Microsoft has announced two partners in its book scanning project, which will compete with Google's controversial Book Search program.
Cornell University will allow Microsoft to scan its library collection, and Kirtas Technologies will provide high-speed hardware for the scanning. Unlike Google's program, Microsoft's Windows Live Book Search will only scan books in the public domain or those whose copyright owners have granted explicit permission. Librarians from Cornell will select texts to be scanned and will oversee quality control for the process. Kirtas claims that its scanning machines are capable of digitizing 2,400 pages per hour and are gentler that human hands with the books.
One of the founders of Wikipedia has announced a new online encyclopedia that he hopes will embody the foundation of Wikipedia while overcoming some of its shortcomings. Larry Sanger's new project, called Citizendium, will use a number of tactics to elicit credible, useful content from a community of volunteers while avoiding the kinds of intentional distortions that have been a problem for Wikipedia. On Citizendium, contributors must register with their real names, and a team of editors will enforce a set of community rules. Sanger said that Wikipedia is an "amazing" resource but believes that "an even better massive encyclopedia" can be produced by overlaying a system of "gentle controls" on how content is developed and edited. The creation of Citizendium will involve a "fork" of the existing Wikipedia content.
A study conducted by researchers at Stanford University indicates considerable and rising rates of Internet addiction among U.S. users.
The study, which asked more than 2,500 people about their Web habits, found that almost 14 percent said it was difficult to be offline for more than a few days. Eight percent said they use the Internet as a means to escape the real world, and a similar portion admitted to hiding their Web habits from their partners. Researchers said these kinds of behaviors are not unlike those exhibited by people with problems such as alcoholism. According to the study, the profile of a typical user who has problems with Internet addiction is a single, college-educated, white male who spends more than 30 hours per week using the Internet for "non-essential" purposes. Elias Aboujaoude, one of the researchers in the study, said that it is important to remind ourselves that despite all the benefits of technology, "it creates real problems for a subset of people." Indeed, six percent of the respondents said their addiction had adversely affected their relationships with other people.
Obviously the greatest headline news being avoided this week by the major US media is the free press rating list of the "Reporters Without Borders" based in Paris, France, since the US has consistently fallen from its initial top 10% rankingof 17th when the list started down to 53rd this year.
I did LOTS of search integration this morning and came up with the following compilation from numerous sources, who obviously dealt with tie scores in different ways, then, if you want to skip my own compilation, I finally found the entire listing, but without explanator notes as to the scoring, which is included.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.
The US continues to fall from its initial 17th place, edge of top 10%, to 53rd, edge of top 1/3, due to the practice of jailing reporters for political reasons– Joshua Wolf, who refused to yield a videotape of some political protestors to a grand jury, not to mention, of course, the whole Valerie Plame thing about a fake weapons of mass destruction report concerning Iraq in which a reporter spent her next half year in jail.
Inaddition, Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj who works for Al-Jazeera has been held in Guantanamo since June of 2002 without being charged and an Associated Press photographer named Bilal Hussein is being held in the Iraq jails by the US since April.