U.S. warns of Canadian spy coins (Yes, seriously)

The U.S. Defense Department has cautioned its American contractors about seemingly normal Canadian coins that may have a tiny radio frequency transmitter hidden inside. So far, the high-tech coins have been found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006, the government is claiming. The U.S. isn't suggesting who might be behind this latest act of espionage, or even which Canadian coins carried the transmitters. No word yet on if Sydney Bristow or Jack Bauer will be involved in the investigation.
(Click here to read the full article by Associated Press writer Ted Bridis.)

TIME Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year is... You!

TIME Magazine has unveiled their person of the year for 2006. And who gets this well-known culture award? Everyone. According to the magazine, everyone is coming together as a community and collaborating "on a scale never seen before," in between social sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and MySpace. The current use for the Internet is a tool to bring millions of people together to make small contributions back to everyone else. It's not just "Web 2.0," they say. "It's really a revolution." A mini-revolution that could perhaps include the Twin Institutes, Delta and Epsilon? (Editor: Only if you updated more than once a week!)

Because we're all spending this time networking with the rest of the world on the Internet, TIME magazine has named "You" as the Person of the Year for 2006.
(Click here to read TIME.com's profile of the 2006 Person of the Year.)

Philips introduces PC-free phone for Skype

Have you heard of Skype? It's that free international online phone communications system that lets you have all the benefits of having a phone, without having to use a phone. Unless, of course, you want to use a phone using Skype, but that would just kind of defeat half the purpose of Skype. (If I understand the concept correctly, that is.) Well, Philips Electronics announced that it would introduce the "world's first cordless DECT phone that can make Skype Internet calls" without being connected to a computer. The phone will be avaliable by the end of the year.

The IBM PC turns 25 this week

Ned Potter of ABC News filed a report today noting that twenty five years ago this week, the world changed forever. Twenty five years ago the world saw the release of the IBM 5150. Sure, Apple and Commodore had released personal computers before, but neither were as initially successful as the 5150. The first mainstream computer had no hard drive; users stored data on a cassette recorder or on a floppy disk. It had 16 kilobytes of RAM. The IBM 5150 sold one million units in it's first five years.

Today, about 70 percent of American households have at least one computer. (Read the full article)

ABC's online experiment to expand in the fall

This past spring, ABC.com launched a online video player that allowed internet users to watch full episodes of some of their most acclaimed primetime programs. The free service allowed people to watch episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias and Commander in Chief, all with limited commercial interruption. In fact, you would only have one sponser per episode. So you might have to sit through a 15-60 second ad between breaks, that's all the commercials you would see. According to new data released by ABC, the online streaming experiment worked - with great results. And as a result, a new version of the broadband player will come out in the fall with even more programming available.

According to ABC, viewers will see a slightly longer commercial inventory, but it won't hamper the "great consumer experience" that people were accustomed to seeing. In addition, episodes of programs will be available only four weeks after they originally aired. "Most people watch because they missed the episode, and that happens mostly within a discrete period of time," said Albert Cheng, executive vice-president of digital media for Disney-ABC Television Group. "Once you let it sit there, it doesn't get that much usage down the line." Most viewing of a particular episode was done within 24 hours of the original telecast.

During the two-month test, more than 5.7 million request for episodes were made and 16 million video streams were served. Each episode contained four separate streamed, which were proceeded by an ad. Not surprisingly, Lost was the most popular show in the test run, while Commander in Chief was the least-watched. Focus group studying showed that most viewing was done because users didn't watch the episode on TV. And a surprisingly large number of people - eighty-seven percent - could recall the advertiser.

By comparison, there have been six million downloads from Apple's iTunes service form ABC, Disney Channel and ESPN combined.

Not only is the ad recall percentage great for advertiser, the median age is demo-friendly as well. According to ABC, the average age of the video-streaming user was 29. ABC's average age during the May sweep was in the mid-40's.

No details have been announced yet on which programs will be available online when the service resumes in the fall, except that Lost and Desperate Housewives are expected to return. (Alias and Commander in Chief were cancelled and will not come back to the broadband service.) (Read the full article)

Overseas company to market odor-eating walls

In something that could very well impact your life, Japanese lavatory equipment maker Toto Ltd. is ready to launch the industry's first odor-decomposing wall material on August 10. This special material can absorb the "toilet odor" for photo-catalytic decomposition, according to Todo. The company said that tests confirmed that the material can reduce residual ammonia to one-sixteenth of the original amount. The wall cost about 210,000 yen, or, about $1,825 dollars, and is available in white, beige or pink. Why spend money on a high-tech air freshener when your wall can do all the work for you? (Read the full article)

HarperCollins makes a big online push

Book giant HarperCollins announced on Thursday that it is rolling out a beta version of a service that will allow potential book buyers to read a few pages of each title over the Internet. The new service is called "Browse Inside" and features books from ten featured authors including Michael Crichton, C.S. Lewis, Rick Warren, Paula Coelho and Isabel Allende. Within one year, ten more authors will be added.

According to the AFP, this new program allows people to read six pages of Allende's novel "Zorro", while Amazon.com's similar "Search Inside" feature allows you to read four pages of the same book. Plans are to have this program roll out on a much, much larger scale over the next year, "extending the application to all books globally." You can test the service out yourself by going to HarperCollins.com and clicking on a featured author's book. The "Browse Inside" button will appear underneath the cover art. (Read the press release) (Read the AFP article)

Court puts Moussaoui trial exhibits online

Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the September 11, 2001 attacks, was on trial for two months. And in those two months, the prosecution and defense submitted 1,202 items for exhibit. And now, the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia has released all of the exhibits to the public on their website. According to ABC, this is the first criminal case for which a federal court has provided access to "all" exhibits online.

In the documents available online, you can watch video clips, telephone and 911 phone calls and pictures presented before the jury. Some of the pictures are gruesome to look at, as they show body parts being recovered following the September 11th attacks. In also includes memos and information from the FBI, CIA and NSA concerning Moussaoui and other hijackers.

Now, this isn't "all" of the exhibits... There are still some classified reports shown to the jury, plus some videotapes dispositions of Moussaoui's roommate Hussein Al Attas and Faiz Bafana, a senior Jemmah Islamiyah member who discussed Moussaoui's dreams to fly a plane into the White House. Those tapes are viewed as witness testimony and will not be released at this time. (Read the full article)

Click here to view the exhibits on the court's website. (Viewer/listener discretion is strongly advised.)

This post is good for 36 hours

On television, news only seems to have relevance from anywhere between ten minutes to a few hours. After that, people already know the story and what to know more about something else. But what about the internet? According to the academic paper, "The Dynamics of Information Access on the Web," the answer is surprisingly long: 36 hours. Actually, it takes 36 hours for half of the total readership of an article to have read it.

The study also concluded that Internet users do not read news articles evenly throughout the day. Instead, they read in "bursts." So basically, some will see a story right away, while others won't see it for a few hours. (read the full article)

We want to use that story to segway into a note about what we cover and what we don't cover. Since many of you view this site at different times, and depending on when I work I update at different times, I try not to go for the big stories. The war between Israel and Lebanon? Such news stories have extremely time-dated material in them. We don't like time-dated material so much here, because it just doesn't work for this one particular site. You may only view this site once a week, but we still want to give you information you can use and find valuable, and not think "oh, that was so last Tuesday!".

It's not to say that we already knew what the study reported, but, we were already "programming" along those same basic principles. We've long given up on being a news "source." Rather, we are a news "supplement," adding to what you have already seen or read on the news throughout the day. And we like to do that with flashy graphics. Alot.

Nielsen to rate television commercials

It may very well revolutionize the television advertising industry. Nielsen Media Research announced on Tuesday that, come November, it plans to measure how many people actually watch TV commercials. Nielsen, as you know, already tracks how many people watch television programs. Both TV networks and advertisers say that they expect the new system to show a significant drop in viewership during commercial breaks. A documented drop in viewership could, potentially, significantly change the amount of advertising dollars that flow in and out of a network.

Industry analysts are already predicting that this new system will result in more in-program advertising and product placement, like in the early days of television. This could also perhaps change what kind of commercials you see, and in what order. If a commercial break starts off with a strong GEICO commercial, does that mean that the rest of the break will retain more viewers? How about movie trailers? Would funny commercials work better than serious ones? We'll start finding out the answers to these questions in November when the new service goes live. (Read the full article)