Bebo speak: Teenagers create secret language to keep parents and bosses in the dark

By Daily Mail Reporter

Teenagers on social networking site Bebo have created a secret language to stop adults knowing what they are up to (posed by model)


Teenagers on social networking site Bebo have created a secret language to stop adults knowing what they are up to, researchers say.

Youngsters are using slang words to keep parents and employers in the dark about their social activities such as partying and drinking.

Instead of writing they are drunk, teens post 'Getting MWI' - or mad with it.

Being in a relationship is known as 'taken' or 'Ownageeee', and 'Ridneck', a corruption of redneck, means to feel embarrassed.

Meanwhile, girls posting 'Legal' are indicating that they are above 16 and legally allowed to have sex.

Lisa Whittaker, a postgraduate student at the University of Stirling, who studied teens aged 16-18 in Scotland, said the slang had been created to keep their activities private, and cited the example of one young girl who was sacked after bosses found pictures of her drinking on the website.

She said: 'Young people often distort the languages they use by making the pages difficult for those unfamiliar with the distortions and colloquialisms.

'The language used on Bebo seems to go beyond abbreviations that are commonly used in text messaging, such as removing all the vowels.


'This is not just bad spelling, which would suggest literacy issues, but a deliberate attempt to creatively misspell words.


'The creation and use of their own social language may be a deliberate attempt to keep adults from understanding what is written on the page.

'By doing this they are able to communicate with their in-group and conceal the content from the out-group. This further adds to their online identity.'

She said that one reason for encoding their messages was to keep adults in the dark about their drinking or smoking.

One teen she questioned, known as Kelly, was fired when her employer found pictures of her drinking on the website.

Ms Whittaker said: 'Kelly feels very bitter about losing her job over the content of her Bebo page.

'When I ask her to tell me about it she uses the word "judge", which indicates that she feels victimised by her ex-employers.

'This issue here surrounds the fact that Kelly likes to drink at the weekends, even though she is still under the legal age.

'She posted videos of herself drunk on her Bebo page, which led her employers to sack her.

'Kelly feels her personal life is separate from her working life, which may be the case, but by posting videos online her Bebo page has given her employer an insight into behaviour which may have otherwise remained private.

'Young people give each other recognition for going to college and having a job but also engaging in social activities such as drinking and smoking.

'Others may see this as a divergence, for example, a young person is labelled a delinquent for drinking alcohol while underage.

'However, these young people are able to recognise each other for both socially desirable and undesirable behaviours.'

She went on: 'Social networking sites like Bebo provide young people with an opportunity to gain informal positive recognition from their peer group.

'The total number of friends you are connected with indicates your popularity.

'However, in terms of self-presentation and recognition this is not a straightforward process.

'For young people, a low number of friends, for example, less than 500, is a sign that you are not very popular or very well-liked.

'By contrast, having too many friends can also be detrimental to your self-image as you appear desperate.

'The number of friends you have on Bebo must be a carefully monitored.

'It seems young people are creatively developing their internet literacy to keep certain information private from unwanted and unintended audiences while simultaneously gaining recognition and boosting their self-esteem through online interactions with their peers.'

She is due to present her research at a seminar at the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data and Methods in Cardiff tomorrow.


source :dailymail

Chatroulette: Is new teenage website the most disturbing internet craze yet?

By Olivia Lichtenstein

Worried mother: Olivia Lichtenstein was horrified by what daughter Francesca could access online


When writer OLIVIA LICHTENSTEIN's daughter told her about a 'cool' new teen website, she decided to investigate. What she found was the most worrying internet craze to date.

Late on a weekday afternoon and I'm sitting at my computer. On the screen in front of me are two small boxes - little video streams - one above the other. My face is in the bottom box. The face and bare torso of a man is in the one on top. Let's call him Gerry.

Beside Gerry's face is a box into which we can type, so that we can chat to one another. So he types hello and then asks where I come from. I say hello back and tell him I am from London.


Our exchange has lasted barely seconds, but suddenly another message pops up. He's asking me if I will remove my top so he can see my breasts.

He is a complete stranger, and one of the many crude and deviant men I have encountered in the past 30 minutes.
I quickly click a button to have him removed from my screen.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the world of Chatroulette - an internet site that is turning into something of a phenomenon.

It was my 16-year- old daughter who told me about Chatroulette, a 'cool' new site she and her friends recently started using.

It's the fast-growing, latest fad among teenagers - a quick and easy way to communicate online with people from all over the world.

It works literally like roulette. Users log on, press a big button labelled 'Next' and it then randomly connects you to any one of a number of people across the world currently logged on. The gimmick is the fact that all of the users have webcams - so they can 'meet' the random strangers.

It was the idea of 17-year-old Russian schoolboy Andrey Ternovskiy. He launched it in November last year and his business quickly grew virally from 50 users to 50,000 in its first month.

One million people now visit it each day. However, what may have started as the innocent game of a Moscow schoolboy has quickly become a potential tailor-made portal for perverts and paedophiles - proving once again that the internet is putting the lives of our vulnerable teenagers in jeopardy.

And believe me, after you've seen it, you'll never complain about your teen's obsession with texting their friends again.

For this, the latest Frankenstein monster spawned by the internet is, as with so much web-based activity, impossible to monitor, restrict or control.

After my daughter first told me about it a few weeks ago, I decided to investigate the site for myself - and, even for a technophobe like me, the ease with which I was able to access it was terrifying.


Worried mother: Olivia Lichtenstein was horrified by what daughter Francesca could access online


Our exchange has lasted barely seconds, but suddenly another message pops up. He's asking me if I will remove my top so he can see my breasts.

He is a complete stranger, and one of the many crude and deviant men I have encountered in the past 30 minutes.

I quickly click a button to have him removed from my screen.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the world of Chatroulette - an internet site that is turning into something of a phenomenon.

It was my 16-year- old daughter who told me about Chatroulette, a 'cool' new site she and her friends recently started using.

It's the fast-growing, latest fad among teenagers - a quick and easy way to communicate online with people from all over the world.

It works literally like roulette. Users log on, press a big button labelled 'Next' and it then randomly connects you to any one of a number of people across the world currently logged on. The gimmick is the fact that all of the users have webcams - so they can 'meet' the random strangers.

It was the idea of 17-year-old Russian schoolboy Andrey Ternovskiy. He launched it in November last year and his business quickly grew virally from 50 users to 50,000 in its first month.

One million people now visit it each day. However, what may have started as the innocent game of a Moscow schoolboy has quickly become a potential tailor-made portal for perverts and paedophiles - proving once again that the internet is putting the lives of our vulnerable teenagers in jeopardy.

And believe me, after you've seen it, you'll never complain about your teen's obsession with texting their friends again.

For this, the latest Frankenstein monster spawned by the internet is, as with so much web-based activity, impossible to monitor, restrict or control.

After my daughter first told me about it a few weeks ago, I decided to investigate the site for myself - and, even for a technophobe like me, the ease with which I was able to access it was terrifying.


Fan: Demi Moore has used Chatroulette in the past


Apart from a sweet but banal conversation with a Spanish student who wanted to improve his English, and a courteous Turkish architect,
most of the encounters I experienced left me feeling that I had become the unwitting participant in a porn film.

The ability to parachute into the lives of strangers is simultaneously addictive and repellent. Just like pornography, it leaves the user feeling dirty and ashamed.

Most of the people I encountered were foreign - and while their English was often poor, they knew the words required to fulfil one purpose: to persuade young girls and women to undress.

Chatroulette may have been invented by a child, but it's clearly not appropriate for children - and it's anything but a game.

But, thanks to celebrity users such as Paris Hilton and Ashton Kutcher, teenagers are flocking to the site.

Indeed, if you swiftly 'next' your way through your matches, you will find that around 50 per cent of users appear to be younger than 20.

The fact that my daughter and her friends are not shocked by the site is shocking in itself - it's a further indication that such aberrant behaviour has been normalised.

'If you don't like something, you just click "next",' my daughter blithely told me.

It saddens me that she has grown up in a society that makes it possible for her to be so worldly and resigned at such a young age.

But she is not alone. Even more depressingly, it seems that - thanks to the internet - such sexualised behaviour is pervading all generations.

Just last week, a newspaper column related the story of a woman who had recently gone on a date with an unnamed parliamentary candidate. Their date went well, but - as the source revealed - the very next day she received an email containing a photograph of his genitals.

Shocking enough, but sadly not a unique occurrence. I have a number of middle-aged friends who are newly divorced or still single and navigating the tricky minefield that is internet dating. They have found that conversations online all too quickly turn vulgar. And increasingly pornographic, too.

One told me of a man who, within minutes of meeting online, tried to engage her in dirty talk. Another had an online suitor who bombarded her with a series of naked pictures.

Of course, my friends did not participate. But one short afternoon on Chatroulette and you will find that there are a number of women who will. So what is it that is attracting so many modern men and women to such disturbing exhibitionism?

Dr Taly Weiss is a Jerusalem-based marketing trends researcher with a PhD in Social Psychology.

She says that internet encounters, be they ones such as on Chatroulette or dating sites, or the sending of explicit photos, are about satisfying the feeling of excitement that comes when we are allowed inside private places and invite people into them too.

Chatroulette, in particular, where you are literally live in front of a total stranger, takes this to extremes.

I fear for what is going to happen next. For, when you think back to the creation of mobile phones, what started as a useful way of communicating quickly turned into sexting (sending explicit text messages).

Now, we face the worrying prospect that a growing number of men find it acceptable to expose themselves to strangers online - and the young girls watching them not only think it's normal, but some even agree to perform sex acts on themselves in return.

Will this soon become the perverted future of courtship?

Just think of the way that Ashley Cole threw away his marriage to Cheryl Cole by texting naked photos of himself to a stranger, before embarking on an alleged affair with her. 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall was raped and murdered by 26-year-old Peter Chapman, a man who had met and groomed her on Facebook.

Let us no longer pretend that this is all a 'bit of fun'. How long will it be before we hear of a similar Chatroulette tragedy?

Sarita Yardi, a PhD candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is studying the role of technology in teenagers' lives.

She says that the idea of showing your face to strangers violates almost all social norms of the offline world.

'If someone walked up to you at a cocktail party, stared at you intensely, then simply walked away, you would feel confused and probably offended,' she says

She advises parents to think carefully about what material is socially appropriate for their child and to weigh up the risks and rewards. 'It's like an online Lord Of The Flies,' she says.

'There are too many unacceptable cultural and moral boundaries that are crossed - like random and unpredictable exposure to nakedness - for it to persist in its present state. This brings up interesting questions of governance.' Indeed it does.

The startling lack of internet controls has been a cause of anxiety for parents for some time.

While users of other social networking sites are urged to check the identities of those they talk to, Chatroulette aficionados socially enter into conversation with random strangers who remain entirely anonymous.

Our children live in an age where the internet is all that they've ever known and they have access to all manner of images and information that we, as children, were not exposed to.

According to a recent Home Office report on the Sexualisation of Young People, 99 per cent of eight to 17-year-olds have access to the internet and 60 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds say that they mostly use it on their own.

The study found that 49 per cent of children aged eight to 17 have an online profile on sites such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook and that girls report being under increasing pressure to display themselves in their underwear online.

Almost half of them say that their parents set no rules for the use of such sites. Chatroulette has taken social networking to the next level and provides a perfect forum for men to prey on vulnerable girls and women.

The images I encountered were shockingly pornographic, and it disturbs me profoundly to think that my 16-year-old has been exposed to them, even if she does have the street smarts to move swiftly on if she encounters anything unseemly.

The site is little more than a haven for exhibitionists and voyeurs.

It's not a game, it's porn, and pornography is addictive, corrosive and promotes unhealthy sexual stereotypes and behaviour for girls and boys. It undermines dignity and respect for others by making sexual intimacy into little more than a spectator sport without love, commitment or responsibility.

Depressingly, the business world has been quick to exploit the opportunities of this viral site, now worth an estimated £30 million, which has spread like bushfire around the world.

Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist with Union Square Ventures who has invested in dozens of dotcom companies, including Twitter, states on his blog: 'The internet is this huge network with over a billion people worldwide on it.

'Chatroulette feels like a cool way to take a quick trip around that network, meeting people and talking to them.'

But while the site's founder claims he built it so he and his friends could start doing things together online, like watching movies or making things, those aims have quickly been subverted.

And, as I discovered during my short venture into that world, it's yet another example of the pernicious sexual culture that threatens to corrupt the fibre of our children's innocence.


source: dailymail

The 'Henry Higgins' iPhone app that teaches the Queen's English on the go

By Daily Mail Reporter

Learn on the go: Alison Pitman shows off the iPhone app that can teach the Queen's English

A British speech expert has developed an iPhone application which trains users how to speak Queen's English.

The application instructs users to mimic 15 different vowel sounds and 16 consonant sounds to replicate received pronunciation.

Users download the training exercises and then play it through their mobile phone before undertaking a series of tasks aimed at reproducing the Queen's English.

The exercises are similar to those Professor Henry Higgins set for Eliza Doolittle, played by Audrey Hepburn, in the rags to riches film My Fair Lady.

The £2.99 application, called 'British Accent' has been recorded by voiceover expert Alison Pitman, who has appeared on dozens of videos, training films and adverts.

She has produced several voice training videos and features on mobile answerphone messages and automated text messages.

Now the mum-of-one from Stapleton, Bristol, hopes the application will be downloaded by customers around the world hoping to replicate her clipped English accent.

'I have found that there is a lot of demand for what I do in India,' she said. 'I guess there are a lot of companies out there who run call centres and they want their staff to speak in English accents.

'I also get a lot of work in America. There is something about the English accent that people like and I guess it is because of all the connotations to do with class, history and heritage.

'People hear the English accent and it conjures up images of sophistication and elegance.'


In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire... Audrey Hepburn's character Eliza Doolittle attempts to change her accent in My Fair Lady


The app has been developed in conjunction with business partner Zepho Inc, which are experts in computer software.

Mrs Pitman, who runs her business Voiceover Services from a studio at her home, says users should start notice the difference in every day speech.

Zepho Inc spokesman Bala Paranj said: 'We believe that the success of this App will be down to three things: Simplicity, Usefulness and Value.

'You can repeat the lessons as many times as you like by using the controls for the playback.

'You can pause and practice your accent at any time and the audio meter shows you the intonation so that you can pronounce it properly.'

For more information on the 'British Accent' iPhone App click here



source: dailymail

Mother updated Twitter as her son, two, lay dying

By Paul Thompson

Shellie Ross has caused outrage for tweeting as paramedics tried to save her dying son


A mother posted messages on Twitter as rescue workers tried to save her dying son.

Shellie Ross, who is in her 30s, sent out ‘tweets’ to the social networking site just minutes after two-year-old Bryson was found floating face down in the family’s swimming pool.

As paramedics tried to revive him, Ross, who used the online name ‘Military-Mom’, posted the note: ‘Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.’

Five hours later, after he was pronounced dead from drowning, she wrote, ‘Remembering my million dollar baby’.

She then uploaded photos of Bryson to be viewed by her 5,000 followers. But her actions have provoked anger from fellow bloggers and Twitter users, and raised questions about the sharing of private information over the internet.

One user, Madison McGraw, wrote: ‘The first thing I thought when I saw the tweet was that it was very sad. I just thought, “Who would tweet that her son just drowned?” I couldn’t believe it.


Ms Ross, who used the tweet name 'Military-Mom', has defended the use of Twitter to announce her son's death


The person that I have compassion for is her son who might still be alive if Ross interacted with her son like she interacted with people on Twitter.

‘It shows the repercussions for social media gone awry.’

Yesterday, a police spokesman said Ross’s 11-year-old son, who had been cleaning out the chicken coup at the family’s home in Merritt Island, Florida, had called an ambulance after noticing his brother had fallen into the water.

Ross sent her first tweet at 10.22pm British time on Monday – just a minute before the 999 call was made.

Records show an ambulance arrived at the house at 10.38pm and Ross posted another message 34 minutes later.

Yesterday, Ross defended the use of Twitter to announce her son’s death, saying no one ‘had a right to question my actions’. ‘I didn’t tweet-by-tweet the accident,’ she said.

Trisha Haas, who founded the website Momdot.com where Ross worked, defended her friend’s actions, saying: ‘She twitters a lot and was close friends with people in the blogging community’.

Ross and her husband Steven, who is in the U.S. Air Force, have asked to be left in private so they can mourn their son.


source: dailymail

'Google phone set for launch': Videos emerge of new Nexus One mobile dubbed 'iPhone-killer'

Two videos have emerged of Google's first ever phone called Nexus One.

The mobile is still unofficial but reports suggest it will be launched in the New Year in a bid to take on Apple iPhone.

A technology website has released two short teaser clips of the phone in action. The first video showed the animation on the start up screen, incorporating the colours of Google's logo. The second appeared to show an animated wallpaper.

The phone, also nicknamed 'Passion', will feature Google's own Android 2.1 software and will be manufactured by Taiwan-based manufacturer HTC.

This picture of the Nexus One was one of many that have appeared on Twitter over the weekend

The internet giant is planning to sell two handsets. One will be available with a T-Mobile contract.

The other handset will be sold unlocked directly to customers via its website. This means Google can partly avoid having to tie itself to any particular carrier.

In Britain, iPhones were originally only available to 02 customers. The handsets are now also available on the Orange network.

Google decided to road-test the device by handing them to its own employees over the weekend.

Technology blog Engadget reported that device boasts microSD expansion, WiFi and Bluetooth. It will also use Qualcomm’s super-fast Snapdragon processing chip

The company's mobile phone blog cryptically admitted a phone had been produced with a posting over the weekend.

It said: 'We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with

'Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.'

The Google phone will come loaded with Google Navigation and Google Goggles according to Engadget

The phone is thinner than an iPhone and features a similar touch-screen configuration but with the addition of a Blackberry-style track ball.

The Nexus One has not been officially released but the name has already stirred by controversy. Some commentators have speculated that the name is inspired by Nexus series of androids in the film Blade Runner. However creator Philip K. Dick's daughter, Isa, said: 'We were never consulted, no requests were made, and we didn't grant any sort of permissions.'

Google has created two other 'Googlephones' in the past: the so-called 'Dev Phone 1', which was an unlocked phone the company sold online; and the Ion.

Both were 'Google' handsets, both were given out to employees early on and both were built by HTC.

The internet firm's Android operating system has also been installed on phones manufactured by Motorola and Sony Ericsson.

Customers would still need to have a contract or pay-as-you-go agreement to use it.

Ben Schachter, an analyst at San Francisco-based Broadpoint AmTech Inc, said: ‘If all of a sudden everyone is getting on the internet via their mobile device, Google needs to make sure it has an influence on that.

‘They need to make sure they have influence on how the mobile web will develop.’
Experts believe aim of the launch is to gain access to valuable consumer data that can be used to sell ads at premium prices, rather than to make money from direct hardware sales.

Google said that it had given out handsets for staff to test, so they could ‘experiment with new mobile features and capabilities’ and give quick feedback on the new technology.

Mario Querioz, Google’s London-based vice president of product management, wrote in his blog on Saturday:

‘At Google, we are constantly experimenting with new products and technologies, and often ask employees to test these products for quick feedback and suggestions for improvements.

‘We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities.'

Rumours of a so-called 'Googlephone' have appeared regularly ever since the internet company bought a Californian mobile software startup company, also called Android, in 2005.

Watch the two new clips of the Google phone below:






source: dailymail

U.S. Allows New Stem-Cell Lines for Research

By Alice Park

President Obama looks at brain cells through a microscope with Dr. Marston Linehan as he tours the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., before making a major announcement regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Jim Watson / AFP / Getty

Nobody likes a busy signal. And for U.S. stem-cell researchers, none has been more frustrating than the one on the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry home page. That's where the government agency lists all of the embryonic-stem-cell lines that scientists are allowed to study using taxpayer dollars. For months, the page has been depressingly static. "None are available at this time," it read. "Please check back later."

That message changed Dec. 2 at 12:30 p.m. ET, when the government finally made available the first 13 stem-cell lines that researchers can study with federal funds. Researchers had been awaiting the announcement since March 9, when President Obama signed an Executive Order lifting the ban that former President George W. Bush had placed on government support of human-embryonic-stem-cell research. The previous Administration had restricted federally funded studies to only the dozen or so stem-cell lines that had been created before Aug. 9, 2001. The new policy allows scientists to experiment with any existing stem-cell line, regardless of when it was created, as long it meets specific criteria showing it was derived in an ethically and scientifically responsible manner.

Already, the Federal Government has given out 31 grants totaling about $21 million for research involving the larger pool of human embryonic stem cells. But the recipients of that money have been waiting to use it since September, when the NIH, charged with establishing and applying the stem-cell vetting criteria, began reviewing potentially eligible cells. In addition to the 13 lines approved on Wednesday, another 96 lines are waiting for the green light, 20 of which may get it by Friday.

"It's exciting to be able to say that, after what clearly has been a time of frustration on the part of the scientific community over their inability to gain access to federally funded cell lines, that's now changing," Dr. Francis Collins, director of NIH, told reporters during a telephone briefing. "Because the vast majority of basic biomedical research that goes on in the U.S. is supported by NIH, the fact that researchers who are our grantees could not work on the new lines was seen by many people as a significant deterrent to rapid progress in the field."

Progress will certainly accelerate as more stem-cell lines are added to the government registry. A larger pool of available stem cells is a more accurate reflection not only of the diversity of the population but also of the variety of forms that treatable diseases can take. That translates into more opportunities for researchers to study basic human development and disease development, screen new drugs for their effectiveness against disease and create entirely new therapies. The ultimate goal is to use stem cells, which can morph into any of the body's hundreds of different cell types, to cure disease by repairing or even replacing damaged or defective cells.

Of the 13 newly approved lines, 11 came from the lab of Dr. George Daley, director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Children's Hospital Boston and a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute; the other two came from Dr. Ali Brivanlou, an embryologist at Rockefeller University. Daley's submission for NIH review was 130 pages long, he says, including a 16-page informed-consent document signed by each of the donors of the embryos from which the stem-cell lines were derived, ensuring that the donors were aware of where their embryos were going and what they would be used for. "Our documents were very exhaustive," Daley says. "Probably too exhaustive. But I stand behind that process. I think it does need to be scrupulous and done with great care."

That kind of meticulousness probably helped expedite the NIH's approval of the new lines, a process that involves applying a checklist of criteria spelled out by the agency and providing documentation that the cells meet all of the requirements exactly. This review, says Collins, boils down to NIH staff agreeing that all the necessary criteria for inclusion have been met. Approval of some lines may be less straightforward if certain requirements have not been met to the letter. For instance, since stem-cell lines are drawn from unused embryos donated to research by couples undergoing the IVF procedure, researchers must offer proof that each couple was fully informed of all their options for discarding excess embryos. If the proper documentation doesn't exist, an NIH working group would have to determine whether the spirit of the requirement was met.

Some experts worry that the stringent vetting and documentation processes may place an undue burden on labs that have painstakingly created human-embryonic-stem-cell lines using their own hard-earned private funds. (Researchers are still prohibited from using federal money to create new stem-cell lines because of a congressional ban on harming or destroying embryos.) According to some estimates, as many as 780 such lines may exist worldwide, but not all labs may be willing to subject themselves to the scrutiny and administrative hassle of registering their lines with the NIH. Even among the handful of stem-cell lines that were eligible for federally funded study under President Bush, only one has so far been resubmitted for NIH review and inclusion in the government registry.

In many cases, researchers studying existing stem-cell lines do so free of any monetary strings, which means they are also entitled to any potential commercial windfall that may come from the application of the cells to a treatment or therapy. "Any discoveries they make using the lines will be theirs," says Amy Wilkerson, associate vice president for research support at Rockefeller University, who oversaw the submission of the university's lines.

But despite the relatively slow start for American stem-cell research, Rockefeller's Brivanlou is hopeful that the NIH approvals mark the beginning of a new era in our understanding of human development. "I consider it a shame that at the beginning of the 21st century, we know more about how development works in the worm, the fruit fly and the mouse than we know about our own development. And it's not because of scientific limitations or technological limitations," he says. "It would be nice if someday people are allowed to ask basic questions simply about where we come from as human beings. I'm optimistic that we are experiencing the first steps in the right direction."


source: Time.com

Man Can Control Robotic Hand with Thoughts

By AP / ARIEL DAVID

Amputee Pierpaolo Petruzziello touches a robotic hand during a press conference in Rome, Dec. 2, 2009

(ROME) — An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.

During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body.

"It's a matter of mind, of concentration," Petruzziello said. "When you think of it as your hand and forearm, it all becomes easier."

Though similar experiments have been successful before, the European scientists who led the project say this was the first time a patient has been able to make such complex movements using his mind to control a biomechanic hand connected to his nervous system.

The challenge for scientists now will be to create a system that can connect a patient's nervous system and a prosthetic limb for years, not just a month.

The Italy-based team said at a news conference in Rome on Wednesday that in 2008 it implanted electrodes into the nerves located in what remained of Petruzziello's left arm, which was cut off in a crash some three years ago.

The prosthetic was not implanted on the patient, only connected through the electrodes. During the news conference, video was shown of Petruzziello as he concentrated to give orders to the hand placed next to him.

During the month he had the electrodes connected, he learned to wiggle the robotic fingers independently, make a fist, grab objects and make other movements.

"Some of the gestures cannot be disclosed because they were quite vulgar," joked Paolo Maria Rossini, a neurologist who led the team working at Rome's Campus Bio-Medico, a university and hospital that specializes in health sciences.

The euro2 million ($3 million) project, funded by the European Union, took five years to complete and produced several scientific papers that have been submitted to top journals, including Science Translational Medicine and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Rossini said.

After Petruzziello recovered from the microsurgery he underwent to implant the electrodes in his arm, it only took him a few days to master use of the robotic hand, Rossini said. By the time the experiment was over, the hand obeyed the commands it received from the man's brain in 95 percent of cases.

Petruzziello, an Italian who lives in Brazil, said the feedback he got from the hand was amazingly accurate.

"It felt almost the same as a real hand. They stimulated me a lot, even with needles ... you can't imagine what they did to me," he joked with reporters.

While the "LifeHand" experiment lasted only a month, this was the longest time electrodes had remained connected to a human nervous system in such an experiment, said Silvestro Micera, one of the engineers on the team. Similar, shorter-term experiments in 2004-2005 hooked up amputees to a less-advanced robotic arm with a pliers-shaped end, and patients were only able to make basic movements, he said.

Experts not involved in the study told The Associated Press the experiment was an important step forward in creating a viable interface between the nervous system and prosthetic limbs, but the challenge now is ensuring that such a system can remain in the patient for years and not just a month.

"It's an important advancement on the work that was done in the mid-2000s," said Dustin Tyler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University and biomedical engineer at the VA Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio. "The important piece that remains is how long beyond a month we can keep the electrodes in."

Experts around the world have developed other thought-controlled prostheses. One approach used in the United States involves surgery to graft shoulder nerves onto pectoral muscles and then learning to use those muscles to control a bionic arm.

While that approach is necessary when the whole arm has been lost, if a stump survives doctors could opt for the less invasive method proposed by the Italians, connecting the prosthesis to the same system the brain uses to send and receive signals.

"The approach we followed is natural," Rossini said. The patient "didn't have to learn to use muscles that do a different job to move a prosthesis, he just had to concentrate and send to the robotic hand the same messages he used to send to his own hand."

It will take at least two or three years before scientists try to replicate the experiment with a more long-term prosthesis, the experts said. First they need to study if the hair-thin electrodes can be kept in longer.

Results from the experiment are encouraging, as the electrodes removed from Petruzziello showed no damage and could well stay in longer, said Klaus-Peter Hoffmann, a biomedical expert at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the German research institute that developed the electrodes.

More must also be done to miniaturize the technology on the arm and the bulky machines that translate neural and digital signals between the robot and the patient.

Key steps forward are already being made, Rossini said. While working with Petruzziello, the Italian scientists also were collaborating on a parallel EU-funded project called "SmartHand," which has developed a robotic arm that can be directly implanted on the patient.


source: Time.com

Jet-powered Ford guns for 300 mph

By Keith Barry
Owner Joe Wilkins hopes to fire up this car on the Bonneville Salt Flats after he attaches a spoiler to the back

(Wired) -- Joe Wilkins knew there was only one way to give his supercharged, alcohol-injected Hemi-engined hot rod more power: Put a jet engine in the trunk.

"It started as a hobby and turned into a monster," said Joe Wilkins, the motor madman behind what might be the wildest 1939 Ford ever built. He's an inventor and defense department contractor, and the idea of goosing the Ford's ability to turn heads and shred tires came when he bought a used gas turbine engine.

"I got hooked on the simplicity and power that this thing produced, and I decided one day I want to put it in a car."

Luckily for us, he did. The Hemi Jet -- Wilkins has copyrighted the name -- fires up this weekend at the Houston AutoRama, and Wilkins plans to attempt a land speed record in the near future.

In the meantime, he's tooling around Navasota, Texas, in what he says is the ultimate sleeper when the jet engine's tucked away in the trunk.

Most people say "Nice car" and assume he's got the obligatory small-block Chevrolet engine under the hood. Little do they know.

"I can drive it up to the store and get a gallon of milk if I want to," he told Autopia.

The car is an amalgamation of the Big Three, with a Chrysler engine, Chevrolet drivetrain and Ford body. Wilkins says the jet engine was probably used as an APU and weighs 110 pounds.

He claims the car is street legal so long as the jet stays stowed. He fires it up from time to time to show off, and he plans to run it flat-out at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

"We want to be the fastest street legal car in the world," he said.

He's got some intense competition. The Bugatti Veyron tops out at 253 mph and the Shelby Supercars Ultimate Aero TT does 255. And then there's Red Vector One, that crazy Vauxhall that does zero to 60 in under a second. Record, schmecord -- we just want to see the video.

"I'm more than certain the car will go over 300," Wilkins said. "We've still got a ways to go [before Bonneville], but not a long way. We'll have to experiment in some wind tunnels and end up with a spoiler on the back to keep the front end on the ground."

Sadly, Wilkins won't be behind the wheel during the car's test run.

"I turned 61 last Sunday. I just don't think I'm going to be able to handle it [without] the reflexes I had 20 or 30 years ago," he said. "I know several people who would be more than interested."

So do we, and we even suggested Wilkins give the job to fellow jet-junkie Bob Maddox. After jumping from a plane with a pulse jet strapped to his chest, we suspect Maddox would welcome the opportunity to stay on the ground.


source: cnn.com

Jet-Propelled 'Fusion Man' to Attempt New Record-Breaking Flight

The pilot known as 'jetman' is confident he will make aviation history once again Wednesday.

Yves Rossy is hoping to become the first person to make an intercontinental flight with a jet pack by crossing the Straits of Gibraltar.

The Swiss airline pilot and aviation inventor told a news conference: "It's going to be historic" before adding "no one has ever done this before."

Rossy will launch his record attempt from the skies above Tangier in Morocco.

He will start by jumping out of a light airplane when it reaches a height 6,500 feet above the ground.

Once airborne he will unleash his wings and fire up his engines.

He hopes to land safely on a beach in southern Spain about 15 minutes later.

The wing itself — which was designed by Rossy — is made of carbon fiber.

With fuel it weighs around 132 pounds, and because of the dangers involved, he wears a flame retardant suit.

When flying, Rossy looks like a comic book hero with the contraption propelling him at a speed of more than 180 mph.

May 14, 2008: Yves Rossy, known as the 'Fusion Man,' flies with a jet-powered single wing over the Alps in Bex, Switzerland.

He will be followed throughout the attempt by a team of paramedics in a helicopter.

They are on hand should anything go wrong in the skies above the turbulent waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Rossey has made a number of successful record-breaking attempts in the past.

Last year, he flew from Calais to Dover crossing the English Channel.


source: foxnews.com

Shuttle Atlantis Closing in on Space Station

By Tariq Malik

NASA's space shuttle Atlantis is closing in on the International Space Station and on track to link up with the orbiting laboratory later today.

Atlantis and its crew of six astronauts are due to arrive at the space station at about 11:53 a.m. EST to deliver tons of vital spare parts and other bulky gear that only NASA's shuttles can haul.

"We're ready to get to station tomorrow," shuttle commander Charlie Hobaugh radioed Mission Control in Houston late Tuesday. "See you then."

• SLIDESHOW: Space Shuttle Atlantis launch

• SLIDESHOW: Ready for takeoff — The crew prepares for lift-off

An early look at data from a Tuesday inspection of the heat shield panels lining Atlantis' nose cap and wing edges has found no immediate cause for concern. NASA experts will continue to analyze that data, as well as the images from today's photo session, to be sure.

"Preliminarily, we don't have any significant issues," said LeRoy Cain, head of Atlantis' mission management team. NASA has kept a close watch on the health of its shuttles since the tragic loss of shuttle Columbia and its astronaut crew in 2003 due to heat shield damage.

Atlantis launched Monday and is hauling more than 27,000 pounds of cargo to the space station, including a pair of massive carrier platforms laden with large spare parts for the orbiting laboratory. The spares, which include huge gyroscopes, pumps and other gear, will be installed at the station during three spacewalks planned for the 11-day space mission.

The shuttle will also ferry NASA astronaut Nicole Stott back home from the space station.

Stott has been living aboard the station since late August as part of the outpost's six-person crew. She will return home on Atlantis and is currently the last astronaut planned to be rotated on and off the station using a NASA shuttle before the fleet is retired in the next year or so.

Stott and her crewmates have been tackling some glitches with the station's systems.

A 150-pound device used to distill astronaut urine into pure drinking water is broken and will have to be returned to Earth on Atlantis. The stations' water processing assembly is also experiencing problems.

Neither glitch is expected to pose any concern to Atlantis' week-long stay at the space station, Cain said.

Mission Control roused the Atlantis astronauts at 4:28 a.m. EST with the song "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder, a tune specially selected for mission specialist Bobby Satcher, who is making his first spaceflight.

"We're looking forward to a good day," Satcher said.


source: Foxnews.com

In today's space race, watch out for China

By Adam Levine, CNN
China's first lunar probe blasted off from its launch pad at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on October 24, 2007.

Washington (CNN) -- When China decided to test an anti-satellite missile in 2007, the impact shattered not just the target satellite but any illusions that China did not have military intentions in space and the capabilities to achieve them.

The United States is still ahead in space development, but China has been making impressive progress in expanding its own program -- and it has not gone unnoticed.

"I think anyone who's familiar with the space business, and particularly the history, our history in the space business over the years, would have to be absolutely amazed at the advancements that China has made in such a short period of time," said Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of the U.S. Strategic Command, which is in charge of the military's space operations.

"They certainly are on a fast track to improve their capabilities," Chilton said in early November. "They're to be commended for the achievements that they've done in such a short period of time."

China's intentions in space are a matter of great interest to the United States.

The Pentagon is trying to encourage more transparency by the communist country and last month hosted a delegation that included Gen. Xu Caihou of China's Central Military Commission. Xu met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and toured various U.S. installations, including STRATCOM, which oversees space, cyberspace and nuclear military operations.

"Where they're heading, I think, is one of the things that a lot of people would like to understand better," Chilton said. He would not speak in detail about any of the discussions between U.S. and Chinese officials.

Any hope for transparency will be tough to come by. China itself may not have a handle on its intentions, said Roger Cliff, a Chinese military analyst at RAND, a global policy think tank. Cliff said there is an internal struggle within the Chinese military for who will control the space mission.

China's president has said its space efforts are "peaceful." But a top Chinese military official spoke of offensive and defensive capabilities in space because "only power could protect peace," Chinese air force Cmdr. Xu Quiliang told the Xinhua news agency.

"It is not clear, and in part the reason for that is because China isn't clear where it is going in space, because they are still arguing it out," Cliff said.

Also, transparency is in the eye of the beholder, Cliff noted. For China, transparency "is a luxury of the superior military power."

What has become increasingly apparent is that China views having a powerful presence in space as crucial to both its military and its commercial interests.

China has launched satellites for communications, reconnaissance and global positioning systems. It is on track to launch more satellites in 2009 than the United States.

It has performed a spacewalk and aims to land a rover on the moon in 2012 and place a manned space station in orbit by 2020, according to a Defense Department report to Congress about China's military capabilities. It also is testing the Long March V Rocket, the world's largest, to lift heavy payloads into space and double its current capabilities.

China is also developing microsatellites that weigh less than 100 kilograms.

China has the ability to conduct some space military operations. As it showed in 2007, the country can attack low orbiting satellites.

China is also developing more advanced weapons like "lasers, high-powered microwave, and particle beam" capabilities to interfere with satellites and is developing its ability to track and identify satellites, "a prerequisite for effective, precise counterspace operations," the Defense Department report concluded.

"China views the development of space and counterspace capabilities as bolstering national prestige and, like nuclear weapons, demonstrating the attributes of a great power," the report explained.

The country is also thinking about "co-orbital" anti-satellite systems, Cliff said. The intent is to have a satellite that can catch up to and destroy or jam another satellite.

China's push into space is part of its efforts in the "global commons" of space, maritime and cyberspace, explained David Finklestein, director of China studies at CNA, a nonprofit research organization. Finklestein said the country is aggressive in expanding not just in space but also in cyberspace and at sea, areas not controlled by any specific country.

The United States and China have had confrontations at sea and in cyberspace. Chinese ships have harassed U.S. naval ships in international waters, and the United States has accused China of trying to hack into government computers.

"When you consider that they have taken the old Gemini and Apollo programs and leapfrogged and condensed that into the last decade or so, it is impressive," Finklestein said. "Outer space, like the high seas, is incredibly important global commons where the Chinese and other nations need to work to find common ways to avoid problems."

Space, to the Chinese, is a matter of national prestige.

"There is tremendous excitement in China about the space program. Most Americans take the space program for granted. A shuttle goes up, and everyone yawns," Finklestein said.

But for all its advances, China has come to realize that it must demonstrate it's a responsible global citizen. Cliff said the 2007 anti-satellite test also showed China that progress comes with risks.

The international outcry that followed put China on the defensive. The resulting debris field in orbit was potentially harmful as well.

"Smashing things in space and creating debris, your own satellites can suffer damage as well," Cliff said. That's why China is working to develop other anti-satellite capabilities, "realizing it is better not to smash things up in space and develop debris fields that last hundreds of years," he added.


source: Cnn.com

Texas Woman Sues Facebook for Privacy Violations

Worried about your privacy online? So is a woman from Texas, who's suing Facebook and Blockbuster for posting too much information about her on the Web.

Cathryn Harris found out after the fact that Facebook added a note every time she rented a movie from Blockbuster — a note that contained her full name and the name of the movie she was renting.

"I wasn't renting any movies that I'm ashamed of, but what if I had been? It's nobody's business," Harris told MyFoxDFW. "They need to follow the laws and respect their customers' privacy and not try to go behind the curtain."

The 25-year-old homemaker from Dallas County, Texas, said she made the discovery last year when she rented the 1985 adventure film "The Jewel of the Nile," starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. She said an alert appeared on her Facebook profile detailing the transaction.

As a result, Harris filed two lawsuits — one against Blockbuster last year and one against Facebook last month. The suits claim a partnership between the two companies allowed Blockbuster to send Harris' movie-renting habits to Facebook without fair opportunity to opt out.

At the heart of the suit is Facebook's controversial Beacon system, essentially a tracking flag that follows you across a network of sites and reports back to Facebook on your activity. For consumers, it's a way to share more information about your daily activity; for advertisers, it's a way to learn a great deal more about an individual.

Following public outcry over the system in late 2007, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized for the Beacon system, noting that "the problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends."

Facebook's policy has been changed, but Harris' lawsuit alleges that whether a consumer opts in or out, Beacon is a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act. That piece of law prevents a company from disclosing information about a customer's rental habits without their knowledge; the suit alleges that Beacon still transfers information, it just doesn't display it.

Harris initially sued Blockbuster, arguing that the company is responsible for her privacy. But Blockbuster disagrees. A spokesman for the company said "…any information we send our customers is done in accordance with all privacy laws … a customer with a Facebook account is in control of whether they elect to keep their Facebook information private or disclose it to others."

In the meantime, the online social networking giant is settling a similar California lawsuit and has agreed to discontinue the Beacon advertising program. In response to the case, Facebook said it learned "how critical it is to provide extensive user control over how information is shared."

The outcome of the California case could determine whether Harris can move forward with a class-action lawsuit.

source: foxnews.com

Social networks and kids: How young is too young?

By Doug Gross, CNN

(CNN) -- Status updates, photo tagging and FarmVille aren't just for adults or even teenagers anymore.

Researchers say a growing number of children are flouting age requirements on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, or using social-networking sites designed just for them.

Facebook and MySpace require users to be at least 13. But they have no practical way to verify ages, and many young users pretend to be older when signing up.

Some scientists worry that pre-adolescent use of the sites, which some therapists have linked to Internet addiction among adults, could be damaging to children's relationships and brains.

But many other experts say there's not any solid research to back that up and that most children seem to use social-media sites in moderation, and in positive ways.

"For the most part, although there's so much press about all the bad things they're doing, much of what they do on these sites is stuff they would be doing anyway," said Kaveri Subrahmanyam, a professor of psychology at California State University-Los Angeles.

In two surveys reported this year by Pew Internet Research -- of 700 and 935 teens, respectively -- 38 percent of respondents ages 12 to 14 said they had an online profile of some sort.

Sixty-one percent of those in the study, ages 12 to 17, said they use social-networking sites to send messages to friends, and 42 percent said they do so every day.

The data in the study was from 2006, so it's not a stretch to assume those numbers are higher this year. Research on younger children is limited, but anecdotal evidence shows that many of them are also logging on.

CNN iReport: How much do you let your kids reveal on social networking sites?

"Of course they are," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at Pew and one of the report's authors. "They're using them because that's where their social world is. Because there's no effective way to age-verify ... children very quickly realize, 'I just say I'm 14 years old, and they'll let me use this.' "

Marc Bigbie, a software salesman who lives near Savannah, Georgia, said he has three children -- 14, 12 and 11 -- who all have accounts on at least one social-networking site.

His oldest daughter, then 11, was the first in the family to create an account, on MySpace. And it was without her parents' permission.

"It was kind of a negative thing at first," he said. "We kind of took it away from her. But, finally, we said, 'You can have it, but we need the password so we can be on there at any time.' "

Since then, all three of the kids have gotten Facebook accounts, with their parents even agreeing to fudge their ages.

Bigbie said he makes sure his children's accounts are set to provide as little personal information as possible, and they allow their activity to be seen only by confirmed friends. He and his wife monitor the pages to make sure they know the friends that their children have added.

He said the oldest daughter is the only one who uses the account almost every day, while the younger children log on briefly every now and then.

In the past couple of years, some scientists have voiced concerns that children are spending too much on these sites and that such online socializing could have lasting negative effects as they mature.

"My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment," Susan Greenfield, an Oxford University neurocientist and director of Britain's Royal Institution, told London's Daily Mail in February.

"I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier [online] screen dialogues," she said.

Other scientists criticized Greenfield's comments, calling them speculation, not science.

Subrahmaynam said a study of high school students showed that in most cases, the people they interact with most often online are people they also socialize with in person.

Children today have spent their whole lives on computers, and their brains are better adapted than those of adults to integrate online activities with their offline lives, she said.

"You'll always have the small minority of kids who are not using it appropriately," she said. "I do think you're going to have a few people that are doing things that kids probably couldn't do with telephones a generation ago.

"But we don't want to get swept away by the general fear. It's here, and it's pretty harmless."

Many parents also worry that younger users of social sites could be targets for online predators. While there are some concerns that kids aren't mature enough to make good decisions about their privacy, Subrahmaynam and Lenhart said most are savvy enough by their early teens to know what, and who, to avoid. Younger children, they say, need more parental supervision.

Alternately, a growing number of networking sites are geared specifically toward younger users. Sites such as Disney's Club Penguin -- mainly a game site, but with limited social functions -- WebKinz and Whyville feature more restricted and supervised networking.

Such kids-oriented sites are "sort of a training ground" for future use of mainstream social networks, Lenhart said.

Children as young as 5 have accounts at KidSwirl, a kids' social-networking site patterned loosely on Facebook, said creator Toby Clark.

Clark said the average user spends about five minutes on the site per visit -- far less than Facebook's average of more than 20 minutes.

He said he limits the amount of time his two children, 9 and 6, spend on the site, but that any parent who bans their children from such sites isn't facing the facts.

"The reality is that we're a technology-driven generation," said Clark, who launched the site in February and said it has about 10,000 users. "That's not going to change."

So what long-term effect will social networking have on children? Scientists say it may be hard to know for sure.

"We've lost the control group," Subrahmanyam said. "How do you find a group of kids that are not using the computer?"

source: cnn.com

Twitter lists and real-time journalism

By Pete Cashmore, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.

London, England (CNN) -- The Twitter community is abuzz this week about the site's new "Lists" feature, which allows users to create collections of interesting people to follow on the micro-messaging service.

From lists of sports stars to comedians to political pundits, Twitter has provided its members with the tools required to splice a torrent of updates into a series of relevant, topic-based streams.

In doing so, the social networking startup may have hit upon the long-overdue cure to information overload and birthed a new breed of editor: the real-time Web curator.

Drowning in data

Approximately 25 million Tweets are posted every day; more than 5 billion have been created since Twitter's launch.

Facebook users are even more prolific in aggregate: Forty-five million updates are posted there daily. In May, the last date for which we have data, YouTube announced that 20 hours of video is uploaded to its servers every minute. That's more than three years of content being uploaded to YouTube daily.

As the barriers to media production fall -- cameras in virtually every cell phone, video cameras in iPods, text messaging as a publishing platform -- this content tsunami is growing ever taller.

The friend filter

An obvious antidote: use your friends as a filter.

Google's new Social Search allows users to add their social networking profiles to a Google account and see search results filtered and prioritized based on their circle of friends.

Through integration with Facebook, meanwhile, Web sites are allowing users to create personalized experiences. Connect your Facebook account with social news site Digg.com, for instance, and your existing friends become a filter for the most interesting web links.

From personal to professional

Much like blogging, however, link-sharing on the Web has evolved beyond the personal. While most Twitter users stick to the standard "What Are You Doing?" fare, a growing number spend much of their time collating links and pointing their followers to relevant, timely, topic-based information.

Tracking the pulse of PR in the digital age? You'll probably want to follow Edelman Digital's Steve Rubel, who scours the Web for topical links and shares his findings on Twitter and FriendFeed.

Seeking insights into the mainstream media's transition to the Web? Follow Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor, podcaster and media pundit.

Want to know what venture capitalists are reading these days? Try Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson, who shares links and insights daily with his 35,000 Twitter followers.

See a list of CNN's anchors on Twitter

Next up: collate dozens of these experts into a topic-based list, and -- voila! -- your hand-picked editorial team extracts the signal from a wall of noise.

Most of these link gatherers have "real" jobs, you'll notice; I see no reason why that should remain the case. In the attention economy, wherein the scarce resource is time and the abundant one is content, those who effectively allocate our attention create value.

Where value is created, it follows that money can be made. The inevitable outcome: Web curators are not just real-time but full-time.

The rise of real-time journalism

Possibly we don't need a new breed, however, just an adaptation.

Journalists, it would seem, are well-placed to capitalize on the trend, since directing an audience's attention via links is not materially different to editing a newspaper or magazine.

Perhaps media companies already see this emergent future: The New York Times has created a Twitter list of all its staff, and the Los Angeles Times has set about categorizing Twitter celebrities.

See CNN International's Twitter list

The Web-centric Huffington Post has gone a step further by embedding Twitter Lists on its Web site to create hubs of real-time updates.

For those cast adrift in a sea of content, good news: A "curation" economy is beginning to take shape, tweet by tweet, list by list.


source: cnn.com

Mars Rover 'Spirit' Has Amnesia. Again

By Tariq Malik

NASA's Mars rover Spirit is suffering a new bout of amnesia, one that comes after months of being stuck in deep Martian sand.

The 6-year-old rover's latest memory lapse occurred Oct. 24 and came more than six months after a series of four other amnesia events earlier this year. During the events, the plucky rover failed to record science observations in the part of its flash computer memory that stores information overnight when other systems are powered down.

"We still don't have information about what causes these amnesia events," said rover project manager John Callas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., in an update.

In the latest event, Spirit did not use its flash memory between Oct. 24 and Oct. 27. The rover does have an alternate memory system in which to store data, but must beam that information home to Earth before entering an overnight sleep period, mission managers said.

Callas said engineers are weighing Spirit's amnesia problem to determine how it may affect day-to-day operations for the long term. Aside from the memory glitch, the rover is in good health and communicating with Earth.

"If they are intermittent and infrequent, they are a nuisance that would set us back a day or two when they occur. If the condition becomes persistent or frequent, we will need to go to an alternate strategy that avoids depending on flash memory," Callas said. "We would only get data collected the same day and any unsent data from an earlier day would be lost. The total volume of data returned by the rover is expected to be about the same."

Meanwhile, the new memory lapses will likely further delay NASA's efforts to extricate Spirit from its Martian sand trap. The rover has been mired in deep sand since April, unable to move.

An independent team of robotics experts is currently reviewing recent NASA tests that used a ground-based version of Spirit to come up with escape plan for the stuck rover on Mars. NASA has mounted a "Free Spirit" campaign to come up with ways to free its beloved rover.
NASA launched Spirit and its robotic twin Opportunity in 2003 on a mission to explore Mars. The rovers landed in different parts of the planet in January 2004 and spent more than five years roving across Mars and uncovering clues to the planet's watery past.

While engineers try to free Spirit, its robotic twin Opportunity is headed toward a giant Martian crater called Endeavour. Earlier this month, Opportunity spotted a Martian meteorite dubbed Shelter Island on the heels of another space rock find — called Block Island — in September. The rover used its onboard instruments to study both meteorites.

Initially built for a 90-day mission, the two rovers have received repeated life extensions. Spirit is the older of the two rovers and has spent five years and nine months exploring Mars.


source: foxnews.com

Facebook, Twitter crooks just a click away

By Stephanie Chen, CNN

(CNN) -- (CNN) -- If you're on Facebook, Twitter or any other social networking site, you could be the next victim.

Experts say cybercrooks are lurking just a mouse click away on popular social networking sites.

That's because more cyberthieves are targeting increasingly popular social networking sites that provide a gold mine of personal information, according to the FBI. Since 2006, nearly 3,200 account hijacking cases have been reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

It starts with a friend updating his or her status or sending you a message with an innocent link or video. Maybe your friend is in distress abroad and needs some help.

All you have to do is click.

When the message or link is opened, social network users are lured to fake Web sites that trick them into divulging personal details and passwords. The process, known as a phishing attack or malware, can infiltrate users' accounts without their consent.

Once the account is compromised, the thieves can infiltrate the list of friends or contacts and repeat the attack on subsequent victims. Social networking sites show there is ample opportunity to find more victims; the average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site.

"Security is a constant arms race," said Simon Axten, an associate for privacy and public policy at Facebook. "Malicious actors are constantly attacking the site, and what you see is actually a very small percentage of what's attempted."

Social Media Crimes

As some social networking sites experience monstrous growth, they are becoming a new -- and extremely lucrative -- frontier for cybercrime. Facebook says it has 300 million users, nearly the size of the U.S. population, and it continues to attract users outside the college student niche. From February 2008 to February 2009, Twitter, a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages known as tweets, grew 1,382 percent to more than 7 million users.

"They [cybercriminals] are very adept to using social engineering," said Donald DeBold, director of threat research for CA, an Internet security company. "Your friend is in trouble traveling in another country, 'I lost my wallet. I need help.' They exploit the curiosity aspect out of human nature."

A few decades ago, malicious software and viruses were usually the result of a prank, but Internet security experts say today's attacks are profit-driven. A study from the Indiana University in 2005 discovered that phishing attacks on social networks operated with a 70 percent success rate. These users had fallen for the scam, opened the foreign link and released personal information.

Cybercriminals are employing phishing and malware attacks for a number of reasons, including trying to redirect users to sites where profit is fueled by the number of visitors. They also try to elicit private information like passwords and bank account numbers to perform scams.

Early this year,Twitter experienced several phishing attacks in which a Web page that looked identical to the widely recognized light blue Twitter page was a hoax. The company warned users to double-check the URL to ensure they were visiting the correct site.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 72,000 complaints about Internet fraud in 2008 that were referred to law enforcement agencies for further investigation. These cases involved financial losses amounting to $264.6 million, an increase from 2007. Each person lost an average of $931.

"Most of us would want to help a friend in need, but if it's an online friend, and they want you to wire money, you should double-check," FBI spokesman Jason Pack said.

Security experts said it makes sense that cybercriminals are turning to social networking sites. Personal information is abundant on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Each time users give out valuable information like birth dates or addresses, they could be providing hints about their password, security experts say.

The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concern about the information visible through Facebook quizzes and applications.

"They'll have access to all that information, so they can sell it, they can share it, they can do an awful lot with it," Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy-related issues with the ACLU, told CNN.com in September.

Many Internet security experts consider the first virus attack on the PC to have occurred in 1986. By the early 1990s, viruses transmitted on floppy disks became ubiquitous. When the World Wide Web became widely available that same decade, viruses, worms and malware became problems in e-mail accounts, frustrating users who clicked on messages thought to be legitimate.

In the new millennium, the most common form of malware attack has become known as drive-by downloads. While surfing on Google or Yahoo, spyware or a computer virus is automatically and invisibly downloaded on a computer, requiring no user interaction for the computer to be infected.

"We are on the verge from shifting from the Web being the No. 1 victim of infecting to social network," said Mikko H. Hypponen, chief of research technology at F-Secure Corp. His company sells anti-virus software and malware protection programs. "It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better."

Social networks are fighting the aggressive attacks from cybercriminals. Most sites have information pages dedicated to educating users about the risks of Internet scams. Users can become a fan of "Facebook Security" and receive updates on how to protect their accounts. One of the most common pieces of advice given by security experts is to change passwords frequently.

Facebook has also developed complex automated systems that detect compromised accounts. They spot and freeze accounts that are sending an unusually high number of messages to their friends. Company security officials said Facebook is a closed system, which can be helpful in erasing phony messages from all accounts.

At News Corporation's MySpace.com, the company creates blacklists of phony accounts to prevent people from clicking on a faulty link. Hemanshu Nigam, first chief security officer for MySpace, said the firm warns about suspicious links and educates users about the harm phishing and malware attacks can bring. "We are prepared for them," he said.


source: CNN.com

Defriending can bruise your 'digital ego'

By Breeanna Hare, CNN

(CNN) -- If you harbor a bit of angst over Facebook friend requests gone unanswered, a surprise "defriending" or being deserted by your Twitter followers, you're not alone.

Elaine Fogel has amassed more than 500 connections on LinkedIn, a professional networking Web site, by extending invites to those who appear to fit her wide array of career interests.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, people just say yes," she said.

But then came "this one woman" who Fogel encountered on one of the 40-plus discussion groups she belongs to on LinkedIn. The woman offered interesting opinions, so Fogel sent her an invitation to join her network.

"She sent an e-mail saying, 'I only connect with people I know, and hopefully our paths will cross one day,' " said Fogel, of Phoenix, Arizona, her voice still carrying notes of disbelief. "I read that, and I said, 'Oh, my God, I've been rejected.' "

Fogel echoes other users who have felt the twinge of hurt and surprise from social media rejection. Some may think hers is an overreaction -- it happened online, with a woman she didn't know -- but recent research shows that our "digital egos" can bruise as easily as we do in person. In fact, rejection online may have the potential to sting even more.

"People tend to think that these relationships are trivial and not very deep, but this is what we're moving towards, having a lot of our communications play out over the Internet," Purdue University social psychologist Kip Williams said. "That's the way it's becoming; this is how we interpret our worth. People care how many [online] friends they have."

Or, increasingly, how many Twitter followers they have. This year, a third-party service launched Qwitter, which allows Twitter users to determine who's stopped following them and which tweet may have turned them off.

Experts say rejection on social networks can hurt worse than an in-person snub because people are usually more polite face-to-face than they are online.

"I think the thing that is often clearly worse online is when it's relatively anonymous, and people use that as a cover and are more cruel than they would be otherwise," said Jean Twenge, a San Diego State psychologist who has studied the way social networking affects personality development.

Online rejection also doesn't lessen the physical reaction we have to emotional pain.

"Pain is divided into two components," said Baldwin Way, a UCLA researcher who studies the way human brains respond to social rejection.

"If you put a red-hot poker on your arm, one part of your brain says, 'This pain is on your arm,' and the other part says, 'Ow, that hurts' and is less concerned with where it is and more concerned about the emotional meaning of it," he said. "That [second] part also seems to be activated when someone's left out or excluded and rejected."

To Way's surprise, that neurological reaction holds true even when the rejection comes in a digital form, lacking the real-world body language, vocal intonations and other aspects that can influence the way rejection is perceived and felt.

"If you'd asked me a few years ago if you'd get the same effect online as you would in person, I'd say no way," Way said. "I thought doing something in person would have stronger effects than doing something online, but interesting data has come out in the last few years that show mental representations are just as powerful as the real thing."

These data include Williams' "cyberball" studies, which ask a participant to play a virtual ball-tossing game with two other icons. In one study group, the participant plays the game for the entire six minutes, but in the second group, he or she is included for only a fraction of that time and then ignored. The second group reports feelings of anger and lower levels of self-esteem.

Whether participants believe they're playing with humans doesn't appear to affect their feelings of rejection.

"Even when people get rejected by the computer, they feel bad," Twenge said.

Kenneth Loflin, a student who participated in Williams' study, got so frustrated by his fellow players that he gave the computer screen an offensive gesture.

"I'm a people person, and I like people to like me," he said.

The study also affected the way Loflin interacts online. Out of the 1,200 friends he has on Facebook, 400 of them he doesn't really know, many of them being friends of friends.

"I thought about defriending them, but I didn't want them to feel how I felt" during the "cyberball" game, Loflin said.

By contrast, Bruce Hammond doesn't have a problem giving the rejection slip to Facebook hangers-on.

"For the most part, the people that I'm defriending are the people that I don't have a relationship with: the people I haven't talked to in 15 years," said Hammond, 30, of Chicago, Illinois. "I don't let someone know if I'm going to defriend them. I just do it."

Similarly, Hammond doesn't expect any of his Facebook contacts to let him know before giving him the ax. If someone rejected him in real life, he would ask why the person felt that way, but when the relationship is online, his thinking changes.

"If I come on [Facebook] tomorrow and see I have 425 friends instead of 426, I'm not going to go through my list and see who did it and be upset with them," he said.

Cecilia Sepp, a Washington, D.C.-area consultant, said she avoids the issue entirely by limiting her online network to about 100 friends.

"I don't have a problem with defriending because I don't accumulate [enough] to have a high number," Sepp said.

"When I first heard that defriending was beginning on social networks, it was through a blog post by someone who was shocked that this person had defriended them because they didn't understand why," she said. "The person wanted to know had they done something, had they said something, should they ask, 'What did [I] do?' "

Sepp believes that online "defrienders" should extend the courtesy that Fogel's LinkedIn rejecter gave her: an e-mail explanation.

"You have no facial expression online; you have no tone of voice online; it's very easy to misinterpret phrasing in an e-mail. You have to be very careful about your wording and be more explicit with people when you're making or removing connections," Sepp said. "That's why it's so important to connect with people that you actually know."


source: CNN.com