Slashdot Mirror

stefanb writes, "The Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge, an ongoing challenge to compress a 100-MB excerpt of the Wikipedia, has been awarded for the first time. Alexander Ratushnyak managed to improve the compression factor to 5.86 and will receive a 3,416-Euro award. Being able to compress knowledge well is believed to be related to acting intelligently." The Usenet announcement notes that at Ratushnyak's request, part of the prize will go to Przemyslaw Skibinski of the University of Wroclaw Institute of Computer Science, for his early contributions to the PAQ compression algorithm.

An anonymous reader writes, "I just tried a Google Image Search in IE7 for the first time. Whenever I click on an image, my browser tells me in big bold letters, "This is a reported phishing website." Try it yourself: make sure automatic phishing detection is turned on and do an (adorable) image search; click on one of the result thumbnails. MSN Live Image Search has no such issues. Insert Microsoft evil conspiracy theory here." I get this behavior under IE7, Win XP Pro, SP2, Parallels, Mac OS X.

Allen Varney writes in this week's edition of The Escapist about the beauty of Rooster Teeth's machinima, why Red vs. Blue is as good as it is, and why there is money to be made in this burgeoning art form. From the article: "Often, by the time we hear of fortunes being made in a new way, it's already too late to get in. But in machinima, the barrier to entry remains absurdly low, the need for professionalism desperate. If you're funny or interesting, can voice-act well, and produce reliably over the medium term - and you don't quit - there's absolutely nothing blocking you from success." I'm rather fond of some of the supremely odd Machinima based in World of Warcraft - such as Illegal Danish -Super Snacks or the Switcher videos. Any machinima you'd like to recommend to your fellow users?

Allen Varney writes in this week's edition of The Escapist about the beauty of Rooster Teeth's machinima, why Red vs. Blue is as good as it is, and why there is money to be made in this burgeoning art form. From the article: "Often, by the time we hear of fortunes being made in a new way, it's already too late to get in. But in machinima, the barrier to entry remains absurdly low, the need for professionalism desperate. If you're funny or interesting, can voice-act well, and produce reliably over the medium term - and you don't quit - there's absolutely nothing blocking you from success." I'm rather fond of some of the supremely odd Machinima based in World of Warcraft - such as Illegal Danish -Super Snacks or the Switcher videos. Any machinima you'd like to recommend to your fellow users?

Itninja writes, "Having used RAC several times in the past (as a buyer), I was shocked by a recent experience. I did a bit of looking around to see if I was the only one having problems with Rent-A-Coder. Apparently, I'm not." From the article: "This unfairness of RAC fees motivates the majority of coders to negotiate payment outside the scope of RAC which amounts to you and coder getting a better deal. For example, I have several coders that I fully trust willing to work on projects on a monthly basis because it is easier for him to deal with established clients than to have to bid for projects all the time. It saves me time and trouble because I can work with a person that I trust and he knows what is expected." A comment to this posting links a discussion of RAC at Google Groups, and there the service has its defenders. What has your experience of RAC been, either as a buyer or as a coder?

Rockgod writes "Google Analytics Senior Manager Brett Crosby unveiled the tool, called Google Website Optimizer, this morning at the eMetrics summit in Washington D.C. If you find web site traffic heat maps like CrazyEgg, ClickDensity or Google Analytics' own heat map interesting, this looks like the next generation of that kind of tool. If Google's Website Optimizer can score high on usability, I expect it to be a big hit with small and medium size website publishers."

There have been so many articles written about the perils, pitfalls, and possible rewards of running a business based on free or open source software that we can't possibly link to them all. Instead, let's ask MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos how to make money with a company based on free software, because he runs a company that is almost always touted as one of the world's greatest free software (business) successes. You may want to read some of these interviews with Mårten before you come up with your own questions in order to avoid duplication, but other than that suggestion and the usual Slashdot interview rules, ask whatever you like, however you like.

AmadeoDonofrio writes, "Intel has lunched a unique guerrilla marketing campaign for their new dual-core processor. They asked world-renowned virtual builder Versu Richelieu to create a new masterpiece in the Second Life virtual landscape using their dual-core chip. What's really crazy is that they put her in a storefront window on 5th Avenue and 39th Street in New York City for 72 hours while she works. The web site is a mashup of technologies including side-by-side live video feeds from a web cam in the window, and her SL point-of-view. There's a Flickr slide show and her embedded Hipcast audio blog, and soon to come archives of the whole experience in 12-hour segments hosted by YouTube. Is Intel pushing their marketing to extremes by utilizing all these free online services to promote their product? Or is it good publicity for all parties involved?"

pumpknhd writes "Looks like Google has finally integrated Writely and spreadsheets into Google "Docs & Spreadsheets". Writely.com now redirects to this new location. The design has also changed to match the look of other Google services." The more "applications" I try forcing into a tabbed web MDI model under a Mac, the more clumsy it gets. They aren't in my Dock, they can't be apple-tabbed through. Issues like this really frustrate me as I find myself wanting to use more web2.0 ajaxy fancy pants programs.

PreacherTom writes "Yesterday's big news was Google's $1.65 billion deal to acquire popular video hosting service YouTube. But will it be a good deal? The market thinks so, as Google's stock rose about $10 per share after the purchase. On the other hand, YouTube increases Google's risk of copyright infringement, opening the door for significant liability...if Google cannot solve this issue. Will their planned video 'fingerprinting' be enough, or just a billion dollar mistake?" From the article: "YouTube's policy is to remove copyrighted clips once alerted to their existence. Content providers say the company needs to be even more proactive ... Todd Dagres, general partner at Boston's Spark Capital, says that Google's large market cap of $130 billion makes it much more vulnerable to lawsuits than a private company such as YouTube. 'Once Google starts to apply its monetization machine, there is going to be more money at stake and people are going to go after it,' says Dagres. 'You cannot monetize other people's content without their approval.'"

Over 30 readers wrote about Google's purchase of YouTube today for $1.65 Billion, as rumored last week. The all-stock transaction is the single largest purchase in the company's 8-year history. The move follows on the heels of Google's convincing Sony and Warner Music to put music videos online for free. Reportedly, YouTube will retain its brand and all its 67 employees, including co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

derek_farn writes, "Google now has a page that supports source code searching. I hope they extend it to be more programming-language aware (e.g., search for identifiers and functions) like the specialist code search sites (Krugle, Koders, and Codease), who probably now have very worried investors. I don't see any option to search for Cobol. I guess there is not a lot of Cobol source available on the Internet, even although there is supposed to be more Cobol source in existence than any other language (perhaps that statement is not true in the noughties)." From the Cnet.com article: "Google engineers, many of whom participate in open-source projects, already use these code searching capabilities internally. Since it is a Google Labs project, the company is not yet seeking to monetize searches through ads."

Noryungi writes, "It seems the alien invasion of the Earth has just started! A 50-meter insect has been spotted roaming the German countryside! Let the 'I, for one, welcome our new giant insectoid overlords' joke contest begin!" A moderator at a Keyhole forum IDs the bug as a thrip, about 1mm long, squished under a glass plate during scanning.

nieske writes "In response to Google Apps for Your Domain, Microsoft is also planning to release free web-based business software. The software will be ad-supported, but a paid, ad-free version will also be available. From the article: 'Revenue from software licenses for Office and the Windows operating system accounts for a bulk of Microsoft revenues. The challenge for Microsoft will be to make sure a free or, possibly, a subscription-supported version of Works won't hurt sales of its dominant Office software, which accounted for a quarter of the company's $44 billion in sales last year.' Would you choose an ad-supported online version of Microsoft Office over other free options like OpenOffice or Google Apps for Your Domain?"

Lens Hood Man writes "Marking the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week, Google is inviting users to celebrate their freedom to read by making Banned Books available to all. From the Google Blog: "...you can use Google Book Search to explore some of the best novels of the 20th century which have been challenged or banned." Those books challenged this year include 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Lolita'."

vandalman writes to tell us that Google is betting on the obsessive compulsive need for many users to see big numbers next to their name with a new beta service called Google Image Labeler. From the description: "You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session."

jmahler asks: "Suppose you work for a fairly decent-sized (but independent) CPA firm in the IT department. Suppose further that you have repeatedly warned the partners of the dangers of having unsecured laptops in the field, and have requested to replace the very thin, and rapidly aging line of defense (and functionality) currently protecting your network from all of the mean and nasty folks on the Internet. Let's continue, then, to suppose that the partners have all agreed to ignore every recommendation put forward regardless of cost or benefit. Is there a good way, beyond memos and emails, to inform the partnership that the water in which they tread could quickly become dangerous? What about absolving ourselves of responsibility for data theft and loss from a laptop 'disappearance' in the field?"

symbolset writes to say that "Intel is expecting to lay off 10% of their workforce in a move to become more competitive against rival AMD. From the article: 'The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker, having suffered several financially disappointing quarters, launched an internal analysis in April to find ways to increase its efficiency. [CEO Paul] Otellini is scheduled to announce the results of the analysis, including the layoff, on Tuesday after the stock market closes, sources familiar with the plans said. Intel has about 100,000 employees worldwide, so the cut could be as high as 10 percent of the company's staff.' Coverage also at The Register, internetnews.com, and more as it develops at Google News. Reuters has the number at up to 16,000."

theskeptic writes "The WSJ has an article about opposition to programs that provide laptops to 6-8th grade kids. Detractors say that the kids are wasting too much time online browsing dangerous sites, instant messaging friends, and posting to Myspace. Parents are worried that serious learning is being neglected in the quest to 'dazzle up presentations with fancy fonts instead of digging through library books.' Some parents however are 'enthusiastic laptop proponents,' one saying the laptop has helped her twelve-year-old son 'master critical professional skills like how to compile a PowerPoint presentation.'" Gaaah.

prostoalex writes "Google Apps for Your Domain is Google's entrance into the office productivity world, but contrary to popular expectations, the company is not shipping word processor or spreadsheet for corporate use just yet. Google, Inc. bundled e-mail client (Gmail), shared calendaring environment (Google Calendar), instant messaging client (GTalk) and HTML page generator (Google Page Creator) to be used across specific domains. The service will be ad-supported, reports the Associated Press." From that article: "The free edition of Apps for Your Domain is, like Google's main site, supported with ads. By the end of the year, the company also plans to launch a paid version that will offer more storage, some degree of support, and likely, no ads. A price for this edition hasn't been set. Providing e-mail and other applications for businesses moves Google closer into what has traditionally been turf occupied by Microsoft Corp. Earlier this year, Google released a program that builds simple Excel-type spreadsheets but lets users access them on the Web."

An anonymous reader writes "It's 15 years already! On August 25th, 1991 Linus Torvalds submitted the famous message to comp.os.minix: 'Hello everybody out there using minix — I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things)' Happy Birthday Linux!"

savio13 writes "Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of its Open Source Software Lab has invited 4 Mozilla developers to spend 4 days with Microsoft's Vista Readiness ISV team. The invite can be found on mozilla.dev.planning and was posted on Saturday (Aug. 19). Schroepfer replied by indicating that Microsoft and the Moz guys are already in contact via email and will follow up on the offer there. This is interesting because Sam posted the offer in a public forum (and indicated that he'd sent a PM, but was posting in case they had an @microsoft.com email filter). Sam also made a point of stating that the Vista ISV Readiness offer is typically only for commercial ISVs."

An anonymous reader writes "The Mac Observer is taking a look at UI development with lots of video links to some of the latest developments in user interfaces. It also has links to some of the most interesting historical footage of UI developments, here's one of the 1968 NLS demo. From the article: 'Sadly, a great many people in the computer field have a pathetic sense (or rather ignorance) of history. They are pompous and narcissistic enough to ignore the great contributions of past geniuses... It might be time to add a mandatory "History of Computers" class to the computer science curriculum so as to give new practitioners this much needed sense of history.'"

pieterh writes "I've launched a campaign to rid the world of the caps lock key. Sure, there are more serious problems to solve but please, think of the children! How am I going to explain to my kids why some of the most valuable keyboard real estate is squatted by a large, useless key that above all you must not press! Our campaign mission is simple: to send a message to the computer industry to force it (by any means necessary) to retire the CAPS key. It's going to be a hard, long, and possibly very embarassing war on uppercase, but some things just need to be done. "

TechnoSophos asks: "How can I get the real scoop on the latest scientific research? The fourth-grade-reading-level newspaper version of the story is rarely accurate, and is too focused on the wow factor. On the other hand, neither searching for arbitrary strings, nor browsing by journal or even topic is particularly effective if the task is simply staying up to date with the latest news. I don't need gorgeous graphics, nor do I need someone with a Bachelor's in Literary Criticism telling me what the research is about. I just want the cold, hard facts -- lots of 'em."

thetan writes "Google has announced the first major upgrade to Blogger since taking over the creaking old platform. Still in beta, the new service offers a tie-in to your Google Account, dynamic pages, separate comment feeds, new layouts, an apparent merger with Google's Page Creator for WYSIWYG editing, integration of feeds, public/private access control and — of interest to bloghackers — tag-based labels for categories. Take the tour."

Bamfarooni writes "Registration for Google Code Jam 2006 opens today. The event consists of 3 online rounds (September 5-6, September 14 and September 19,) in which participants compete to solve three coding problems faster and more accurately than their competitors. If you've got what it takes, and more of it than anyone else, then you can take home up to $10k for your code-fu."

fragmentate writes "This morning Google released information about their analysis of the exaggerated click-fraud numbers. Without pointing fingers, they mention that click-fraud analysis companies need to clean up their methods. From the post, 'A rigorous technical analysis by Google engineers has found fundamental flaws in the work of several click fraud consultants - flaws that help explain why widely quoted estimates of the size of the click fraud problem are exaggerated.' They even point out some obvious shortcomings of the methods used. The entire report [PDF] is available with their complete analysis."

Bashar writes "A Bahraini newspaper reported today that Bahrain government, following the block of nude sites, have instructed all ISPs to block the Google Earth service, making them one of the few countries worldwide to block a major Google service that is used around the globe, and proving very effective. Here is the same news source, translated by Google to English."

twofish writes "InfoWorld columnist Peter Wayner recently reviewed six of the most popular "open source" Ajax toolkits. The article sets out to see if they are enterprise ready in comparison to commercial products such Backbase, JackBe, and Tibco's General Interface. The six open source projects covered were selected because each has a high-profile in the developer community and support of one or more stable organizations. " The toolkits covered are:

1. Dojo
2. Google Web Toolkit
3. Microsoft Atlas
4. Open Rico and Prototype
5. Yahoo AJAX Library
6. Zimbra Kabuki AJAX Toolkit

Whilst the definition of open source is broad, the round-up is quite helpful.

Lord Satri writes "New around the corner, Microsoft Live Labs' Photosynth, will 'take a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.' There's a demonstrational video and a 'smart photos' example page. From the site Very Spatial: 'The word is that Photosynth will be available for free, at least at first, but no word yet on an exact release date.' I must admit, seems like Photosynth may offer interesting features with an clean interface. This tool will directly compete with Stitcher, and to some extent, Google SketchUp. The virtual world reconstruction tools market is getting crowded, and competition is good. Microsoft doesn't yet have software to tie a photo library with Windows Live Local (Google does), but don't be surprised if it comes to life."

HiTech writes "eWeek has an article looking at Oracle's frustration with both XenSource and VMware over their reluctance to work together. The goal is to develop a single interface for virtualization solutions in the Linux kernel. Oracle's comments follow those by Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman at Oscon last week that XenSource and VMware were butting heads instead of working together to come up with a joint solution. Brian Byun, VMware's vice president of products and alliances, admits the company had been approached by a neutral third party for offline mediation to establish how best to make this happen. But Simon Crosby, the CTO for XenSource, rules out any mediation, saying he believes the two companies are committed to solving the real technical issues."

An anonymous reader writes "It seems even MSNBC is willing to take a jab on those rare occasions when Microsoft products don't work. During a demo of Vista's speech recognition technology, Vista couldn't differentiate between mom and aunt, and all attempts to rectify the problem just made it worse. Wait until you see what it spat out, I think we have a new 'All your base.' Don't you just love Microsoft's live demonstrations?"

NewsForge (also owned by OSTG) has word of Google's newest product: an open-source project repository. Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier sat down for a talk with Greg Stein and Chris DiBona, who say that the product is very similar to sites like SourceForge but is not intended to compete with them. From the article: "Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects. DiBona says that it's a 'direct result of Greg concentrating on what open source projects need. Most bugtrackers are informed by what corporations' and large projects need, whereas Google's offering is just about what open source developers need. Stein says that Google's hosting has a 'brand new look' at issue tracking that may be of interest to open source projects, and says 'nobody else out there is doing anything close to it.'"

Kranfer writes "Reuters is covering the newest offering from Google: real-time traffic mapping on your cell phone. Now you can check how the traffic is ahead of you, of course as long as you don't cause the traffic incident yourself by checking the local issues on your cell phone while driving. Point your cell phone browser to http://google.com/gmm to get your local traffic maps if you live within one of the 30 U.S. cities where this is available."

iDope writes "The Department of Telecommunications of the Government of India has lifted the ban on blogs (reported previously on Slashdot) following pressure from the Indian blogger community and the media. Even with the lifting of the ban several bloggers from BloggersCollective are getting ready to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) (similar to a Class Action Lawsuit in US) in the Supreme Court of India against the Government censorship of the Internet."

Philipp Lenssen writes "Google today released Accessible Search, a Google Labs product aiming to rank higher pages which are optimized for blind users. Google asks you to adhere to the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines if you want to make sure your pages are accessible (and thus, rank better on Google Accessible Search). I wrote a small tool to compare results of default and accessible results."

hal9000(jr) writes "A recent column ('Social Engineering, the Shoppers' Way') on darkreading.com shows how easy it is for a pen test team to walk into a supposedly secure facility using a shoppers club card because the man trap feature was enabled. Man-traps allow people to enter an outer door but not an inner door similar to ATM kiosks. Once inside, of course, they had the run of the place." Lessons: after writing down your password, eat your sticky notes rather than leave them on the monitor.

cpatil writes "On the directions of the government of India, Indian ISPs have started censoring and blocking web properties. This was first noticed by Indian bloggers and upon inquiring with their respective ISPs, the actions are confirmed. Unfortunately, Blogspot and TypePad are the targets till now." There's an ongoing discussion of the censorship on GoogleGroups. The rediff.com coverage linked above indicates that the blocking is based on a list issued by India's Department of Telecommunications.

devv_null asks: "This morning on my drive to work, I was listening to the latest podcast of the Philosophers Zone. The topic of the program was 'Is a free market in ideas a good idea?'. It featured author and speaker Jaron Lanier, who in May published an article Digital Maoism. He highlighted Wikipedia as an example of the one of the worst kinds of 'collective intelligence' and using the 'wisdom of the crowd' to average facts about the world and include them in a massive, lifeless document. Being a habitual Wikipedia user, I could only disagree with his take on the web enterprise. While it shouldn't be considered the ultimate source of knowledge on the web, I think it's ideal in many cases to use as a starting point. Apparently, Lanier thinks a Google search results page is better." So, what is your take on this issue?

Strange_Brew writes "It appears Microsoft is really going all out to get Windows Vista secured before its release date in 2007. There's an article on PC World which talks about Microsoft's plan to give Asia's largest hackers conference an inside look at the new security features in Windows Vista this coming September." From the article: "The Hack In The Box conference will host two speakers from Microsoft. The first, Dave Tamasi, a lead security program manager at Microsoft, will give a presentation on security engineering in Vista. The talk will include a discussion about features suggested by hackers and other security conscious members of the computing community, in addition to security improvements made on Vista. The second speaker, Douglas MacIver, a penetration engineer at Microsoft, will review Vista's BitLocker Drive Encryption and the company's analysis of threats and attempts to penetrate the security feature."

Dysfnctnl85 asks: "As a follow up to the previous discussion 'Alternatives to Citrix Remote Computing?', I've hit another brick wall in my quest to enhance the way my company does remote computing. Right now I've setup Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 R2 on two 64-bit machines with 16gb of RAM each. Before I can setup Presentation Server 4, I need to install the Novell client to allow access to our NetWare servers. After doing some research on Google, and hopping forums on the Novell Support boards, I've determined that Novell has no plans to release a 64-bit client for any Microsoft OS until Vista launches." Has anyone managed to get VMWare, Citrix and 64-bit Windows working together? "Now I'm sure there are other companies out there in a similar situation (as noted on the forums and Google Groups), so I then decided to look into the virtualization market to see if I can still make my dream happen. I've been emailing my Citrix rep who in turn has been speaking with a Citrix engineer who is currently training with VMWare, coincidentally. I'm wondering if anyone has successfully ran a VMWare + Citrix solution in order to fully take advantage of dual 64bit procs, a Windows 64-bit OS, and 16GB of RAM. I was thinking of running 2 Citrix Servers within VMWare to handle maybe 8GB, effectively making 4 public Citrix servers, but I'm not sure what the best solution would be."

Google Checkout Launched Roy van Rijn informs us that Google's new online payment system is now online. "Under the name Checkout, the venture offers an incorporated manner to search, advertise and pay. If you buy something on Checkout, 2% and $0.20 go to Google. Paypal, the biggest competitor uses 1,9% and $0,30. Analysts compare Google/Paypal to for example Visa/Mastercard living peacefully together, while others predict the end of Paypal." W3K adds "You can use your Google account to store an unlimited number of credit cards and addresses. The service allows you to track all your orders and shipping in one place," and adds a link to a quick video tour.

Google Checkout Launched Roy van Rijn informs us that Google's new online payment system is now online. "Under the name Checkout, the venture offers an incorporated manner to search, advertise and pay. If you buy something on Checkout, 2% and $0.20 go to Google. Paypal, the biggest competitor uses 1,9% and $0,30. Analysts compare Google/Paypal to for example Visa/Mastercard living peacefully together, while others predict the end of Paypal." W3K adds "You can use your Google account to store an unlimited number of credit cards and addresses. The service allows you to track all your orders and shipping in one place," and adds a link to a quick video tour.

CoffeeHedake writes "The SWGEMU (Star Wars Galaxies Emulator) Team has successfully run their first Alpha stage test of a reverse-engineered version of Sony Online Entertainment's Star Wars Galaxies server software. An announcement was made on the SWGEMU bulletin boards that something special would be shown in their IRC channel at 12:00AM EST Today. A hosted video montage of the successfully connecting the SWG client to an emulated server, loading a character, zoning from one area to another, and other huge leaps were shown in the clip." Read on for more information, including links to the video clip. CoffeeHedake provides a pointer to the forum and current announcement, and links to the video at several mirrors:

• mirror one
• mirror two
• mirror three
• mirror four
• mirror five
• mirror six
• mirror seven
• mirror eight
• mirror nine

CoffeeHedake continues "This all comes after much very bad press for SOE, after completely changing the game mechanics of Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. The game has had a rocky history, with nerfs and bugs abounding, but the latest 'NGE' or New Game Enhancement patches have led to the detrimental decline in player population. SWGEMU was formed with the hopes of allowing players to 'roll back' their experiences to a Pre-'Combat Upgrade' state of the game, months before the ill-fated NGE was implemented."

"The SWGEMU will allow private, emulated game servers to be run by anyone with the hardware and bandwidth to support the load, possibly allowing customized environments, and game mechanics, as well as a 'dungeon master' control of the server, possibly even over a LAN."

"News has spread, even throughout the Sony Online Entertainment forums of SWGEMU's latest success. No word from Sony, as of yet."

eobanb writes "The Yahoo-owned photo sharing site Flickr has come under fire recently for the perceived 'lock-in' that their API creates. Flickr's terms of service state clearly that all photos uploaded to Flickr by users are owned by their respective users, yet Flickr's API only allows uploading, not exporting. Surprisingly, Flickr developer Stewart Butterfield posted in the thread on Flickr: "I actually had a change of heart and was convinced by Eric's position that we definitely should approve requests from direct competitors as long as they do the same. That means (a) that they need to have a full and complete API and (b) be willing to give us access." This means that users will soon be able to freely move data between different photo-sharing sites, like Zooomr (which has already implemented the Flickr API), Google PicasaWeb, 23hq, or Tabblo."

Dominic Hargreaves writes "This year GNOME received 181 applications to Google's Summer of Code program, yet none were from women. As a result, they've decided to address this imbalance by launching an outreach program to sponsor three female students to work on GNOME-related projects this summer." Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background. Is this sponsorship a creative way to get women interested in GNOME, or is it merely sexist?

Billosaur writes "Word has come out via the Washington Post on Google's plan to launch a a tool for searching US Government web sites. The tool, usgov.google.com, is meant to be used by Federal employees who may need to search across several different sites for information, and '...is also designed to help citizens navigate convoluted pages of government-speak and tailor news feeds to their interests. Users can customize the layout of their page to remain updated on government-related news from official and commercial sources, including the White House, Department of Defense, The Washington Post and CNN. Google is also working with agencies to increase the frequency of news updates to keep content current.'"

chrisd writes "We're very happy to announce that the a new version of Google Earth has been released. It features 3D textured buildings, some neat UI updates, better internationalization and, with this release, a native Linux version is available for download as well. The Google Earth team (with the help of Ryan Gordon) worked very hard to make this possible. Please see the Earth support site and check out the BBS for more information."

chrisd writes "We're very happy to announce that the a new version of Google Earth has been released. It features 3D textured buildings, some neat UI updates, better internationalization and, with this release, a native Linux version is available for download as well. The Google Earth team (with the help of Ryan Gordon) worked very hard to make this possible. Please see the Earth support site and check out the BBS for more information."