The BBC is looking to encode TV listing metadata and employ a compression algorithm to circumvent piracy, ad removal and illegal copying. According to a recent blog post by the EFF's Danny O'Brien, the group wants to get mandatory DRM onto digital TV receivers via a broadcast flag. In other words, a "public service broadcaster" wants to lessen the way we consume media by forcing manufacturers to limit product playing abilities. While open source TV services like Boxee allow users to view programs over home networks regardless of the device, a broadcast flag would force all HDTV receivers to include content protection. For those of us who watch our programs online, this could pose a serious problem.
Microsoft is taking aim at malvertising in an effort to curb the phenomenon. The Redmond company filed five civil law suits in King County Superior Court this morning after finding that a number of online advertisers were delivering malicious code to users. In the past ReadWriteWeb has covered a number of malvertising scams including the Facebook Fan Check virus' scareware scam. As was the case with Fan Check, the 5 companies are being accused of mimicking Windows security updates and tricking users into running fake programs.
Well-known podcaster and RSS pioneer Dave Winer is critical about Google's reading list patent. In a recent blog post, Winer explains how Google filed a patent laying claim to "a method of subscribing to a collection of feeds". Winer's own Scripting News discusses OPML file subscriptions or "reading lists" much earlier than the patent application and from what I understand, BlogBridge has also supported dynamic reading lists for years.
The steady flow and increased volume of information made available by new real-time web technologies will require new technology for consumption and different thinking for users. That's the thesis of an interesting new blog post by activity streams thought leader Chris Messina titled What can dogs tell us about the real-time web?
Messina uses research from Alexandra Horowitz's new book Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know as a metaphor for the change from the old document and page centric web to the new, real-time and people centric web. We've selected Messina's post as our Real-Time Web Article of the Day in our lead-up to the ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit on October 15th.
Anyone who has ever tried to keep the peace is told to avoid two topics: religion and politics. The latter is precisely the reason a flame war has ensued on Facebook. In an effort to personalize healthcare reform benefits, WhiteHouse.gov launched a "Reality Check" Facebook quiz application to rally for President Barack Obama's widely disputed Health Insurance Reform Plan. While the application was only shared with Facebook users 6 hours ago, 350 people have already commented on everything from education, to war, to congressional travel records to general partisanship.
Seesmic just released an update to its popular Twitter and Facebook desktop client that gives users enhanced access to their Facebook accounts. Specifically, Seesmic Desktop 0.6 now allows users to set up columns for Facebook Pages and post to these pages if they are administrators. In addition, Seesmic's Twitter features got a few useful updates, including a 'reply to all' feature and a new column for favorites. Seesmic also announced that yfrog will now become the default picture posting service for all Seesmic applications and that the company's desktop application has now been downloaded over 2.5 million times.
Posterous, the popular minimalist blogging service, just released a major update to its service, which includes customizable themes, a feature a lot of users had been waiting for. Users can now choose between five different themes, all of which are highly customizable. According to the company, additional themes will be added over time. Users can now also easily import their Tumblr blogs and even use their Tumblr themes as Posterous now also supports the Tumblr theme format. Posterous also announced that its traffic grew tenfold over the last 12 months to 4.4 million unique visits last month.
When you think about Google Books, chances are that you are thinking about eBooks and searching books on your desktop. Starting today, however, On Demand Books, the makers of the Espresso Book Machine, will have access to Google's vast library of public domain books. Bookstores that buy an Espresso Book Machine will now be able to provide on-demand printing services for any of the close to 2 million books in Google's repository.
Notifications combines push notifications for Twitter, email, and any RSS feed into one iPhone app. While we have tested quite a few push notification apps in the past, including some great apps like Boxcar and GPush, none of these offer the flexibility of Notifications. While it still has a few flaws and takes a while to set up, Notifications offers a number of features other apps don't offer, including the ability to get notified of new tweets with specific keywords. The app costs $2 and is available in the App Store now.
Recent research by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Vassilis Kostakos pokes a big hole in the prevailing wisdom that the "wisdom of crowds" is a trustworthy force on today's web. His research focused on studying the voting patterns across several sites featuring user-generated reviews including Amazon, IMDb, and BookCrossing. The findings showed that a small group of users accounted for a large number of ratings. In other words, as many have already begun to suspect, small but powerful groups can easily distort what the "crowd" really thinks, leading online reviews to often end up appearing extremely positive or extremely negative.
