Steve Jobs: 1955-2011

Steve Jobs is dead. One big question is whether the unbelievably innovative culture he forged will live. Jobs was not a great human being, but he was a great, transformative, and historical figure. Many books were dashed off describing what a tyrannical person Jobs could be… Read more

Google Changes Search Algorithm, Trying to Make Results More Timely

Acknowledging that some searches were giving people stale results, Google revised its methods on Thursday to make the answers timelier. It is one of the biggest tweaks to Google’s search algorithm, affecting about 35 percent of all searches.The new algorithm is a recognition that Google, whose dominance depends on providing the most useful results, is being increasingly challenged by services like Twitter and Facebook, which have trained people to expect constant updates with seconds-old news… Read more

Infographic Reveals What Makes An Effective Social Video Campaign…And What Doesn’t

These days, as online video campaigns are becoming more and more popular for advertising, everyone wants to go viral. But what works and what doesn’t? Social video platform Jun Group has just released a new infographic that provides some insight into the emerging trends and usage patterns n social video. Some of the findings may surprise you.Last month I had the opportunity to chat with Jun Group CEO and founder Mitchell Reichgut about viral video and social video. Reichgut sees social video, or providing viewers with rewards like virtual currency for watching and sharing videos via Facebook and other social channels, as one of the keys to a successful online video advertising campaign…Read more

Disney and YouTube Make a Video Deal

LOS ANGELES — Two powerful media companies, the Walt Disney Company and YouTube, are betting that a new partnership will help them surmount separate but equally worrisome hurdles as they each strive for greater Web dominance.The deal, set to be announced on Monday, is small on its surface: Disney Interactive Media and YouTube, a division of Google, will spend a combined $10 million to $15 million on original video series; those shorts will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube. The channel will also include amateur video culled from the torrent uploaded to YouTube daily… Read more

A New App for Counting Calories

The toughest part of counting calories can be figuring out how many are actually on your plate. But what if your Android or iPhone could do it for you?A smartphone app called PlateMate, developed by former Harvard engineering students and currently in the works, may soon allow you to snap a picture of your food and quickly get a good estimate of its calorie count. Other tools count calories by letting users input the foods they eat, or sending photos out to a nutritionist. A social networking app called Meal Snap allows users to get nutritional breakdowns by taking pictures of their food, though the calorie estimates often fall within a broad range. PlateMate uses a different system of social networking to quickly crunch data and estimate calories, as an article in today’s Boston Globe explains:… Read more

Adobe to Kill Mobile Flash, Focus on HTML5

Adobe announced Wednesday that it is killing Flash for mobile devices and will instead focus its efforts on HTML5 for mobile developers.In a blog post on the company’s Web site, Danny Winokur, Adobe’s vice president and general manager of interactive development, said, “We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations.” He said the company will increase investment in HTML5 and innovate with Flash for advanced gaming and premium video… Read more

Apple and Android Note-Taking Apps Make Paper a Memory

Like a lot of people in the ’80s, I bought a microcassette recorder to capture great ideas the way Michael Keaton’s character did in “Night Shift.” (“Idea to eliminate garbage: edible paper.”) My recorder quickly gathered dust because it was much easier to retrieve ideas and reminders from good old inedible paper.So when I first saw apps like Evernote (free on Apple and Android), PhatPad ($5 for iPad) and Notability ($1 for iPad) for note-taking and organizing, they struck me as software versions of those old recorders: places where ideas go to die… Read More

The Most Valuable Digital Consumers

These days, Social/Local/Mobile seems to be driving much of the conversation about online opportunities. But at the end of the day, there is only one constant common denominator across the Web: the consumer. An understanding of this consumer and how they are influenced by social, mobile and local experiences online is vital to big brands looking to reach them on the Web. Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, illustrate some findings that highlight digital consumer behaviors and consumption patterns that can help brand advertisers understand their most valuable customers and how they’re engaging across social, local and mobile…Read More

The Under-Examined Story of Fallujah

Seven years after the U.S. invasion of Fallujah, there are reports of an alarming rise in the rates of birth defects and cancer. But the crisis, and its possible connection to weapons deployed by the United States during the war, remains woefully under-examined.On November 8, 2004, U.S. military forces launched Operation Phantom Fury 50 miles west of Baghdad in Fallujah, a city of 350,000 people known for its opposition to the Saddam regime…Read more

In Tahrir Square: A nurse reports from the Tahrir Square field hospital

I got a message on Sunday that the Tahrir Square field hospital needed medical help and supplies. As I used to be a nurse, I went. The tear gas is toxic in a way it was not in January. Various people have said that the cyanide component is greater or that phosphorus is causing the problem. I can positively confirm that the gas injuries are completely different and much more severe. We treated hundreds of youngsters who had totally collapsed and were not breathing. Most came to quickly but we had two deaths and one, a young boy, asphyxiated…Read more

Mixed Messages for Tunisian Women

After the tumult of the Arab Spring, many Tunisian women are wondering whether they should be optimistic or concerned about preserving and expanding their rights…read more

Turkey, Jordan to set up safe zones in Syria: diplomats

BEIRUT: Turkey and Jordan, backed by Western and Arab powers, are preparing to set up two “safe zones” for civilians inside Syria, diplomats said Friday.

The Western and Arab diplomats told The Daily Star that Syria’s two neighbors would press ahead with preparations to establish the two havens if President Bashar Assad did not sign on to an Arab plan aimed at ending a bloody crackdown on anti-regime protesters by Saturday.

The diplomats said an international meeting in Paris would discuss later Friday the details of the plans to set up the zones in southern and northern Syria.

On Wednesday, the Arab League gave Assad three days to agree in writing to allowing hundreds of observers into Syria to oversee the implementation of the Arab plan to end eight months of violence against protesters that has killed more than 3,000 people.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011/Nov-18/154477-turkey-jordan-to-set-up-safe-zones-in-syria-diplomats.ashx#ixzz1eSvJJKOs
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb) …Read More

Famous Authors’ Harshest Rejection Letters

It’s hard to imagine that the definitive icons of literature could have been subject to the same iciness of the high-gated publishing-house “no” machines that we know all too well. Of course, even down-to-earth publishers can miss a great work sitting on their desks; with thousands of titles of varying merit clogging editors’ mailboxes, it’s impossible to skim every page of every slush-pile manuscript, let alone give it its proper consideration. Furthermore, some of our most adored geniuses churned out well-spotted crap before maturing into the artists we remember.

Prescience is no hard science, but hindsight can be a kick in the shins nonetheless, especially for the editors who sent these rejection letters to writers who would later become the bestselling, influential giants of their day — and ours…Read More

Can the study of politics, power and culture at the local level reshape efforts to rebuild Afghanistan?

Ten years after the Taliban’s leaders fled their country in apparent defeat, the war in Afghanistan has become what one observer calls “a perpetually escalating stalemate.” As in Iraq, the United States military has responded to bad news with counterinsurgency: eliminate troublemakers in the dark of night, with the most lethal arts, and befriend tribal elders by day, with cultural sensitivity and expertise. The Army has gone so far as to embed credentialed social scientists with front-line troops in “Human Terrain Teams” that engage in “rapid ethnographic assessment” — conducting interviews and administering surveys, learning about land disputes, social networks and how to “operationalize” the Pashtun tribal code…Published by The New York Times

Why should a teacher earn less than a manager?

Criticism of capitalism has increased in recent months. Protest movements, such as “Occupy Wall Street,” are outraged at the excesses of bankers who, according to the protesters, bear the main responsibility for the current economic crisis – but apparently are not being held responsible. A growing number of voices from different parts of society are now showing solidarity with the anti-capitalism activities and reflecting the widespread frustration felt by citizens.Undoubtedly, these anti-capitalist protests have their finger on the pulse of our time. But it is not enough to simply condemn capitalism for its undeniable excesses. We need a deeper analysis of why the capitalist system, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us…

What’s the big deal? The Arab League’s Non-Solution for Syria

On the surface, the Arab League appears to have successfully negotiated a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad to end his bloody eight-month crackdown on largely peaceful protesters. But appearances are always deceiving, especially when the subject is the regime in Damascus, which has found endless ways to perpetuate itself, and the chief broker of the deal is a perennially ineffectual pan-Arabist dinosaur.On Wednesday, the Arab League announced from its Cairo headquarters that Syria had accepted the agreement without reservations. The pact calls on Assad to withdraw his security forces from the streets, stop violence, free all political detainees, hold a national dialogue with the opposition within two weeks and allow the media, the Arab League and international monitors access to the closed country. “The agreement is clear,” Qatar’s Foreign Minister, Jassem bin Hamad, said at a press conference in Cairo. “We are very happy that we have reached an agreement and will be happier when it is implemented.”… Read More

A Chill on Tahrir Square

CAIRO — A cool breeze wafts along the streets of Cairo these days and the North African sun has become a tamer, gentler creature. But this sleepless city now beats to a more unsettling rhythm.Much of the unease is fed by fear of the unknown — that febrile political playground, in which new parties proliferate, filling the air with their Much of the unease is fed by fear of the unknown — that febrile political playground, in which new parties proliferate, filling the air with their… Read More

In Assad’s Syria, There is No Imagination

The House of Assad evokes an imperial sense of power, or at least its trappings, with iconography that one scholar described as infused with “laudatory slogans and sempiternal images.”
But my first impression of Rami Makhlouf, President Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and one-time confidante, was of his unassuming quality. Here was a tycoon, a figure as rich as he was loathed, who eschewed formalities and ceremony. I had seen it before, in men like Saad Hariri, a former prime minister in Lebanon, lavished with so much privilege and so much wealth that pretensions become unnecessary… Read More

Reporting From Syria in Secret

As The Lede has reminded readers for months, because of restrictions imposed by the Syrian government on independent reporting, much of the information about the uprising there, including video of the security crackdown on protesters this week, reaches the Web only after it has been smuggled out of the country by a network of activists.Some foreign reporters, including Anthony Shadid of The New York Times, have managed to make the opposite journey, sneaking into Syria to cover the uprising in person.This week’s episode of the PBS series “Frontline” featured a video report produced by another journalist who managed to work secretly inside Syria, Ramita Navai… Read More

The Consequentialist

Barack Obama came to Washington just six years ago, having spent his professional life as a part-time lawyer, part-time law professor, and part-time state legislator in Illinois. As an undergraduate, he took courses in history and international relations, but neither his academic life nor his work in Springfield gave him an especially profound grasp of foreign affairs. As he coasted toward winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2004, he began to reach out to a broad range of foreign-policy experts––politicians, diplomats, academics, and journalists… Read More

An Excerpt from ‘Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu’

Chengdu in June burst with life. The flowers were out, the markets awash with watermelons, and a scent of jasmine pervaded the air. After nightfall you’d see some people in the crowd laughing and others crying. Life was like a lavish banquet in a graveyard, with death fluttering smilingly around us.Chengdu in June burst with life. The flowers were out, the markets awash with watermelons, and a scent of jasmine pervaded the air. After nightfall you’d see some people in the crowd laughing and others crying. Life was like a lavish banquet in a graveyard, with death fluttering smilingly around us… Read More

Murong Xuecun’s Acceptance Speech for the 2010 People’s Literature Prize

If I am not mistaken, the People’s Literature magazine “special action award” was not bestowed for my literary achievement, but for my courage. I’m embarrassed because I am not a brave person.Genuine bravery for a writer is not about jousting with a pyramid-scam gang. It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer’s conscience… Read More

For Student Journalists, Challenges in Putting Out the School Newspaper

There was something wrong in each of the four issues of The Bennett that students at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School produced last year. Or at least that is what the assistant principal thought. Before they went to press, she edited 50 percent to 75 percent of the articles in each issue of the student newspaper. Everything from punctuation to a review of a school performance was fair game for the administrator’s red pen.“My students got to the point that they were saying, ‘Why should we do this? They are going to cut it anyway,’ ” said The Bennett’s adviser, Taisha Matthews… Read More

What Egypt’s Military Council Didn’t Learn from the Revolution

My friend Yusri Foda is the host of the Egyptian talk show, The Last Word. Yusri invited me to take part in his show to comment on a program that featured Generals Assar and Hegazy of the military council. Despite my full respect for the generals, what they said in the program was disappointing because they confined themselves to praising the decisions of the military council. The next day, Yusri called me to tell me that the show had been cancelled. When I asked him what had happened, he said, “There were pressures that led to cancelling the program, so I’ve decided to suspend the show. In my work, I obey only my conscience and I can never agree to take orders from any other party.” … Read More

J. Edgar, the movie(2011)

Even with all the surprises that have characterized Clint Eastwood’s twilight film years, with their crepuscular tales of good and evil, the tenderness of the love story in “J. Edgar” comes as a shock. Anchored by a forceful, vulnerable Leonardo DiCaprio, who lays bare J. Edgar Hoover’s humanity, despite the odds and an impasto of old-coot movie makeup, this latest jolt from Mr. Eastwood is a look back at a man divided and of the ties that bind private bodies with public politics and policies. With sympathy — for the individual, not his deeds — it portrays a 20th-century titan who, with secrets and bullets, a will to power and the self-promotional skills of a true star, built a citadel of information in which he burrowed deep… Read More