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Armonk, NY — Dec 18, `07 — IBM today announced the availability of IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections, a corporate social networking visualization and analysis tool.

IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections is designed to help organizations maximize their investment in social software by answering questions such as who the key experts are on a given topic, how they are connected, and whom a user’s contacts know that they do not.

Developed by IBM Research, Atlas has four Web 2.0-based components — My Net, Find, Reach and Net. These components help users spot the important connections and the relationships between various groups and navigate their personal and corporate networks.

The Net component of Atlas provides a visual indication of the important hubs among topic experts and informal groups that have developed while working on similar projects.

My Net offers similar capabilities for a user’s personal network. For example, a salesperson can better manage and understand their social networks making sure they have connections across the right topic areas.

Reach, the social software dashboard feature in Atlas, helps users navigate the up to six degrees of separation that divide them from a colleague. The dashboard shows users the shortest path to reach an expert and ranks the expert based on the level of interaction across the network.

The Find component of Atlas builds upon core Lotus Connections expertise capabilities by taking searches beyond the corporate directory to include results based on social data such as reporting structures, blogs and communities.

Atlas is designed to work with IBM Lotus Connections, the industry’s first integrated enterprise social software platform. The latest version of Lotus Connections, version 1.02, is now available and features:

* Expanded support for operating systems such as SUSE Linux, browsers such as Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and directories such as Microsoft Active Directory, enabling businesses to deploy and integrate social software across their IT environment.
* Plug-ins for IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Explorer and IBM WebSphere Portal, enabling people to interact with their professional networks using their everyday productivity tools.
* A rich API based on the REST and Atom standards allow other applications to utilize the profiles, community, bookmarking, blogging and activity services of Lotus Connections.

More on IBM Atlas at IBM.

SAN FRANCISCO –BUSINESS WIRE– Dec 03, ‘07 — Russia-based SUP, today announced that it has acquired LiveJournal from Six Apart, Ltd. LiveJournal is one of the world’s leading global online communities, with a monthly audience of more than 18m unique visitors in nearly every country in the world.

Additionally, SUP today launched a new U.S. company, LiveJournal, Inc., based in San Francisco, which will manage and operate LiveJournal. More information on the acquisition is available at Livejournal.com/LJ_2008.

This deal is the second agreement between SUP and Six Apart. In October 2006, SUP concluded a licensing agreement with Six Apart to support and develop the large Russian segment of LiveJournal, which now represents 28% of its monthly audience. In the past twelve months, SUP and Six Apart have worked in close collaboration to improve LiveJournal for Russian users during which time the community has almost doubled.

New LJ community to highlight plans launched

The new management team outlined their plans for the service in a new LiveJournal community – LJ_2008 – dedicated to addressing questions and concerns from users, and serving as a forum to discuss anything related to the acquisition. Also at LJ_2008, users will find details about LiveJournal, Inc.’s goals over the next 100 days. These goals include planned upgrades as well as new features and services for the LiveJournal community. The team will focus on such items as service performance, usability, socialization and discovery features. LiveJournal, Inc. is encouraging users to post on the community new ideas for improving the service.

The LiveJournal community was informed of the news yesterday afternoon. SUP promised significant new investment in LiveJournal in the coming months and years. SUP also reassured the community that while subscribing to a minimalist approach in managing the site, it will establish clear and concrete policies with regard to communication and consultation on issues vital to the community.

Nov 22, ‘07 — DiveintoMark.org shows us two sides of Jeff Bezos and of Amazon Here is how:

“When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.”

Jeff Bezos, Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002

“You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.”

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007

More in-depth stories / discussion on Amazon Kindle at DiveintoMark.org

SEATTLE –BUSINESS WIRE– Nov 19, ‘07 — Amazon.com today introduced Amazon Kindle, a revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs, magazines and newspapers to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight.

More than 90,000 books are now available in the Kindle Store, including 101 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases, which are $9.99, unless marked otherwise. Kindle is available starting today for $399 at Amazon/Kindle.

- Downloads Content Wirelessly, No PC Required, No Hunting for Wi-Fi Hot Spots

The Kindle wireless delivery system, Amazon Whispernet, uses the same nationwide high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones. Kindle customers can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store, download or receive new content — all without a PC, Wi-Fi hot spot, or syncing.

- No Monthly Wireless Bills or Commitments

Books can be downloaded in less than a minute and magazines, newspapers, and blogs are delivered to subscribers automatically. Amazon pays for the wireless connectivity for Kindle so there are no monthly wireless bills, data plans, or service commitments for customers.

- Reads Like Paper

Kindle uses a high-resolution display technology called electronic paper that provides a sharp black and white screen that is as easy to read as printed paper.

- Books, Blogs, Magazines & Newspapers

The Kindle Store currently offers more than 90,000 books, as well as hundreds of newspapers, magazines and blogs

- Subscriptions are auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle overnight so that the latest edition is waiting for customers when they wake up. Monthly Kindle newspaper subscriptions are $5.99 to $14.99 per month, and Kindle magazines are $1.25 to $3.49 per month.

- The Kindle Store has over 300 blogs on topics ranging from Internet and technology to culture, lifestyle, and humor, to politics and opinion.

- Holds Hundreds of Books in 10.3 Ounces

- Built-In Dictionary and Wikipedia

- Adjustable Text Size

- Comes Ready To Use

Nov 16, ‘07 — Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people.

Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point. It’s time to fight back. Says StupidFilter Project.

What is StupidFilter Project

The solution we’re creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we’re collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.

Eventually, once the research is completed, we plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a Wordpress plugin.

Project Status

This project is currently in the design and analysis phase. We’ve gathered a fairly large (225K+ comments) database of comments, primarily from Youtube, that ever-inspiring font of stupidity. We’ve implemented a web-based comment ranking system to seed our stupidity corpus and that’s proceeding nicely.

Moderator applications are now open and we’re going through them as quickly as possible. We’re testing CRM114 as a classification platform, initial tests with the bit entropy and correlative classifiers are pretty promising. Additionally, we’ve moved to a new dedicated server better suited to the heavy database work we’re doing. We’re still on track for a late December alpha code release date. StupidFilter.

WASHINGTON (AP) — October 21, ‘07 – It was late on Aug. 22 when Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt wrapped up 1,250 words on his experiences in Mozambique. There was more he wanted to write about online, but he had to be up early. “I think I’ll post and go to bed,” he wrote on his Web log.

Leavitt and Michael Chertoff at Homeland Security are the first two members of President Bush’s Cabinet who are blogging. The State Department has begun a blog, too, although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is not a contributor so far.

Two of Chertoff’s 11 entries challenge New York Times editorials. Most recently, he said the newspaper’s editorial staff “hyperventilates” about the department’s effort to arrest gangs and get illegal aliens off the street.

Leavitt has written about the children’s health care program and defend Bush’s veto of a spending increase that the Democratic-controlled Congress passed. Last week, the House failed to override the veto. “The drama around vetoes and overrides are just the way Washington conducts a conversation and debate,” he wrote.

More at AP, Michael Chertoff, Secretary-DHS Blog-Leadership Journal, Mike Leavitt, Secretary HHS Blog

TUAW, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, reports on WordPress plug  in that automatically formatts all your posts specifically for the iPhone. In their words, “I run my personal site using WordPress, and one reason I like using it so much is that is all the great plugins available for it. On another site I ran under WordPress, I loved using the WP-Print plugin– it automatically creates a “printable” version of each page on your site. All of the printer compatibility, none of the actual work.

And now, someone’s cooked up an iPhone version of that same plugin, where you simply install the WP plugin on your blog (for WordPress 2.2.1), and instantly you can see all your posts formatted specifically for the iPhone. Instead of creating a whole other, “mobile” version of your site, you can simply put in this plugin, and you can get a link that will reformat your content for the iPhone or iPod touch. Very excellent.

If you run a WordPress blog or site and were thinking about creating a version of it for the iPhone or iPod touch, your work is done. Download the iWPhone plugin from Content.Robot, install it, and you’re set.

More at TUAW, Content.Robot

Oct. 10, 2007, SAN JOSE, Calif. – eBay Inc. today extended the ability of its community members to connect through commerce with the launch of eBay Neighborhoods, a new feature on eBay.com. A collection of micro-communities built around common interests and passions, eBay Neighborhoods encourages eBay community members to interact, share, and trade with each other in a fun and engaging way.

eBay Neighborhoods draws content from existing community features such as eBay listings, eBay Blogs, eBay Guides, and eBay Reviews, while adding new Neighborhood-specific message boards, member-uploaded photos, and social mapping tools to visualize the interconnections between people and their common interests.

At launch there are more than 600 neighborhoods covering a diversity of interests from Beyonce and Battlestar Galactica, to Webkinz and Weddings. The company expects the number of neighborhoods to grow and evolve based on continuous community feedback.

More at eBay Press Release, eBay Neighborhoods

HAVANA, Oct 10 - When 32-year-old Yoani Sanchez wants to update her blog about daily life in Cuba, she dresses like a tourist and strides confidently into a Havana hotel, greeting the staff in German. Esteban Israel of Reuters further reports, “That is because Cubans like Sanchez are not authorized to use hotel Internet connections, which are reserved for foreigners. In a recent posting on “Generacion Y“ Sanchez wrote about the abundance of police patroling the streets of Havana, checking documents and searching bags for black-market merchandise.

She and a handful of other independent bloggers are opening up a crack in the government’s tight control over media and information to give the rest of the world a glimpse of life in a one-party, Communist state. “We are taking advantage of an unregulated area. They can’t control cyberspace out there,” she said.

But they face many difficulties. Once inside the hotel, Sanchez has to write fast. Not because she fears getting caught, but because online access is prohibitively expensive. An hour online costs about $6, the equivalent of a fortnight’s pay for the average Cuban. Independent bloggers like Sanchez have to build their sites on servers outside Cuba, and they have more readers outside Cuba than inside.

That’s not surprising, since only 200,000 Cubans, or less than 2 percent of the population, have access to the World Wide Web, the lowest rate in Latin America, according to the International Telecommunications Union. Only government employees, academics and researchers are allowed their own Internet accounts, which are provided by the government.

Regular Cubans are allowed only to open email accounts that they can access through terminals at post offices, where they can also see Cuban Web sites, but access to the rest of the World Wide Web is blocked.”

More at Reuters and at Yoani Sánchez’ Blog Generación Y