New Academy Award-winner Jeff Bridges reprises his role as arcade regular and computer programming genius Flynn in the trailer for Tron Legacy, which just made its official web debut today. The film is a long-anticipated sequel to the 1980s geek classic Tron, and this is the first full-length trailer.

The film (or at least the trailer) focuses on Flynn’s son, who goes looking for his father in the now-abandoned arcade that was the launching point for the first movie, only to find him in a more technologically advanced version of the fantastic and dangerous virtual world introduced in the first film (which won much acclaim for special effects).

Since the franchise has always been about the latest in filmmaking technology, Tron Legacy will be presented in 3D. A 3D trailer actually premiered before select showings of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Tron fans traveled from distant cities to see it. The movie is also trending on Twitter right now, so we think this has the makings of a hit.

Disney plans to release Tron Legacy on December 17, believing that it will draw a big audience during the lucrative holiday season.

We know many Mashable readers are going to be interested in seeing this film, but does it have any chance of living up to the iconic original? Watch the trailer and leave a comment letting us and other readers know what you think.

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Watch the Trailer

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Reviews: Mashable

Tags: 3D, disney, Film, jeff bridges, Movies, trailer, tron legacy, video

In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious.

Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more.

In a game where selfishness made more sense than cooperation, acts of giving were “tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more,” wrote political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University.

Their findings, published March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the latest in a series of studies the pair have conducted on the spread of behaviors through social networks.

In other papers, they’ve described the spread of obesity, loneliness, happiness and smoking. But there was no way to know whether those apparent behavioral contagions were actually just correlations. People who are overweight, for example, might simply tend to befriend other overweight people, or live in an area where high-fat, low-nutrient diets are the norm.

The latest research was designed to identify cause-and-effect links. In it, Fowler and Christakis analyze the results of a so-called public-goods game, in which people were divided into groups of four, given 20 credits each, and asked to secretly decide what to keep for themselves and what to contribute to a common fund. That fund would be multiplied by two-fifths, then divided equally among the group. The best payoff would come if everyone gave all their money — but without knowing what others were doing, it always made sense to keep one’s money and skim from the generosity of others.

Only at the end of each game did players find out what the rest of their group had done. The game was run again and again, each time mixing group members and keeping their identities anonymous, so that decisions were never personal.

When one person gave, others in their group tended to be generous during the next two rounds of play. Recipients of their largess became more generous in turn, and so on down the chain. When a punishment round was added — players could spend their own money to reduce the rewards of selfish players — generosity lasted even longer.

“It is often supposed that individuals in experiments like the one described here selfishly seek to maximize their own payoffs,” wrote Fowler and Christakis. “The equilibrium prediction is to contribute nothing and to pay nothing to punish noncontributors, but the subjects did not follow this pattern.”

According to the the researchers, the explanation lies not in calculations of odds and rewards, but in simple behavioral mimicry: Monkey see, monkey do, human style. When people are irrationally generous, others follow suit.

The network described by Fowler and Christakis doesn’t necessarily replicate natural group dynamics, but suggests a general model for how behaviors spread. They suggest that researchers of altruism and cultural evolution study how different group configurations promote or limit the spread of behaviors.

However, the findings aren’t just a feel-good story. Selfish behavior spreads easily, too.

Images: 1) Heath Brandon/Flickr.
2) James Fowler.

See Also:

• Loneliness May Be Contagious
• Altruism’s Bloody Roots
• Termite Altruism Might Have Roots in War
• The Buddy System: How Medical Data Revealed Secret to Health and Happiness
• Bacteria Sacrifice Selves for Greater Good

Citation: “Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks.” By James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 10, March 9, 2010.

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the DMCA.

On the one hand, as an author, I like that it gives me a way to stop illegal copies of my work being distributed in the US, so ensuring that I can continue to make a living without having to get a proper job. On the other hand, as an occasional journalist, I hate that it can also be used by trigger-happy lawyers to prevent certain embarrassing documents entering the public domain.

Thus conflicted, it was with some trepidation that I received news from the old country that Gordon Brown’s government is getting ready to enact its very own version of the DMCA. Called the Digital Economy Bill (DEB), the new statute aims – amongst other things – to halt the rising tide of intellectual property theft on the Internet. But unlike the DMCA, its reach won’t be limited to national borders: any site anywhere in the world that’s accessible from the UK needs to obey the law or else it’s liable to find itself blocked from the entire country. I’m not kidding, this is China-level enforcement.

The bill originated in the House of Lords (our second law-making chamber) where it’s being tweaked and plucked, with various clauses added and removed – before being sent to the Commons (our first chamber) for debate and a final vote. Here in a nut are the key clauses as it currently stands:

Firstly, if the law passes, ISPs will be obliged to keep track of all allegations of illegal file-sharing made by copyright owners. These complaints will be used to produce an list of “persistent offenders” (subscribers who had received more than, say, 50 complaints about them) which will be made available on request to the copyright owners. The list will be anonymised, with subscribers identified only by a reference number, but copyright owners can then apply to the British courts to subpoena the names and addresses of the subscribers involved. Copyright owners can then take legal action directly, claiming substantial damages for each violation. The government is also able to take action: demanding that ISPs cut off internet access from households identified as persistent offenders.

A second – and even more controversial – clause was bolted on by members of the House of Lords in response to the claim that over 35% of copyright breaches occur not through P2P sharing, but rather through media hosts like YouTube and file locker services like Rapidshare. The new amendment will give the courts the power to demand that British ISPs block access to any site that knowingly and unlawfully hosts copyright material. That’s not just sites hosted in the UK but any site anywhere in the world. As with the DMCA, the ISP won’t be liable until they are notified of the illegal content (the ’safe harbor’ defence) providing they then take immediate steps to block the sites hosting them. If, however, the ISPs refuse to act, they will be liable to the full legal costs of the copyright owner. But unlike the DMCA, the amended bill contains absolutely no penalties for copyright owners who file bogus or spurious claims. The effects are about as chilling as can be: it is in the copyright owners’ interests to make as many claims as they like, and in the ISP’s interests to immediately block every site they’re notified of in order to avoid potentially huge legal costs.

Opponents of the bill point out that most cases will never come to court as ISPs will roll over immediately, as they frequently do under DMCA in the US. But the opponents don’t stop there. Hell, they don’t really stop anywhere. Between the amended blocking clause which could, in theory, see sites like YouTube blocked from the UK – and the potential for having one’s entire house disconnected from the web, the DEB has come in from a veritable gale of criticism, much of it vented right here in the blogosphere. Who’d have thunk it?

TechCrunch’s own Devin Coldewey notes that the “persistent offenders” list won’t just affect domestic file-sharers. Internet cafes, hotels and anywhere else that offers public wi-fi access could find themselves taken offline if their customers are found to be swapping copyright files. If anything, these public access points are even more at risk as it doesn’t take many teenagers using your cafe to rack up 50 copyright violations: this despite there being no way for the establishments to police what their customers are doing online. As Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow put it, almost entirely without hyperbole, “UK Digital Economy Bill will wipe out indie WiFi hotspots in libraries, unis, cafes“

In fact Doctorow is one of the bill’s harshest critics, writing numerous posts about its dangers. Not only is he vehemently opposed to the persistent offenders clause but he also rails against the site-blocking amendment, arguing that it will essentially ban file lockers from the UK, even when much of the content hosted on them is perfectly lawful. In response to Doctorow and his ilk, thousands of UK web users have signed petitions opposing the bill. Even members of parliament have come out to publicly attack the proposed measures – as Tom Watson MP told me on Twitter: “Enshrining net filtering at ISP level scares me half to death…. Law has to have a starting point. This isn’t it. Copyright reform for the internet age should be Step One. Rip it up. Start again.”

A clusterfuck, then. A total shit show, even more draconian than the DMCA and even more packed to the gills with chilling effects. There’s an election coming up in the UK and the government is apparently anxious that the law be pushed through before then, but to do so would be a travesty – instead the bill should be scrapped and revisited in the next parliament.

Or at least that was my first thought. Then I actually read the bill.

And, you know what, it’s actually not that bad.

For a start, the first point of contention – the compilation of a persistent offenders list, and the potential banning of them from accessing the Internet – isn’t quite as unfair as it sounds. Despite Doctorow’s claim that “your entire family [can] be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial”, there are actually multiple points at which evidence comes into play, and the accused file-swapper is given a chance to defend themselves. The bill requires the creation of an independent tribunal body to hear claims of unfairness arising from the new laws, and alleged infringers have not one but two rights of appeal to the tribunal. With each alleged breach, the new law demands that the ISP send a letter to the subscriber putting the allegations and the evidence to them.

Only once a significant number of  breaches have been alledged (the drafters of the bill suggest 50) will the subscriber be added to the persistent offenders list. Again, they will be notified. Only at this point can the copyright owner appeal to the court – using a law that has been around for 36 years – to get the name and address of the offender. Even then, though, they won’t be taken to court. Instead, the copyright owner has to send the subscriber yet another letter (this will be their 52nd) warning them that legal action is imminent if they don’t stop. It’s only then that legal action will be taken, leading to a possible fine and – only at the extreme end of the scale – their Internet access being disconnected.

The second point of contention – the blocking of file-sharing sites – is still pretty bad, but again it’s not quite what some commentators [*cough* Cory *cough*] suggest with headlines like “Lords seek to ban web-lockers (YouSendIt, etc) in the UK“. Yes, the courts will have the power to require ISPs to block sites that egregiously host copyrighted files. But they can only do so if the site involved has refused to remove the copyrighted files – a last resort against foreign file lockers who ignore British court injunctions. More importantly it’s also a power that the British courts have had since the 2002 E-Commerce Directive Regulations (with ISP’s being similarly liable for inaction): the new legislation simply creates a DMCA-style process for making take-down requests easier to issue.

After several hours of reading – not just the proposed new law but also all of the existing copyright law, plus the current World Intellectual Property Organisation Treaty (the UK is a signatory) and also hundreds of pages of discussion around all of the above – a few things became clear…

For one thing, many of those opposing the bill don’t seem to be opposed to the bill itself so much as they’re opposed to the entire notion of copyright law, particularly when it’s used by “greedy record companies” or “rich recording artists”. As one commenter put it on the Guardian: “If you want to be solely a ‘recording artist’ and find you’ve been caught short – tough. No one owes you a living. You’ve been rendered obsolete by technology (not me) and you either adapt or fade away like so many other industries.” The only copyright law that people like that will accept is one that lets them steal whatever they like.

Far be it from me to suggest that Cory Doctorow has an anti-copyright agenda, but there’s no doubt he’s the world’s leading proponent of the ‘give everything away free and reap the tangential rewards’ model of intellectual property protection. Creative Commons might work perfectly for a man who makes his living writing and speaking about how he gives things away free, but it’s not always the answer for musicians, authors and filmmakers who don’t have that particular sideline. And I say that as an author who just gave his last book away under a Creative Commons license and who isn’t going to go broke any time soon.

Whatever Doctorow’s biases, headlines like “UK Digital Economy Bill will wipe out indie WiFi hotspots in libraries, unis, cafes” or “Leaked UK government plan to create ‘Pirate Finder General’ with power to appoint militias, create laws” do nothing to encourage rational debate. In fact, they’re curiously reminiscent of “Obamacare will kill grandma” claims from Republicans in the US. Why debate facts when you can drive people to your way of thinking through scary headlines?

And yet, shrill objections aside, it’s equally clear that the Digital Economy Bill has its fair share of potential problems. There’s not a huge amount of new law in the bill, but there are a whole bunch of new processes – new takedown notices, persistent offender lists etc – all of which will need to work properly from day one. In the British government’s haste to rush it through before the upcoming election, there’s a huge risk of passing a bad statute which will prove impossible to enforce.

Most clear of all though is that, beyond a general call to “scrap the bill and start again” (again: paging the Republicans), none of the opponents of the bill are suggesting a credible alternative. For all of our fears of “chilling effects” the fact is that the Internet is shitting all over the intellectual property rights of the UK creative industries (industries which account for 7.9% of the nation’s GDP). Existing law offers almost all of the protections required by copyright owners, but it’s too slow and costly to enforce in the face of widespread online infringement. A shake-up of the enforcement process is much needed – not just to protect fat cat record companies, but also to ensure the livelihoods of thousands of musicians, authors, filmmakers, photographers, artists and the rest who contribute to our cultural landscape. To those people, the effects of an online copyright free-for-all are just as chilling. If the DEB isn’t the right bill , then it is beholden on those attacking it to suggest an alternative.

Here’s mine:

1) My parents run a business that offers free wi-fi to their customers. I know it’s impossible for them to act as copyright police and so, alarmed by the proposed bill, they’ll likely choose to close down their wi-fi hotspots. To avoid that, the law needs to distinguish between domestic and business internet users when it comes to the persistent infringers clause. For domestic users, the 50-strikes and you’re out clause – and the disconnection threat – should stand: it’s a powerful deterrent, and there are plenty of points at which householders can appeal. For businesses and public wi-fi providers, the disconnection threat should be dropped entirely – it’s clearly a disproportionate punishment – but the fine should remain. In both cases, though, the burden should rest on the copyright owner to prove complicity in the infringement. Domestically, this is as simple as proving multiple breaches from the same IP address – there is a duty on the homeowner to lock down their wi-fi and to know what is happening under their roof, especially after receiving multiple notifications. For businesses, though, the copyright owner should face the (almost impossible) task of showing that the business owner is knowingly permitting copyright breaches on their premises. They’ll basically have to send private detectives round and catch the owner in the act – something only worth doing in extreme cases.

2) The current site-blocking amendment should be dropped entirely. Instead it should be replaced with a virtual carbon copy (quelle irony) of the DMCA’s takedown procedures, but with even more severe punishments for copyright owners who file spurious claims. If an alleged infringer files a counter-notice but the copyright owner decides not to then pursue legal action, the former should be immediately entitled to claim damages against the latter, set at a fixed amount (say £250 – a little under $400) for every day each affected file was offline. In the case of entire sites being blocked, these damages could be enormous. The result: copyright owners will have a costly disincentive against filing spurious claims.

3) Finally, and most importantly, the bill should be abandoned until the next parliament. Rushing through legislation is almost never a good idea – and it’s not like it’s going to be a vote winner, either for this government or the next one. With the full lobbying force of the creative industries behind a new law, there’s virtually no chance that it won’t be passed in the next twelve months so MPs should take the next few months to revise it, to consult with experts, to explain it to critics and generally to ensure that everything that can be done to make it fair has been done.

The UK’s creative industries generate £112.5 billion in revenue for the British economy. The Digital Economy Bill should be passed, and it should be passed soon. But more than all of that, it should be passed right.

Nathan Yau is a doctoral candidate in statistics, but the most valuable lessons he's learned in analyzing and working with data don't involve formal math. Here's how he suggests looking at lines, charts, and numbers to find interesting things.

Photo by net_efekt.

Yau lays out the skills and mindsets that have served him well in his studies and analysis. As he puts it, he can't shoot from the hip with questions about proper sampling size or rendering formal analysis, but he's learned what to look for when looking at data—something we all do regularly, whether in monthly budgets or spreadsheets at work.

Two of his suggestions:

See the Big Picture
... It's important not to get too caught up with individual data points or a tiny section in a really big dataset. We saw this in the recent recovery graph. Like some pointed out, if we took a step back and looked at a larger time frame, the Obama/Bush contrast doesn't look so shocking.

Ask Why
... This is the most important thing I've learned: always ask why. When you see a blip in a graph, you should wonder why it's there. If you find some correlation, you should think about whether or not it makes any sense. If it does make sense, then cool, but if not, dig deeper. Numbers are great, but you have to remember that when humans are involved, errors are always a possibility.

It's not a top 10 list or secret hacks—just smart advice, and worth looking back at when you're vexed by a hidden message beneath all the numbers and lines you see in any data set.

Excellent guest comic at Pictures For Sad Children, excerpted here:

It's short, brutal and hilarious—just like life.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

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Illustrator Christopher Niemann's Lego block recreations of famous New York icons are very clever. Abrams just published a board book full of them. See other examples here on the NY Times.

I Lego N.Y.

Earlier this week, news broke that the EU was opening an antitrust investigation into Google — and Microsoft’s fingerprints were all over it. One of the three companies filing complaints about Google is owned by Microsoft, while another is a member of a group that’s partially funded by them. Google promptly responded to the inquiry with a blog post called “Committed to competing fairly” that gave a brief overview of how its search rankings work.

Today, Microsoft has written a blog post that admits that it played a part in instigating the inquiry, stating that “complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors.” And it’s also accusing Google of “telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.”

Microsoft’s post, which was written by VP and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner, details some of the company’s recent discussions with the European Commission and US DOJ, which have revolved around the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal (which, in turn, led to talk about Google’s allegedly anticompetitive practices). Heiner also notes that Microsoft has been directing other “concerned companies” to competition law agencies.

Here are some of the more interesting passages:

As Google’s power has grown in recent years, we’ve increasingly heard complaints from a range of firms—large and small—about a wide variety of Google business practices. Some of the complaints just reflect aggressive business stances taken by Google. Some reflect the secrecy with which Google operates in many areas. Some appear to raise serious antitrust issues. As you might expect, many concerned companies have come to us and asked us for our reaction and even for advice. When their antitrust concerns appear to be substantial, we suggest that firms talk to the competition law agencies. (Complaining to Microsoft won’t do much good.)

Both search and online advertising are increasingly controlled by a single firm, Google. That can be a problem because Google’s business is helped along by significant network effects (just like the PC operating system business). Search engine algorithms “learn” by observing how users interact with search results. Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google.

These and other network effects make it hard for competing search engines to catch up. Microsoft’s well-received Bing search engine is addressing this challenge by offering innovations in areas that are less dependent on volume. But Bing needs to gain volume too, in order to increase the relevance of search results for less common search terms. That is why Microsoft and Yahoo! are combining their search volumes. And that is why we are concerned about Google business practices that tend to lock in publishers and advertisers and make it harder for Microsoft to gain search volume.

For the first time in years, I want letterheaded paper. Via Letterheady (more details at link):

Doing the right thing by exposing a company's shoddy product, customer service, or iffy privacy policy can have consequences. Our friends at Boing Boing just finished dealing with MagicJack and a groundless defamation suit because they were brutally honest.

You can read a full account of the events along with the post that started it all over at Boing Boing, but the ordeal boils down to this:

Boing Boing posted about MagicJack's "terms of service-which include the right to analyze customers' calls-and various iffy characteristics of its website" in April of 2008. According to Robert Beschizza:

The post was titled "MagicJack's EULA says it will spy on you and force you into arbitration." This EULA, or End-User Licensing Agreement, concerns what subscribers must agree to in order to use the service. I wrote that MagicJack's allows it to target ads at users based on their calls, was not linked to from its homepage or at sign-up, and has its users waive the right to sue in court. I also wrote that that MagicJack's website contained a visitor counter that incremented automatically; and that the website claimed to be able to detect MagicJacks, reporting that "Your MagicJack is functioning properly" even when none are present.

He also notes that "the post didn't criticize the service or the gadget itself, which works very well."

In March 2009, Boing Boing was notified that MagicJack was filing suit because "these statements were false, misleading, and had irreparably harmed MagicJack's reputation by exposing it to 'hate, ridicule and obloquy.'"

A great deal of back-and-forth followed until the suit was finally dismissed and MagicJack was ordered to pay Boing Boing "more than $50,000 in legal costs."

We may think that all's well that ends well and that the truth prevailed, but it took a great deal of time and legal costs. Perhaps a site smaller than Boing Boing could not have handled the effects of a defamation suit like this—justified or not—and would've given in to a company's demands. And that's more terrifying than some wonky EULA. [Boing Boing]

When it's time to book a plane ticket, you've got an overwhelming number of online destinations to check—which really complicates things. NYT writer Matt Gross details his simple booking workflow, which combines his favorite travel sites for great deals.

Photo by lrargerich.

You've probably heard of most of the services he uses (we've mentioned most of them here, in fact), but his process of moving from one site to the next—and his reasons for doing so—are what makes his guide interesting. Like most of us he starts at the Lifehacker favorite, Kayak, to get a baseline for prices. Next, he continues down the booking rabbit hole into more interesting and esoteric sites to verify ticket prices, see if he can find anything cheaper, and determine if he might save some money if he waits a little longer. For example:

So, I check out another site: cFares.com, which has a twist. For a $50 annual membership, you'll get small rebates if you book through them. Each rebate may be only $8 or $20, but if you fly several times a year, that can add up quickly. And last spring, cFares found me a flight from New York to Paris for $543.17, or about $200 less than any other search engine found.

His article covers his varying methods for domestic and international flights, and it's got some great tips for finding good deals without spending every waking minute searching every travel site you can find. Got your own tried-and-true methods for finding a great deal on a ticket? Let's hear it in the comments.

Jesse Brown sez, "Boing Boing readers may remember me guest-posting about Bitstrips for Schools, the educational comic-making site which launched in Ontario classrooms this past September.

Well, in six months, kids in this province have created ONE MILLION educational comic strips.

Here's #1,000,000, made by by Sam B of Angela Youmans' Grade 8 English class.

It's great dramatization of Laura Secord's historic journey (spelling error aside)."

THE ONE MILLIONTH BITSTRIP created by Ontario students!

(Thanks, Jesse!)

Any of you guys in the San Diego area?

Taking some recharge time. It’s going to be a hard weird run to summer, and I need a bit more in the tank than I’ve got. I feel almost like I should write a BERG-style Weeknote, since I’m engaged on Sekrit Missionz as well as sleeping half of every day. BERG do this lovely thing where they attach codenames to projects and work sequences — they were in Escalante condition, but are now in Scenario 4 condition, and it really gives you an insight into their eccentric science-fiction-reality work culture. (By “eccentric,” I do of course mean “quite mad” but the difference between eccentrics and lunatics is that eccentrics get paid.)

(Scenario 4 always makes me think of Alternative 3.)

I dunno. How would I describe the space from here to early summer? The world is more interesting than ever. I mean, every new day is intrinsically more interesting than the last, but I’m really feeling the spin of the planet lately.

Pretty picture by Cassandra:

There’s a degree of spin-up happening all over. Eric Rodenbeck;

I’ve been feeling for some time now that the data visualization space is about to go completely bananas

Talking about this, a live visualisation of Olympic-related Twitter chatter. Coincidental for me, because I just started following The Economist’s data-viz vodcast. And one of BERG’s current projects is all about data-viz. There’s some rattle and hum in a dozen weird little spaces like that right now. Last year felt like a holding pattern to me in many ways (not least in my work, after the disaster that the last half of 2008 turned into). This year might be good. Striking out for parts unknown.

You know you've wondered what Google Earth would look like across a curved, eight-display installation, and now your most stupendous dreams are a reality thanks to Liquid Galaxy. That's the moniker that's been given to Jason Holt's 20 percent project, which he's just now getting to showcase to the world at the TED conference in San Francisco. Reportedly, eight Linux machines are tied to the process, and he's able to fly through the digital skies via voice commands and sheer mental strength. Or maybe it's just voice commands. Head past the break for a cockpit view, but be sure to close one eye if you're prone to motion sickness.

[Thanks, Camron]

Continue reading Google exhibits Liquid Galaxy installation at TED, we toss back a Dramamine

Google exhibits Liquid Galaxy installation at TED, we toss back a Dramamine originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know you've wondered what Google Earth would look like across a curved, eight-display installation, and now your most stupendous dreams are a reality thanks to Liquid Galaxy. That's the moniker that's been given to Jason Holt's 20 percent project, which he's just now getting to showcase to the world at the TED conference in San Francisco. Reportedly, eight Linux machines are tied to the process, and he's able to fly through the digital skies via voice commands and sheer mental strength. Or maybe it's just voice commands. Head past the break for a cockpit view, but be sure to close one eye if you're prone to motion sickness.

[Thanks, Camron]

Continue reading Google exhibits Liquid Galaxy installation at TED, we toss back a Dramamine

Google exhibits Liquid Galaxy installation at TED, we toss back a Dramamine originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Popular Science  |  YouTube  | Email this | Comments

I'm at the TED conference this week, held in Long Beach, California. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and it is an annual gathering of amazing ideas and stories. Here's a list of TED 2010 speakers.

In past years, I've posted summaries of all the presentations, but this year I'm going to write a daily wrap-up instead. I'll post my first this evening.

The highlight of TED each year is the TED prize. The winner of this year's prize is celebrity chef and international nutrition advocate Jamie Oliver, who gets $100,000 and "the opportunity to present his wish to change the world." CNN is live streaming Oliver’s talk, "in which he will reveal his one wish to change the world." You'll be able to watch it here at 8:50 p.m. (ET).

I was happy to learn that Intelligentsia Coffee is making espresso drinks for everyone at TED, and our pal Kyle Glanville, Intelligentsia's director of espresso research and development and first place winner of the National Barista Championship, is pulling shots. Kyle just made me a mind bending double espresso!

Ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro is about to perform, so I'm signing off to enjoy his performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Above, a multiscreen, ultrafast Google Earth station, called Liquid Galaxy. I shot a video that I'll upload later. Photo by Marla Aufmuth, an old Wired colleague of mine.

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Another day, another "journalism is dead, long-live journalism" article... >>>

Sree Sreenivasan is a professor and Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia Journalism School and contributing editor at DNAinfo.com.

Ask a journalist about the state of the media and the answer you get may range from dire predictions about  journalism’s imminent demise to cautious optimism. The doomsayers point to falling newspaper circulation, fragmenting TV audiences and the 18,000+ jobs lost in 2009. Sites like PaperCuts, which painstakingly tracked those job losses (and has already noted 815 losses for January of 2010), and Twitter feeds like TheMediaIsDying, help reinforce the notion that the American media is, well, dying.

For the optimists, this is an exciting time of great opportunities, with more media being created and consumed than ever before. Here’s part of what Joshua Micah Marshall, creator of Talking Points Memo, told the graduating class at Columbia Journalism School last year:

It’s the people who are entering the profession right now that are going to create the editorial models, the publishing models, the business models, that define journalism in the 21st century.

And that is something that’s exciting, it’s a challenge, which, in my mind, totally outweighs the bumps in the road, the instabilities, and the lack of security that journalists face today that maybe they didn’t 20 years ago.

Of course, no one knows for sure exactly where we are headed, but this seems like a time when preparing to deal with the changes ahead would be a good idea.

And that’s what Mashable did earlier this week with its fourth Mashable NextUp NYC, as part of Social Media Week. Held at the 92YTribeca — the hip, downtown version of the venerable 92nd Street Y of the Upper East Side (“free Wi-Fi” announces a chalkboard at the door) — the event attempted to look at the changing media landscape and the evolving role of journalists in it. When Mashable’s Adam Hirsch asked former contributor (and my student at Columbia J-school) Vadim Lavrusik to do a public conversation with me on the topic, we decided to bill it as “The Future Journalist: Thoughts from Two Generations.”

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The Tra-digital Journalist

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Once upon a time, I used to be a young, fresh-faced journalist of the future, so it horrifies me that I’ve turned into the voice of an older generation. But Vadim is an example of what it will take to succeed in the future: a balance between the traditional values and skills of journalism, and the digital skills and mindset that are so critical these days. My colleague, Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, coined the term “tra-digital journalist” and it describes Vadim and so many other young journalists today (be sure to read his Mashable post on 8 Must-Have Traits for Tomorrow’s Journalist, which served as a backbone for our discussion).

The concept of the tra-digital journalist is among the many ideas we discussed and we’ve put together our slides below and also have a Twitcam live-streamed video of the conversation.

Here are some of the other key concepts that we discussed:

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The Fundamentals Are Critical

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Despite the importance of technology, it’s the fundamentals of journalism that are still critical. The fundamentals include: great reporting and writing, journalistic ethics, specialization by topic or beat, investigative skills, news judgment. Also invaluable, critical thinking and critical reading — too many journalists don’t pay attention to either.

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The Future Journalist Is…

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We identified specific digitally-oriented skills and traits a future journalist would need. These include being:

• a multimedia storyteller: using the right digital skills and tools for the right story at the right time.
• a community builder: facilitating conversation among various audiences, being a community manager.
• a trusted pointer: finding and sharing great content, within a beat(s) or topic area(s); being trusted by others to filter out the noise.
• a blogger and curator: has a personal voice, is curator of quality web content and participant in the link economy.
• able to work collaboratively: knowing how to harness the work of a range of people around him/her — colleagues in the newsroom; experts in the field; trusted citizen journalists; segments of the audience, and more.

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Business Items

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We discussed some business-ish skills and traits that are going to be useful.

• an entrepreneurial spirit: having an experimental open-mindedness, being an innovator.
• being entrepreneurial within an existing company: you don’t have to be at a startup to be entrepreneurial; there might be a lot you can do within some large corporations.
• business savvy: understands the business of his/her industry; understand value of content; understand new media business models
• knows & embraces metrics: understands the value and danger of metrics; studies today’s major metrics tools, Google Analytics, Omniture, Nielsen, Bit.ly, etc
• thinks “Career Management,” Not “Next Job”: understands value of thinking long-term; thinks strategically about career choices; keeps re-tooling

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Be a Permanent Learner

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Most journalists don’t appreciate how much better they’d be at their jobs if they were constantly learning new ideas and skills. Such a learner’s media diet may include:

• Mashable
• PaidContent.org
• ReadWriteWeb
• Lifehacker
• Poynter, Mediabistro blogs, Mediaite, CJR, etc
• [what would you add?]

Being on deadline or in crisis mode is not the time to try and figure out new technology. When the plane lands in the Hudson, it’s too late to figure out Twitter. When your company starts layoffs, it’s too late to figure out LinkedIn. Start carving out time to learn new concepts and tools.

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Social Media

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Wouldn’t be Mashable if we didn’t talk about social media. Using the syllabus of my Social Media Skills for Journalists course (developed with adjunct professor Adam Glenn), we outlined what social media can do for journalists:

• find new story ideas, trends and sources
• connect with audience(s)
• bring attention and traffic
• help them create, craft and enhance their personal brands — this point is absolutely essential for journalists to grasp. Once upon a time your work spoke for itself. Nowadays, there’s too much competing for everyone’s attention and you have to make sure you get your work out there and get it noticed.

Smart journalists understand that social media is for listening, not just broadcasting or sharing what’s on your mind.

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Mashable’s Convening Power

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As with most events these days, I learned much from the audience Q&A and the networking sessions before and after the talk. My boss, Nicholas Lemann, Columbia J-school Dean and New Yorker contributor, often talks about the convening power of a place like our school: the ability to bring together influential people to have important conversations. I saw up close for the first time Mashable’s in-person convening power, having experienced its online convening power for a long time now. Attendees included a cross-section of folks doing some of the most interesting work in media today. And, as you will hear in the video, many people in the room knew more about the topic that I did, including Edelman’s Steve Rubel and members of the Mashable editorial team (who, in some ways, are living prototypes of tomorrow’s journalists).

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The Folly of Predicting the Future

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As we say in the slides, the social media scene today is where radio was in 1912, where TV was in 1950, where the web was in 1996. A lot of wonderful opportunities and terrible mistakes lie ahead of us. Predicting the future of journalism at any of those points would have resulted in a lot of wrong predictions back then. While we are sure many of our predictions are going to be wrong in specifics, we have the chutzpah to presume they are right directionally. We welcome your feedback and input.

Connect with Vadim Lavrusik on Twitter (@lavrusik) and via his blog, Lavrusik.com and his new project covering startups in New York City, NYC3.0.

Connect with Sree Sreenivasan on Twitter (@sreenet) and via his Facebook tech tips page, Facebook.com/SreeTips. His columns about the media and technology run in DNAinfo.com, a Manhattan news site he helped put together with Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts (whose family just bought the Cubs and Wrigley Field). The syllabus and notes for his Social Media Skills for Journalists course is at bit.ly/socmediaskills and his workshops collection is at bit.ly/workshops. On Friday, Feb. 5, 2010, he is hosting two free webcasts, Basic Twitter for Journalists and  Advanced Twitter for Journalists, one of them featuring Mashable founder Peter Cashmore. Details and archive at bit.ly/columbiajtw2.

Image courtesy of 92YTribeca in New York City

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Reviews: Facebook, Google Analytics, Lifehacker, LinkedIn, Mashable, Twitcam, Twitter

Tags: journalism, Journalist, media, nextup-nyc, social media week

On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.

After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.

The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others. We suspended this person while we were sorting through exactly what happened. When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated.

This was not one of our full time writers, and so the frequency of posts was light. Nevertheless, we’ve also deleted all content created by this person on our blogs. We are fairly certain that most of the posts weren’t tainted in any way, but to be sure we’ve removed every word written by this person on the TechCrunch network.

Our attorneys have advised us not to disclose the name of the individual because the person is not a legal adult. We also think that, given the intern’s age, it may not be appropriate to make their identity public.

We are all shaken here at TechCrunch – this is someone who was our friend and who we trusted to be honest with our readers. Our hope is that the intern learns something from this experience and grows into the kind of person that will be more welcome in this community.

I apologize to each one of you. I promise that we will always maintain complete transparency with you on how we operate, even when it isn’t such an easy thing to do.

Update: Daniel, the intern in question, has decided to talk about this situation publicly on his blog. I’m glad that he has. You can read his thoughts here.

The study of social networks has thrown up more than a few surprises over the years. In a social network, most nodes are not linked to each other but can easily be reached by a small number of steps. This is the so-called small worlds network.

Late last week, I wrote a post about how netbooks running Chrome OS and the iPad were on a collision course. Some people took exception to that, noting the iPad was only a touchscreen device while Chrome OS was created to be used with more traditional computing form factors, like netbooks and laptops. But there’s a new concept video that has surfaced on a Chromium Project page that very much shows how the two could and should compete head-on in the touch tablet space.

Again, this is just a concept video at this point, but it clearly shows what the people building Chrome OS are thinking about for future products. Oh, and in case you’re worried that since Chromium OS is an open source project, this is just some random person making these videos that Google is unlikely to use for Chrome OS, they were made by Glen Murphy, a Googler working on Chrome (with a sense of humor).

Clearly, the tablet in this video is bigger than the iPad, but don’t rule out Apple making a larger tablet as well. It’s worth noting that Google’s tablet concept video was uploaded January 25, two days before the iPad unveiling.

For more of a taste of what Google has in mind with these tablets, check out the concept pictures as well. Watch the video below.