Issue #6 for galo gimenez
com
Technologies behind Google ranking
By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/16/2008 10:53:00 AM
In my previous post, I introduced the philosophies
behind Google ranking. As part of our effort to
discuss search quality, I want to tell you more
about the technologies behind our ranking. The
core technology in our ranking system comes from
the academic field of Information Retrieval (IR).
The IR community has studied search for almost 50
years. It uses statistical signals of word salience,
like word frequency, to rank pages. (See"Modern
Information Retrieval: A Brief Overview" for a
quick overview of IR technology.) IR gave us a
solid foundation, and we have built a tremendous
system on top using links, page structure, and many
other such innovations.
Search in the last decade has moved from give
me what I said to give me what I want. User
expectations from search have rightly increased.
We work hard to fulfill the expectations of each
and every user, and to do that we need to better
understand the pages, the queries, and our users.
Over the last decade we have pushed the
technologies for understanding these three
components (of the search process) to completely
new dimensions.
When we talk about queries at Google, we use
square brackets [ ] to mark the beginning and end
of queries (see " How to write queries" by Matt
Cutts), a notation I will use throughout this post.
(Pages and search results change frequently, so in
time, some examples used here may not behave as
explained.)
• Understanding pages: Over years we have
invested heavily in our crawl and indexing system.
As a result we have a very large and very fresh
index. In addition to size and freshness, we have
improved our index in other ways. One of the key
technologies we have developed to understand
pages is associating important concepts to a page
even when they are not obvious on the page. We
find the official homepage for Sprovieri Gallery in
London for the Italian query [ galleria sprovieri
londra], even though the official page does not
have either London or Londra on it. In the U.S., a
user searching for [cool tech pc vancouver, wa]
finds the homepage www.cooltechpc.com even
though the page does not mention anywhere that
they are in Vancouver, WA. Other technologies we
have developed include distinctions between
important and less important words in the page and
the freshness of the information on the page.
• Understanding queries: It is critical that we
understand what our users are looking for (beyond
just the few words in their query). We have made
several notable advances in this area including a
best-in-class spelling suggestion system, an
advanced synonyms system, and a very strong
concept analysis system.
Most users have used our spelling suggestion
system at one time or another. It knows that
someone searching for [ kofee annan] is really
searching for Mr. Kofi Annan, and is prompted:
Did you mean: kofi annan; whereas someone
searching for [ kofee beans] is actually looking for
coffee beans. Doing this internationally with very
high accuracy is hard, and we do it well.
Synonyms are the foundation of our query
Vote for FeedJournal's Future
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 7/1/2008 12:20:00 PM
It is now dead-simple to request and vote for the
3/9/2008 - 7/22/2008
understanding work. This is one of the hardest
problems we are solving at Google. Though
sometimes obvious to humans, it is an unsolved
problem in automatic language processing. As a
user, I don't want to think too much about what
words I should use in my queries. Often I don't
even know what the right words are. This is where
our synonyms system comes into action. Our
synonyms system can do sophisticated query
modifications, e.g., it knows that the word 'Dr' in
the query [ Dr Zhivago] stands for Doctor whereas
in [ Rodeo Dr] it means Drive. A user looking for [
back bumper repair] gets results about rear bumper
repair. For [ Ramstein ab], we automatically look
for Ramstein Air Base; for the query query [ b&b
ab] we search for Bed and Breakfasts in Alberta,
Canada. We have developed this level of query
understanding for almost one hundred different
languages, which is what I am truly proud of.
Another technology we use in our ranking system
is concept identification. Identifying critical
concepts in the query allows us to return much
more relevant results. For example, our algorithms
understand that in the query [ new york times
square church] the user is looking for the well-
known church in Times Square and not for articles
from the New York Times. We don't just stop at
identifying concepts; we further enhance the query
with the right concepts when, for instance,
someone looking for [ PC and its impact on people]
is in fact looking for impact of computers on
society, or someone who searches for [ rainforest
instructional activities for vocabulary] is really
looking for rain forest lesson plans. Our query
analysis algorithms have many such state-of-the-art
techniques built into them, and once again, we do
this internationally in almost every language we
serve.
• Understanding user s: Our work on interpreting
user intent is aimed at returning results people
really want, not just what they said in their query.
This work starts with a world class localization
system, and adds to it our advanced personalization
technology, and several other great strides we have
made in interpreting user intent, e.g. Universal
Search.
Our clear focus on "best locally relevant results
served globally" is reflected in our work on
localization. The same query typed in multiple
countries may deserve completely different results.
A user looking for [ bank] in the US should get
American banks, whereas a user in the UK is either
looking for the Bank Fashion line or for British
financial institutions. The results for this query
should return local financial institutions in other
English speaking countries like Australia, Canada,
New Zealand, South Africa. The fun really starts
when this query is typed in non-English-speaking
countries like Egypt, Israel, Japan, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, Switzerland. Likewise the query [football]
refers to entirely different sports in Australia, the
UK, and the US. These examples mostly show how
we get the localized version of the same concept
correctly (financial institution, sport, etc.).
However, the same query can mean entirely
different things in different countries. For example,
FeedJournal features you want to see added to
future updates. The top requested features can be
voted on from both the Reader and Member
Services pages. Head over to FeedJournal's
UserVoice page to add your own suggestions, cast
feedjournal.
[Côte d'Or] is a geographic region in France- but it
is a large chocolate manufacturer in neighboring
French-speaking Belgium; and yes, we get that
right too :-).
Personalization is another strong feature in our
search system which tailors search results to
individual users. Users who are logged-in while
searching and have signed up for Web History get
results that are more relevant for them than the
general Google results. For example, someone who
does a lot football-related searches might get more
football related results for [giants], while other
users might get results related to the baseball team.
Similarly, if you tend to prefer results from a
particular shopping site, you will be more likely to
get results from that site when you search for
products. Our evaluation shows that users who get
personalized results find them to be more relevant
than non-personalized results.
Another case of user intent can be observed for
the query [ chevrolet magnum]. Magnum is
actually made by Dodge and not Chevrolet. So we
present the results for Dodge Magnum with the
prompt See results for: dodge magnum in our result
set.
Our work on Universal Search is another
example of how we interpret user intent to give
them what they (sometimes) really want. Someone
searching for [ bangalore] not only gets the
important web pages, they also get a map, a video
showing street life, traffic, etc. in Bangalore --
watching this video I almost feel I am there :-) --
and at the time of writing there is relevant news
and relevant blogs about Bangalore. Finally let me
briefly mention the latest advance we have made in
search: Cross Language Information Retrieval
(CLIR). CLIR allows users to first discover
information that is not in their language, and then
using Google's translation technology, we make
this information accessible. I call this advance: give
me what I want in any language. A user looking for
Tony Blair's biography in Russia who types the
query in Russian [ ] is prompted at the bottom of
our results to search the English web with:
Similarly a user searching for Disney movie songs
in Egypt with the query [ ] is prompted to search
the English web. We are very excited about CLIR
as it truly brings us closer to our mission to
organize the world's information and make it
universally accessible and useful.
I could go on and on showing examples of state-
of-the-art technology that we have developed to
make our ranking system as good as it is, but the
fact is that search is nowhere close to being a
solved problem. Many queries still don't get
satisfactory results from Google, and each such
query is an opportunity to improve our ranking
system. I am confident that with numerous
techniques under development in our group, we
will make large improvements to our ranking
algorithms in the near future. I hope my two posts
about Google ranking have made it clear that we
live and breathe search, and we are more passionate
than ever about it. Our fervor for serving all our
users worldwide is unprecedented. We pride
ourselves in running a very good ranking system,
and are working incredibly hard every day to make
it even better.
Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
your vote for what to add next, or just browse
around the submitted feature requests. I will make
sure to use this input to decide which features get
implemented next.
2
Danny Schechter: Homeowners "March"
Against Foreclosure
(The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:34:54 AM
NACA's 5 Day DC Event Offers Help, And A
Way Forward
WASHINGTON JULY 20: Forty-five years ago
this summer I spent a day Marching on
Washington. Everyone remembers it as just four
words of the many uttered by Dr. Martin Luther
King: "I have a dream." After that march for justice
(and jobs), the organizers led by Bayard Rustin
returned to the Statler Hilton Hotel, now the
Capital Hilton, which was the event's headquarters.
Dr. King was there, and Malcolm X even dropped
by for a press conference of his own to warn that
non-violence was unlikely to lead to change.
It was August 28, l963, a day which is still
memorialized in the hotel's lobby. I was a civil
rights worker then, and a small fry organizer of that
historic mobilization. That night, I crashed in a
hotel room rented for SNCC, the Student Non-
violent Coordinating Committee.
Within five years, violence would claim the lives
of both Malcolm and Martin, and today, Dr. King's
children are, sadly, suing each other in part over
how best to monetize his legacy.
Today, I am back in that very same hotel,
although the name Hilton is better known now for
the antics of Baron Hilton's granddaughter Paris.
Over this past weekend, the hotel, just a few blocks
from the White House, was once again playing host
to a human rights battle, this time the fight against
foreclosures.
America's largest and most militant
homeownership organization, NACA, The
Neighborhood Assistance Corporation hired out the
grand hotel for five days, and brought 460 staffers
from 38 offices to Washington for a five day event
to demonstrate that their approach to stopping
foreclosures is superior to everything that is being
done elsewhere or proposed in Congress. They
reference "the dream" too, 45 years ago activists
wanted to claim it. Today they fight to save it.
NACA believes that making mortgages
affordable is the only way to stabilize at-risk
homeowners. They call on banks to restructure
mortgages, lower interest rates and replace
adjustable mortgages and ARMS with low fixed
rates for the long term.
To make its point, and serve the community,
NACA publicized an offer of free counseling and
advice for homeowners that included creating
modified and restructured loan proposals and
aggressively persuading lenders to accept them.
A solicitation was made in radio ads and through
direct mail. People with mortgage problems were
Neil Armstrong's Beautiful Mistake
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/21/2008 9:52:22 AM
On this very day 39 years ago, Neil Armstrong
stepped onto the surface of the moon.
Watching on grainy television sets 240,000 miles
away, millions of spellbound people heard
Armstrong proclaim, "That's one small step for
man; one giant leap for mankind."
Famously, Armstrong was supposed to say"one
small step for a man," but blew his line in the the
excitement of the moment -- and thank goodness,
because the mistaken utterance couldn't have been
more perfect.
I once heard that science fiction titan Ray
Bradbury spent his night calling everyone who'd
FeedJournal, Booklet Style
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 3/9/2008 2:09:00 PM
It's great fun to monitor Technorati for blogs posts
talking about FeedJournal. There are some
advised to make appointments on the NACA.com
website and bring their mortgage documents with
them. The event was a big and audacious gamble
by NACA's feisty CEO Bruce Marks.
Something amazing happened. Some
homeowners started arriving at 6:30 AM. Soon
lines stretched around the block. It was a march of
the We Don't Want To Be Homeless, "wearing
their troubles on their faces," as one NACA staffer
later observed. A million families face foreclosure
this year and many are trying to do something
before their lives go on the auction block. The
statistics are hard to wrap your head around; a
parade of real people can't be ignored.
By day's end, thousands of homeowners had
trekked through the NACA process which included
an orientation, the scanning of their documents into
the organization's proprietary mortgage software
and then one on one counseling in a ballroom
which had been transformed into a vast arena of
small tables, each with a HUD certified counselor
and a computer. The counselors help the
homeowners assess the affordability of their
mortgages and the prospects of their losing their
homes. They then draft sustainable budgets and a
plan.
With personal financial data in place, backed by
bank statements, mortgage paper and pay stubs,
they proposed affordable "solutions" to mortgage
servicers and banks. These call for cutting interest
rates and restructuring the mortgages at fixed rate
for 30 years. NACA negotiators emailed the
proposals to the finance companies and then
advocated for their new members.
Soon, emails started coming back from lenders
with letters accepting some of the proposals. I
spoke to some ectstatic homeowners who were
leaving after a frustrating day of waiting for new
deal that would allow them to save money and their
homes.
Officials from some banks and agencies dropped
by and marveled over this well organized, business
like and passionate first of a kind event. It clearly
showed the enormity of the foreclosure crisis and
the anger among so many homeowners who feel
victimized by the subprime ponzi scheme. It also
showed that there is a solution within reach if
lenders are willing to compromise. NACA may
take it on the road.
These people--old and young, some with
children, others in wheel chairs. came from as far
away as Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. They
were dignified and quiet, perhaps also frightened.
Many told me they have had trouble sleeping
because of worries about whether they could keep
their families together.
laughed at his spacefaring dreams and told them
exactly where they could put their skepticism,
anatomically speaking. Bradbury himself, however,
recalls events differently.
"We're here to be the audience to the magnificent.
It is our job to celebrate. That's what I wanted to
say and what I did say on the Cronkite show," he
said during a 2000 speech at the National Book
Awards ceremony. "I stayed up all night that
night.... I was on nine different shows around the
world. I said all these things. I cried all night I was
so happy."
What about you, Wired Science readers? Do you
have any stories of your own (or your parents' own)
from that night?
Note: As some commenters have pointed out,
innovative usages out there and one of my favorites
is from Nik Codes, who outlines how he uses
FeedJournal in the restroom! Don't worry, the link
is safe for work." I printed out Coding Horror and
it really did feel like Jeff Atwood in the Wall Street
Journal or New York Times."
The event did rate some press attention, but, as is
often the case, drug related murders they night
before were, predictably, of more interest to most
local TV outlets. The CBS Evening News and Fox
News showed up. (Afterwards, the Fox cameraman
told me he was coming back with his own
mortgage documents.)
A Washington Post columnist had praised the
event the day before it happened, writing, "The
Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America
is doing something that should have been done a
long time ago.
Homeowners won't have to wait weeks for a
callback from their loan servicers. They won't have
to fret and fuss -- and in some cases cuss -- to get a
mortgage servicing company to listen to their pleas
to save their homes from foreclosure."
But when the event unfolded, exceeding
organizer's expectations, the Post did not bother to
send a reporter. The newspaper is right next door to
the hotel. Only z few of the media outlets contacted
bothered to show up.
Early next week, NACA will encourage its
homeowners to descend on Congress to
"encourage" their Senators and Representatives to
press bankers to restructure constituent's loans.
While congress debates bailouts, NACA saves
homes.
Early next week, NACA will encourage its
homeowners to descend on Congress to
"encourage" their Senators and They may be more
successful with bankers who know that getting
some payment is better than none, than with
posturing members of Congress who seem
paralyzed when it comes to helping people in need.
Last week, Bill Moyers featured journalist
William Greider who discussed, as Graig Gingold
reports, "the abject failure of the politicians in DC
to do what was called for to protect the public from
the predatory lenders."
He cites as evidence a headline from the
Washington Post: "Figures in Both Campaigns
Have Deep Ties to Mortgage Giants"
The battle lines are being joined, NACA, a
modern day David is taking on the mortgage
Goliath---and, so far, making progress Hopefully
the bloggers, gathered in their own convention in
Austin Texas, and other activists, will take notice
and realize there is more to politics than electoral
contests.
News Dissector Danny Schechter made the film
In Debt We Trust and has just finished a new book
investigating the crisis, Plunder to be published by
C o s i m o . C o m m e n t s t o
dissector@mediachannel.org
Armstrong didn't flub the line -- the vowel was lost
in transmission. Score one for old-fashioned tech!
Like hand-colored photographs and vinyl records,
space communications are much improved by a
few scratches and pops.
See Also:
• John Glenn At Unveil of New HD Space History
Footage
• Water Found on the Moon
• The History of the Moon's Seas
• Send Your Name to the Moon on NASA's Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter
• Americans Find Out NASA Is Going Back to
the Moon
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and
Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.
Nik also mentions how he uses BookletCreator
for folding FeedJournal into a nice booklet, a great
suggestion which I'll be sure to add to the FAQ.

Jeffrey Kluger: Cartoon Complexity
(The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:25:31 AM
Never mind the nervous Nellies, I say kudos to
the New Yorker for its recent cover illustration of
Barack and Michelle Obama. The image of the
potential first couple as a Muslim and a terrorist,
fist-bumping in the Oval Office while an American
flag burns in the fireplace was just a crackerjack bit
of irony. The visual jujitsu the editors intended was
immediately evident. (We don't think these things
are true! We're just making fun of people who do!)
And as for anxious Democrats and other worriers
who suggest that maybe, just maybe, such a satiric
bank-shot with comedic backspin won't be quite so
clear to a broader audience--anyone outside the
Conde Nast building, for example--well, just look
at the record.
If political history shows us anything, it's that
subtlety and nuance always get through more
powerfully than a single picture or resonant sound
bite. To hear the fussbudgets tell it, you'd think that
Obama's opponents were already making hay out
of the fact that his middle name is Hussein or that
he donned traditional Ethiopian clothing while on a
state visit to Africa, even though Hussein is as
common as "Bob" in the part of the world where
Obama's father was born and politicians are forever
donning local costumes to please local hosts. You'd
think Democrats were already pounding John
McCain for allegedly saying that he wants the Iraq
war to continue for 100 more years, when all he
really said was that he doesn't much mind if a long-
term peacekeeping force remains in Iraq as long as
the shooting has stopped. You'd even think some
people still believe that Al Gore claims to have
invented the Internet, when what he did say was
that he took the legislative lead in creating the
organized Web that exists today--which he did--a
statement of fact no one would stoop to
misrepresent because, well, it just wouldn't be
sporting.
If this through-the-looking-glass world--in which
fair play and square dealing were the rules in
politics--really did exist, then the folks at the New
Rob Kall: McCain to New York Times: Dammit
My Friend, Can't You See? I Am Right,
Obama's Wrong. Let Me Repeat...
(The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:20:49 AM
Senator McCain is beginning to show us what a
McCain presidency will look like and it ain't pretty.
It's creepy.
Not surprisingly, the right wing echo chamber is
demonstrating what it will act like, with its latest
clueless demonstration, proving that Fox News and
the Drudge Report are good at what they do --
echoing talking points and delivering messages --
but short on the goods when it comes to even
getting what it means to function as a journalistic
operation.
Earlier this week, Obama sent the New York
Times an op-ed ahead of a speech, one that
contained new ideas and information. The New
York Times opted to run it.
McCain sent a print version of what we've been
seeing on TV since Obama started on his massively
successful, slam dunk overseas tour. The McCain
piece was a poorly written, painfully repetitive
recitation of his anti-Obama, "I was right on the
surge and he was wrong and won't admit it" rant. I
was going to say talking point but it's no longer just
a talking point. McCain looks desperate and
frustrated when he launches into his tirade how,
and annoyed that "we" are not getting it, not
lapping up his bromides and understanding how
Yorker really would have made a perfectly
defensible decision in running their cover. Nothing
wrong with editors indulging their puckish selves if
the 300 million of us sitting around the giant
Algonquin round table that is our nation are all in
on the joke. In the slightly more rough-and-tumble
world that actually exists, however, an election is
less an exchange of civilized badinage than of
rabbit punches, kidney jabs, and slanders so
shameless they'd make a Tammany hack blush.
And that presents problems.
There are few fields in which the increasingly
sophisticated science of simplexity--the study of
the way simple things can be improbably complex,
and complex things can be brilliantly simple--
applies more powerfully than in politics. The
Twainian dictum that a lie can make it around the
world before the truth even gets its boots on is
nothing compared to the light-speed fleetness with
which a simple idea takes hold in politics,
compared to the mud-footed slowness of a complex
one--something you'd think we'd have learned by
now. In 1976, Gerald Ford sank his own
presidential campaign when he declared that he
didn't think the East bloc was under Soviet
domination. Few rational people believed he had
really forgotten the ongoing, 30-year lockdown
Moscow had imposed on the Warsaw pact nations;
rather he was merely making the more nuanced
point that the democratic aspirations of those
countries couldn't be smothered even if their
political freedoms could be. Nonetheless, which
impression do you think stuck? In a debate four
years later, Jimmy Carter was asked the most
important issue then facing the world and he
answered nuclear proliferation, citing his 14-year-
old daughter Amy as the source of that idea.
Nobody truly thought that the President had
huddled with his child for policy guidance before
going out on stage, but rather that he was merely
reminding voters that the world we create today
will be left to our children tomorrow so we need to
listen to their hopes and fears. Now try making
these more subtle arguments when pundits are
hooting that Ford thinks Poland is a thriving
right he is.
The problem is, his message is now falling on
ears that have been updated. It's an old, stale
message that doesn't seem to be working. Right on
Surge, Obama Wrong. Yadda yadda yadda.
So what?! He's been right on how to get out and
Maliki has repeatedly confirmed that this is what
the Iraqis want. Oh? You say Maliki doesn't know
what he wants or what the Iraqis need?
Just imagine what a president this kind of
inability to let go, this obtuse, stuck, inability to
recognize the fact that the situation has changes,
that the vectors in play have changed. McCain
seems imprisoned within his brittle inflexibility,
stuck with his limited range of ideas. Look
familiar? It should. It's the G.W. Bush modus
operandi sans a pitbull Dick Cheney type to drive it
through.
Even the right wing echo chamber players who
are having fun thinking they are beating up on the
New York Times don't get it that their attacks,
while they may play to their usual Kool-Aid
marinated base, are clearly seen as clueless by any
and all of the players in the real media, in the real
journalistic world -- both publishers and writers
alike.
I publish a medium sized website and routinely
encounter rank amateurs who declare that their
freedom of speech is violated if their poorly written
3
democracy and Carter's got a teenager running the
NSC.
Ronald Reagan was the modern master of the
clean, lethal sound bite--the maestro of "There you
go again" and "Are you better off today than you
were four years ago?" The Bushes raised the stakes
--while lowering the game--with their toxic stew of
Willie Hortons and Swift Boats and John McCain's
nonexistent black child. But the sheer ability of the
simple--even if phony--idea to steamroll the
clumsy, complex one has been with us as long as
there have been elections.
It was into this environment that the New Yorker
released its Barack and Michelle cover, almost
certainly knowing that it would be used in
innumerable slanderous ways by innumerable
bloggers and other folks who wish Obama
something other than succcess in November. That
did both the candidate and the New Yorker itself a
disservice. In 2001, many people argued that Time
magazine ought to name Osama bin Laden as its
Person of the Year, since that year bin Laden
undeniably influenced world events for better or
worse more than any other person, which is the
historic criterion for the Person of the Year
designation. I have been a writer and editor for
Time since 1996, and though back then I was not
part of the Person of the Year discussions, I was
relieved when I learned we had chosen Rudolph
Giuliani as 2001's cover boy instead. I for one
didn't have the stomach to watch Time get villified
in the U.S. and feted in the Arab world for what
appeared to be an honor bestowed on a man who
had killed 3,000 Americans--feeling pretty
confident that our subtle for better or worse
explanation would not get heard through the din.
While the reaction to the New Yorker cover will
hardly be as passionate as all that, the magazine's
complex message will surely be simplified--and
misused--the same way. I hope that'll be worth the
laughs it got.
Jeffrey Kluger is the author of Simplexity: Why
Simple Things become Complex (and How
Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)
articles are rejected. Sorry. You have the right to
speak or write hackneyed or badly written pieces.
We don't have to publish them. Real media
operations realize that. Faux media are so
accustomed to accommodating the people and
organizations they serve that they demonstrate their
cluelessness with their smarmy remarks and
indignation that McCain's repetitive hack writing
was rejected.
I give the New York Times extra credit for NOT
publishing the McCain piece. It might have sold
some extra papers, but it would have definitely
NOT been up to the standards the New York Times
holds for writing. You can read it, here, on the
Drudge Report. Ironically, now that the piece of
writing has become news as an object, it would be
appropriate to publish it, but not as an op-ed,
instead, as the document that was rejected.
Of course, it is totally unrealistic to think that the
right wing echo chamber organizations (I am loath
to call them media) will ever actually report that
this is actually another blunder by McCain and his
handlers. It will be interesting to see if the more
moderate media -- the big three networks and CNN
will follow MSNBC in mocking the indignation
that Fox News and the Drudge Report have
demonstrated.
Cross-posted from OpEdNews.com
4
Pigeons: The Next Step in Local Eating (No,
Really)
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/18/2008 3:53:58 PM
When you look at a pigeon, you might see a dirty,
rat-like bird that fouls anything it touches with
feathers or feces, but I see a waste-scavenging,
protein-generating biomachine.
At a time when rising demand for meat across the
globe endangers the food system, and local eating
has gained millions of ( T-shirt wearing) adherents,
it's time to reconsider our assumptions about what
protein sources are considered OK to eat.
You see, city pigeons are the feral descendants of
birds that were domesticated by humans thousands
of years ago so that we could eat them and use their
guano as fertilizer, we read in Der Spiegel. They're
still doing their part, i.e. eating and breeding, but
we humans have stopped doing ours, i.e. eating
them.
Numbering in the hundreds of millions, they
could be a new source of guilt-free protein for
locavores in urban centers. Instead, we're still
trying to kill off our species' former pet birds,
which (as any city-dweller can attest) doesn't work.
"Killing makes no sense at all," Daniel Haag-
Wackernagel, a biologist at the University of Basel,
told Der Spiegel. "The birds have an enormous
reproduction capacity and they'll just come back.
There is a linear relationship between the bird
population and the amount of food available."
And in the developed world after World War II,
there's always been plenty of food.
"This explosion of the pigeon population is due to
the large food supply, because after the war food
became cheap in relation to income," Haag-
Wackernagel argues on his website. "Since this
increase in our welfare, society has produced
pigeon food in abundance through our wasteful
practices."
It sure sounds like a bad situation, but put the two
quotes together in the context of food production.
Using FeedJournal #2: Google Reader Integration
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 3/30/2008 10:30:00 PM
This is the second post in a series on how to best
take advantage of FeedJournal Reader. Today's
post describes how you can integrate FeedJournal
with Google Reader, the most popular web based
RSS reader . As I pointed out in the previous
article, you'd rather keep feeds with shorter articles
A food source that lives on our trash that is so
reproductively prolific that we can't kill it off?
That's green tech at its finest! Pigeons are direct
waste-to-food converters, like edible protein weeds,
that leave droppings that could be used as fertilizer
as a bonus.
And yet we expend energy trying to get rid of
them.
It wasn't always this way. In fact, eating pigeons
is as American as eating pumpkin pie. Probably
more so, on a net weight basis, actually.
A 1917 report to the Massachusetts Board of
Agriculture details the story of the American
passenger pigeon, extinct kin to our current city
birds. The birds provided our founding fathers with
a bountiful feast in 1648 when, according to
Massachusets Bay Colony luminary John
Winthrop, "multitudes of them were killed daily."
The report describes the many millions of birds
that were killed all across the nation through the
19th century. A specialized itinerant profession
even arose, the netters, who when pigeons were
spotted "learned their whereabouts by telegraph,
packed up their belongings, and moved to the new
location." In one particularly fascinating section,
the author describes the last great flock of New
York pigeons on the lam from marauding bands of
netters who sell their meat to market.
Possibly the last great slaughter of pigeons in
New York, of which we have record, was some
time in the 70s. A flock had nested in Missouri in
April, where they were followed by the same
pigeoners, who again destroyed the squabs. The
New York market alone would take 100 barrels a
day for weeks without a break in price. Chicago,
St. Louis, Boston and all the great and little cities
of the North and East joined in the demand. Need
we wonder why the pigeons have vanished?
That's right: Passenger pigeons were hunted to
extinction because they were a popular food in the
great cities of Restoration-era America.
in your old RSS reader.
Still you will daily run into articles in Google
Reader that you wished would show up in
FeedJournal Reader. To do that, simply tag the
article with "to FeedJournal" in GoogleReader.
To set up articles with this tag to be automatically
published in the next print issue of FeedJournal,
you have to make the tag public. This setting is
available in "Manage Subscriptions" below Google
Reader's subscription list. Click on the Tag tab and
Of course, the obvious objection is that pigeons
carry disease, but some evidence suggests that they
aren't particularly susceptible to avian flu. As for
the meat itself, I called up the FDA's food safety
line to ask how pigeon compared, safety-wise, to
your average factory-farmed pig or chicken, but
after one-and-a-half hours on hold, the office
closed down and I gave up.
But as part of this 65 percent not-kidding thought
experiment, let's assume that there's nothing
horrifically bad about eating pigeon.
Really, all pigeons need is a re-branding. Just as
the spurned Patagonian toothfish became the
majestic Chilean sea bass and the silly Chinese
gooseberry became the beloved kiwifruit, pigeons
can merely reclaim their previous sufficiently
arugula-sounding name: squab.
The term squab now refers to the meat of the
baby pigeon, but it can also mean pigeons in
general, so we can simply extend the brand back to
its historical proportions. In fact, some companies
like Bokhari Squab Farms are already doing good
business selling the stuff: A dozen of Bokhari's live
squab goes for $60.
So, go buy sustainablesquab.com and encourage
your urban friends to make omnivorism local. Just
remind them: Pigeons are fowl.
Disclaimer: How serious am I? 65 percent not-
kidding.
Image: A composite image of scavenger pigeons
on the left and squab on the right. Left: flickr/
ulterior epicure. Right: flickr/ vanberto.
Thanks to urban agriculture supporter, TJ
Sondermann, for his Twitter research help. Even
though I'm pretty sure he's not going to be eating
pigeon any time soon.
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google
Reader feed, and webpage; Wired Science on
Facebook.
toggle the tag's state to public. This makes the
"view public page" visible. At the bottom of the
public page's right-hand column is a link to the
RSS feed. That's the RSS feed you need to
subscribe to in FeedJournal Reader.
Once you've made the tag public and subscribed
to it, you can keep tagging articles in Google
Reader to make them appear in your next print-
edition of FeedJournal. Good Luck!
 5

Jonathan Schwarz: Looking Back: Rumsfeld

Privately Criticized Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki
As Inferior To Mass Murderers
(The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:22:04 AM

There's no question Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-

Maliki has recently been giving the White House
and John McCain heartburn. On Saturday in an
interview with Der Spiegel he essentially endorsed
Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
Then did it again today, right after speaking with
Obama in Baghdad: After talks with Democratic
presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday,
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki reaffirmed
that Iraq wants U.S. combat troops to withdraw
from Iraq by the end of 2010, a few months later
than Obama had proposed.
So it's worth looking back at the Bush
administration's private views of Maliki, as stated
by Donald Rumsfeld back in 2006.
For the recent New York Time story on the close
government ties of TV military analysts, the paper
pried loose tons of internal Pentagon records never
meant to see the light of day. Buried in the pile was
a recording of Rumsfeld having lunch with many
of the Pentagon's analysts in December, 2006 just
before he was replaced by Robert Gates. (The large
.wav file is available here.)
One section of the recording goes like this:
UNIDENTIFIED ANALYST #1: This is really
off the record, but do you think that this implemented, and you felt good about it. The WMD and Al-Qaeda ties to the media.)
government can survive -- the unity government -- fellow who proceeded Maliki [Ibrahim al-Jaafari] But that may merely have been the prelude. The
or they're eventually gonna have to go to an was like a windsock. You know, he was the last Bush administration was able to briefly install
authoritarian one like came out of [South] Korea, guy he talked to, and we're still off the record. Allawi as Iraq's Prime Minster in 2004. Soon
Syngman Rhee, was really an authoritarian leader. Q: We heard that windsock terminology over afterward, Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker
The eleven years I was supporting commander in there from somebody else. provided convincing evidence that, just before
Korea, the president was an Army major general in RUMSFELD: Oh man, he was something. Yes, taking office, Allawi had personally shot seven
civilian clothes and they had their highest growth he's a hell of a -- a very pleasant guy, but good Iraqi prisoners.
rates and did the '88 Olympics and they finally grief, the last guy he talked to. This fella [Maliki] is Yet as bad as Allawi was, the South Korean
handed it over. The real question is, and we all better than the one before, but he's not Syngman dictator Syngman Rhee was far worse. According
hope the unity government [inaudible], but it's very Rhee. to recent reporting by AP, Rhee, who took power
difficult. For anyone familiar with Ayad Allawi and in 1948, supervised the slaughter of over 100,000
RUMSFELD: It is very difficult. You look at it Syngman Rhee, the casual admiration Rumsfeld South Koreans in the space of a few weeks.
and there isn't anyone smart enough to know the expresses for them is like a punch in the stomach. Indeed, Allawi and Rhee seem almost
answer to your question. The hands of both Allawi and Rhee are covered indistinguishable from Saddam Hussein. But then,
UNIDENTIFIED ANALYST #1: I think the with the blood of their countrymen. Rumsfeld never had any real problems with him
answer's they can't, but how you do get that right Allawi was a member of Saddam Hussein's either.
person? Baathist Party during the sixties and seventies. [The secret dictator handshake]
RUMSFELD: I mean, Allawi had steel up his Seymour Hersh quotes an American intelligence BONUS: Allawi's successor and Maliki's
backside. official as saying "Allawi helped Saddam get to predecessor as prime minster was Ibrahim al-
UNIDENTIFIED ANALYST #2: Fallujah. power"; Hersh also reports that a high level Middle Jaafari. Jaafari is the one whom Rumsfeld refers to
RUMSFELD: And he wasn't well liked and East diplomat told him that Allawi was part of a as a "windsock." In what must have come as quite a
wasn't perfect. He'd leave the country for long Baathist Party hit squad that murdered dissenters in surprise to the Bush administration, Jaafari was a
periods and stuff. He was not as attentive as he Europe. (After a falling out with Saddam in the mid fervent admirer of Noam Chomsky.
needed to be, it strikes me. But good lord, in terms -seventies, Allawi lived in England and ended up originally posted at the Tiny Revolution
of dealing with him, he was terrific. He could make channeling false information about Iraq's purported
a decision and he would kick some fanny to get it

Templates bring Docs to life

By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/16/2008 5:37:00 PM
What do wedding planners, gas mileage
calculators and photo albums have in common?
They're all examples of templates available in the
Google Docs Template Gallery that Sarah Beth
Eisinger (Docs Templates engineer), Grant Dasher
(intern), and I built and (happily!) released today.
When researching how people use templates, we
saw that lots of you create documents for all
aspects of your lives. You need resumes and cover
letters to look for jobs and fax cover letters and
invoices to run your businesses. And of course you
want to use documents in fun ways with family and
friends, such as unique designs and layouts for
invitation cards and calendars. Finally, everyone
wants to be able to have tools that "just work":
print mailing labels, track portfolio values, and
manage projects without having to painstakingly
create documents from scratch.
These needs inspired our new templates and
gallery. We developed these in conjunction with
Avery Dennison, Vertex42.com, TemplateZone,
and Visa Business.
Many templates leverage the collaborative aspect
of Google Docs so that several people can work on
a single document online without having to email
attachments back and forth. To hear the story
behind two templates, watch these videos:
To get started, go directly to the template gallery
or access it from the "New" menu in your
document list. Templates are currently available
only in English, but other languages are coming
soon. They're also available to Google Apps users.
Posted by Valerie Blechar, Templates Engineer,
Google Docs
(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog.)
6
Our Googley advice to students:
Major in learning
By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/15/2008 5:48:00 PM
Management guru Peter Drucker noted that
companies attracting the best knowledge workers
will "secure the single biggest factor for
competitive advantage." We and other forward-
looking companies put a lot of effort into hiring
such people. What are we looking for?
At the highest level, we are looking for non-
routine problem-solving skills. We expect
applicants to be able to solve routine problems as a
matter of course. After all, that's what most
education is concerned with. But the non-routine
problems offer the opportunity to create
competitive advantage, and solving those problems
requires creative thought and tenacity.
Here's a real-life example, a challenge a team of
our engineers once faced: designing a spell-checker
for the Google search engine. The routine solution
would be to run queries through a dictionary. The
non-routine, creative solution is to use the query
corrections and refinements that other users have
made in the past to offer spelling suggestions for
new queries. This approach enables us to correct all
the words that aren't in the dictionary, helping
many more users in the process.
How do we find these non-routine savants? There
are many factors, of course, but we primarily look
for ...
... analytical reasoning. Google is a data-driven,
analytic company. When an issue arises or a
decision needs to be made, we start with data. That
means we can talk about what we know, instead of
what we think we know.
... communication skills. Marshalling and
understanding the available evidence isn't useful
unless you can effectively communicate your
conclusions.
... a willingness to experiment. Non-routine
Students surf their way to success
By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/16/2008 12:02:00 AM
Early on in my career at Google I was approached
by a former professor of mine, Jamie Murphy, who
was eager to give his students hands-on exposure to
online marketing. Apart from delivering a great
learning experience, Jamie wanted to make sure
that his students would leave university with skills
they could take directly into the workforce.
Together, Jamie and I recruited a panel of
professors from all over the globe and came up
with the Google Online Marketing Challenge.
Student teams had to identify a local business with
a website, but no experience of online marketing,
and then were given free Google AdWords
vouchers worth the equivalent of US$200. The
student teams worked with the local business to set
up an AdWords account and structure an online
marketing campaign which would increase web
traffic and sales for the local business. The teams
had three weeks to run the campaign and had to
submit their campaign report to a panel of
international academic judges.
Today we're announcing the winners: an
innovative team from the University of Western
Australia who worked with an indoor rock-
climbing school that scaled the heights and scooped
the global prize. The winners will be whisked off to
Mountain View, California for a tour of the
Googleplex and meet with the creators of AdWords
and other executives. To help them in their ongoing
studies, each team member will also receive an
Apple MacBook Pro.
problems call for non-routine solutions and there is
no formula for success. A well-designed
experiment calls for a range of treatments, explicit
control groups, and careful post-treatment analysis.
Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so
you need a willingness to accept the evidence even
if you don't like it.
... team players. Virtually every project at Google
is run by a small team. People need to work well
together and perform up to the team's expectations.
... passion and leadership. This could be
professional or in other life experiences: learning
languages or saving forests, for example. The main
thing, to paraphrase Mr. Drucker, is to be
motivated by a sense of importance about what you
do.
These characteristics are not just important in our
business, but in every business, as well as in
government, philanthropy, and academia. The
challenge for the up-and-coming generation is how
to acquire them. It's easy to educate for the routine,
and hard to educate for the novel. Keep in mind
that many required skills will change: developers
today code in something called Python, but when I
was in school C was all the rage. The need for
reasoning, though, remains constant, so we believe
in taking the most challenging courses in core
disciplines: math, sciences, humanities.
And then keep on challenging yourself, because
learning doesn't end with graduation. In fact, in the
real world, while the answers to the odd-numbered
problems are not in the back of the textbook, the
tests are all open book, and your success is
inexorably determined by the lessons you glean
from the free market. Learning, it turns out, is a
lifelong major.
Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP,
Product Management
L to R: Dr. Fang Liu, Glen Linthorne (from the
partner business),
Victor Tsen (hanging), Amy Smith, Aaron Balm,
and Lauren Bobridge. Absent: Anna Usikov.
There were also three regional winners, including
students from Pennsylvania State University, who
won in the fierce Americas field, while a team from
the Universität Bern in Switzerland beat some
impressive competition to win for Europe, the
Video: 'Match on a
Stick to Hydrogen.
Big Bang Coming.'
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/19/2008 12:35:15 AM
Where can you find explosions, deadly poisons,
and spy stories? The periodic table.
Brady Haran, a journalist, teamed up with
chemists at the University of Nottingham to create
the best educational tool since chemistry sets -- a
series of exciting YouTube videos about each
element -- jam packed with information and fun.
In a clip about hydrogen, Haran and his
colleagues fill a balloon with the gas and prepare to
ignite it with a match, but the explosion comes
after a quick lecture by Martyn Poliakoff, a soft-
spoken professor with remarkable hair.
When speaking of Polonium, Poliakoff mentions
the recent assassination of a Russian spy with the
radioactive substance, and its earlier role as a
trigger in atomic bombs.
Students should react well to the films. Each of
them contains the elements of a good lesson:
brevity, excitement, quick starts, closeup shots,
serious information, and likeable characters.
Hopefully, they will be an inspiration for many
similar projects.
Middle East and Africa. The Asia Pacific winners
came from the Australian Graduate School of
Management with a skillful campaign for a small
specialty cake business (actually based in
California).
These four teams were clearly deserving winners,
but the enthusiasm all the students and professors
showed for the challenge was inspiring. We
initially expected slightly more than 1,000 students
to take part, and were thrilled when c. 8,500
students from 47+ countries put their marketing
skills to the test.
The success of the challenge and the positive
feedback we've had from both professors and
students was more than we had hoped for. As Dr.
Fang Liu, who taught the winning team, notes:
“The Online Marketing Challenge offers a great
opportunity for students to develop their skills and
experience in online marketing. Local businesses
also benefit as the AdWords campaigns have
helped promote their business to a wider
community. I feel absolutely thrilled that one of my
student teams is the global winner." We're
delighted to have worked with professors to find a
fun and innovative way to introduce online
marketing into the university curriculum. And
we're happy to say the Challenge will carry on next
year, and we hope it will go from strength to
strength. Here are more details on the Challenge
and our winners.
Posted by Lee Hunter, Product Marketing
Manager

Barely Alive, Seafloor Using FeedJournal
Microbes Might Resemble Exo- #3: How to
Publish Anything
Organisms
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/21/2008 4:54:31 PM
Deep below the sea floor live massive colonies of
primitive microbes.
Almost like one-celled zombies, these microbes
use so little energy that it might be more accurate
to call them undead rather than alive.
Yet scientists think that the species might provide
a model for life on other planets. Even on this
planet, such microbes might account for a
whopping 10 percent of the Earth's biomass.
"In essence, these microbes are almost, practically
dead by our normal standards," said Christopher
House, a geosciences professor at Penn State
University, and the lead author of the paper, in a
release. "They metabolize a little, but not much."
The cold, lightless and energy-poor conditions
under the seafloor provide a promising research
analog for the harsh conditions in subsurface
Martian soil or near hydrothermal vents on Europa,
Jupiter's second moon.
"We do not expect the microbes in other places to
be these microbes exactly," said House. "But, they
could be living at a similar slow rate."
Subseafloor microbes, according to a
metagenomic analysis to be published Thursday in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
are genetically distinct from life on Earth's surface
and oceans. The Archaea the Penn State
researchers found might look like bacteria, but they
don't eat or work like them. While E. coli might
double its numbers in 30 minutes, Archaea could
take hundreds or even thousands of years to
accomplish the same amount of growth.
The researchers conducted their work off the
coast of South America in a region known as the
Peru Margin. They sampled genetic material from
the biomes at varying depths. Below 160 feet, the
researcher said Archaea account for 90 percent of
the life present, and represent the most unique
environment thus far revealed by metagenomic
analysis.
The Archaea represent a thus-far untapped
genetic repository for scientists looking for novel
genes for changing metabolism, withstanding cold
or synthesizing chemicals.
UCLA molecular biologist Jim Lake called the
results "very exciting." He also noted that more
research into populations of isolated Archaea
communities like the one described in the paper
could do more than reveal the attributes of the
Publisher Gets Images in Free Service
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 5/18/2008 1:21:00 PM
Images are now freely available in FeedJournal
Publisher, allowing any blogger or content provider
to generate a great-looking PDF out of their latest
writings. This feature was previously reserved for
paying Gold members, but is now free for all to
use!
At the same time, the FeedJournal subscription
model got simplified, only one paid subscription
option is now available: Gold. I found that the
Silver option only served to confuse potential
customers. The new model is more in line with
FeedJournal's focus on simplicity.
The Publisher page has also been improved to
better showcase the newspaper layout. Today, PDF
publishers have the luxury of choosing between at
least two brilliant solutions for embedding PDF
content on their web site: Scribd and Issuu. As they
both offer very competitive packages for the same
microbial life.
"Our whole concept of microbial evolution is up
for grabs," Lake said. "People are realizing there is
lots of exchange and gene transfers between
organisms, and I think the whole area is about to
explode."
Lake noted that while many, like House and
Biddle, think the Archaea are an ancient species,
they could just be evolving very quickly because of
their isolation, a bit like animals on the Galapagos
islands.
The debate about how Archaea got so very
different from other prokaryotes like bacteria
highlights how little is known about them. House's
co-author, astrobiologist Jennifer Biddle, said that
even the most basic questions about this kind of
life remain unanswered.
"For example, how do they die?" asked Biddle.
Image: Close-up photographs from the drilling
site, 1229. Courtesy of the Ocean Drilling Program.
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google
Reader feed, and webpage; Wired Science on
Facebook
unbeatable price (free), the choice is tough. Issuu
offers a slightly sexier experience, but Scribd on
the other hand have a good programming interface
for automating the upload process. I chose to use
Scribd for embedding my blog's newspaper as an
example.
7
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 4/22/2008 2:32:00 PM
This is the third post in a series on how to best
take advantage of FeedJournal Reader. Today, I
describe how you can select any text to be
published in the next issue of your personalized
newspaper.
If you are like me, you are probably receiving
links to interesting online articles from a multitude
of sources: e-mail, newsletters, ads, feeds, etc. I
find that more and more relevant and interesting
information is becoming available online, but I
usually don't have opportunity to read it at the time
of discovery. I would like to file it away and read it
later.
The simplest strategy would be to bookmark the
web page and browse my bookmarks once I have
some time available. I could use my web browser's
bookmark feature, an online boomarking service
like Furl or del.icio.us, or use Instapaper. Provided
I am online, these solutions allow me to access the
relevant articles, but they don't allow me to read the
article uninterrupted.
As I often touch upon in my blog, there is a
fundamental problem with reading long texts on a
computer. I suggest printing the articles on paper
so you can concentrate fully on the reading task at
hand and thereby use your reading time more
effectively. A more bulky, but interesting,
alternative to paper is of course the e-reader
devices, which are doing an excellent job of
emulating the experience of reading printed
material.
If you decide to go the route of printing your
reading list, you might find FeedJournal Reader a
very attractive solution. It's a service, which allows
you to subscribe to news feeds and periodically
publish them in a personalized paper.
To make your paper even more valuable, you can
mark any text not in your subscription list to be
published in the upcoming issue. Below is my
preferred recipe:
Ingredients(all free): One Google Notebook
account with the browser extension (optional) and
one FeedJournal Reader account.
Scenario: You have browsed to an interesting
article but have no time to read it right now.
Instructions: Select the text with the mouse, right-
click on the selection and choose "Note this
(Google Notebook)". The text have now been
saved to your Google Notebook account. Make
sure it is added to a section marked as shared, as it
enables RSS feeds from the notebook. Grab the
feed URL from the public page of your Google
Notebook and subscribe to it in FeedJournal
Reader. Once you subscribed to that section's RSS
feed, any additional entries you add to Google
Notebook will be automatically published in
FeedJournal Reader.
Another solution I have been successful with is
Evernote 2.0 which replaces Google Notebook's
functionality in the scenario above. Evernote is still
in invitation-only beta mode, but looks very
promising since it offers client applications for both
web, Windows, Mac and mobile platforms. I have
invites to share for accessing Evernote beta, so just
let me know if you would like one. UPDATE (Apr
24, 2008): As Ken Lawrence correctly pointed out
to me, the Evernote solution does not work for
FeedJournal, because it cuts off the notes if they
are too long. This correction only invalidates the
last paragraph of my blog post. Using the
suggested Google Notebook service works as
advertised. Thanks, Ken!
8
Hitting 40 languages
By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/18/2008 7:01:00 AM
One of our goals is to give everyone using Google
the information they want, wherever they are, in
whatever language they speak, and through
whatever device they're using. A huge part of that
goal is making our services available in as many
languages as possible. And as I’m sure you can
imagine, that isn't as easy as simply as translating a
few lines of text.
Take Hebrew or Arabic, which are written from
right to left. An Arabic speaker may search for
[world cup football 2008] [ 2008 ]. Part of the
query will be written from right to left in Arabic,
while the numbers will be written left to right.
Sometimes the right-to-left difference can mean
having to change the entire layout of a page, as
with Gmail.
Or take Russian, where words change depending
on their placement and role in a sentence. In
Russian, for example [pizza in Moscow] is [ ] but
[pizza near Moscow] is [ ].
Then there's the whole challenge of ensuring that
queries are locally relevant. While many
Australians searching for [freedom] are looking for
the Australian furniture chain, UK and US users
are often looking for the definition of the word
itself. Our search results, then, have to take into
account these local differences.
Our efforts to make Google products available in
as many languages as possible dates to 2001, when
we started Google in Your Language, which lets
volunteers translate and edit translations of Google
products in their native languages.
As more and more users, advertisers, and partners
interact with Google across the world, the need for
local products has become even more obvious. In
2007, we undertook a company-wide initiative to
increase the availability of our products in multiple
languages. We picked the 40 languages read by
over 98% of Internet users and got going, relying
heavily on open source libraries such as ICU and
other internationalization technologies to design
products. Do you need web search in Chinese or
AdWords online support in Spanish? Perhaps
Google News in Hindi or Google Scholar in
Korean? Not a problem.
Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg
Scholars
By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/17/2008 10:25:00 AM
Posted by Beate List, University Programme,
Zurich
A few months ago we had the great pleasure of
announcing the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars
in the U.S. and our first class of Scholars in
Canada. Now it's the Europeans' turn.
This scholarship program, originally established
in the U.S. to honor the work of Anita Borg and to
recognize outstanding young women scholars in
computer science and related fields, expanded to
Europe most recently. Nearly 300 undergraduate
and graduate students from more than 31 countries
applied for the award. Sixty-three finalists were
selected; 20 women received a €5,000 scholarship
for the 2008-2009 academic year. The remaining
43 finalists received a €1,000 award.
Each of the finalists visited our Engineering
Centre in Zurich for our annual Scholars' Retreat,
which included tech talks, career panels and social
fun. All of it was a way for the young women to
share experiences and come together as leaders in
the computer science field.
Visit the Google Europe Anita Borg Scholarship
page for more on the program. Hearty
Here's a taste of how far we've come.
Growth in local language versions.
• 30 in 30: Today we have more than 30 products
in more than 30 languages, up from 5 products in
30 languages just a year ago.
• In 2004, we had 150 local-language versions of
various products (e.g. a product local to the UK,
not just the English-speaking world); today we're at
more than 1500.
• From January to March of 2008, we launched
256 local-language versions of various products,
compared to 55 in the same period of 2007.
• We've upgraded to Unicode 5.1 to make sure
that we can handle any characters people read or
write in.
The web is only useful - or utile, , poyteczny, or
nyttig, depending on what language you speak - to
the degree it can be accessible in your language.
That's why we're so excited about how far we've
come - and why we know there's still a lot of work
to be done.
Posted by Mario Queiroz, Vice President,
Product Management, Europe, Middle East, Africa,
Latin America
congratulations to these winners!
The 2008 Europe Anita Borg Scholars
• Cynthia Liem, Delft University of Technology,
The Netherlands
• Despina Michael - University of Cyprus, Cyprus
• Dina Petri - University of Reading, UK;
Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos
III de Madrid, Spain
• Inbal Talgam - Weizmann Institute of Science,
Israel
• Katy Howland - University of Sussex, UK
• Kerstin Wendt - Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona, Spain
• Ksenia Rogova - Petrozavodsk State University,
Sony said to be
prepping PSP-3000
with built-in mic
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:07:00 AM
Filed under: Gaming
There may not have been any word of a new PSP
out of E3 as some had suspected, but it looks Sony
may have a bit of a late surprise for us, at least if
these tantalizing pics from PSPChina are to be
believed. Apparently, this new PSP-3000 model
remains mostly unchanged from the current PSP-
2000, with the notable addition of a built-in
microphone and a somewhat less notable
PlayStation button in place of the usual Home
button. As you can see in the picture after the
break, the signature steel ring on the back of the
PSP also appears to have been trimmed a bit
(there's a pic of the inside of the case as well, for
the curious). Not exactly the DS Lite sort of
upgrade that'd make everyone ditch their old PSPs
to be sure but, as we've seen with the PSP-2000, it
would be about par for the course for Sony.
[Via Joystiq, Khattab]
Continue reading Sony said to be prepping PSP-
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Russia
• Mirela Ben-Chen - Technion - Israel Institute of
Technology, Israel
• Nadezhda Baldina - Moscow Institute of
Electronic Technology, Russia
• Olga Boronenko - University of Reading, UK;
Aristotle University, Greece; Universidad Carlos
III de Madrid, Spain
• Patricia Moore- Dublin City University, Ireland
• Rebecca Stewart - Queen Mary, University of
London, UK
• Sara Elisabeth Adams - University of Oxford,
UK
• Seda Gürses - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Belgium
• Silvia Breu - University of Cambridge, UK
• Siska Fitrianie - Delft University of Technology,
The Netherlands
• Stefanie Jegelka - Max Planck Institute for
Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany
• Svetlana Obraztsova - Steklov Institute of
Mathematics, Russia
• Sylvia Rueda - University of Nottingham, UK
• Ulyana Tikhonova - Saint Petersburg State
Polytechnical University, Russia
Update: Added photo.

A Cheap, Natural Way of
Cutting Greenhouse Gas
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/21/2008 4:21:09 PM
Keeping tropical forests from being cut down isn't
cheap, but it's affordable -- and it might be
humanity's best short-term climate change solution.
In a paper published today in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, a team of
economists and ecologists calculated a price of
keeping CO2-gobbling tropical forests intact.
That's only the first step in conserving them, but
it's an important one.
"Nobody knew how expensive or cheap it would
be," said study co-author Brent Sohngen, an
agricultural economics professor at Ohio State
University. "Our results say it's a relatively cheap
option compared to storage in deep geological
wells, or trying to transform the energy economy.
That's a good option in the long run, but expensive
in the short term. This is a good option in the near
future."
Sohngen's team calculated the costs of paying
landowners to say their chainsaws using three
different estimates of tropical forest area and
carbon sequestration potential.
Slowing deforestation by 10% over the next
twenty years would cost between $0.4 billion and
$1.7 billion annually, and save about half a gigaton
of CO2 yearly. A 50% deforestation drop would
cost between $17 and $30 billion, and save more
than two gigatons of CO2 each year -- about one-
third of total United States greenhouse gas
emissions.
The money would go to landowners, who would
'Tongue Drive System' Controls Wheelchair,
Computer
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/21/2008 9:36:18 AM
Quadriplegics may gain a new degree of freedom
via their tongues, if a new control system becomes
widely available.
The new system uses that famously strong, agile
and sensitive muscle, the tongue, to provide
computer accessibility and wheelchair control to
severely disabled people.
Designed by researchers for people with
debilitating spinal cord injuries and diseases, the
tongue-drive tech takes advantage of the nearly
direct connection between the tongue and the brain
via cranial nerves, which makes it particularly
likely to remain functional, even after severe
accidents.
The system has two parts: a small magnet,
attached to the tip of the tongue via adhesive,
piercing or implantation, and a headset with two
charge rent on leaving their forests untouched. But
where would the money come from? Sohngen says
a carbon market based on internationally accepted
pollution constraints would be the best source.
Lacking that, however, members of international
climate treaties could fund the projects directly.
Sohngen does warn that his estimates don't
account for the potentially considerable costs of
enforcing deals, monitoring forests and paying
middlemen.
"We need to figure out what those are going to
be," he said. But there are also benefits
unaccounted for by his estimations.
"You preserve biodiversity and help enhance
water quality. we haven't even calculated what
those benefits are, but they're probably big, and you
don't get them with new nuclear power plants or
carbon sequestration," he said.
Global cost estimates of reducing carbon
emissions through avoided deforestation[PNAS]
[not yet online]
Image: Brandon Keim
See Also:
• Making Deforestation Unprofitable is Key to
Bali Success
• Biofuel Solution at Sea, not on Land
• Can't See the Forest for the Biofuels
• Beetles Turn Western Forests From Carbon Sink
to Carbon Source
• China's 2030 CO2 Emissions Could Equal the
Entire World's Today
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and
Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.
three-dimensional magnetic sensors mounted on it.
The headset picks up the location of the tongue via
the magnet and transmits that information to a
smartphone.
Maysam Ghovanloo, the lead Georgia Tech
researcher, designed software that converts the
9
TiVo lets users buy stuff
from Amazon on their TV,
all three QVC fans go wild
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 8:23:00 AM
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Back in May, TiVo's VP of product marketing
got all of our hopes up that the next announcement
involving it and Amazon would include HD Unbox
content. As you can very clearly see, this is most
certainly not the case. Instead, we have the
immense pleasure of informing internet-connected
Series2, Series3 and TiVo HD owners that they can
now buy wares from Amazon without leaving their
couch. If browsing through Amazon's
extraordinarily huge store with just a remote
sounds appealing to you, you're in luck (and mildly
insane). Also of note, the new Product Purchase
feature will enable advertisers to "market products
sold through Amazon on any broadcast or cable
network, any TV show, or via any of TiVo's
extensive interactive advertising features." In other
words, next time you see Dwight using that iconic
shredder, you can buy that bad boy right then and
there. Take that, Staples.
[Via Zatz Not Funny] Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
position of the tongue into joystick or mouse
movements, allowing the severely disabled to
control a wheelchair or computer. The setup could
provide an unprecedentedly simple and powerful
means of locomotion for the disabled.
"This device could revolutionize the field of
assistive technologies," Ghovanloo said in a
release.
See also:
• Wired 15.04: Mixed Feelings(using the tongue
to "see")
• A Sixth Sense for a Wired World(sensing
electric fields with a fingertip-embedded magnet)
Image and Video: Courtesy of Georgia Tech.
Credit: Gary Meek.
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Google
Reader feed, and webpage; Wired Science on
Facebook.
10
"In their own words": political
videos meet Google speech-to-
text technology
By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/14/2008 4:32:00 PM
Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet and Ari Bezman,
Product Managers
In this U.S. election year, what information could
be more important than the candidates' own words
to describe their views, actions and platforms?
Our teams have been working to develop tools to
make it easier for people to track election-related
information. A few months back, YouTube
encouraged everyone to participate in the
discussion process through the CNN/YouTube
debates, Google Checkout offered an easy and fast
way for individuals to make contributions to
political candidates, and the Geo team created
maps and layers to inform voters during elections.
Today, the Google speech team (part of Google
Research) is launching the Google Elections Video
Search gadget, our modest contribution to the
electoral process. With the help of our speech
recognition technologies, videos from YouTube's
Politicians channels are automatically transcribed
from speech to text and indexed. Using the gadget
you can search not only the titles and descriptions
of the videos, but also their spoken content.
Additionally, since speech recognition tells us
exactly when words are spoken in the video, you
can jump right to the most relevant parts of the
videos you find. Here's a look:
In addition to providing voters with election
information, we also hope to find out more about
how people use speech technology to search and
consume videos, and to learn what works and what
doesn't, to help us improve our products.
The gadget only searches videos uploaded to
YouTube's Politicians channels, which include
videos from Senator Obama's and Senator
McCain's campaigns, as well as those from dozens
of other candidates and politicians. It usually takes
less than a few hours for a video to appear in the
Malfunctioning Bladder Could Alter Your Brain
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 8:56:13 AM
Bladder problems are all in your head, in a
manner of speaking.
Researchers report that rats suffering from
overactive bladders experienced a neurological
rewiring, with parts of their brains devoted to
peeing shutting down as urination control shifted
elsewhere.
At the same time, their brains became more
aroused, exhibiting low-frequency electrical
activity and higher levels of brain patterns called
theta waves, which can also be observed during
meditation and dreaming.
index after it has been published on YouTube.
Candidates can control the videos that appear in the
gadget by managing the content they upload to
YouTube. While some of the transcript snippets
you see may not be 100% accurate, we hope that
you'll find the product useful for most purposes.
Speech recognition is a difficult problem that hasn't
yet been completely solved, but we're constantly
working to refine our algorithms and improve the
accuracy and relevance of these transcribed results.
To try it out, just visit our iGoogle gadget page.
We welcome your feedback, so please feel free to
leave a comment while you're there.
The findings, published today in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that
organ malfunctions also affect the brain -- and not
just directly-implicated regions, but other mental
processes as well.
As with any rodent study, it remains to be seen
whether the same thing happens in people. But
given the marvelously overlapping complexity of
the brain, it seems plausible.
Note: One of my pet peeves is reductionistic, life-
on-the-savannah evolutionary explanations for
complex behaviors. But of course I'm prone to
them, too. To wit: If our savannah-dwelling
ancestors were going to the bathroom too often,
they'd want to be on a constant lookout for safe
Transistors on paper
become a reality
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:51:00 AM
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets Check it, nerds. A
team over at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa has
reportedly figured out a way to use paper (yes,
paper) as an interstrate component of a Field Effect
Transistor (FET). In testing, the group "fabricated
the devices on both sides of the paper sheet," thus
causing the paper to act as the "electric insulator
and as the substrate" simultaneously. Remarkably,
results showed that performance actually rivaled
that of best-in-class oxide thin film transistors,
giving revived hope for the realm of disposable
devices like paper displays, labels, intelligent
packaging, tracking tags, etc. The findings are
scheduled to be published this September, after
which we're sure any firms interested in taking this
stuff commercial will be putting their best foot
forward.
[Via Scientific Blogging] Read| Permalink| Email
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places to pee.
Impact of overactive bladder on the brain:
Central sequelae of a visceral pathology[PNAS]
Image: PNAS
See Also:
• Climate Change Means More Kidney Stones
• New Anti-Obesity Drugs Could Stunt Kids'
Brains
• Scientists Link Brain Symmetry, Sexual
Orientation
• New Type of Painkiller Could Stunt Memory,
Learning
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and
Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.

Late, Great Watson Explored
Supernatural, Kept Pet
Tapeworm
(Wired Science)
Submitted at 7/21/2008 8:17:26 AM
In our hyperspecialized, citation index-happy era,
scientists like the late Lyall Watson-- biologist,
geologist, anthropologist and adventurer -- are a
vanishing breed.
Sure, his theories weren't always accurate. But
they were lots of fun, as was his life, a record of
which overlows the boundaries of his obituary in
today's New York Times.
Among other things, the South African-born
Watson earned degrees in eight scientific
disciplines; filmed nature documentaries for the
BBC; ran a safari company; created a whale
sanctuary; promoted championship sumo wrestling;
led expeditions into Antarctica, Madagascar and
the Kalahari desert; wrote a best-selling history of
supernatural science; lived for 12 years on a boat in
the Amazon; and named his tapeworm Fred.
Where were the seeds of his polymathic
brilliance sown? In a telling anecdote, the Times
recounts how
In an effort to tame him and his rambunctious
friends, Mo’s grandmother drove the lot of them to
a beach shack made of driftwood and left them
with a month’s provisions and instructions to fend
for themselves. The tribe prospered, and the
exercise was repeated every summer thereafter.
You probably won't find that sort of advice in the
parenting section of your nearest Borders, and it's a
Garmin introduces waterproof nuvi 500 /
550 for the argonauts
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 8:42:00 AM
Filed under: GPS
Sure, Garmin's new nüvi 500 series can get you
from point A to point G on paved and well-lit
highways, but that's not the (whole) point here.
Instead, these rugged (and waterproof) navigators
are geared up to take to the trails, waterways and
sidewalks with one-touch transitions between
driving, bicycling, boating and walking modes. The
500 includes road maps and topographic maps for
the lower 48 US states, Hawaii and Puerto Rico,
while the 550 touts comprehensive street map
coverage of the US and Canada. Both devices boast
a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a removable, rechargeable
battery, Garmin's "Where Am I?" feature and
geocaching support to boot. As for USers, you'll
Celebrating young computer scientists
By Eric Case (The Official Google Blog)
Submitted at 7/17/2008 1:30:00 PM
Last week, the ten grand prize winners for the first
Google Highly Open Participation Contest, our
initiative to get pre-university students involved in
open source development. We were very excited to
welcome these burgeoning computer scientists and
their families to Silicon Valley in a celebration of
their many accomplishments.
Our grand prize winners and the Open Source
team
Chosen from more than 350 students worldwide,
our winners created software, documentation and
marketing materials for ten different open source
projects, getting all this work accomplished in just
FeedJournal Adds Multilingual Support
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 4/16/2008 1:45:00 PM
Experimental support for additional languages is
shame.
Images: Watson, right, with new age artist Penny
Slinger; the cover of Lifetide: The Biology of the
Unconscious, which science fiction titan Stanislaw
Lem called a "concentrated package of
misinformation" that would "require several years
of work by a whole team of authors" to correct.
See Also:
• The Next Step in Space Exploration: Billionaire
Scientists
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and
Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.
find the 500 and 550 on sale in Q3 for $499.99,
while those across the pond will see the nüvi 550
land this September for £299.
[Via GPSTracklog, thanks Rich] Read| Permalink|
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over two months. For more details, including
interviews with the winners and their mentors,
check out the Google Open Source Blog.
Posted by Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager -
Open Source
now available in FeedJournal Reader!
You set your language in "Edit Profile". This
update adds support for the following encodings:
Eastern Europe (Latin 2), Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish,
Hebrew, Arabic, Windows Baltic and Vietnamese.
11
Dr. Dre's Beats
headphones keep they
heads ringin' for $350
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 8:02:00 AM
Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio
You can't put velvet in these earcups and call 'em
nice headphones! As Mr. Chappelle would likely
attest, there are no better headphones in which to
drop the beat into than Dr. Dre's "highly
anticipated" Beats. The master of chronic himself
has slapped his all-but-forgotten name onto a set of
cans (which we spotted originally at CES), and is
now ready to introduce 'em to the world. Starting
on July 25th, the crunk-inducing headphones will
be available exclusively at Apple and Best Buy
(both online and in-store), though the buying
experience would likely be way more gangsta if
checking out at BeatsByDre.com. Still, for
$349.95, we'd recommend looking at more
respected names in sound, but if your street cred is
sitting at rock bottom, you may have no other
choice. Thug life, fool. Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
Bug Squashed In Generate
Newspaper
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 3/12/2008 11:38:00 PM
Today's update to FeedJournal Reader includes a
fix for an annoying bug which occurred
sporadically. Error messages about trying again
after you hit the "Generate Newspaper" button
should now have been rooted out. The update also
includes some site optimizations to Reader.
I am currently probing the market for a more
reliable web host; so if you have positive
experiences from an ASP.NET + SQL Server
hosting company I'll gratefully lend you an ear.
The right-to-left languages have not been tested yet
so there are probably still some issues with them.
Please let me know how it works in your language!
12

Panasonic pushes out

14.7MP DMC-FX150
pocket shooter
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 7:42:00 AM

Filed under: Digital Cameras

WowWee's Alive White Tiger Cub gets
unboxed, showcased on video
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 7:21:00 AM
Filed under: Robots
It has been a hot minute since WowWee let the
Alive animals out of the zoo, but this particular
White Tiger Cub has just recently been loosed from
its cage. Although it's just dying for an I Can Has
Cheezburger? caption (feel free to drop your best in
comments below), this cute cat looks to be the
perfect play toy for small children or adults hoping
to rekindle some of that youthful innocence. We're
also told that the eyebrow and mouth movements
are "quite realistic," but its the individual
personality that really makes it worth coming back
to. Check out the unboxing and a brief review in
the read link, and peek a video of the feline in
action after the cut.
Continue reading WowWee's Alive White Tiger
Cub gets unboxed, showcased on video Read|
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Taking the wraps off of three cameras at once
just isn't good enough for Panasonic, so how's
about a fourth? The pocket-friendly LUMIX DMC-
FX150 arrives in a trio of stylish hues (black, gold
and silver) and features an admittedly absurd 14.7-
megapixel sensor, 28-millimeter wide-angle
LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT lens, a 3.6x optical
zoom and a host of manual controls to boot. This
shooter can also capture shots in RAW format, and
the usual suspects -- you know, red-eye correction,
optical image stabilizer, face detection, intelligent
ISO, etc. -- are all there. If this one fits the bill,
expect to receive one of your own for $399.95
when picking it up next month.
[Via Impress] Read| Permalink| Email this|
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popSiren Gets Her Hands

on FeedJournal
By Jonas Martinsson (Jonas Martinsson -
Blog)
Submitted at 6/18/2008 2:20:00 PM

Sarah Lane over at popSiren had the good taste of

recording a video review of my FeedJournal
Reader service earlier this week. She had solely
positive things to say about the RSS newspaper and
I certainly appreciate the exposure! I'll keep the
video embedded on FeedJournal's front page for a
while - I think it can be a good way of presenting
Electric MINI hitting the service to new visitors who prefer to watch a
video instead of reading about it.
US streets in summer
2009
(Engadget)
Submitted at 7/22/2008 9:29:00 AM

Filed under: Transportation

Not that electric MINIs are anything new, but
unless you were willing to pay for all the mods
yourself, procuring one wasn't exactly simple.
Now, however, we're hearing that MINI itself will
be bringing scads of these buggers to American
streets in the summer of 2009. Yeah, like, one year
from right now. MINI USA VP Jim McDowell was
the source of said statement, though he didn't
mention whether all of them would be reserved for
California or if they would be available sold out
nationwide. Hey MINI, we'd say you've got a hit on
your hands. Read| Permalink| Email this|
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