Adaptive Path: The Aurora Future Browser

You may have heard the term “Web 2.0″ bandied about. It’s a fundamental shift away from developing a web browser that interacts with the internet in a particular manner and towards thinking of the internet as an actual application that interacts with us in a particular manner. There’s also an implicaton that the current Web 1.0 is generally people taking things off the internet, while Web 2.0 is collaborative and is give-and take.

If that type of heavy techno-geeky online existentialism is too much for your brain to handle on a Friday afternoon, then just simply watch these eye candy videos from a company called Adaptive Path, which theorizes what your web browser experience could be like 10 years from now. It’s fascinating and appears to utilize a lot of the drag-and-drop interaction you might find in today’s Java applets. For example, those of you familiar with Facebook or Blogger have probably already been able to drag-and-drop or click-and-move objects for a while now.

Party Platform Recognizes Growing Role of Internet in Shaping Life and Policy

This article is leftward-leaning, which may offend some of your sensibilities, but the facts of the article are interesting. It is time to admit that the internet is here to stay, it is not some kind of fad, and people who are running for public office need to be knowledgable about the internet: whether by the way they campaign; their recognition of the internet’s power, popularity, and pervasiveness; or their recognition of the dangers of the internet and that the security of our data networks is a national security issue.

This time around, the platform for the party’s ideas diverges from its recent historical trajectory not only because of the way its ideas were gathered (through more than 1,600 meetings involving more than 30,000 Americans both in the 50 states and in cities around the world,) but because it acknowledges the importance of the internet, and the growing importance it has to modern Americans’ everyday lives.

“In the 21st century, our world is more intertwined than at any time in human history,” reads the document. “This new connectedness presents us with untold opportunities for innovation, but also new challenges. We will protect the Internet’s traditional openness and ensure that it remains a dynamic platform for free speech, innovation, and creativity.”

“We have a candidate who knows how to turn on a computer, and when you say the word mouse-pad, he doesn’t say ‘what — is that a new form of rodent control?’” jokes Michael Yaki, the Democratic National Committee and Obama for America campaign’s national party platform director.

More seriously, he acknowleges that the heightened profile of the internet within the party platform is simply a reflection of the way modern society operates — especially for an important and influential new generation of voters. “We have a recognition that for Americans under the age of 30 the internet is going to be, and is, an important part of how they live their daily lives,” he says. “And the ubiquity of it in our platform reflects the reality of the world in which we now live.”

Here’s a startling question: what would you do if terrorists set off an electromagnetic pulse in the middle of some large, metropolitan banking areas, and suddenly your bank didn’t know how much money you had in your accounts?

I’m not telling you who to vote for, but I am telling you that national security is not always protected by guns and bullets.

Judge: Copyright Owners Must Consider ‘Fair Use’

The way that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is enforced scares me. It seems like in their zeal to go after file sharers, the lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America would rather make money for artists in the courtroom than on the shelf of your local music store. When the paying customers get thrown in the mix with the true pirates, then nobody wins. You can’t even listen to the radio at your business sometimes without them coming after you. That’s why this case gives me a little bit of relief:

In the nation’s first such ruling, a federal judge on Wednesday said copyright owners must consider “fair use” of their works before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites. The doctrine, recognized by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, permits limited use of copyright materials without the owner’s permission.

“Even if Universal is correct that fair use only excuses infringement, the fact remains that fair use is a lawful use of a copyright,” U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled. “Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with ‘a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,’ the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright.”

The legal dispute decided Wednesday centers on a rarely used clause in the DMCA — originally approved by Congress in 1998 — allowing victims of meritless takedown notices to seek damages, in a bid to deter false notices and breaches of First Amendment speech. It is usually used when somebody issues a takedown notice and misrepresents ownership of the copyright.

The case considered a lawsuit brought by a Pennsylvania woman whose 29-second garbled video of her toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” was removed last year after Universal sent YouTube a takedown notice under the DMCA. The DMCA requires removal of material a rights holder claims is infringing its copyrights. If it isn’t removed, legal liability can be placed on YouTube or other video-sharing sites. But the act also allows the uploader — in this case, the Pennsylvania mother of the dancing toddler — to demand the video be reposted online.

Universal did not challenge Stephanie Lenz’s assertion that the video was a “fair use” of Prince’s song. After being taken down for six weeks, the video went back online last year, having now generated about half a million hits.

While there is no bright-line rule, the factors to consider whether a video uploaded to a file-sharing site is a fair use are: how much of the original work was used, whether the new use is commercial in nature, whether the market for the original work was harmed, and whether the new work is a parody.

Face-Based Advertising, Coming Soon to Store Near You

If you’ve ever seen the movie Minority Report, there’s a few scenes where advertising is directly marketed to specific people by name based on retinal scans that identify people when they walk into stores or go through the subway. Apparently, that technology may not be far away.

Out-of-home advertising, often referred to as “place-based media,” is seeing a surge in sales and popularity due to innovations in the sector, some of which hold the promise of turning place-based media into face-based sales.

Advertisements out of the home at the cash register, on the road, and in the common area of malls target consumers at point of sale, getting their attention when they have their wallets out or are trying to find a place to spend their dollars.

New innovations in the sector are allowing retailers to update digital tools to reflect changes in the time of day and the company’s sales objectives. Today the Wall Street Journal focuses on companies like Dunkin’ Donuts — which now updates promotional messages in two Buffalo stores between the morning and afternoon rush hours.

Soon advertisers will be able to tailor their messages to the person standing in front of a sign for their products: “The company powering the screens for Dunkin’, YCD Multimedia, is in the midst of deploying facial-recognition technologies that can classify people into certain demographic groups by identifying their approximate age and their sex.”

Security companies have been using these tools for some time, comparing the image of a person’s face against a database of face information. At the 2001 Super Bowl, officials apparently used the technology to scan for terrorists in the crowd.

While the process sounds rather invasive, companies are hoping to avoid privacy complaints by not storing information about consumers that interact with the displays, but a bigger issue seems to be one of vanity. How soon until someone sues for being mistaken for a member of the opposite sex?

What do you think of this? Is this technology furthering marketing or Big Brother watching us? We may find this disconcerting, but I’m sure that there’s a generation of kids growing up now that will think this is cool, and by the time they are in charge, it will become second nature to them.

Love, INC

This is pretty self-explanatory:

When I heard about the service agency called Love, INC, I assumed that meant Love, Incorporated. But it actually means Love—In the Name of Christ. The organization’s goal is to mobilize churches to reach out to a hurting and needy world in the name of Christ.

Throughout history, people have said they’re acting in Jesus’ name, when in reality it was for their own advantage. During World War II, the horrors of the Holocaust were sometimes rationalized by those who labeled the Jews “Christ-killers.” Today racist groups dare to use “Christian” in their name or literature while using violence and hatred to intimidate people.

The Word of God is so saturated with the word love that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could justify doing hateful acts in the name of Christ. Love is at the core of the gospel: Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was motivated by God’s love. “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9).

As grateful followers of Jesus, we are told to “do all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col. 3:17). When we represent Him to other people in word and deed, they should see love, in the name of Christ.

It’s unfortunate, but for as many Christians out there who are out in the world sharing Christ’s love with others and doing the work in His name He has commanded us to do, there is a minority of Christians who get more publicity for fault-finding and spreading hate. It’s no wonder that the prosperity gospel that some preach is so popular: it’s an incomplete form of the gospel that avoids talking about sin and faith in Jesus as the only way to avoid hell and focuses more on the blessings that result from being a believer in Christ. Who wouldn’t want to hear only good things all the time?