Top Items:
Sarah Lyall / New York Times:
What's the buzz? Teens can't stand it — BARRY, Wales—Though he did not know it at the time, the idea came to Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a factory with his father, a manufacturing executive in London. — Opening the door to a room where workers were using high-frequency …
Steve Hamm / Business Week:
Sony BMG's Costly Silence — The label was alerted to the secret, virus-vulnerable software on its CDs long before the scandal broke. Trouble is, it didn't act immediately to alert consumers — For Sony BMG Music Entertainment, it has become a public-relations nightmare — and it shows no signs of abating.
RELATED ITEM:
ctv.ca:
New spyware could prevent drivers from speeding — Many motorists would balk at the idea of an electronic back-seat driver that forcefully prevents them from speeding. — But a new device being road-tested by Transport Canada could mean breaking the speed limit will no longer be an option.
Discussion:
Gadget Blog
RELATED ITEM:
Daniel Terdiman / CNET News.com:
Newsmaker: Banking on a virtual economy — Late last month, Jon Jacobs, an independent filmmaker from Miami, became the first person in the history of online gaming to spend $100,000 on a single virtual item when he bought a space station in the game "Project Entropia."
Discussion:
Second Life Future Salon
Andrew Hill / Financial Times:
An energetic guide for a 21st-century journey — Thomas Friedman has a vision for the final edition of The World is Flat: anybody will be able to update it. — "It's been suggested to me that we actually turn the book into an open-source product. Just put it up on the web like Wikipedia …
Discussion:
Davos Newbies
Jeremy Reimer / Ars Technica:
Firefox 1.5 released on Mozilla's FTP site — The much-anticipated release of Firefox 1.5 has finally been posted on Mozilla's FTP site. This is the full release, unlike the Release Candidates 1, 2 and 3 that were posted on the Mozilla.org website on November 1, November 10 and November 17, respectively.
Dan Farber / Tech Blogs on ZDNet:
Grand Central turning to Swivel — After co-founding and leading CNET (from which this blog issues forth) from obscurity to Web stardom, Halsey Minor started 12 Entrepreneuring, raising over $130 million to incubate Web services companies before flaming out during the 2001 bubble bursting.
John C. Dvorak / PC Magazine:
Dead Media Everywhere — I've had thoughts on dead media before but I never thought about a real solution. I've decided paper tape is the way to go. Everything needs to be transferred to paper tape. Can you image the piles of paper tape that a 500GB hard drive would create?
Discussion:
digg
Momus / Wired News:
Blogging With a Wooden Tongue — The French call it la langue de bois, the "wooden tongue." It's the language of officialdom; of politics, power and propaganda. It's usually spoken by someone whose job is to speak, but whose real mission is to end speech.
Discussion:
A Jack of All Blogs
Ryan Naraine / eWEEK.com:
Trend Micro: RSS Is Worm Bot's Next Target — Security researchers at Trend Micro Inc. have pinpointed RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology as a lucrative target for future bot worm attacks. — David Sancho, senior anti-virus research engineer at Trend Micro, warned that RSS feed hijacking …
Discussion:
Micro Persuasion
Pete Wright / The secret life of an MS Author:
Motion LE 1600 Tablet — I've long had a certain amount of lust for the Motion slate Tablet PC's. They are well balanced, have an incredible screen (if you go for the pricey view anywhere option). In fact, if computer manufacturers can be compared to car manufacturers, Motion to me always seems like the BMW of PC builders.
Discussion:
Life On the Wicked Stage
John Heilemann / New York Magazine:
Googlephobia — Google may be the giant asteroid that is going to make the old-media dinosaurs extinct—but the publishing industry is trying to head it off. — Pat Schroeder, the former Colorado congresswoman who's now the head of the Association of American Publishers …
Discussion:
John Battelle's Searchblog
Eric Mankin / eurekalert.org:
Surprise! Computer scientists model the exclamation point — Two Southern California engineers have created a mathematical theory of surprise, working from first principles of probability theory applied to a digital environment — and the results of experiments recording eye movements of volunteers watching video seem to confirm it.
Ina Fried / CNET News.com:
No Vista Beta 2 this year — The second beta of Windows Vista will not come until next year, Microsoft said Tuesday. — The software maker did not give a time frame for the release of Beta 2 of the operating system, and said only that it would have more to say next year.
