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vitaly.friedman writes "What do you do when you're getting close to the limits of 2-dimensional optical technology? Well, how many dimensions do we have to work with?" From the Ars Technica article: "How much greater data density? In the Hitachi Maxell device, a single disc about 1 cm larger in diameter than a CD will buy you 300GB. By way of contrast, HD-DVD currently offers a maximum of 30GB on a 2-layer disc, and Blu-ray tops out at 50GB. Although upgrades are in the works that promise to increase the capacity of both of those formats, even the most pie-in-the-sky predictions fall short of what is planned for merely the first commercial generation of holographic storage. Future plans for that medium include boosting the capacity to 800GB in two years, and 1.6TB per disc by 2010."

Vitaly Friedman writes "In his article in the recent Educause magazine, Bryan Alexander, Director for Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE), presents a comprehensive analysis of the rising web 2.0 companies and describes the emerging of web 2.0. From the article: ' ... larger players have entered the field, most notably Yahoo, which has been buying up many projects, including Flickr and del.icio.us. Microsoft is considering a massive extension of RSS. And Google has been producing its own projects, such as the Lens RSS reader and Google Maps. Meanwhile, academic implementations are bubbling up, like the social bookmarking and search projects noted earlier. This Web 2.0 movement (or movements) may not supplant Web 1.0, but it has clearly transformed a significant swath of our networked information ecology.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "The motion picture industry is in talks with some major retailers about installing DVD burning kiosks in stores. It's an interesting idea, but one that almost entirely misses the point. Hollywood's movie distribution system is in dire need of a fix - very few will dispute that. Movie attendance has been suffering, DVD sales are slumping, and all the industry has managed to do is come up with a half-baked, unpopular download service and a scant handful of simultaneous releases. In another attempt to sort of give consumers what they want, the motion picture industry is thinking about allowing retailers to set up in-store kiosks for distribution."

Vitaly Friedman writes "Microsoft has revealed a surprising new feature for Word 2007: built-in blog publishing. The big surprise is this: the HTML that is generated is actually not that bad. 'Joe Friend, a lead program manager (Microsoft's term for a person who creates the specifications for software that programmers implement) has posted an entry on his blog regarding an interesting new feature being implemented for Word 2007: direct publishing of blogs to the web from within the program.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence. From the article: 'Yahoo continues to defend itself against charges that its Chinese operations have been responsible for the jailing of multiple dissidents. Multiple reports have surfaced which tie Yahoo Mail to various Chinese court cases that have ended in imprisonment for writers with politically unpopular opinions.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "Standards for the hotly anticipated Wi-Fi successor haven't yet been agreed upon. Where's that leave all those early-bird products? 802.11n is a highly anticipated successor to today's Wi-Fi, promising a huge performance boost. The draft spec promises to deliver data rates up to 180 Mbps, which could make wired home networks unnecessary and should allow high-definition wireless video streaming. At issue is whether the draft spec is far enough along that companies can make products that will provide that performance but still be compatible with each other and with older Wi-Fi equipment."

Vitaly Friedman writes "Two researchers demonstrate how much more effective spam could become if its authors used basic data-mining to personalize their messages. From the article: "North America, though no longer the world leader in spam production, still has serious potted meat problems. A recent research paper out of the University of Calgary suggests that those problems could soon be a lot worse if spam creators adopt a few simple data-mining procedures.""

Vitaly Friedman writes "Entrepreneur Mark Cuban doesn't believe that traditional television advertising is dead, it simply needs to be more interesting. And what's more interesting than being live? From the article: 'It's no secret that the traditional 30-second spot has been losing much of its luster with advertisers. With the rise of other media options (videogames, home theater systems, Web surfing) on the one hand and the recent growth of DVRs like TiVo on the other, traditional television advertising has been feeling the squeeze. Broadcasting executives are struggling to figure out the economics of the new digital landscape, and have been willing to try just about any creative idea, such as TiVo's plan to replace old commercials with new ones when watching recorded shows.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "Scientists hope that mind-reading computers will one day replace typed passwords, making fingerprint readers and retina scans obsolete. Skeptics say don't count on it. From the article: 'Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, are exploring the possibility of a biometric security device that will use a person's thoughts to authenticate her or his identity. Their idea of utilizing brain-wave signatures as pass-thoughts is based on the premise that brain waves are unique to each individual. Some researchers believe the difference might just be enough to create a system that allows you to log in with your thoughts.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "The stage is set for the biggest tech battle in years: the antitrust lawsuit filed by AMD against rival Intel. What sort of effect is it likely to have on the industry and the consumer? From the article: 'Last year, the company filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel, claiming that their rival had "unlawfully maintained its monopoly by engaging in a relentless, worldwide campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with AMD" for more than ten years. AMD has already subpoenaed computer manufacturers, retailers, and even Microsoft to provide documentation pertaining to the case. Now, the timeline has been set for the trial of the Megayear to commence.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "A report in the Wall Street Journal today talks about how eBay is looking for partners to defend against the growing threat of Google. Specifically, Google Base and the payment system in the works in Mountain View are seen as possible dangers to eBay's auctions and PayPal payment operations, says the report. Google Talk just throws some salt in the wounds by looking for a toehold in Skype's turf."

Vitaly Friedman writes "A proposed broadcasting law by the European Commission that would regulate emerging media formats in the same way as traditional broadcasting companies draws fire from the companies who say they will be hurt by a one-size-fits-all mentality. From the article 'An alliance of companies, including ITV, Yahoo, Vodafone, Intel and Cisco Systems, warned that a European Commission proposal to impose rules for traditional broadcasters on new media providers could have "unintended consequences" and hurt investment.'"

Vitaly Friedman writes "ICANN, the body responsible for creating top-level domains, is considering a new one. Conceived as a way to easily manage contact information in an age where many people have numerous contact numbers, the proposed .tel TLD would allow individuals and companies to keep all of their contact information in an easily accessible location. Companies would get companyname.tel while individuals would be able to register firstnamelastname.tel." This idea has been kicked around for quite a while; one of the question is the whole name-space collision issue. For instance, there's me and then there's other me. Lemme tell how strange it is getting fan mail for country music stars.

vitaly.friedman writes "The master of text-based search could be looking to lend a voice to Internet users everywhere, or so it appears based on Google's latest patent. Patent #7,027,987, issued today by the US Patent and Trademark Office, covers a 'Voice interface for a search engine.'"

vitaly.friedman writes to mention an Ars Technica story on the ABC's newest bid to stay relevant in the Information Age. As of the end of this month the network will be airing certain popular television shows on the ABC website, starting the morning after their first broadcast. From the article: "All programs will be shown in their entirety, including commercials which cannot be avoided. That's a smart move on ABC's part, as it ensures that advertisers will get another shot at hawking their wares to an audience that might otherwise change channels during commercial breaks or fast-forward through them if recorded. Aside from being unable to avoid commercials, watching the programs will be similar to watching timeshifted content in that viewers will be able to pause, fast forward, and rewind."

vitaly.friedman writes "While growth is slowing at most top Internet sites, it is skyrocketing at sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information. The dramatic success of those Internet categories is apparent from a recent online-traffic analysis provided by market research firm ComScore Media Metrix, which examined visitor growth rates among the 50 top Web sites over the past year."

vitaly.friedman writes "Microsoft has lost another round at the EU though this time it has nothing to do with the antitrust case. This time the dispute is over fonts; specifically Segoe, one of the typefaces Microsoft wants to use in Vista. Microsoft filed its "registered community design" for the font back in January of 2004, paid the required fee, and everything was great until December." A copy of the decision is also available.

vitaly.friedman wrote to mention a Wired article about The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing crewe out of Sweden that thumbs its nose at the MPAA just for kicks and has yet to be shut down. From the article: "The Pirate Bay's legal adviser, law student Mikael Viborg, said the site receives 1,000 to 2,000 HTTP requests per second on each of its four servers. That's bad news for the content industries, which have fired off letter after menacing letter to the site, only to see their threats posted on The Pirate Bay, together with mocking replies. Viborg said that no one has successfully indicted The Pirate Bay or sued its operators in Swedish courts. Attorneys for DreamWorks and Warner Bros., two companies among those that have issued take-down demands to the site, did not return calls for comment."

vitaly.friedman writes "Microsoft has published the due date for Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) on its Windows Lifecycle Web site. The preliminary due date (the latter half of 2007) for the next collection of fixes and patches for Microsoft's desktop operating system is as more than a year later than many company watchers were expecting."

Vitaly Friedman writes to tell us Wired is covering a new service that hopes to alleviate some of the woes of digital picture management using face-recognition technology. Riya, requires a bit of upfront training but thereafter it is able to identify and tag individuals in your pictures along with text recognition for street signs and the like. The service also plans to offer the ability to make your online photo albums public, private, or viewable by invitation.

victorialever writes "Since one could have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is, it seems to become impossible not to jump on the CSS bandwagon as well. The 10 Best Resources for CSS provides an impressive list of the CSS resources which have recently become essential for web-developers. Among them - CSSZenGarden, The Web Developer's Handbook, Stylegala, PositionIsEverything etc."

vitaly.friedman writes "Whether you are looking for Complex analysis, Differential Equatiions or Probability and Statistics references, the Mathematical Atlas covers the whole area of mathematics and related subjects. The so-called 'Gateway to Mathematics' is a collection of articles about aspects of mathematics at and above the university level, but (usually) not at the level of current research. "The goal of this collection is to introduce the subject areas of modern mathematics, to describe a few of the milestone results and topics, and to give pointers to some of the key resources where further information is to be found. Like any good atlas, we try to present several ways to look at each area and to show its relationship with neighboring areas and sub-areas."

vitaly.friedman writes "Bookmarks for web-developers, a list of useful tools supposed to make the life of web-workers easier, includes over 500 manually selected resources, tutorials, references and examples related to web-development. The "Web-Dev-Bookmarks" also includes links to other catalogs and lists related to web-design and web-development."

vitaly.friedman writes "Bookmarks for web-developers, a list of useful tools supposed to make the life of web-workers easier, includes over 500 manually selected resources, tutorials, references and examples related to web-development. The "Web-Dev-Bookmarks" also includes links to other catalogs and lists related to web-design and web-development."

vitaly.friedman writes "Bookmarks for web-developers, a list of useful tools supposed to make the life of web-workers easier, includes over 500 manually selected resources, tutorials, references and examples related to web-development. The "Web-Dev-Bookmarks" also includes links to other catalogs and lists related to web-design and web-development."