Episode 0030, 01/04/2008
Title: Wikia Takes on Google, Identity Theft on the Rise, The Terabyte Notebook is Here - Almost, Endemic Surveillance in the US
Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the week, Episode 30, recorded January 4th, 2008.
This is Ken Baldauf bringing you this week's technology news and information.
This CourseCast is brought to you by Course Technology. Check out www.course.com for innovative textbooks and creative electronic learning solutions.
Story 1 - Wikia Takes on Google
You may recall that in December, I reported that Google was taking on Wikipedia with a new online encyclopedia called Knol. In a turn of the tables, Wikia Search, a community driven search engine from Jimmy Wales who founded Wikipedia, will open to the public on January 7th as a challenger to Google. You can check it out at search.wikia.com. On the wikia site, Jimmy claims that Web search is currently broken due to lack of freedom, community, accountability, and transparency. Wikia Search has been created to change all that. Wikia Search will "reduce the bottleneck" of what Jimmy claims are "two or three firms controlling the flow of search traffic" and put the power in the hands of the users. Wikia Search users will have the ability to vote search results up or down to provide what is hoped will be more relevant search results.
The competition between Google and Wiki in the online encyclopedia, and search businesses is interesting for a number of reasons. Most markedly is the size and nature of the two businesses. Google is a private, profit-driven business worth around $18 billion with 16 thousand employees, while the Wikimedia Foundation is a not-for-profit organization with 12 paid employees. It's rather like Sampson and Goliath, with Sampson representing the community-powered, open-source Wiki, and Goliath the profit-driven, "secret algorithm"-based, Google. Only time will determine which paradigm persists.
Source: Can Social Search Take Down Google? (TopTechNews), Wikia Search to offer first peek next week (News.com)
Story 2 - Identity Theft on the Rise
According to a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), identity theft is on the rise. Over the course of 2007, publicly reported data breaches rose by more than 40 percent. According to the report, 127 million private data records were exposed during 2007. The organization believes that identity theft cases will continue to increase over the coming year and become increasingly international in scope with more sophisticated attacks.
Source: Report: Identity Theft Worse in 2008 (CIO Today)
Story 3 - Endemic Surveillance in the US
The FBI is investing $1 billion to build the "worlds largest database of people's physical characteristics" including images of faces, fingerprints, and palm patterns. The system will provide the government with "unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad". About the same time as this news was released, the Electronic Privacy Information Center published a 1,100 page report in which it states that the US is the "the worst ranking country in the democratic world" when it comes to respecting citizen's privacy rights.
Source: FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics (Washington Post), US and UK have become "endemic" surveillance societies (ARS Technica)
Story 4 - The Terabyte Notebook is Here - Almost
This week Hitachi unveiled a new 500 GB, 2.5 inch notebook hard drive. That's three times the capacity of today's typical notebooks. Hitachi's announcement was followed by one from Asus stating that it was manufacturing a notebook computer that includes two of Hitachi's new drives. The Asus M70 notebook, the first notebook to be mass produced with 1 TB of hard drive storage, will be available in February. The idea is likely to catch on with numerous other notebook manufacturers.
Source: Hitachi unveils half-terabyte 2.5-in. notebook hard drive (ComputerWorld), Get Ready for the Terabyte Notebook (TopTechNews)
New Briefs
That's it for this week's CourseCast. Links to this week's stories and many more news and information resources are provided at the CourseCast Web site at www.course.com/coursecasts. E-mail us with your suggestions for the show at course.coursecasts@cengage.com. Until next time have a great week and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of Technology!