The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘national’

Yahoo is backing a cycling team. I don’t know why — but they’re doing it. And today their passion got a little boost: from Google.

Google is announcing tomorrow at the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC that Google Maps will now include biking directions in the U.S. Apparently, this was the most-requested feature for the service, as some 57 million Americans ride bikes.

Thousands of miles of bike trails have been added to the maps. And there is also step-by-step directions, much like you can see for driving or public transportation directions in the maps. There is also a new layer that shows bike trails and bike-friendly areas on roads. Yes, it’s a bike-lover’s dream.

To make this new feature happen, Google partnered with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit group that converts old rail lines into bike trails. The group have given Google information on some 12,000 miles worth of trails in the U.S.

To coincide with the launch, Google also has a cycling contest. To enter, you simply have to tweet with the hashtag #bikewithgoogle. The randomly selected winner will get a voucher for $2,500 to be used at American Cyclery.

I fully expect that hashtag to be dominated by members of Yahoo’s cycling team tomorrow.

Find out more about the new feature in the video below.

Naturally, which you launch a new product with a huge amount of hype, like Google Buzz, you’re going to want to own the .com domain name for it. And Google obtained googlebuzz.com just in the nick of time, according to a document from the National Arbitration Forum.

On November 13, 2009, Google, represented by Meredith M. Pavia (presumably, a Google lawyer), filed a complaint that BuzzNews Network was using the googlebuzz.com domain in bad faith. Further, they argued that it was “confusingly similar” to Google’s trademark on the company name. This was an easy one for the forum to rule on since BuzzNews Network never responded to the complaint.

The presiding panelist also cited Google as being one of the most recognized brands in the world, and clearly that part of the name overcame any claim to “buzz” BuzzNews Network might have had. It probably didn’t help that BuzzNews bought the domain from GoDaddy in 2004 and had parked it with links ever since.

On December 23, 2009, the panelist ruled the name had to be turned over to Google. And though it doesn’t yet forward anywhere, you can bet Google will soon set up googlebuzz.com to point to the service, just as googlewave.com points to Google Wave. While Google launched the service today, it originally planned to do it at a later time, we hear. That had to be moved up for some unknown reason, so they’re lucky they got the domain when they did.

Of course, it looks like someone else just registered buzzgoogle.com and is parking it. The fight continues…

[thanks Shmuel]

…vending machine. And you thought our government was low-tech

Originally posted here: 
Capitol Hill gets a big iPad

Much has been written about China and “hackers” in recent weeks, probably because it contains two items that sound mysterious and scary: China and its rise, which unsettles people who believe the U.S. should run the planet, full stop, and “hacking.” Oh, scary hackers! Anyhow, here’s another story! A rather large Web site, one allegedly offering software for hacking , has been shut down . The site, Black Hawk Safety Net, was once located at 3800cc.com, but all you get now a bad request

Original post:
China shuts down pretty darn big hacking Web site

Nintendo’s next console has been the subject of countless rumors, and every time something comes up, someone at Nintendo vehemently denies it. A new console? Perish the thought! Well, I never! But at the Japan Media Arts Festival on Saturday, Shigeru Miyamoto himself said that yes, Nintendo is working on new hardware.

Original post:
Miyamoto: Nintendo is working on new hardware

The Pew Internet Project says that kids who buy their own phones are four times as likely to sext - that is send inappropriate images or texts to other kids. The sad thing is that some of these images make it into some of the 3,000 reports received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children every week.

While I still think sexting, like rainbow parties, is an overblown phenomenon, the report, found here and embedded after the jump, polled 2,553 Millennials (18-29) and 800 adolescents between 12 and 17. The results were quite interesting.

In a defining speech today on Internet Freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton extended foreign policy to the Internet, calling it a “global networked commons.” Her speech harked back to Franklin Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms speech, and updated each one (Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want, Freedom From Fear) to apply to the Internet. She also added a new freedom, the Freedom to Connect:

The freedom to connect – the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly in cyber space.

Apparently, it is now the U.S. government’s foreign policy to protect and promote these freedoms throughout the information “commons” which extend beyond our physical borders.  It is also U.S. foreign policy to encourage corporations, particularly those in the technology industry, to protect these freedoms.  Call it corporate statecraft.  Towards the end of the speech, Clinton applauded Google’s recent decision to rethink whether it will continue to operate in China following coordinated cyber attacks on its operations there. Not only that, she encouraged other companies to follow Google’s lead:

I hope that refusal to support politically-motivated censorship will become a trademark characteristic of American technology companies. It should be part of our national brand. I’m confident that consumers worldwide will reward firms that respect these principles.

Certainly, the Internet knows no national boundaries. But trying to impose our ideas of freedom onto other countries, especially dictatorships, may end up being a futile effort. Nevertheless, Clinton explains why she thinks it is important to try:

Ultimately, this issue isn’t just about information freedom; it’s about what kind of world we’re going to inhabit. It’s about whether we live on a planet with one internet, one global community, and a common body of knowledge that unites and benefits us all. Or a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the whims of censors.

Going through the various freedoms, below I’ve distilled some of what she had to say.  On Freedom Of Expression, she notes:

Blogs, email, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas – and created new targets for censorship.

. . . Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They have expunged words, names and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. . . . With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. Beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day.

On Freedom Of Religion:

Just as these technologies must not be used to punish peaceful political speech, they must not be used to persecute or silence religious minorities.

On Freedom From Want:

. . . the internet can serve as a great equalizer. By providing people with access to knowledge and potential markets, networks can create opportunity where none exists. . . . A connection to global information networks is like an on ramp to modernity. . . . Information networks have become a great leveler, and we should use them to help lift people out of poverty.

On Freedom From Fear:

As we work to advance these freedoms, we must also work against those who use communication networks as tools of disruption and fear. . . . Governments and citizens must have confidence that the networks at the core of their national security and economic prosperity are safe and resilient.  This is about more than petty hackers who deface websites.

The State Department is actively developing tools to help citizens of other countries express themselves freely on the Internet and circumvent censorship.  Clinton also announced that the State Department will launch an “innovation competition” to help promote these freedoms abroad:

We’ll be asking Americans to send us their best ideas for applications and technologies that help to break down language barriers, overcome illiteracy, and connect people to the services and information they need. Microsoft, for example, has already developed a prototype for a digital doctor that could help provide medical care in isolated rural communities. We want to see more ideas like that. And we’ll work with the winners of the competition and provide grants to help build their ideas to scale.

Sounds like the State Department is going to start an Internet Freedom fund.

Photo Credit: Flickr/ U.S. State Dept.

For a while, the only way to play the location-based Foursquare was through its iPhone app or the scant mobile website. Then came an Android app, opening the game to a whole new group of users. And now, BlackBerry users are getting the love.

The service is officially launching on the BlackBerry today after several weeks in private beta testing with a few hundred users. Specifically, the app with work on all 8000 and 9000 series devices (any BlackBerry with a trackball), and it will also work with the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm, but Foursquare notes that a special version built for that device is in the works too.

As you can see in the screenshots, the app is pretty similar to the Foursquare apps on the other platforms. While not quite as pretty as the latest iPhone version, it gets the job done. Our own Leena Rao has been one of the beta testers, and speaks glowingly of being able to use the service after months of iPhone-envy. That said, she does note that there were some bugs, but can’t be sure if that’s more of a BlackBerry problem then a Foursquare problem. A number of testers have noted in the forums problems with location-sensing, but with the latest update that got sent out last week (the “release candidate”) version, the service made a number of UX tweaks in an attempt to make it more obvious to find the actual venue you are looking to check in at.

This BlackBerry launch is an important one for Foursquare as they continue to grow. Windows Mobile and Palm Pre versions has also been in the works for some time by independent developers using Foursquare’s API. Once it’s on all the mobile platforms, it will have a pretty strong defense against both Gowalla, which is currently iPhone-only but has a mobile web interface that works on Android, and the Yelp application, which just last week added the check-in feature that is the key to Foursquare. That is still only available on the iPhone app, but it has some 1.25 million users — well above Foursquare’s total numbers (somewhere around 200,000).  Foursquare also just yesterday confirmed the hiring of a COO (which they are calling their General Manager).

Amazon’s Kindle device sparked quite some controversy last year over its text-to-speech capabilities. The Authors Guild was up in arms over the feature, identifying it as a threat to audio book sales, and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American Council of the Blind (ACB) had some things to say about the Kindle, too.

In June 2009, NFB and ACB jointly filed a discrimination lawsuit against Arizona State University (ASU) to prevent the university from deploying Amazon’s Kindle DX as a means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students because the device cannot be used by blind students. Sounds arbitrary, I know, but more on that later.

ASU was one of six institutions of higher education to deploy the Kindle DX as part of a pilot project to assess the role of electronic textbooks and reading devices in the classroom.

The main contentions in the lawsuit filed by NFB and ACB – which also targeted the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) – was that while the Kindle DX has a text-to-speech feature, the menus to select a book or purchase a book are not blind-friendly, making it impossible to select textbooks for download.

The blindness organizations alleged that this was in violation of federal law. ABOR and ASU denied and continue to deny any violations of the law. Either way, the parties this morning announced that they have reached a settlement agreement.

The agreement was reached in light of several factors, according to the press release: ASU’s commitment to providing access to all programs and facilities for students with disabilities, the fact that the pilot program will end in the Spring of 2010 and the university’s agreement that should ASU deploy e-book readers in future classes over the next two years, it will strive to use devices that are accessible to the blind.

Interestingly, the settlement agreement also stipulates that Amazon “and others” are making improvements to and progress in the accessibility of e-book readers. It’s unclear which what these improvements are and when they will be into effect.

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

Students at the University of Colorado at Boulder will soon be constructing a tiny spacecraft to observe space weather in the near-Earth orbit. The project is funded by a $840k grant from the National Science Foundation and is just the latest project in a long line of student-built spacecraft over the last 50 years for LASP, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Originally posted here:
Students at CU to team up, build tiny spacecraft