Witt's Push Client

http://nienkegroeit.nl/molo.php

CNN - Twitter: A stand-in for opinion polls?

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Twitter: A stand-in for opinion polls?

The next time you're low on cash and need to get a quick read on the public's feeling on politics or current events, consider sampling Twitter.

According to a new report out of Carnegie Mellon University's computer science department, sentiments expressed via the millions of daily tweets strongly correlate with well-established public opinion polls, such as the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) and Gallup polls.

The data analysis methodology still needs some tweaking, but the researchers still believe that Twitter posts could act as a "cheap, rapid means of gauging public opinion."

Assistant professor Noah Smith and his team collected 1 billion Twitter messages posted in 2008 and 2009 and analyzed them for topic (politics versus economy) and sentiment (positive or negative). They compared the consumer confidence tweets against ICS data from the same period as well as Gallup's Economic Confidence Index.

Tweets about President Obama were compared against Gallup's daily tracking polls from that time period, and tweets about the election were compared against 46 polls created by Pollster.

The researchers found that there was a strong correlation between opinions expressed on Twitter and the traditional polls on topics like Obama's job performance, the job market, and the economy. While the ICS and Gallup polls showed an 86 percent correlation between them, Twitter showed between a 72 and 79 percent correlation to the traditional polls.

Still, there were some areas where the Twitter data didn't correlate particularly well. Twitter mentions of Obama did tend to correlate with his rising popularity during the runup to the 2008 presidential election, but mentions of McCain also correlated with Obama's increasing popularity.

Smith and the team acknowledged that natural language processing would have to be improved before Twitter could be used to predict things like elections, and a number of other considerations should be taken into account when using tweets for analysis.

For example, should retweets or news headlines count in the data? Still, even with so much noise in the average Twitter stream, the researchers were pleased to have extracted some signal that apparently shows something useful.

"In this work, we treat polls as a gold standard. Of course, they are noisy indicators of the truth ... just like extracted textual signals," reads the report. "Future work should seek to understand how these different signals reflect public opinion either as a hidden variable, or as measured from more reliable sources like face-to-face interviews."

The paper will be presented later this month at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.

CNN - Before you buy: 12 things to know about the iPad

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Before you buy: 12 things to know about the iPad

You've seen the television commercials and the product reviews.

But maybe, like many gadget lovers, you're still debating whether you really need this new touch-screen computer from Apple.

To help you make sense of the hype, here are answers to 12 common questions about the iPad, Apple's much-anticipated "slate" computer, which goes on sale Saturday.

Is there anything else you'd like to know? If so, please post in the comments section below and we'll do our best to answer your questions.

1. How is the iPad different from a laptop?

The word "laptop" is getting somewhat brushed aside for a truckload of new, confusing categories.

The Apple iPad falls into the slate (some people say tablet) category of portable personal computers, because, unlike a laptop, it doesn't have a hardware keyboard.

Another key difference: To type and to navigate through files and photos on the iPad, you touch its screen in the same way you operate an iPhone or iPod Touch. That's possible on some laptop models, but not many.

2. How is the iPad different from e-readers like the Kindle?

Reading digital books on "e-readers" like the Amazon Kindle is becoming increasingly popular. The iPad acts like an e-reader and like a personal computer, but there are some notable differences between the two.

For one, the iPad has a color display. The Kindle, by contrast, is only black-and-white. Some people think the iPad, partly for this reason, will be popular with students who read textbooks with colorful diagrams. Others say the Kindle's screen, which isn't backlit, will be easier on the eyes over long periods.

There's an aesthetic difference, too: The iPad will display books horizontally, with two pages showing, or vertically, zooming in on a single page of text. The Kindle only works in vertical mode.

Perhaps more importantly, the devices access books from different online bookstores. iPad users buy books from Apple's new digital bookstore, called the iBookstore, which supports an open e-book format called ePub. Kindle users must buy their books from Amazon.com.

3. How much does the iPad cost?

Prices range from $499 to $829. The more expensive versions have more storage space, which means you can put more music and videos on the device.

iPads that connect to the Internet with Wi-Fi only are less expensive than those that can connect through Wi-Fi and through AT&T's mobile Internet network.

4. Do you have to sign-up for an AT&T contract when you buy the iPad?

You don't have to buy an AT&T mobile Internet contract to purchase the iPad.

If you buy a Wi-Fi-only version of the iPad and have a Wi-Fi connection at home, or you want to use the iPad primarily at coffee shops or public places that have wireless Internet connections, then you probably won't have to deal with AT&T at all.

Pricier versions of the iPad are able to connect to AT&T's mobile 3G network, allowing them to browse the Web from many more locations.

Surprisingly, you don't need a contract with AT&T to use this service, either.

Users can pay by the month and cancel at any time without penalty, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at the iPad unveiling. The unlimited data plan with AT&T costs $29.99 per month.

The Wi-Fi-enabled iPads go on sale on Saturday. The AT&T-enabled iPads will ship in late April, according to the online Apple store.

5. If there's no keyboard, how do you type on the iPad?

Instead of being a piece of plastic with physical keys, the iPad's keyboard is a graphic that pops up on the device's touch-sensitive screen -- an interface that will be familiar to iPhone and iPod Touch users.

iPad users type by touching pictures of keys on the screen. The iPad keyboard is about the same size as the one on your desk, but you can't feel the keys.

When he unveiled the device in January, Jobs said the iPad is "a dream to type on." But some bloggers, including this writer, have complained that the iPad's touch-screen keyboard is difficult to use.

6. What does the iPad do best?

The iPad is designed for consuming various types of media -- reading books, browsing the Web and watching videos, in particular.

It's also marketed as a portable gaming device, and there are hundreds of games for sale in the iPad App Store.

The device doesn't have a DVD player, but you can download videos from Apple, or stream them from the Web.

The iPad is best suited for people who would, say, want to read their e-mail, but wouldn't have to compose lengthy responses.

It's better for a blog reader than a blog writer.

7. Can you create documents, spreadsheets and presentations with the iPad?

Apple created a new suite of "apps" specifically for the iPad. These iWork programs, which cost $9.99 each, let users create documents, edit spreadsheets and create business presentations from the iPad.

It's unclear how easy these programs will be to use. Some reviewers say it's easy enough to compose business documents on the iPad. Others say serious users will need another computer to be productive.

The iPad has a Wi-Fi connection, which, in theory, could be used for printing documents wirelessly through your printer. There is some debate online about what apps will perform this function.

8. Can you view any Web site on the iPad?

A certain format of online video, called Flash, does not play on the Apple iPad.

While there are some workarounds for this, many Web sites are redesigning themselves, using a type of code called HTML5, so they will work on the iPad.

That code allows video display on the device, but you may notice some sites will have holes because the iPad doesn't support Flash video.

9. Will the iPad replace my current computer? Or do you need both?

Some technology writers and critics say the iPad is an all-in-one machine. Others argue that it's more of a portable accessory, and that most computer users need a desktop or laptop computer in addition to an iPad.

What works for you really depends on what you use your computers for. If you spend a lot of time typing or creating things with your computer, it may be easier to use a laptop. If you just want to surf the Web, read books, play games, watch movies or send an occasional short e-mail, the iPad might work.

Apple and others sell keyboards that can be attached to the device in case you need to write a longer e-mail and don't want to fiddle with the touch-screen keyboard.

10. Is the iPad lighter and smaller than other laptops or e-readers?

The iPad will be about a half-inch thick and weigh about 1½ pounds.

Its screen is 9.7 inches across, when measured diagonally.

That's smaller and lighter than some laptops. A 10-inch netbook from Dell is similar in size but weighs about a pound more.

Amazon's Kindle DX is slimmer than the iPad, at only a third of an inch thick, and it weighs slightly less: 1.2 pounds, according to Amazon.

Its screen is the same size as the iPad's, but it doesn't display color.

11. Can you subscribe to newspapers and magazines on the iPad?

Some magazines and newspapers have said they hope the iPad will help save their struggling industries. A number of them have reformatted their publications for the iPad's screen and are offering new digital subscription plans.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, will charge $17.99 per month for an iPad subscription to its newspaper.

12. Are there iPad alternatives?

Apple is not the only computer maker offering a slate device. Some are on the market now and others will come out soon.

HP briefly showed off its slate computer before an audience at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Dell has announced plans to make a personal computer in the slate category.

Viliv and Asus have tablets on the market, too.

CNN - Social media at work -- ban or boon?

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Social media at work -- ban or boon?

Social media are, by definition, supposed to be a social experience. Make a profile and start connecting. Reach out to friends, old and new. Post a profile picture, and while you're at it upload a photo album of your trip to Greece so others can see and comment.

When you're done with that, look at your friends' profiles and see what they're up to. Oh, a friend just logged in, too, so now you can chat.

What, it's been two hours since you logged on? How did the time pass so quickly? You should get back to work.

And this is why some employers have banned social media sites -- as well as other potential time wasters -- from the office. The only problem is that social media aren't a fad. Certain sites might have come and gone over the past five years, but the movement toward interactive communities continues, and companies are active participants.

In fact, having social media skills on your résumé is a boon right now, when many of today's employers haven't ever logged on to Facebook or Twitter and don't understand what these sites do.

The case against social media

Few employers would argue that social networks are inherently bad, but what makes the sites great (freedom to post what's on your mind, discuss the day's hot topics, post silly pictures) is also what makes the sites dangerous for a company. Consider these findings from a 2009 survey on policies and data loss risks from Proofpoint Inc.:

• 17 percent of companies report that they have investigated the posting of confidential, sensitive or private information to a social network, such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

• 10 percent have taken disciplinary actions against an employee who violated social networking policies in the past 12 months.

• 8 percent terminated an employee for violating a social networking policy.

• 45 percent are highly concerned about unauthorized information being posted on social networks.

Even the most ardent Facebooker can see that employers have reason to be concerned about security breaches. Factor in the issue of wasting time and you have a viable threat to productivity. Or is it all sound and fury?

Dona Hall works in a commercial real-estate firm where Facebook and MySpace are banned from any computer connected to the network. Sites for shopping and watching sports are also restricted. Yet, Hall points out that employees could use a smart phone to connect to any of these sites and the company couldn't stop them. She says she thinks that doing so wouldn't address the problem, however.

"As a manager, the focus needs to be on tasked results and productivity, not merely taking the toys away and hoping they don't find something else with which to play," Hall says.

Site forbidden

Nan York works for a corporation that has blocked several Web sites, including Facebook, and her work experience is worse as a result.

"I am not more productive for it. I worked hard for my employer before the ban, and appreciated having something I really enjoyed doing in my few minutes of break from my work," York says. "I am a grown-up and take my grown-up responsibilities very seriously -- from paying my bills to doing my work. I don't need stodgy, out-of-touch corporate drones to censure me."

For York, the situation is an issue of trust, or lack thereof, by her bosses.

"They don't trust their work force to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate media in the workplace, or to do work when on the job," she says.

Book Masters Distribution has found one solution, says marketing coordinator Kim Swanstrom. The company has blocked all social networking sites, as well as streaming media and other potentially objectionable or harmful pages.

"As I do understand the importance, it does become extremely annoying when I am researching things and am constantly being blocked," Swanstrom says. "We try to keep up with what is being said about our books and our company on social networking sites. Our solution has been to set up a community computer in plain sight that has no restrictions."

Other organizations, such as the Patrick Hoover Law Offices, use social media for their businesses. At Hoover Law, employees and interns are encouraged to access and utilize social media as they see fit because it can help the business. Facebook has been successful in getting new clients and publicity for the firm. Plus, the organization can tout its tech-savvy approach to business, not to mention the effect that access to social media has on employee morale.

Obviously, companies haven't formed a uniform stance on social media, and based on their varying experiences, a single approach might not be the best way to handle it. If Facebook can benefit your company, why would you ban it? If employees are wasting time and bandwidth, does it make sense to allow it?

Ultimately employees' best chance of avoiding this battle is to keep the social networking to a minimum while on the clock. Don't give the boss a reason to dislike social media and you won't have to resort to crouching under your desk to check Facebook on your iPhone.

CNN - Facebook gripes protected by free speech, ruling says

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Facebook gripes protected by free speech, ruling says

A former Florida high school student who was suspended by her principal after she set up a Facebook page to criticize her teacher is protected constitutionally under the First Amendment, a federal magistrate ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Barry Garber's ruling, in a case viewed as important by Internet watchers, denied the principal's motion to dismiss the case and allows a lawsuit by the student to move forward.

"We have constitutional values that will always need to be redefined due to changes in technology and society," said Ryan Calo, an attorney with Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

"The fact that students communicate on a semi-public platform creates new constitutional issues and the courts are sorting them out," Calo said.

Katherine Evans, now 19 and attending college, was suspended in 2007 from Pembroke Pines Charter High School after she used her home computer to create a Facebook page titled, "Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I've ever met."

In his order, Garber found that the student had a constitutional right to express her views on the social networking site.

"Evans' speech falls under the wide umbrella of protected speech," he wrote. "It was an opinion of a student about a teacher, that was published off-campus ... was not lewd, vulgar, threatening, or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior."

Matthew Bavaro, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Evans, was pleased with the ruling.

"The First Amendment provides protection for free speech regardless of the forum, being the Internet, the living room or a restaurant," he told CNN.

On the Facebook page created by Evans, which included a picture of her teacher, Evans wrote: "To those select students who have had the displeasure of having Ms. Sarah Phelps, or simply knowing her and her insane antics: Here is the place to express your feelings of hatred."

According to court documents, Phelps never saw the posting, which was made from a home computer after school hours.

After receiving three comments from people who criticized her and supported the teacher, Evans removed the page from Facebook.

School principal Peter Bayer suspended Evans, an honor student, for three days for disruptive behavior and cyberbullying of a staff member. Bayer also removed her from Advanced Placement classes and assigned her to regular classes.

Bavaro, Evans' attorney, is seeking to have the court find the school's suspension invalid and to have documents related to the suspension removed from her school file.

"It will eliminate any official public record and validate her rights, since her First Amendment rights were violated," he said.

Internet experts say the court got it right, and that the ruling shows the law evolving with society.

"It reassures Internet users and students that they can still speak their mind," Calo said. "Its not a security issue. Its personal opinion and gossip."

Calo believes high-profile campus shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech have made schools more security conscious. But in this case, the principal went too far, he said.

"I think this is just an example of an overreaction on the part of an administrator to speech outside the classroom," he said.

"It used to be that principals wouldn't hear you talking about teachers outside the class. Social networks give principals the ability to see what students are saying about teachers and each other.

"It's one thing to use that information to identify illegal or dangerous conduct. It's quite another to punish opinion and speech outside the classroom that doesn't disrupt the activities of the classroom," he told CNN.

Bavaro said Evans is not granting media interviews at this time. He said she is not seeking to get rich from her lawsuit.

"We are only seeking nominal, token damages. Maybe $100. Some token amount to show that her rights were violated," he said. This case is not about money."

An attorney representing Bayer, the school principal, did not return CNN's calls for comment.

CNN - Why Google Buzz will be a hit

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Why Google Buzz will be a hit

Google Buzz, Google's new social networking service announced this week, isn't particularly original.

Just like Facebook and Twitter, it lets you share links, updates and media with friends. Even so, it'll probably be a moderate success.

Google Buzz is perhaps the most generic "social sharing" service launched to date. Users can enable the service in their Gmail accounts to share status updates, photos, videos and more with the group of people they e-mail most often.

Friends can also comment on these updates or "like" them to express approval.

There isn't a great deal of innovation here; early adopters will remember FriendFeed, an identical service acquired by Facebook last year.

While FriendFeed built a strong technology platform with an advanced search engine, it failed to achieve significant mainstream success. The site's features are instead being integrated into Facebook, where FriendFeed's talented engineers and Facebook's massive reach (more than 400 million users at last count) combine for maximum effect.

Good technology has value, but leading social networks require "network effects." Facebook is infinitely more valuable because all your friends are on it.

Facebook has leveraged this "critical mass" of users to stay ahead of new rivals, too. Why visit Twitter, you may ask, when Facebook has continually extended its feature set to keep up with its less popular competitor?

The story of social networks is in fact a story about network effects: How can a service reach a point at which there are enough users and content to be useful?

YouTube achieved this trick by providing embedded videos for MySpace and blogs, siphoning off members along the way. MySpace eventually chose to block YouTube links and build a rival video service, but the move came much too late to halt YouTube's rise.

Photobucket, meanwhile, became one of the world's largest photo sites by providing photo hosting to MySpace users; MySpace parent Fox Interactive Media (now News Corp. Digital Media) acquired the service in 2007.

There are arguably better video sites than YouTube and better photo hosts than Photobucket, but network effects tend to trump technical prowess in the social networking realm.

Google Buzz certainly isn't groundbreaking, but it will achieve critical mass virtually overnight. Thanks to integration with Gmail, the new tool is in the eye-line of the millions of users who obsessively check their inboxes for new mail. ComScore pegged Gmail at 176.5 million unique visitors in December.

What's more, Google Buzz uses data about those you frequently e-mail to automatically build a social network for you. Gone are the challenges of critical mass faced by virtually every new social networking service. In Google Buzz, your address book is your network.

Two forces are at work here, then: the immediate utility of a social service pre-populated with people you know, combined with the habitual behaviors associated with checking your email throughout the day.

A stream of fresh content from people you care about, served up on a site you visit every day, may prove to be an irresistible attraction -- although perhaps not a novel one.

CNN - How can we cope with information overload?

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How can we cope with information overload?

Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of online content? You're not alone. Keeping up to speed can be nearly impossible these days, with potentially hundreds or even thousands of daily postings competing for your attention from services like Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds.

If you worry you're missing interesting content, it's probably because you are.

The bad news is that there's no way to fix the problem: The amount of online content out there is simply too much to handle, and it's constantly growing.

But the good news is there's plenty of entrepreneurial energy going toward tools for helping us, if not eradicate the problem, at least deal with it a bit less ineffectively.

One of the more interesting approaches is the use of prediction. If tools can predict what content you'd like based on what they know about you, they can then use that knowledge to highlight the right content.

Indeed predictive models might become increasingly important to online life, in more ways than one.

Consider the My6Sense app for the iPhone. If you access your Twitter, Facebook and RSS content through the app, it uses algorithms to learn about you from the way you behave as you go through your streams. It observes, for instance, which links you click, how long you look at something, and whether you share the content with others.

There are thousands of such variables it pays attention to. Along the way, it gets to know you. The longer you use it, the better it gets at figuring out which content you'll likely be interested in. It then puts this content at the top of your streams.

No content is filtered out, but items within your content streams are re-ordered. Sometimes the service surprises you. A news article, for instance, might have a headline that does not attract your attention. But the content of that article, or a part of it, could be of great interest to you -- something the algorithm can easily predict if it knows you well enough.

"Every day or two I find something like that that amazes me," says My6Sense founder Barak Hachamov, who's been using the product for a little over nine months. Most users start getting good results after a few sessions with the app, he says.

And while the algorithm can predict based on past behavior, it's also flexible enough to adapt to a user's constantly changing interests. At some point, the technology behind My6Sense could be offered as a common feature on many online services.

Although the Israeli startup is not currently commenting on it either way, it could conceivably offer an open Application Programming Interface (API) so that publishers or application developers can integrate the technology into their own offerings.

The app is interesting in its own right, but more interesting perhaps is what it suggests about the future.

Personal algorithmic profiles might become a common approach to better finding desired content. Clay Shirky, a prominent technology speaker and consultant, sparked much online debate two years ago by claiming that "there's no such thing as information overload, there's only filter failure."

My6Sense, or services like it, could be a step toward more effective filters. (Although, again, technically it only re-orders rather than filters content.)

Predictive tools might be used in other ways, as well.

There's a growing awareness that people are using social media to publicly announce what they intend to do in the future.

Jeremiah Owyang, a consultant and blogger on social media, calls this the "intention web."

Try this search on Twitter: iPad + "planning to buy."

You'll see a great deal of real-time declarations of intent to buy Apple's much-anticipated device.

Businesses could use such information. Services that specialize in mining and presenting it -- likely to be no small task -- could offer them predictive models that help lead to, say, inventory adjustments.

Of course, accuracy in predicting anything -- demand for a product, your potential interest in a tweet or article, the outcome of a football match, the weather -- will always fall short of what's desired. No predictive technologies will ever be advanced enough to fix that basic characteristic of life.

But in a no-win situation like information overload -- or filter failure, take your pick -- predictive tools can, perhaps, at least save you some time.

"You could be the filter," notes Hachamov. "You could read 5,000 pieces of content and find what you want. But usually you want to do some other things with your life."

CNN - List of Academy Award nominations

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List of Academy Award nominations

Below is the list of nominees for the 82nd annual Academy Awards. The Oscar ceremony will take place on March 7 and will be televised by ABC.

Best picture

"Avatar" "The Hurt Locker" "Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire" "Up in the Air" "Inglourious Basterds" "Up" "The Blind Side" "District 9" "An Education" "A Serious Man"

Which pictures have the most nominations? Actor

George Clooney, "Up in the Air" Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart" Colin Firth, "A Single Man" Morgan Freeman, "Invictus" Jeremy Renner, "The Hurt Locker"

Actress

Meryl Streep, "Julie & Julia" Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side" Gabourey Sidibe, "Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire" Helen Mirren, "The Last Station" Carey Mulligan, "An Education"

Supporting actor

Matt Damon, "Invictus" Woody Harrelson, "The Messenger" Christopher Plummer, "The Last Station" Stanley Tucci, "The Lovely Bones" Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds"

Supporting actress

Vera Farmiga, "Up in the Air" Mo'Nique, "Precious" Anna Kendrick, "Up in the Air" Penelope Cruz, "Nine" Maggie Gyllenhaal, "Crazy Heart"

Director

Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious Basterds" Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker" James Cameron, "Avatar" Lee Daniels, "Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire" Jason Reitman, "Up in the Air"

Animated feature

"Up" "Coraline" "Fantastic Mr. Fox" "The Princess and the Frog" "The Secret of Kells"

Original screenplay

"The Hurt Locker" "Inglourious Basterds" "The Messenger" "A Serious Man" "Up"

Adapted screenplay

"District 9" "An Education" "In the Loop" "Precious" "Up in the Air"

Best foreign-language film

"Ajami" "El Secreto de Sus Ojos" "The Milk of Sorrow" "Un Proph�te" "The White Ribbon"

Best film editing

"Avatar" "District 9" "The Hurt Locker" "Inglourious Basterds" "Precious"

Art direction

"Avatar" "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" "Nine" "Sherlock Holmes" "The Young Victoria"

Cinematography

"Avatar" "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" "The Hurt Locker" "Inglourious Basterds" "The White Ribbon"

Costume design

"Bright Star" "Coco Before Chanel" "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" "Nine" "The Young Victoria"

Best documentary feature

"Burma VJ" "The Cove" "Food, Inc." "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" "Which Way Home"

Documentary short

"China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province" "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner" "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant" "Music by Prudence" "Rabbit � la Berlin"

Makeup

"Il Divo" "Star Trek" "The Young Victoria"

Music (original score)

"Avatar" "Fantastic Mr. Fox" "The Hurt Locker" "Sherlock Holmes" "Up"

Music (original song)

"Almost There" from "The Princess and the Frog" "Down in New Orleans" from "The Princess and the Frog" "Loin de Paname" from "Paris 36" "Take it All" from "Nine" "The Weary Kind (Theme from "Crazy Heart") from "Crazy Heart"

Short film, animated

"French Toast" "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" "The Lady and the Reaper" "Logorama" "A Matter of Loaf and Death"

Short film, live action

"The Door" "Instead of Abracadabra" "Kavi" "Miracle Fish" "The New Tenants"

Sound editing

"Avatar" "The Hurt Locker" "Inglourious Basterds" "Star Trek" "Up"

Sound mixing

"Avatar" "The Hurt Locker" "Inglourious Basterds" "Star Trek" "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

Visual effects

"Avatar" "District 9" "Star Trek"

Newsweek Mobile - J.D. Salinger's Influence

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J.D. Salinger's Influence

Updated: 01/30/2010

Next to the acerbic Holden Caulfield, today's boyish literary icons-the wizard with Coke-bottle glasses, the vampire with an abstinence agenda-look like a bunch of phony morons. The 16-year-old protagonist of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye  was a world-weary and tortured soul trapped in the body of a prep-school student, and his shiftless romp around New York City is required reading for the American teenager. But his influence has extended far beyond the schoolhouse. Here are six realms that Caulfield's piercing wit has penetrated in the 59 years he's been with us:

Crime. Mark David Chapman, the 25-year-old assassin of John Lennon, was arrested clutching a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and had penned "This is my statement" inside the book. Chapman was a former mental patient from Honolulu, where he worked as a security guard, attempted suicide twice, and tried to legally change his name to Holden Caulfield. He later explained in a handwritten letter to The New York Times that "this extraordinary book holds many answers" and that "all of my efforts will be devoted toward" getting people to read it. Other crimes have since used the book as a touchstone; John W. Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, was also said to have a special fascination with the book.

Slang.Catcher in the Rye is to modern youth-speak what Dante's Divine Comedy was to 14th-century Italian; what Huckleberry Finn  was to the Reconstruction-era South. Written in the 1950s slangy vernacular of its protagonist, Catcher remains a historical linguistic record of postwar colloquialism. Some of Holden's trademark patois was lastingly absorbed into everyday speech-terms such as "screw up," "moron" and, of course, his liberal use of profanity. Some slang terms have faded as relics of the '40s and '50s-fewer kids these days use "lousy" as a term of scorn.

Film. The book itself was famously banned from ever becoming a movie, and Salinger also banned the use of his name in the film version of Field of Dreams, the book version of which he has appeared in as a character. In the movie, James Earl Jones instead plays Terence Mann, a prickly and reclusive author who represents a fictionalized version of Salinger. Beyond direct (or thinly veiled) references, Salinger's Caulfield has inspired a slew of "disaffected teen" or "coming of age" movies, from 1955's Rebel Without a Cause  through 2009's Adventureland.

Theater. Musicals (Next to Normal) and dramas (Six Degrees of Separation) alike make allusions to the novel, but the latter contains one of the most memorable. The play is suffused with Catcher references, but the biggest comes in a masterful monologue (later delivered onscreen by Will Smith) in which protagonist Paul says that Holden's tale "mirrors like a fun-house mirror and amplifies like a distorted speaker one of the great tragedies of our times: the death of the imagination."

Satire. One of The Onion's most enduringly humorous pieces was a 2005 homage to Caulfield: it centered on a 38-year-old man who decides to conclude his lifelong quest to "find himself." From the piece: "The search initially showed great promise, with Speth's early discovery of his uncle's old Doors records and a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Over the next two decades, however, the 'leads just petered out.' Although Speth searched in a wide variety of places-including the I Ching, a tantric-sex manual, and a course in chakrology-he uncovered nothing."

Books.60 Years Later Coming Through the Rye. It's practically tradition: Just like Gone With the Wind saw sequels, prequels and send-ups (remember Carol Burnett's "Went With the Wind"?), Salinger's marquee work was a source of inspiration. Last summer, Swedish author John David California wrote what he billed a "literary commentary on Catcher and the relationship between Holden and Salinger" in this "unauthorized sequel" to the book. In his version, Holden is a 76-year-old resident of a nursing home, where he goes by Mr. C, and his adored younger sister, Phoebe, is a drug-addled mental patient. Luckily for readers who'd rather not see Catcher thusly sullied, a federal judge prohibited its publication in the United States.

(c) 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

CNN - Google searches getting more social

Sent from sedimaano@yahoo.com's mobile device from http://www.cnn.com.

Google searches getting more social

Google's move to include social networking information in its searches has gotten personal.

The search-engine giant has announced that, with a few tweaks, people using Google can now see search results related to friends, co-workers and other members of their social networks above all other results.

The Social Search feature was introduced to a limited number of Google users last year and was made available to everyone in beta status this week.

"This is just a first step in our ongoing effort to ensure that Google Web search is always as social as the Web itself," the company said in an instructional video posted to its official blog.

The tool requires a Google account. Then, a user can link their profile to friends and family via their blogs or profiles on networking sites like Twitter.

The world's largest social-networking site may prove tricky, though. Many of Facebook's roughly 350 million users responded to Google's addition of results from the site by tightening their privacy settings. The result is that Google -- and other search engines -- can only access people's public profile pages, which usually don't have much information.

If they choose, Facebook users and administrators of Facebook groups and fan pages can adjust their privacy settings to make their data accessible to others on the Web.

When searching, a Google user can now click a link -- "My Social Circle" -- to bring up anything members of the user's network had written or otherwise posted on that topic.

The user would be able to add or remove people from their profile.

In its blog, Google said that enabling Social Search could make results more valuable because they come from sources that the user trusts.

"We think there's tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we're just beginning to scratch the surface," Google said in the blog post.

Google's move comes as some of the Web's most popular sites are moving to make user experiences more personal.

Last week, Twitter changed its "Suggestions" list, moving away from celebrities and major media outlets to rotating lists of experts in various fields that users may find interesting.

The site also allows users to switch away from the site's top trending topics and instead view the most popular discussions among people who live in their area.

"[D]oes Twitter really want to serve up celebrity musings and general interest news, or would it rather provide the most interesting information streams to individuals -- reflecting our interests, perhaps, or helping us to connect with friends and local happenings?"

Mashable.com founder and CEO Pete Cashmore said this week in a column for CNN.com. "Late last week, Twitter provided the answer: Celebrities aren't for everyone."