Mission Creek

from cnet.com

most likely this will not be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

What: A business traveler protests the warrantless search and seizure of his laptop by Homeland Security at the U.S.-Canada border.

When: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules on July 24.

Outcome: Three-judge panel unanimously says that border police may conduct random searches of laptops without search warrants or probable cause. These searches can include seizing the laptop and subjecting it to extensive forensic analysis.

full story here

full opinion here 

from washingtonpost.com

I wonder if future conferences will be virtual…

teven Rombom never got a chance to share the results of an hours-long experiment in getting someone’s background at a hackers convention in New York City last week.

Before he could sit down to lead a Saturday afternoon panel discussion entitled “Privacy is Dead . . . Get Over It,” federal agents moved in to arrest him for his methods of digging up information on people.

The arrest of Rombom, who also goes by Steven Rambam, was unrelated to the experiment at the Hackers on Planet Earth, or HOPE, conference…

full story here 

from forbes.com 

I think this is a very interesting take on this space. One I agree with…

Burlingame, Calif. -If you haven’t yet directed your Web browser to MySpace.com or a site of its ilk, you’re late to a very crowded party. More than 70 million Americans visited a social networking site in April, according to Nielsen NetRatings–that’s nearly half of the U.S. Internet audience.

These sites, which consist of blank profile canvases that users personalize and then share with friends and strangers, are poised to carry the tech sector through a sustained boom. There’s money and eyeballs coming at these sites from all directions, but because there isn’t much money flowing back out again, some wonder whether we’re in for another bubble.

Both big corporations and tiny startups are trying to capitalize on the social networking trend, but neither camp has demonstrated a surefire business model.

full story here

from usatoday.com

SAN FRANCISCO — A new strain of spam popping up in e-mail boxes is confounding consumers and corporate security officials.

The spam contains images spouting everything from stock scams to Viagra, and its volume has more than doubled since April, according to analysis by anti-spam vendor IronPort Systems.

Image-based spam accounts for 21% of all spam, compared with just 1% in late 2005, IronPort says.

full story here

as reported in siliconbeat.com

Bix, to offer online performance contests, raises $7 million

Twttr, another mobile social networking application

Calisolar, latest stealth solar Silicon Valley startup raises $9M

MoveDigital, another video distribution technology

WiChorus, of San Jose, another secretive start-up that is developing software for a wireless networking platform, has raised $8.5 million

Digital Chocolate, the mobile phone game provider of San Mateo, raises around $18 million

UnWiredBuyer gives you mobile alerts so that you can better participate in bidding,

SkyPilot Networks, of Santa Clara, has raised $21M in a fourth round of funding

full story here

from siliconvalley.com

What an baffling move on the Indian government’s part…

Outraged Internet users from New Delhi to Silicon Valley are blasting India’s government for shutting off access to millions of blogs, drawing comparisons of the world’s largest democracy to the authoritarian censorship of China and Iran.

“A lot of people are saying, `Wait a minute. This can’t be happening in India. China, yes. Pakistan, understandable’,” said Fremont blogger Sabahat Ashraf, who has several blogs that attract readers from India but now can’t be read in India. “People are startled and distressed.”

Other Silicon Valley bloggers are baffled and angry over India’s ban in recent days of blogs hosted by popular services used by Americans. The ban of 17 blogs and Web sites, which the government claimed fanned religious hatred, was unintentionally extended to millions of blogs when some of India’s Internet service providers blocked entire domain names, instead of just the specific sites. Banned domains include Google’s Blogger, Yahoo’s GeoCities and Six Apart’s TypePad services…

full story here 

from cnet.com 

Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose, sometimes you just walk away…

ACS, which was founded in 1876 and claims to be the world’s largest scientific society, sued Google in 2004. The suit claimed that the free “Google Scholar” journal-search service unfairly competes with ACS’ “SciFinder Scholar,” which appears to be more comprehensive but charges a fee.

“SciFinder Scholar is well-known and long has been well-received throughout the academic community, and we must protect our name and the good will the tool has already achieved,” an ACS representative said at the time.

But the case was quietly settled out of court in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, with Google and ACS submitting a joint two-page document that says each side will pay its own attorney fees.

full story here

OK, not really…. But what would a DRM free music sale mean to Itunes.  Clearly with 85% of the digital music market, driving sales of IPODS and Apple’s revenue to new heights.  What if DRM becomes irrelevant, would this mean the digital music player market would be blown wide open?  Probably, but don’t bet on that happening anytime soon.  There is no chance that the music executives, are going to allow this to occur in any meaningful manner.  The reality is, if music was available DRM free, the truth is that people would trade music directly, without the further involvement of the record industry. And, that just isn’t part of their plan….

from cnet.com

Yahoo announced Wednesday that it is selling Jessica Simpson’s latest single in MP3 format–in other words, with none of the usual copyright protection coding.

Because the song, a party-pop track called “A Public Affair,” has no digital rights management (DRM) protection coded into it, it will be compatible with just about every type of digital music player, from the iPod to the iRiver, as well as with film- and music-editing programs that may not have been able to read DRM-encoded files…

full story here 

Here is a fascinating exchange between a Google executive and one of the thought leaders, and founders of the internet (no, not Al Gore) Tim Berners-Lee.  Many thought leaders feel the next step of the web is to use Artificial Intelligence to search the web and categorize information through a universal medium for information exchange by putting documents with computer-processable meaning (semantics) on a single standard.  This notion would rely on standardized tagging to parse the data and direct the process (this is a very simplified summary).

I think this Google representative has a very valid read.  In essence, his argument is that the tagging is only good as the tag- which is completely subjective. The cynic would also say that the a universal standard would make it easier for search to be completed by competitors.

from cnet.com 

…

“What I get a lot is: ‘Why are you against the Semantic Web?’ I am not against the Semantic Web. But from Google’s point of view, there are a few things you need to overcome, incompetence being the first,” Norvig said. Norvig clarified that it was not Berners-Lee or his group that he was referring to as incompetent, but the general user.

“We deal with millions of Web masters who can’t configure a server, can’t write HTML. It’s hard for them to go to the next step. The second problem is competition. Some commercial providers say, ‘I’m the leader. Why should I standardize?’ The third problem is one of deception. We deal every day with people who try to rank higher in the results and then try to sell someone Viagra when that’s not what they are looking for. With less human oversight with the Semantic Web, we are worried about it being easier to be deceptive,” Norvig said.

“While you own the data that’s fine, but when somebody breaks and says, ‘If you use our enterprise system, we will have all your data in RDF. We care because we’ve got the best database.’ That is much more powerful,” Berners-Lee said. To illustrate his stance, he used the example of bookstores initially withholding information on stock levels and purchase price but then breaking them as others did.

…

full story here 

from nytimes.com

Sometimes we forget that technology; truly revolutionary technology can be developed without the internet…

WASHINGTON, July 18 — In a new approach to making the electric car a mass-market product, a California company will unveil on Wednesday a model that is very specialized, very expensive and very, very fast.

Tesla Motors, a four-year-old Silicon Valley start-up, has raised $60 million and spent about $25 million developing a two-seat Roadster that will sell for $85,000 to $100,000.

It goes from zero to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, “wicked fast,” said the company’s chairman, Martin Eberhard. Because it is an electric, the driver does not have to shift into second gear until the car hits 65, he said…

full story here