By JOHN MARKOFF Published: February 14, 2009 Two decades ago a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate student brought the Internet to its knees with a simple software program that skipped from computer to computer at blinding speed, thoroughly clogging the then-tiny network in the space of a few hours. The program was intended to be a digital “Kilroy Was Here.” Just a bit of cybernetic fungus that would unobtrusively wander the net. However, a programming error turned it into a harbinger heral… Continue

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their attitude towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members. Ernest Dichter originated the idea of having a "group therapy" for products and this process is what became known as a focus group.[1] In marketing In the world of ma… Continue

February 13, 2009 (Computerworld) Hacking an iPhone is against the law, Apple Inc. has argued in comments filed with the U.S. Copyright Office. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a freedom-of-speech advocacy organization, this is the first public statement from Apple about its legal position on "jailbreaking," the term used to describe hacking an iPhone to install third-party applications not sold via Apple's own App Store. In comments submitted to the Copyright Office, App… Continue

CES 2009, the Consumer Electronics Show is in full effect. Already, our loyal group of Trend Hunters is reporting back the hottest gadgets from the first day of the show. http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/top-19-gadgets-from-ces-2009-day-1

Media coverage of Web 2.0 concentrates on the common applications/services such as blogs, video sharing, social networking and podcasting—a more socially connected Web in which people can contribute as much as they can consume. In chapter two I provide a brief introduction to some of these services, many of them built on the technologies and open standards that have been around since the earliest days of the Web, and show how they have been refined, and in some cases concatenated, to provide a t… Continue