Google has been harvesting speech recognition data through Google 411 for a while now. Apparently, the service has yielded a good harvest. YouTube now extracts metadata from spoken words in videos. Obama and McCain are the first test subjects; expect …
Back when we were putting together the grant proposal for ACCURATE, one of the questions that we asked ourselves, and which the NSF people asked us as well, was whether we would produce a “bright shiny object,” which is to say whether or not we wou…
This column is about a new chat system called Talkinator, which I find very exciting, but to do it justice first I have to cover some of the emerging — but not often recognized — realities of Web 2.0 that make a Talkinator even possible.
Bill Gates used to worry about Microsoft losing its monopoly overnight [...]
People have been heaping blame on Yahoo after it announced plans to shut down its Yahoo Music Store DRM servers on September 30. The practical effect of the shutdown is to make music purchased at the store unusable after a while.
Though savvy cust…
The Internet is not above or beyond the reach of the law. Already we have laws in place around the world that address various aspects of the Internet and the impacts the Internet is having on existing laws.
In pretty much every country in the world stealing is against the law and people seem to understand [...]
It’s been using Kontiki’s proprietary P2P client to offset some of that bandwidth for show downloads, but all streams have been completely server-based. The BBC also has been deemphasizing their Kontiki player, even though Kontiki’s …
Recently Barack Obama gave a speech on security, focusing on nuclear, biological, and infotech threats. It was a good, thoughtful speech, but I couldn’t help noticing how, in his discussion of the infotech threats, he promised to appoint a “Nation…