Jeff Random

In a paper released last week, the researchers explained how they developed software that could analyze the sound of someone typing on a keyboard for just ten minutes and then piece together as much as 96 percent of what had been typed. –link

This just begs to be written as a virus payload for many different platforms. Imagine your mobile or computer listening as you enter passwords and sending the data back for analysis.

This would render password masking (hiding the characters as they are entered) ineffective, and bring the advantages of a keystroke logger without leaving a telltale physical change.

The cash-out is both simple and varied. The virus could look for banking or stored value logins. These could be then stored, until critical mass, followed by either a mass cash out, or perhaps a small transaction that could go unnoticed.

Fortunately, things are made much harder by background noise or music. So perhaps risk conscious individuals or companies will start insisting on music everywhere.

Targeting Documents and Terms Through Co-Occurrence Datais a paper written by Dr. Garcia. In which he explains in detail how to choose which keyword in a two term phrase to focus on for SEO.

By way of example the phrase “car insurance” is analyzed, with the end result showing that it is better to target “insurance” as opposed to “car”.

Thus by focusing your efforts on the less competitive term, you can maximize your optimization for the two term keyphrase.

At first glance the GPX2 seemed it could be the “open platform” handset or handheld that has been missing.

When I read about a Linux-based handheld that’s open, powerful and cheap – visions of ad-hoc networking applications seamlessly switching between wifi/wimax, mobile and physical connections danced in my head.

Linux-based handheld that’s open, powerful and cheap
Cory Doctorow: Simon writes in with news of a remarkable-sounding new Linux-based handheld computer/PDA called the GP2X:

It can play games. It can play your Movies. It can play your music. It can view photos. It can read Ebooks. It runs on just 2 AA batteries – And it can do all this in the palm of your hand or on your TV screen.

It runs the free Linux operating system. This means a whole world of Games, Utilities and Emulators are at your disposal. Quake, Doom, SNES, Megadrive, MAME, Media players and Applications to name just a few.

It’s powerful – Two 200mhz CPU’s with 64meg of RAM, custom graphics hardware and decoding chips. Takes SD cards and has 64M of NAND memory. Plenty to play with. One of the most powerful and advanced handhelds today.

It’s cheap. Just £124.99.

It’s open. You want to develop your own games for the GP2X? Go right ahead. The SDK is included with the system free. Not since the days of the Amiga has a system been so easy to develop for, commercially and for fun.

It sounded great, like they really understood the potential and power of opening up your platform for innovation.

Then it came out that the GPX2 has “copyright protection by certified DRM”.

Close, but no cigar.

The Billy Harvey website – clever, understated, technically brilliant. Hat’s off to SoFake.

Via Creating Passionate Users

CHATSWORTH, Calif. – After three years with the AVN Media Network, Jeff Random has announced that he is leaving to pursue other opportunities.

“My time with AVN has been very good for me,” Random said. “The knowledge, contacts and experience have really helped me to grow.”

Random joined AVN.com as online sales manager, and progressed to working across the entire network of companies. Most recently he has served as online marketing consultant with a focus on technology and affiliate marketing.

“Jeff Random has been a valuable and versatile member of our team. His departure comes with no hard feelings, and mutual respect. We wish him the best,” said AVN CEO Darren Roberts.

“I am very proud of my accomplishments and progress we achieved in the last few years,” Random said. “I have enjoyed the opportunities provided to me however now it is time for different challenges.”

“Work It Harder Make It Better Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger” DaftPunk

Looking at revenues & users for Ebay, Yahoo & Google is where new media economics really begins to come into it’s own. This is web 2.0 theory being proven in the market today.

Times of great change mean times of great opportunity.

Web 2.0 is a shift to from tight, hierarchical architectures which realize exponential network FX, to loosely structured architecture which realize combinatorial network FX.

More simply, Web 2.0 is about the shift from network search economies, which realize mild exponential gains – your utility is bounded by the number of things (people, etc) you can find on the network – to network coordination economies, which realize combinatorial gains: your utility is bounded by the number of things (transactions, etc) you can do on the network.

via bubblegeneration – strategy, business models, and innovation

While I have written about The Value of Trust before, trusted computing is entirely different.

This incredible short is both a beautiful example of messaging as well as a good explanation about some of the issues with trusted computing.

watch it now

After watching that, it’s an ideal time to enjoy reading the story
0wnz0red to take your understanding to another level.

Via Boing Boing

Nivi offers a great metaphor for understanding the benefits of granularity for RSS content.

The RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0 is a very interesting read, as is Nivi in general.


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RSS is like an API for content. RSS gives you access to a web site’s data just like an API gives you access to a web site’s computing power. Most important, RSS gives you access to your data that you have locked up on a web site.

Every Web 1.0 company will have to decide what content they will open with RSS. For example, Amazon already makes their content like their book catalog available through their API. But will Amazon open up user-contributed content through RSS?

Will you have access to

• Your explicit content like your purchase history and reviews you’ve written?

• Your drive-by content like the books you have recently browsed on Amazon?

• Other user’s content such as book reviews?

I believe I heard Jon Udell say that the winners of the Web 2.0 orgy will be the sites that don’t lock up user-contributed content. Instead, the winners will create a compelling ecosystem for you to store your content and bring in your content from other sites via RSS. Food for thought.

Note: This is Part 3 of a continuing series called RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0. You may also like Parts 1 and 2.

Metadata that reconstructs the file via the web – exactly what we need these days. The more granular content gets the better this works.

There needs to be a standard so that it’s completely unambiguous just what one means when one says “Copy Optimized DVD Audio disc”. It’s that clear specification that will make embedded players and perfect peer-to-peer network copies possible. A disc containing such files could be popped into your home stereo DVD player and made to play, copy and share with no more user intervention than hitting a button…

Via Boing Boing

“DJ’s are like collaborative filters – but the best ones are also sources of novelty. Noise, if you like, – but good noise. Filters that can jump from peak to peak – from things I might like now, to things I will like when my preferences will evolve (or, better yet, that evolve my preferences). Algorithmic solutions don’t do this yet – and probably won’t for a while, because it’s a (really) hard problem. But it’s also a (really) big market gap.” link

You don’t need an algorithmic solution when you can have your users brute force it for you more accurately, and also introduce novelty.

The question becomes where are you going to get a dedicated group of users who are willing to invest their time, efforts and attention into your system?

Untold numbers of music fans & teenagers seems like a good place to start.

“MTV Hits, an MTV offshoot channel in UK, will turn into a fully interactive service, encouraging viewers to choose playlists and influence the on-screen look of the network.

From later this year viewers will initially be invited to create their own home pages on MTV.co.uk, with features including personal blogs, all-time favourite track lists and current favourites.” –link