internet

A new search engine launched yesterday. Cuil (that's "cool", phonetically) is today's buzz word on the web, primarily because the Cuil's founders - Tom Costello, Anna Patterson, Louis Monier and Russell Power - are respected search experts. Patterson, Monier and Power are former Google employees, and comparisons with the 300lb gorilla of internet search abound.Michael Arrington at TechCrunch compares sizes. At launch, Cuil boasted an index of 120 billion webpages.

This week in PLoS Medicine, the team behind HealthMap, a web-based tool to monitor and track infectious disease, discuss updates to the tool.HealthMap trawls news and health websites for references to illness and then plots them on an interactive map of the world, powered by Google Maps. Its algorithms are context-specific to distinguish mention of a new disease vaccine from a disease outbreak.It can now handle data from English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian and French websites, with other language readers in development.

Google is planning to release tools that let internet users know if their service provider (ISP) is tampering with their internet connection - for example by throttling access to popular bandwidth-heavy sites.It is the latest round of the net neutrality debate. Net neutrals like Google say the the internet should be a straightforward commodity.

Inspired by our friends at Valleywag and their post about Time Magazine's Top 25 Blogs (in which TreeHugger.com was #4), we've decided to compile Time Magazine's list of The Top 15 Green Websites. This time, TreeHugger is #2 (though we're not sure if the list is ordered by rank or not), and many of our friends from the green web-ecosystem are there.

As Valleywag points out, they...

China's "great firewall" trucks no nonsense and encircles a censored version of the web that people outside the country would not recognise.Defying that censorship can have serious consequences.

Internet traffic growth has been declining in recent years, say experts monitoring the flow of data around the world.In fact, if the 45% drop in traffic growth between 2004 and 2005 shown on this traffic-tracking firm's chart happens again we could reach "peak net" in a few years. That's the scenario I just invented in which internet traffic has stopped growing, and is poised to decline.

The BBC is under fire from one of the biggest ISPs in the UK - Tiscali - which is demanding money from the broadcaster to recoup the costs of serving users of the BBC's popular TV streaming service, iPlayer.I find it hard to understand why Tiscali thinks it should receive money - other than the possibility that it perceives the BBC as an easy target.The BBC estimate that the service has increased the UK's use of bandwidth by between 3 and 5%. That is puny compared to the effect of peer-to-peer file sharing - much of which is illegal.

Our love of base ten makes round decades like 30, 40 and 50 loom large when making judgements about being "old". But new research suggests that online the aging process kicks in when you reach 25.Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen released the news earlier today:"Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year"That finding came from a study asking 61 users to perform a number of tasks involving gathering information online.

Dude, someone rickrolled teh lolcat forum!Depending on your tolerance for time-wasting, internet memes are either fun or annoying. You know the ones: those random videos, images and habits that are suddenly everywhere. Sometimes interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes just plain pointless, these catchphrases and fads often seem to come out of nowhere.

Discussions of the technology and politics of China's 'great firewall' in the West often lack a crucial part of the puzzle - the opinions of Chinese web users. At least according to this blogger trying to connect English and Chinese-speaking users.

He directs people to engage with Chinese users by signing up to Fanfou, a twitter like microblogging service based in China. He also translates messages from Chinese users using the service to report on the recent events in Tibet.

The debate about the risks posed by internet addiction has begun again with the publication of an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry on the topic.

Let's take a look at what Jerald Block said. He identifies three "subtypes" of internet addiction: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging (not strictly internet, I know).

Want to know if you're addicted? He provides these four criteria:

1. Excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives
2. Withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible
3. Tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use
4. Negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue

China's government has blocked access to news aggregator Google News and video-sharing site YouTube to suppress material about the civil unrest in Tibet.

This is no small problem for Google now, and it could develop into a much larger headache. Google wants access to the fast-growing Chinese market. But will it resort to self-censoring its own Chinese sites in order to please the government there?

It would be worse in PR terms but more effective in business terms for Google to engage with Chinese censors in reshaping Google News and YouTube to please them. Since Google already censors chinese search results, perhaps that won't be too long in coming. How the company would square that with its "don't be evil" motto is hard to imagine.

China's government has blocked access to news aggregator Google News and video-sharing site YouTube to suppress material about the civil unrest in Tibet, InfoWorld reports.

This is no small problem for Google now, and it could develop into a much larger headache. Google wants access to the fast-growing Chinese market. But will it resort to self-censoring its own Chinese sites in order to please the government there?

It would be worse in PR terms but more effective in business terms for Google to engage with Chinese censors in reshaping Google News and YouTube to please them. Since Google already censors chinese search results, perhaps that won't be too long in coming. How the company would square that with its "don't be evil" motto is hard to imagine.

So, lots of new Music work coming in, lots of new kit to wire up, I bit the bullet and got stuck in.

Due to technical difficulties that I won't bore you with, it took a week to get my computer setup working again.

Something weird happened in that time... I actually enjoyed not being at the end of an email or skype summons. life slowed down. I read a book.

Plugged the bastid back in and all hell breaks loose. Here is a SMALL selection from my inbox...

+ Where's that track??
+ Can you Photoshop this, for YESTERDAY?
+ Our emails broken, can you come & fix it?
+ Can you update our homepage?
+ Where is that Podcast?

for the first time in a long while I am slagging off technology - roll on christmas!