eWeek reports that in an effort to make health-related searches more relevant, Google is conducting an experiment where they ask searchers whether they’re suffering from symptoms:
The company, claiming it wants to better refine its health-search-related processes by “understanding how people search when they’re feeling sick,” wants to start differentiating between users searching for health-related topics purely for research purposes and those searching for those topics in order to find out more about a personal health issue.
In order to do so, searches for certain health topics will produce a small dialog box at the bottom of the screen, asking the user if they’re searching because they, or someone they know, are experiencing that particular health issue.
For example, if you search for “headache,” Google may ask, “Did you search because you or someone you know has a headache? Yes/No.”
Speaking recently at a broadband event, Rep. Rick Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, offered some insight into how the $7 billion in federal stimulus earmarked for broadband expansion would be distributed. Via Broadband Census:
Money would be dispensed in three cycles and the hope was that all would be spent within a year and that both public and private agencies could apply. He also said that while the immediate focus is using the stimulus money to increase broadband availability, he anticipates a rewrite of the universal service phone service law –a law that provides money to ensure rural communities get reasonably priced phone service –will make clear the money can be used to provide broadband too.
For more on the broadband stimulus, check out IIA’s special stimulus section.
Leroy Watson, Legislative Director of the National Grange, discusses why broadband matters to rural communities—especially concerning the fading cultural differences between rural and urban areas.
With the Obama administration making cybsersecurity a national priority (and with hackers from China and elsewhere trying to steal our nation’s secrets every day), preparedness drills are up and running. From the New York Times:
These are the war games at West Point, at least last month, when a team of cadets spent four days struggling around the clock to establish a computer network and keep it operating while hackers from the National Security Agency in Maryland tried to infiltrate it with methods that an enemy might use. The N.S.A. made the cadets’ task more difficult by planting viruses on some of the equipment, just as real-world hackers have done on millions of computers around the world.
Cyber attacks often place America in the unfamiliar position of playing catch-up in technology, making these sort of drills all the more necessary.
After trying, and failing, to pass the so-called “Three Strikes Law”—which would cut the Internet connection of online pirates and copyright infringers—the French National Assembly has passed the controversial act. Disconnections are expected to start happening sometime in 2010.
Expect other countries to be following the law closely.
Via alexkinch.com comes word of new report supplied by the firm Pyramid Research that estimates that mobile in Europe is set to explode in popularity. How big will the explosion be? From the report:
Thanks to the right conditions existing in Europe — including the wide availability and high quality of mobile broadband, attractive pricing, and user-friendly devices — the number of European mobile broadband users will reach 116.6 million in 2014, up from 24.3 million in 2008.
Chances are you’ve at some point received a poorly worded email from a troubled Nigerian official promising you piles of money. And while most people smartly send such missives to their junk folder, some people continue to fall for the scam.
Now, Ars Technica reports, the problem has led to a new online game that’s rising in popularity: Nigerian Scammer Baiting:
Scam baiters are the vigilante enforcers who come together to waste hours, weeks, or months of 419 scammers’ lives for nothing more than the satisfaction of knowing that they are distracting them from real victims. Though the world of 419 scams has existed since long before the Internet, people continue to fall for scammers in droves—certainly, scammers are making millions of dollars every year by promising money, goods, and romance that they never deliver on. That’s part of why scam baiting has actually become a somewhat popular pastime online, with thousands of users flocking to scam baiting forums to share stories and ideas on how to string along more scammers. And hey, why not? Most of us end up spending too much time screwing around on the Internet anyway—these folks just use that time to make scammers miserable.
Roughly one-third of households in rural America cannot subscribe to broadband Internet services at any price.
Peha, Jon M. “Bringing Broadband to Unserved Communities.” Part of The Hamilton Project, Advancing Opportunity, Prosperity and Growth. (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution). May, 2008.
TechCrunch has an interesting profile of the online video streaming service Kyte and its new iPhone app. Included is a staggering number:
In April, Kyte streamed 50 million videos across the Web, mobile devices, and social networks. Just to put those 50 million video streams into perspective, that is half the number of videos streamed in March, 2009 by AOL, the tenth ranked video site in the U.S. (Hulu, which is No, 3, streamed 380 million videos).
50 million videos in a month. That’s a lot of data. Also worth noting: As with most everything, it’s America’s obsession with celebrity that drives the streaming engine:
Of the 215,000 video channels on Kyte, nearly all are created by consumers, but only about 1,000 account for more than 90 percent of the mobile videos streamed via the service. And those 1,000 channels are invariably the work of professionals or the cell-phone videos of famous people such as musicians Lady Gaga and Soulja Boy.
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