned on either the TSA or SFO websites.

Does anyone know if TSA is requiring this at any other airports?

Link

WebsiteMag brings us news from the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) about a recent study of drop catching —'a process whereby a domain that has expired is released into the pool of available names and is instantly re-registered by another party.' The eleven day study showed that 100% of '.com' and '.net' domain names were immediately registered after they had been released. CADNA has published the results with their own analysis. Quoting: "The results also show that 87% of Dot-COM drop-catchers use the domain names for pay-per-click (PPC) sites. They have no interest in these domain names other than leveraging them to post PPC ads and turn a profit. Interestingly, only 67% of Dot-ORG drop catchers use the domains they catch to post these sites — most likely because Dot-ORG names are harder to monetize due to the lack of type-in traffic and because they tend to be used for more legitimate purposes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A community of 'long-necked' Burmese refugees in Thailand are being denied resettlement in other counties by Thai authorities, according to this BBC article. The women wear traditional, stacked metal neck rings that elongate their necks -- they've become a tourist attraction in Thailand, on display what is described as a 'human zoo'.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) says that for the past two years, the Thai authorities have refused to allow a group of 20 Kayan to leave the country, despite firm offers to resettle them in Finland and New Zealand. The suspicion is that the women are being kept in Thailand because of the central role they play in the local tourism industry.

Link. (thanks, Kendra / image: BBC News)

Bryansix brings us a story about the 50th anniversary of the United States' entry into the Space Age. On January 31st, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first U.S. satellite to reach orbit. The New York Times is running a similar feature. "Explorer 1 gave America a chance to recover some of its confidence and prestige after the Sputnik shock, but there was a scientific payoff as well: The data returned by the satellite showed that Earth was not surrounded by a swarm of killer pebbles, as some scientists had feared. However, the cosmic-ray readings hinted at the existence of bands of radiation surrounding the planet - an unexpected result that led to the discovery of the Van Allen Belts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the questions that came up last week in Edinburgh was whether or not social networking sites were really the big moneymakers they claimed to be. In the discussion, what we agreed on, was that the social networking sites had done a good job in doing an "upfront" monetization, with MySpace getting a guaranteed ad deal from Google and Facebook getting a guaranteed deal from Microsoft. However, all the details suggested that on the backend things were pretty ugly. It's not hard to figure out why. Ads work on Google because people are looking for information. They do a search, and if the advertisement shows information that helps with the query, that makes everyone happy. However, when it comes to a social network, usage is quite different. People aren't looking for information about products -- they're looking to communicate with friends. In that environment, ads are seen as an intrusion -- which is the exact opposite of ads in a search world. That explains why Facebook was so focused on its Beacon offering, which was designed to try (rather unsuccessfully so far) to make an advertisement about communicating with your friends.

With all that said, I estimated that within a year, advertisers would begin to back away from social network advertising, unless some new, more effective, mechanism was found. I figured it would take about a year, because the mindset of advertisers would still be focused on just getting ads on these "hot properties" and it would take some time before they realized that no one looked at the ads. Apparently, my estimate was wrong. Brands are already staying away. At least, that was a major point behind Google missing its earnings estimates. It seems unlikely that this situation will get much better, unless social networks really do come up with a different form of advertising. They need to recognize that simply throwing up ads doesn't work any more. An advertisement can't be intrusive. It can't be annoying. It needs to be relevant and wanted.

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We're following the debate on Twitter and there's a chatroom...

irc://irc.freenode.net/debatefest

Dave

Noah Shachtman at Wired's Danger Room blog writes.

A leading general is pleading with the armed services to let troops blog and post to YouTube. Too bad the video site is banned on military nets, and Army rules squeeze military bloggers, hard.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:

Army's new regulations may restrict soldiers' blogs (NPR Xeni Tech)

US Army: reporters are "threat," just like Al Qaeda; milblogs = "therapy"

Army audits show official sites breach security, not milblogs

Under fire, soldiers kill blogs: Pentagon milblog crackdown

Pentagon Sued Over Milblog-Monitoring

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Apparently, the participants in the U.S. 'Cyber Storm' war games are familiar with the Kobayashi Maru, because some of them tried to cheat by hacking the games themselves. They also prepare for some very interesting scenarios. Among other things, the organizers are worried about having too many people on the 'No Fly' list show up at an airport, finding 'mystery liquids' in the subway, and having bloggers reveal the classified location of railcars with hazardous materials. The Department of Homeland Security has already analyzed the results of the games, and plans to hold 'Cyber Storm 2' in March."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While the MPAA continues to insist there's really no legitimate use for file sharing apps, it appears that one film festival has decided that it's a great distribution mechanism for finding new films. The Cinequest film festival is asking filmmakers to submit their movies to a file sharing platform where people can view the films and vote for their favorites. The fan favorites for feature-length and short films will be added to the actual festival. The organizer has a few quotes that suggests he understands that piracy isn't the problem the MPAA makes it out to be: "No artists have ever starved because too many people knew about them."

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willdavid writes "Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft's new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. 'Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a computer virus don't really have extraordinary powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who "stands between chaos and order" and says things like "begone vermin!"'" And because it's never easy, in order to read the archives of the comic you're going to need to install Microsoft's Silverlight.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

its hard to think of writes "There's an interesting story up at Nature News about scientific ethics. It seems that while one group of scientists is figuring out details about aetosaurs (ancient crocodiles), another group in New Mexico is repeatedly taking credit for their work and naming the new animals they 'discover'. It also looks like the state government, which has been asked to intervene, is trying to sidestep the issue. 'The New Mexico cultural-affairs department, which oversees the museum, conducted a review of two of the instances last October and concluded that the allegations were groundless. But some experts call that review a whitewash, claiming that it failed to follow accepted practices of US academic institutions faced with claims of misconduct. Now all three cases are before the Ethics Education Committee of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a professional organization based in Northbrook, Illinois, which is awaiting responses from the New Mexico team before making a ruling.' How widespread is this kind of thing?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tony C Smith says:

StarShipSofa is a weekly podcast that has started to put out Hugo Winning audio stories for free. Last week we put up David Brin's 1985 Hugo winning story "The Crystal Spheres." This week we put up Bruce Sterling's 1989 story "We See Things Differently." Other narrated stories include 2007 Hugo nominee Peter Watts and Michael Moorcock.

A host of SF writers have offered to let the StarShipSofa narrate their works. Writers who have already donated their wo