Paper
3 in 5 Web Users Read Online Newspapers
Source: http://feeds.marketingcharts.com/~r/marketingcharts/~3/-Sa6RZtikDw/
Almost three in five US internet users read newspapers online each month, according to comScore Media Metrix data.
57% of Web Audience Read Online Paper in May Online newspapers received about 123.9 million unique US visitors in May 2010, or roughly 57% of the total monthly US unique internet audience of about 215.7 million users. Those visitors [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/marketingcharts/~4/-Sa6RZtikDw" height="1" width="1"/>
Google’s New Indexing System Is Fully Caffeinated
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5559015/googles-new-indexing-system-is-fully-caffeinated
Google’s latest web indexing system, the tool that pre-scans the entire web to have a ready answer to your search query, promises “50 percent fresher results for web searches.” It’s called Caffeine. And it comes with staggering Google search stats.
The main difference with Caffeine is that, rather than search one entire group of sites (represented in that lead graphic as a layer), then another, less prioritized group of sites, then yet another less prioritized group of sites, everything with the Caffeine algorithm is pretty much indexed constantly. Teased for several months now, Caffeine is the sort of update Google needs to follow the pace of searching services like Twitter. And indeed, Google will need to maintain/continue such innovations to keep up—our world is translated from analog to digital in more, quicker ways every day.
So now for those wicked Google stats:
• Every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel.
• If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second
• Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database
• Caffeine adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.
• You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information
• If these iPods were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.
[Google]
1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/1024-bit-rsa-encryption-cracked-by-carefully-starving-cpu-of-ele/
Since 1977, RSA public-key encryption has protected privacy and verified authenticity when using computers, gadgets and web browsers around the globe, with only the most brutish of brute force efforts (and 1,500 years of processing time) felling its 768-bit variety earlier this year. Now, three eggheads (or Wolverines, as it were) at the University of Michigan claim they can break it simply by tweaking a device’s power supply. By fluctuating the voltage to the CPU such that it generated a single hardware error per clock cycle, they found that they could cause the server to flip single bits of the private key at a time, allowing them to slowly piece together the password. With a small cluster of 81 Pentium 4 chips and 104 hours of processing time, they were able to successfully hack 1024-bit encryption in OpenSSL on a SPARC-based system, without damaging the computer, leaving a single trace or ending human life as we know it. That’s why they’re presenting a paper at the Design, Automation and Test conference this week in Europe, and that’s why — until RSA hopefully fixes the flaw — you should keep a close eye on your server room’s power supply.
1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink
p://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/severe_openssl_vulnerability/“>The Register, TechWorld |
University of Michigan | Email this | Comments
Aardvark Publishes A Research Paper Offering Unprecedented Insights Into Social Search
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/IMDRrISRf-8/
In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin published a paper[PDF] titled Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine, in which they outlined the core technology behind Google and the theory behind PageRank. Now, twelve years after that paper was published, the team behind social search engine Aardvark has drafted its own research paper that looks at the social side of search. Dubbed Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine, the paper has just been accepted to WWW2010, the same conference where the classic Google paper was published.
Aardvark will be posting the paper in its entirety on its official blog at 9 AM PST, and they gave us the chance to take a sneak peek at it. It’s an interesting read to say the least, outlining some of the fundamental principles that could turn Aardvark and other social search engines into powerful complements to Google and its ilk. The paper likens Aardvark to a ‘Village’ search model, where answers come from the people in your social network; Google is part of ‘Library’ search, where the answers lie in already-written texts. The paper is well worth reading in its entirety (and most of it is pretty accessible), but here are some key points:
- On traditional search engines like Google, the ‘long-tail’ of information can be acquired with the use of very thorough crawlers. With Aardvark, a breadth of knowledge is totally reliant on how many knowledgeable users are on the service. This leads Aardvark to conclude that “the strategy for increasing the knowledge base of Aardvark crucially involves creating a good experience for users so that they remain active and are inclined to invite their friends”. This will likely be one of Aardvark’s greatest challenges.
- Beyond asking you about the topics you’re most familiar with, Aardvark will actually look at your past blog posts, existing online profiles, and tweets to identify what topics you know about.
- If you seem to know about a topic and your friends do too, the system assumes you’re more knowledgeable than if you were the only one in a group of friends to know about that topic.
- Aardvark concludes that while the amount of trust users place in information on engines like Google is related to a source website’s authority, the amount they trust a source on Aardvark is based on intimacy, and how they’re connected to the person giving them information
- Some parts of the search process are actually easier for Aardvark’s technology than they are for traditional search engines. On Google, when you type in a query, the engine has to pair you up with exact websites that hold the answer to your query. On Aardvark, it only has to pair you with a person who knows about the topic — it doesn’t have to worry about actually finding the answer, and can be more flexible with how the query is worded.
- As of October 2009, Aardvark had 90,361 users, of whom 55.9% had created content (asked or answered a question). The site’s average query volume was 3,167.2 questions per day, with the median active user asking 3.1 questions per month. Interestingly, mobile users are more active than desktop users. The Aardvark team attributes this to users wanting quick, short answers on their phones without having to dig for anything. They also think people are more used to using more natural language patterns on their phones.
- The average query length was 18.6 words (median of 13) versus 2.2-2.9 words on a standard search engine. Some of this difference comes from the more natural language people use (with words like “a”, “the”, and “if”). It’s also because people tend to add more context to their queries, with the knowledge that it will be read by a human and will likely lead to a better answer.
- 98.1% of questions asked on Aardvark were unique, compared with between 57 and 63% on traditional search engines.
- 87.7% of questions submitted were answered, and nearly 60% of them were answered within 10 minutes. The median answering time was 6 minutes and 37 seconds, with the average question receiving two answers. 70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.
- 86.7% of Aardvark users had been asked by Aardvark to answer a question, of whom 70% actually looked at the question and 38% could answer. 50% of all members had answered a question (including 75% of all users who had ever actually interacted with the site), though 20% of users accounted for 85% of answers.
Another day, another story about some cheap, plastic Wii motion control accessory finding an application outside of gaming. In this case, it’s the balance board, and not only is this device helping stroke victims recover, it’s saving them money, too.
In fact, doctors at the University of Melbourne found that the balance board, normally used for pseudo Yoga or navigating Mii’s down a virtual ski slope, was so sensitive it could very well replace traditional laboratory-grade “force platforms” doctors use to assess a patient’s balance.
When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of “excellent” quality. “I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up,” said lead researcher Ross Clark, in an interview with New Scientist.
Even better, Clark’s team has already published a paper that verifies the Wii balance board is “clinically comparable” to the nearly $18,000 lab force platform. That’s great news for many smaller physio clinics that would otherwise be unable to afford the traditional rig. [New Scientist]
Ad-supported photo books
Need physical copies of some great shots, but you’re a bit too lazy to order and pay for them? HotPrints mails you free 16-page photo books, with shots pulled from Facebook, if you don’t mind some non-intrusive paper ads.
In this case, non-intrusive means the advertisements aren’t watermarked or otherwise touching your actual photos. They’re inserted between the pages, and can be pulled out, kind of like magazine subscription cards. You’d also have to be comfortable with HotPrints using “contextual” data from Facebook to target some ads at you. That means the album style you choose, the content of your profile, and region information from your Facebook account are used to target the ads, but the company claims that no identifying information is given out to its sponsoring partners. You can read more about HotPrints’ do’s and don’ts at their privacy policy.
If you’re cool with that at the cost of free, even free shipping, HotPrints’ Facebook app makes it fairly easy to pull in tagged photos of yourself or any Facebook contacts for a quickie album, with a limit of one per month. It’s a free service, requires a Facebook account (and app authorization) to use.
![]()
April Fools! Gmail Autopilot writes perfect email responses for you automagically

last year, it was Gmail Paper — write email and it automatically prints and sends postal mail to grandma! Awesome! Happy April Fools 2009

About Me
Tags
Popular Posts
- HP Mini 311 Nvidia ION Netbook Hackintosh'ed
- Facebook advertising metrics and benchmarks
- When NOT to use Groupon (as an advertiser)
- How-To View Gmail for iPad on Your Regular Computer - Chrome and Safari
- social media benchmarks
- What is Web 3.0? Characteristics of Web 3.0
- Facebook's Security Check Asks Users to Identify Photos of Friends' Dogs, Gummi Bears
- Vapor4 May Be the First Bumper Worthy of the iPhone 4
- Two Social Success Stories - Groupon and FourSquare
Recent Posts
- 1535
- ‘we are prioritizing our Android platform’
- 1531
- 1529
- 1527
- HP Labs teams up with Hynix to manufacture memristors, plans assault on flash memory in 2013
- Amazon planning subscription video service to challenge Netflix and Hulu?
- It’s Time To Make Standardized Ratings For Gadgets
- Arcade Fire and Google Pushing HTML5 Together
- New ARM architecture (likely Eagle) better suited for OS virtualization
Recent Articles by Dr. Augustine Fou
- Augustine Fou | ClickZ
- ClickZ Welcomes Augustine Fou | ClickZ
- The ROI for Social Media Is Zero | ClickZ
- A New Definition of 'Digital' | ClickZ
- Social Commerce: In Friends We Trust | ClickZ
- 10 Commandments of Modern Marketing | ClickZ
- Digital is the DNA of All Advertising | ClickZ
- Experiential Marketing | ClickZ
- Social Intensity: A New Measure for Campaign Success? | ClickZ
- Beyond Targeting in the Age of the Modern Consumer | ClickZ
Pages
Archives
- September 2010 (7)
- August 2010 (101)
- July 2010 (61)
- June 2010 (28)
- May 2010 (28)
- April 2010 (26)
- March 2010 (33)
- February 2010 (21)
- January 2010 (12)
- December 2009 (4)
- November 2009 (2)
- October 2009 (14)
- September 2009 (6)
- August 2009 (19)
- July 2009 (34)
- June 2009 (11)
- May 2009 (4)
- April 2009 (6)
- March 2009 (13)
- February 2009 (32)
- January 2009 (25)
- December 2008 (1)
- October 2008 (1)
- November 2007 (1)

