Google Contacts is a sweet addon for Thunderbird if you use both gmail.com and the Firefox e-mail client.

AbsTracked tells us the news…Oh ALR, how I’ve missed you so. 

Filed under: Transportation

Production Fisker Karma gets revealed, shakes that sexy thang originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

On Tuesday Ning changed its long standing policy on allowing networks that show pornography and adult material. “Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight,” Ning CEO Gina Bianchini said, and “our ad partners aren’t big fans of the adult networks.”

As far as I can tell, at this time Ning has only one advertising partner - Google. Google won’t put adsense on sites that contain “Pornography, adult, or mature content,” so Ning was at risk of being banned by Google despite the fact that only a very small portion of the networks on Ning are adult oriented.

The problem is that it isn’t clear exactly what networks are being banned. In the blog post, Bianchini said that “adult social networks” are being discontinued. In response to inquiries by some network operators, Ning clarified their policy today in a new blog post. “As it relates to the Ning Platform, adult networks include, but aren’t limited to pornography and depictions of sexual acts,” Bianchini says.

Examples of adult content, says Bianchini, include Pornography or images of sexual acts, Nudity intended to sexually arouse the viewer, Graphic photos or videos and Fetishes.

Ah but wait. Examples of sites that are outside of the ban include Networks for heterosexual, gay, lesbian or transgender individuals, Nudist networks, Networks for educational, medical, or clinical purposes that contain nudity, Breast Feeding networks, Art containing some nudity, Travel networks that include content on nude beaches and Networks promoting safe sex.

Ok, so nudist networks and pictures of lactating breasts are fine (as long as it isn’t a fetish). But basic nudity for erotic purposes isn’t. I guess I understand where the line is, but Google’s definition is much more subjective and general (Pornography, adult, or mature content). Is a transgender social network mature content? seems like it is to me.

And how does violence fit in to all of this? Is there any amount of human carnage that would quality as adult content?

Good luck with this, Ning. Perhaps that’s why Google turned YouTube PG.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

The Smoking Gun:
Dubya's New Digs  —  First couple drops $2.07 million on 1.13 acre Dallas spread  —  This is the Texas home that George W. Bush has purchased for his fast-approaching post-White House years.  The home, on a Dallas cul-de-sac, sits on 1.13 acres and offers 8501 square feet of living space, according to city appraisal records.

For past two years, I have been pointing towards a subtle but important shift that has started to take place - the globalization of the Internet. Thanks to a broadband boom in Europe, Asia and in new emerging economies such as Brazil and China, we are seeing the Internet traffic shift away from its historic US centricity. The trend was confirmed by our friends at Telegeography who have put together a clever Internet Map of the world.

They point out that in 1999, 91 percent of Asia and 70 percent of African Internet capacity connected to the US. In 2008, only 54 percent of Asian countries’ international Internet capacity connects to the US, while only 6 percent of African countries bandwidth connects to the US, as Europe has become more of an Internet hub for Africa. According to their study, the International Internet capacity grew at a compounded annual rate of 57 percent between 2002 and 2008. In 2008, international Internet bandwidth rose 62 percent over 2007 as backbone operators continued to upgrade their networks to meet rising traffic requirements.

Telegeography says the most annual growth was on optical cables that connected to Latin America and South Asia, which increased 119 percent and 112 percent, respectively, between 2007 and 2008. “The declining share of traffic routed via the U.S. actually reflects a healthy trend in the development of the global Internet,” said TeleGeography Research Director, Alan Mauldin.

My long standing belief is that today’s network patters are like trade route patters of the Industrial age, and mirror the economic shifts in our societies.

• Can optic cables predict economic shifts?
• CanBroadband Predict Economic Shifts.

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Alexander Burns / The Politico:
Alito ribs Biden for plagiarism  —  At a gala dinner hosted by the American Spectator Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. cracked wise at Vice President-elect Joe Biden's expense, raising the Delaware senator's past brushes with academic dishonesty to the delight of his conservative audience.

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Intel shares its internal netbook and MID definitions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.