Wikipedia is aflutter with angry psychologists demanding that the community take down reproductions of 10 original Rorschach inkblot plates and their statistically common responses. The Rorschach tests have been used since the 1920's to determine psychological disorders through the analysis of images. Twenty-five percent of all forensic cases utilize the Rorschach test in assessing defendant competency and criminal responsibility. According to the New York Times, Dr. James Heilman of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan originally uploaded the files and discussion has exploded ever since with doctors on both sides of the argument.
When the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal goes through, if Microsoft's Bing takes all of Yahoo's US search engine market share then it will be at 26% to Google's 70%, according to traffic analysts Hitwise. Such consolidation would put the venerable Ask.com in third place, with a mere 2.46%. That would mean that the next spot on the ladder will have 10X as much market share as Ask. That can't make the company happy.
Despite years of innovation, millions spent on marketing, a very logical domain name for search and relatively good brand recognition - Ask is still hurting.
In 2007, Discovery Channel impressed us by embracing the social web in their attempts to promote perennial favorite Shark Week.
Back in the day, a five-track DIY video mixer was enough to tickle our fancy. But we have gone the way of all users and have grown lazier over the ensuing two years. We now require our personalized videos to be mixed for us. Shark Week to the rescue! This year's promotional coup pulls all kinds of data from a user's Facebook profile to generate creepily personal results.
Sony just announced that owners of the Sony Reader can now access over 1 million free, out of copyright and public domain eBooks from the Google Books library. Sony first announced this deal with Google earlier this year, but at that time, it only offered about 500,000 free books. Barnes & Noble, which announced its eBook store and forthcoming hardware eReader last week currently features about 500,000 free books from Google, while Amazon's Kindle can read free books from Project Gutenberg, but doesn't offer compatibility with the ePub format that Google prefers. Amazon currently offers about 300,000 books.
The US Federal Government has plans to offer both Software as a Service for government agencies and a cloud-based platform for agencies to develop, test and deploy new applications. Those programs could be announced at the Gov 2.0 Summit in September, according to a report this morning from Federal News Radio.
SaaS offerings made available will be government-approved services like email, productivity apps, document management and business process management software. Those services are intended for use by other government agencies. Even more exciting may be the application platform that's part of the plan.
VoloMedia, a podcast analytics, advertising, and distribution company, just received a patent for "providing episodic media," including podcasts. According to the company, which filed for the patent in November 2003, U.S. Patent 7,568,213 covers all episodic media downloads, not just the RSS-dependent downloads that power today's podcasts. VoloMedia CEO Murgesh Navar says that the company doesn't plan to go after individual podcasters, but that the company plans to "work collaboratively with key participants in the industry." We do wonder, however, if VoloMedia can really claim to have invented podcasting in 2003, given that the concept was already under development by Dave Winer and others in late 2000 and early 2001.
Universal McCann has released a new report that looks at the state of social media today. Apparently, this trend is showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, it's still growing. From posting photos to writing blogs, the desire to share has become a universal phenomenon. However, the latest report shows that internet users are beginning to now center their digital life around social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, choosing to share their content within these sites instead of on services with a single focus, like Blogger or Flickr.
A few months from now, Yahoo's search engine will be "powered by Bing." After months of back and forth between Microsoft and Yahoo, the two companies finally announced a deal today that will bring Microsoft's search engine to Yahoo's properties, while Yahoo will become the sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers. Barring any roadblocks from industry and government regulators, this deal will grant Microsoft an exclusive license to Yahoo's core search technologies for 10 years. Yahoo expects that this deal will increase the company's cash flow by about $275 million.
When you're installing a new Facebook application, you probably don't think about the app's privacy policy, but perhaps you should. After all, the privacy policy is where the company spells out exactly what they can and will do with your personal user information. However, according to the findings released yesterday on the site Social Hacking, the state of Facebook application privacy policies leaves a lot to be desired. After delving into the current list of the top 25 applications, some disturbing information was revealed. For example, 36% of these top apps had no published privacy policy whatsoever or only offered a link to it after you authorized the application.
RFID is an emerging standard for identification and tracking of goods. It's one of the key underlying technologies for the Internet of Things. Yesterday we looked at the market for Internet fridges. Our conclusion was that until RFID tags become more common place on food items, Internet fridges will continue to be novelty appliances. In this post we look at the current state of RFID (Radio-frequency identification).
Some big names in the retail industry have climbed on board the RFID freight train. Notably Wal-Mart, which has not only adopted RFID big time, but pressured its suppliers to do so too.
