Technology

Twitter CEO unveils \’@anywhere\’ feature

By cnn.com technology on March 15, 2010

Austin, Texas (CNN) — Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced a product Monday that will further integrate Twitter feeds into other Web sites.

The "@anywhere" feature will allow users to post to Twitter from a number of other sites and to comment on each others posts without visiting Twitter.com.

"Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page — and thats just the beginning," the company wrote in a blog post.

The feature, which is expected to launch soon, will be introduced first on 13 Web sites, including The New York Times, Amazon, eBay, Bing, YouTube and The Huffington Post.

Williams made the announcement at the South by Southwest Interactive festival, which is a yearly gathering of technology enthusiasts. Twitter debuted at South by Southwest in 2007.

The @anywhere feature will make browsing the Web more seamless and help Web users find sites and videos more easily, Williams said.

"One of the things weve found with Twitter is that discovery is one of the hardest challenges," he said.

"Twitter drives tons of traffic. … It should result in more followers for a site than just sending out links does," Williams said. "It should hopefully result in more people who are your audience [and who are] using Twitter talking among themselves about your content."

Williams keynote was one of the most highly anticipated events at SXSW, but the speech was met with some negative reaction from the audience in Austin, Texas.

Twitter executives have acknowledged plans to add advertising to the site, which currently is free of ads. Many attendees said they had hoped Williams would talk about how such advertising would work on Twitter.

Instead, some audience members began filing out of the keynote address, which was held as an on-stage interview, about 40 minutes after it started. By the time the interview was over, the hall was more than half-empty.

The session also took a real-time beating on Twitter.

"Ive seen more energy at a lawn bowling tournament," one user wrote.

In an interview with CNN, Williams said Twitter doesnt have anything to announce in relation to its advertising plans.

"Unfortunately, were not in control of what people anticipate well announce," he said.

The measured reactions to the @anywhere feature didnt help the energy level at Williams talk.

"Its an interesting idea to bring Twitter out into the ecosystem, but I think at the end of the day, the intelligence [it would provide] is a little light," said John Logioco, vice president of Outbrain, which makes a widget designed to suggest content on a Web page based on a persons preferences.

"What were looking for on the Web, I think, is less noise, not more noise."

Its unclear exactly when the @anywhere feature will launch. Williams said in an interview that prototypes are being tested now.

"I dont know if we have a launch date yet," he said. "We have participating sites who are working on implementing it right now, and we have sort of prototypes working. It will depend somewhat on the sites who are implementing it when it actually launches because everybody is sort of adopting it differently."

CNNs Valerie Streit contributed to this report.

FCC releases \’broadband plan\’ details

By cnn.com technology on March 15, 2010

(CNN) — Sick of slow Internet connections? The federal government hears you.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Monday unveiled some details of its broadband plan, which aims to speed up Web connections and make high-speed Internet available to more Americans.

The commission plans to use educational programs and an expansion of broadband Internet infrastructure to give 90 percent of Americans high-speed Internet access at home by 2020.

Currently, only 65 percent of Americans have high-speed Internet access at home, which the FCC says is a detriment to economic growth. The proposal will make the U.S. "the worlds largest market of high-speed broadband users" and will create jobs, the FCC says in a news release.

The plan would also lower health care costs and improve home energy efficiency by making information available digitally, the FCC says.

Other details of the plan remain unclear. The FCC will release its entire proposal at a meeting Tuesday.

The FCC also wants to speed up overall connections, which are often criticized as slow by global standards.

Its goal is to give 100 million households access to Internet connections that transfer 100 megabits of data per second.

The average U.S. Internet speed today is much slower — only 3.9 megabits per second, according to the Internet monitor Akamai.

The U.S. has only the 18th fastest Internet connections in the world, behind countries like South Korea, which leads the world with 14.6 megabit-per-second data transfer rates, Akamai says.

One rural towns broadband battle

Each community in America also will get access to at least one "ultra-high-speed" connection at a library, school or military base. Those connections will reach speeds of 1 gigabit per second, the FCC said in the news release.

The countrys broadband plan was required as part of President Obamas 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allocated $7.2 billion to broadband-related initiatives.

The FCCs upcoming broadband plan will be "revenue neutral," according to an executive summary of the plan released Monday. The FCC will auction off 500 megahertz of spectrum to pay for some expenses, such as extending broadband networks to rural areas.

Other programs will be paid for with improved efficiencies, the FCC said.

The plan has been delayed, and it is criticized by some as doing too little.

Speaking at South by Southwest Interactive, a technology conference in Austin, Texas, Derek Turner, the research director for the nonprofit group Free Press, said the broadband plan does not do enough to reduce the cost of high-speed Internet connections, which he said is the biggest barrier to adoption.

Still, he said, he is hopeful that the federal government can address the issue.

"Im actually very hopeful for some positive outcomes," he said at the conference, "because Ive seen stranger things happen in Washington."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski framed the plan as a boost for the economy.

"The National Broadband Plan is a 21st century roadmap to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens, and engage in our democracy," he said in an FCC news release.

"Its an action plan, and action is necessary to meet the challenges of global competitiveness, and harness the power of broadband to help address so many vital national issues."

The plan places some emphasis on the mobile Internet and indicates that the U.S. wants to be a leader in that emerging space.

CNNs Doug Gross contributed to this report.

Analyst: WinPho7 App Tools Likely to Please Devs

By technewsworld.com on March 15, 2010

Microsoft has thrown the doors open to developers interested in working on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series platform, announcing new developer tools and offering the deepest look yet at the Silverlight-based architecture. The new tools include updates to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express, Expression Blend and XNA Game Studio.

Hate speech infiltrates social-networking sites, report says

By cnn.com technology on March 15, 2010

New York (CNN) — The unregulated nature of the Web has aided a proliferation of cyber-hate, according to a report the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Tolerance released Monday.

The report, Digital Terrorism and Hate 2010, notes that there are about 11,500 hate-affiliated Web pages, a 20 percent jump from last years study.

According to the Wiesenthal Center, personal blogs as well as mainstream social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter are easily flooded with racist and terrorist-related content.

"The spike is not in traditional Web sites in the United States," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "Its more global and almost all in the social-networking area."

Mark Weitzman, director of government affairs for the Wiesenthal Center and a co-author of the report, said home-grown terrorism suspects have an active online presence. He cited the case of a Pennsylvania woman who officials say called herself "Jihad Jane."

The woman, Colleen LaRose, has been indicted on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and kill a person in a foreign country. She had been on the radar of the Wiesenthal Center for the past year, Weitzman said.

"We ask, Are they just coming out of the woodwork? and the answer in every single case is the Internet link," Cooper said.

Although these sites are monitored, the reports authors said, they have become increasingly alarmed by the "lone wolf" effect, making it difficult for law enforcement to discern which threats are legitimate and which are simply talk.

For example, the late James W. Von Brunn, the 88-year-old who was charged in the fatal shooting of a security guard at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington in June, kept a Web site called the Holy Western Empire. On it, he blamed a "Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys" and "a Jew judge" for a six-year prison term he served in the 1980s.

However, "theres no equation that says someone who posts a rant … is going to go on a shooting rampage," said Weitzman, who has testified in front of Congress and the United Nations on the issue of digital hate.

Perhaps even more chilling are the growing numbers of "how to" Web sites in which terror groups routinely post instructional manuals and videos on bombmaking and computer hacking.

The study also explored e-commerce and how it can be used to market hate. In February, an eBay merchant offered "an original Holocaust ring," claiming that it came from his uncle who was posted at the Dachau concentration camp during World War II. EBay pulled the Web page before a sale was made.

Founded in 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center was named after a Jew who survived the Holocaust and became famous for his career as a Nazi hunter.

Apple Tosses In a New iPad With $99 Battery Replacement

By technewsworld.com on March 15, 2010

Apple has announced a new service plan its upcoming iPad tablet devices: The company will replace iPads whose batteries can’t hold a full charge for a $99 service fee plus $6.95 for shipping as well as taxes. This is not a matter of a technician removing the old battery and installing a new one. The whole device will be replaced with a brand-new iPad.

Makers: New Digg will be \’wicked fast\’

By cnn.com technology on March 15, 2010

Austin, Texas (CNN) — The popular news-sharing site Digg is getting an overhaul that will personalize results, dramatically expand content and, most importantly, make the site "wicked fast," according to its makers.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson said Sunday that the changes could increase the sites shared content from about 20,000 submissions a day to millions a day.

At the same time, users will get home pages personalized to their interests. Leader boards — discontinued after complaints from new users and veterans — will return, with more categories.

"Its going to be a pretty radical set of changes," said Adelson, who first announced the changes at a party hosted by the bookmarking site Saturday night during the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

Users interested in testing the new Digg can apply by going to the new site. Adelson said people will start getting invitations in the next few weeks and that the site — with revisions suggested by alpha-testers — will open to the public in a few months.

Founded in 2004, Digg allows its devoted set of users to submit a news story or other item that they like. Other users then vote to "digg" or "bury" that item.

The stories that get the most love each day are rewarded with a potential traffic bonanza — placement on Diggs home page in front of its 40 million or so monthly users.

Like most popular social destinations on the Web, the site has attracted its share of controversy. Some have complained that Diggs user-driven rankings give too much prominence to misleading or sensationalistic articles. The site also was forced to crack down on users who planted phony stories on behalf of marketers.

A key change with the new site will be removing the need to be logged in to Digg to submit an item. Anyone on the Internet now will be able to put a story in front of Digg voters. Thats the reason the site expects so many more submissions.

There also will be an unlimited number of topics, helping hobbies, local news and other niche interests that may never make it onto Diggs home page find a place on the site.

"If you think about Digg right now, if you put a Digg button on [a Web page] its kind of like gambling in that if you hit, you hit big," he said. "But if you dont hit, theres not a lot of value.

"Were trying to address that as a tool and say that … I should be able to send a predictable amount of traffic to those sort of smaller and medium-tier sites."

The sites speed will be enhanced by an infrastructure overhaul that Adelson said has been five years in the making.

The homepages leader boards will return in revamped form, this time awarding users who share content in a particular field of interest.

Before, the game aspect of trying to reach the top of a single leader board was unpopular with new users, who felt they could never catch up, and the top users, who reported being offered money by Web sites to put their "Digg" clout behind their sites posts.

"You had the people actually at the top of the list telling us they didnt like the list," Adelson said. "Thats generally a good sign that a feature is broken."

Airline boarding pass? It\’s your phone

By cnn.com technology on March 15, 2010

(CNN) — More air travelers may soon be scanning their smartphones instead of paper slips at airport gates.

United has become the latest airline to offer mobile boarding passes for customers equipped with Web-enabled mobile phones or devices, such as iPhones or BlackBerrys.

United passengers traveling within the United States, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands can now log on to mobile.united.com to check in for their flights via their smartphones.

Those departing from eight U.S. airports, including Chicagos OHare International and Dallas-Fort Worth International in Texas, can also receive an e-mail with an encrypted two-dimensional barcode that stores their flight, seat assignment and gate information.

Once at the airport, passengers can scan the barcode, which is displayed on the screen of the mobile device, at security and during boarding.

(The Transportation Security Administration still requires them to show photo identification so officers can match the name on the boarding pass to the ID.)

Mobile boarding passes can also be refreshed to display new information if there is a seat or gate change.

The TSA likes them because of their improved security.

"The paperless boarding pass will … prevent fraudulent paper boarding passes that could be created and printed from home," the agency wrote on its blog.

Meanwhile, American Airlines has announced that it is expanding its mobile boarding pass program to 19 more airports, bringing the total up to 27. The additions include Washington Dulles International, New York La Guardia and San Francisco International.

The carrier began offering mobile boarding passes in 2008, calling them a way to make travel as easy and convenient as possible.

"This is a great alternative for our customers on the go," said Andrew Watson, Americans vice president for customer technology, in a statement.

The program will be extended to even more U.S. airports in the coming months, American said.

Continental, Delta and Alaska Airlines also offer mobile boarding passes to their customers.

Is the Chatroulette Sleazefest Giving Video Chat a Bad Name?

By technewsworld.com on March 15, 2010

It’s a good bet that when “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart spends six minutes making uber-ironic fun of a particular trend or topic, it’s pretty much arrived as a legitimate Mainstream Media Phenomenon. Such was the case recently with Stewart’s hilarious deconstruction of Chatroulette the Web site that facilitates random video chat conversations.

Clinic uses iris scans to identify patients

By cnn.com technology on March 15, 2010

(CNN) — Rafael Fernandez walks into the Bronx, New York, medical clinic, with his eyes wide open.

Checking Fernandez in, a clinic employee scans his eyes using a handheld camera. Within seconds, the camera reads his iris patterns, and a computer locates his medical record.

Such iris identification technology is usually seen in international airports to allow registered passengers to fast-track through passport checks and immigration.

But far from the sleek European airports, the South Bronx clinic that receives federal funding and operates in one of the most impoverished U.S. areas uses the instruments to prevent medical record mishaps.

Fernandez, a patient of five years at the Urban Health Plan clinic, said the iris scanning makes his visits more convenient.

"Its a shorter wait," said the 72-year-old. "I wait less, and its more efficient. Everything is on computers. Its faster, and I dont have to stay too long. Its in and out."

Urban Health Plan, which serves mostly the uninsured and underserved, fully integrated iris identification to match patients to their medical records in 2009.

With a heavily Hispanic client base, where some of their 37,000 patients speak limited English and only a few provide Social Security numbers, the clinic encountered cases of mistaken identities.

It had 50 Maria Hernandezes, 66 Maria Gonzaleses, 55 Jose Gonzalezes, 83 Carmen Rodriguezes and 103 Jose Rodriguezes, according to the clinic.

If a health worker is "busy and doing a couple different things, its easy to click on the wrong one," said Alison Connelly-Flores, the clinical system administrator at Urban Health Plan. There were ways to check the patients birth date, but "it was still possible to make a mistake."

"There are many patients with similar names and you want to make sure you get the right patient," said Dr. Samuel De Leon, the chief medical officer at Urban Health Plan. "In health care, risk management is an important thing. You want to avoid medical errors. You want to make sure you treat the right patient. You dont want to give the wrong medication."

With growing concerns about such errors, medical identity theft and insurance fraud, health technology experts say more hospitals are looking for better identification tools.

So how do you solve a problem like too many Marias?

A few hospitals use biometrics such as palm, eye or vein pattern readers, which are methods to recognize a person based on unique biological characteristics, according to companies that create the technology.

By using the eye scanner at Urban Health Plan, Maria Hernandez would get her specific medical record and not get mixed up with another person who has the same name.

"We are in the poorest congressional district in the country," Connelly-Flores said. "Being able to use this kind of technology is impressive."

In 2006, De Leon contacted a small iris identification company in Chantilly, Virginia. He was looking for ways to reduce errors at the clinic.

The clinic photographed its patients, but that was imprecise. De Leon didnt want to use fingerprints, because some patients associated that with the police and crime. He didnt want to use palm readers that required physical contact because that would easily spread germs. So he set his sights on iris scanners; it didnt require touching and didnt carry the negative connotations.

But the iris technology back then was bulky and too expensive for the health clinic — as De Leon described, "cool but impractical."

The clinic formed a partnership with the company Eye Controls to develop a more user-friendly model, consisting of a handheld iris camera and software to reduce identification errors.

"The acceptable error rate is zero, because were talking about peoples lives here. People can get hurt and die," said Evan Smith, Eye Controls chief executive officer.

The iris, which is the colored ring of the eye, is unique for every human being. The company tested the iris scanner with simulated IDs and found zero errors in 8 million transactions, Smith said.

Why Keeping the Bar Low May Be Good for Google

By technewsworld.com on March 15, 2010

The Google model survived the dot-com mess but its success seems based largely on the belief that advertising can fund everything. If the users are unhappy, well it doesn’t really matter. In fact, Google’s customers (the folks paying them money) and the folks they actually serve are quiet different, causing me to question the viability of many of their non-search efforts.

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