Archive for May 25th, 2008No, we’re not talking about vile blog commenters. A Jewish human rights group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, released a report last week that states on the web terror and hate is on the rise, particularly on social-media sites. 
According to a briefing detailed by The New York Times‘ Brad Stone, the …
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‘When We Left Earth’ series to take off on Discovery ChannelPosted by: admin in Social Media and Tech (Credit: Discovery)NEW YORK–On Tuesday night, the Discovery Channel hosted a few hundred guests at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium for a preview of When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, filling the audience up with cocktails called “The Liftoff” (a tequila sunrise in a rocket-like … A lot of us at Rocky Mountain Institute lead active lifestyles. Whether it’s riding single track in summer or heading for the ski lifts in winter, we spend a lot of time hauling around outdoor gear. We also spend a lot of time thinking about the efficiency of our cars. Which got me thinking: Just how much extra fuel am I burning by keeping my roof rack on year-round, adding extra drag to my car? And, more importantly, can I save money and reduce my carbon footprint? The basic science The faster you go, the worse it gets, because drag increases exponentially with speed. Driving twice as fast quadruples your drag, and the amount of power required to overcome that resistance increases by a factor of eight (cube law: 23=8). Don’t believe me? Think about what it feels like to stick your hand out the window at 80 mph vs. 40 mph. At the higher speed, you’re paying to overcome the added resistance by burning more gas. Improving performance Some people go the distance to customize their automobiles for improved drag performance. Check out this rather extreme example of “boat-tailing.” Fortunately for the rest of us, there are far simpler (and more socially acceptable) ways to boost your mileage by paying attention to the air flowing around your vehicle. Here are some simple things to keep in mind next time you get behind the steering wheel: Your speed According to the Department of Energy’s fuel economy Web site, driving at 80 mph is equivalent to adding roughly $0.80/gallon to the price of your fuel versus driving at 60. Roof racks Most sources claim a roughly 5 percent drop in fuel economy from roof racks; from personal experience, I’ve measured about a 10 percent drop. If you take the racks off of the vehicle for half of your driving, you’ll save an average of 15-30 gallons of gas per year. If you swap them 12 times per year, that can work out to over $100/hour for your efforts. Who knew aerodynamics could be so lucrative? If that sounds like too much of a hassle, a wind-deflecting fairing for the front rack costs about $50 and will do a good bit to reduce drag and noise. The wider the better: try to find one that smoothly bridges the gap between the windshield and the front bar. A model that improves efficiency by even 3 percent will pay off the investment in around a year of average driving (assuming 15,000 miles/year, 27.5 mpg, $3.50/gallon). Other options Trunk-mounted bicycle racks are typically much cheaper, and offer substantial savings compared to carrying your bike on the roof. On a recent 440-mile road trip to Moab, I found that having one bike on top of my vehicle cut my mileage by 25 percent. That meant I burned nearly 4 gallons of fuel just to move the bike! On cars equipped with hitches, using a rear-mounted cargo box in place of a rooftop box will save lots of gas — and be easier to access. If you have a rooftop box, for the sake of your wallet and the planet, take it off in between uses. Most importantly, though, enjoy the time outdoors! Aaron Westgate is Special Aide to Rocky Mountain Institute co-founder and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins.
 This post was updated at 10:49 AM with comment from Ariel Waldman. Some Web enthusiasts find microblogging service Twitter to be addictive because you can say absolutely anything you want–as long as it’s 140 characters or less. So what happens when “saying anything” translates into harassment? One avid Twitter user, Ariel Waldman, posted an entry Thursday on her personal blog, declaring that “Twitter refuses to uphold (its) terms of service.” She stated she started receiving “multiple accounts of harassment” from another user of the microblogging service and that when she petitioned to Twitter’s community manager, he opted to remove the Twitter posts in question from the site’s “public timeline.” Waldman wasn’t satisfied, especially when the harassment allegedly continued and grew worse into 2008. She wanted to see user account bans of those responsible, and despite insisting that the activity was in violation of Twitter’s terms of service, Twitter executives–including CEO Jack Dorsey–repeatedly said it wasn’t. Some of the comments at issue were apparently posted through a site that grants users to post anonymous “tweets” to a central account, making it difficult to track them to a specific user. 
Blogger Ariel Waldman spurred a lively debate when she claimed that Twitter didn't abide by its own terms of service. She stated it refused to take down an account that harassed her. (Credit: flickr.com/arielwaldman) Waldman is hardly the average Twitter user. Well-known in geek circles, she’s a “social-media insights consultant” who contributes to tech blog Engadget and runs her own site, Shake Well Before Use, about “art, advertising, sex, and technology.” In other words, in the bubble-like culture of Web 2.0, Waldman is a sort of celebrity–and with celebrity comes scrutiny and often unsightly commentary. If Lindsay Lohan took action each time Perez Hilton and his celebrity gossip brethren scrawled “slut” across pictures of her, her lawyer would be working overtime. Waldman also works as the community manager at Pownce, one of Twitter’s few rivals in the microblogging space, giving her a bit of a conflict of interest in the issue. But in a phone conversation with CNET News.com on Friday, she said that the issue (and discussion with Twitter employees) began before she was hired at Pownce, and that she’s a part-time employee with no investment in the company. Still, Twitter has some ostensible safeguards against abuse. The site’s terms of service say users “must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate, or intimidate other Twitter users” and that the company “may, but have no obligation to, remove content and accounts containing content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene, or otherwise objectionable or violates any party’s intellectual property, or these terms of use.” The final response to Waldman’s complaint from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone asserted that “Twitter is a communication utility, not a mediator of content,” and that “Twitter recognizes that it is not skilled at judging content disputes between individuals. Determining the line between update and insult isn’t something that Twitter, nor a crowd, would do well.” Stone added that Twitter’s team would continue talking about which situations were appropriate for account banning. As Waldman pointed out, however, other on the internet services, such as Flickr, Digg, and her employer are far less laissez-faire, banning accounts frequently. And she raised a legitimate concern when she said harassing messages are an issue for identity management in the chaotic muck of the Web. “Anyone can use Twitter to consistently harass you and ruin search results for your identity,” Waldman wrote, “and Twitter won’t execute any means of community management.” That goes back to whether Twitter is inherently for communication or community. There’s no universal standard for terms of service across social-media sites, and most Web users would likely concur that there probably shouldn’t be one. Different services attract different audiences and demographics, and have created different cultures, in effect. If Twitter wants to take a more hands-off approach to situations like Waldman’s, allowing some of the dialogue that a Digg or Flickr wouldn’t, it would be putting itself in the league of say-anything forums like MetaFilter. That would make the service look less wishy-washy with its “we’ll review the situation” response, but at the same time, branding itself as a free-for-all outlet likely wouldn’t help, as Twitter, reportedly having received fresh VC funding, attempts to gain more mainstream traction. “It seems like that’s where a lot of the disagreement is,” Waldman said to CNET News.com. “Twitter’s not wanting to take the job of policing and their users are used to being in communities where I guess they’re a bit more policed.” Either way, what Waldman calls “community management” is something that Twitter has to sort out–fast. As Twitter breaks further out of Silicon Valley culture, the service will invariably have to deal with users who cry foul over far tamer situations. Much like its famous outages, which the site finally addressed in full this week, abuse and harassment is something that Twitter can’t simply ignore.
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Microsoft’s Live Search scraps book digitization projectPosted by: admin in Social Media and TechMicrosoft’s Live Search Team is ending its book search efforts, according to a blog post Friday. Its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic sites will be discontinued next week, and books and academic publishings will show up in regular search results rather than separate sites. “We recognize that … Major Yahoo holder wants sale to Microsoft: report By Benjamin Pimentel, MarketWatch Last Update: 6:37 PM ET May 22, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A leading portfolio manager at Legg Mason Inc., a major shareholder in Yahoo Inc., reportedly wants Microsoft Corp. to purchase the Web portal instead of forging a partnership or a joint venture. Fund manager Bill Miller said […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net |
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