linuxdevices25

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6180313644.html

techcrunch

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/343849215/

http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=20367

Today Google has launched Knol, its Wikipedia alternative that holds authors accountable for the articles they write. Each article is created by a team of authors who receive attribution, and are allowed to take part in a rev-share for AdSense ads on their page. Other users can submit changes, but they have to be approved by the article’s original authors before they go live on the site (it’s basically a moderated Wikipedia).

Google says that it will allow multiple people to create Knols on the same subject. Knol allows users to rate and review Knols, and will likely include ranking as part of search results so we don’t have to sift through countless articles on the same topics. You can see an example article (a Knol that tells you how to write Knols) here.

The big news here is that by assigning ownership and allowing authors to include AdSense ads on their articles, Google is effectively offering a monetary incentive to create good content. In theory, the best articles will get the most attention, and in turn the most revenue.

Unfortunately, this plan may backfire on Google. We’re going to start seeing a flurry of articles on the most popular content - expect to see dozens of biographies on Barack Obama and John McCain in the next few days. For these popular subjects the system should work well - a few lucky (and hopefully credible) articles will rise to the top, and the rest will fade away. But for less popular topics there won’t be any incentive for anyone to write anything.

Wikipedia works well because it’s almost like a charitable organization. Everyone contributes what they can in the hopes of furthering the world’s knowledge. Knol’s community will likely be far more concerned with earning money than the general welfare, which may hurt both its credibility and the amount of participation it sees from the community.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

piggymouse

Я не знаю, где коллега raven_hl это взял, но мне от этого стало хорошо.

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/343841440/tortoise-hates-cats.html

This aggressive little tortoise is unstoppable in his determination to keep cats off his territory.

techcrunch

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/343834140/

http://www.techcrunch.com/?p=20365

MySpace’s upcoming music joint venture with 3 of the 4 major labels, first announced in April, will launch in September (EMI is still a holdout, but from what we hear they may be ready to fold soon). Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, mentioned that date and gave other details about the joint venture in an interview today with Adam Lashinsky at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Half Moon Bay, CA.

Afterward, he told TechCrunch Co-Editor Erick Schonfeld, who is attending the event, that MySpace Music will be a combination music store/subscription service, with unlimited playbacks of full tracks, but for free. The revenue model will be advertising and paid downloads. Advertisers are already lining up, with some eight-figure deals being negotiated.

This is the first time a launch date has publicly been revealed. MySpace is counting on the music store as a new growth business - and bringing in the major labels as equity partners helps ensure their long term buy-in. The seemingly successful Hulu business model which brought in News Corp and other content owners last year will set the example.

Music almost certainly plays a part of MySpace’s continued dominance of Facebook in the U.S. Market. Facebook continues to rely on iLike for music - MySpace, by contrast, has already had a deep music offering and hosts pages for 5 million artists. MySpace says that 65% of their users embed music on their MySpace pages, and over 5 billion songs are streamed on MySpace each month.

There are still a lot of details that need to be explained about the MySpace music venture, and we still eagerly await announcement about the CEO of the new venture.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

alexmoskalyuk

Google сегодня объявил о долгожданном запуске проекта Knol, который с одной стороны вроде как конкурирует с Wikipedia, а с другой, немного упорядочивает поиск информации в сети, делая ее авторство внутри Knol доступным только экспертам. Статьи довольно подробные, если взглянуть на пример. Аналогично мы можем видеть упор на реальное авторство - информация об авторе весьма подробная и содержит время редактирования статьи, ее оценки, профессию и место жительства автора, т.е. для большинства интернет-пользователей, которые ищут важную информацию типа медицинской, это немаловажно.

Что еще интересно в запуске этого проекта? Google, по-моему, впервые, заключил партнерские соглашения о синдикации чужого контента на своем проекте. К примеру, эта статья про забитые туалеты пришла на Knol из журнала Family Handyman Magazine. Модель традиционная и испытанная, однако традиционная она была в основном для Yahoo!, которая вначале заключала соглашения о синдикации контента, а затем выпускала медиа-проект, будь то Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Food или Yahoo! Shine.

В-общем, если Google Knol получит развитие, он может стать серьезным конкурентом Wikipedia не в плане насыщенности (на Knol до сих пор нет биографий звезд поп-культуры, которые в Wikipedia являются самыми популярными статьями), а в плане траффика. За Wikipedia можно побеспокоиться в идеалистическом плане, так как пришла крупная корпорация, которая собирается затоптать неприбыльную организацию, которая рассчитывает на волонтеров. Однако в плане практическом мы знаем, что деньги, пожертвованные на Wikipedia, шли на весьма интересные вещи типа салоны досуга для Джимми Уэйлса.

bash_org_ru

http://bash.org.ru/quote/397983

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/343816047/the-raven-high-pitch.html

On Instructables, The Raven shows how to make a high-pitched tormentor that most mature adults are immune to:

This is a little device that I designed for the simple purpose of being discreetly annoying. It waits for a predetermined amount of time, and then it starts emitting high-pitched beeps. I have programmed mine to take advantage of an interesting property of sound. That is, in general most people above the age of 25-30 can't hear very high-pitched tones (say, 17 KHz for instance). This means if you were to (hypothetically of course) place it in a classroom, it would start bugging the heck out of the students while the teacher/professor will (most likely) be completely unaware of the source of the disturbance.

The Raven, high-pitched torture (via Make blog)

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/343816048/fox-tv-news-anchors.html

Why are these news anchors smiling? Because they've been given cups filled with a solid plastic material that resembles coffee.

Two cups of McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.

They’ve been on the Las Vegas station set for about two weeks, following the lead of a few TV stations across the country, and they’re still looking every bit as frosty and tantalizing (BUY!) as they were the first day you laid your eyes on them.

But wait, here’s the best part: They’re not real. Fake coffee on the real news, two plastic cups permanently filled with some kind of bogus drink. The anchors aren’t even supposed to acknowledge them, McDonald’s reps explain.

boingboing_net

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/343804897/brain-electrodes-as.html

“In the meantime we need to know why some of the patients don’t respond at all,” says (researcher Helen) Mayberg. “Are we missing the target, or are there different subtypes of the disease?” Her team is now trying to find out how to identify those who will respond to DBS, and those who won’t. “Brain surgery is not like getting your nails done, so it is important to try to find out who will benefit..."

Neurologists think that the therapy works by activating or damping down particular brain circuits. At the moment, no-one knows which of the targets within these circuits will eventually prove to be the most optimal...

The centres are also investigating the value of DBS in other psychiatric disturbances, such as obsessive compulsive disorder and addiction.