The abundance of pop culture out there means that things are going to slip by, especially when they’re targeted to a different demographic. Which is why I feel like I’ve seen a large number of comments recently from people who have no clue who Justin Bieber is. (It’s kind of reminiscent of when everyone was confused by that Fred kid, including the fact that they even look a little bit alike.)

I wouldn’t argue that being familiar with the Canadian-born pop star/teen idol is essential for complete pop culture awareness, but for those interested in what the kids are into these days, here are some things you need to know about Justin Bieber if you are over the age of 21.

He’s from Stratford in Ontario, Canada

The reason this is worth noting is because that is far far away from the hustle and bustle of the American music industry. It’s also far away from some of Bieber’s friends and family, which is how Bieber got his start on YouTube: According to Reuters, Bieber’s mother first started uploading clips of him performing in 2007 (at the age of 13) because the video files were too big to email to friends and family. Once he built a following, he was discovered by manager Scooter Braun — a story that echoes Justin Timberlake’s discovery of Esmee Denters. Except that unlike Denters…

He’s gotten very successful very fast

Largely unknown until midway through 2009 to even the teen set, Bieber has exploded since even before the release of his first, My World, which has gone platinum and given Bieber performing opportunities ranging from It’s On With Alexa Chung to the White House. His YouTube channel has almost 150,000,000 million views, making his channel the #72 most viewed channel of all time, and the third most viewed in Canada. Why?

The kids frakking love him

I’m not just talking about this three-year-old girl (who, per the video description, “didn’t take a nap and [thus] was very emotional”). Despite claims that the under-18 set doesn’t use Twitter, Bieber has 1.4 million Twitter followers and is frequently a trending topic of discussion.

In fact he’s so popular that a riot, in which six people were injured, broke out at the Long Island Roosevelt Field Mall in November 2009 because he canceled a performance. (In an odd twist, record executive James A. Roppo was arrested on felony charges because he didn’t Twitter out a cancellation notice; he’s since plead not guilty.) Plus…

He generates interesting reactions from the rest of the web community

YouTube vloggers constantly invoke his name for views, including What the Buck’s Michael Buckley, who enlisted a Canadian correspondent to report on local feelings about the teen sensation.

And don’t even get comedian Aziz Ansari started about Bieber — or, to be specific, don’t get Ansari’s alter ego Raaaaaaaaaandy (first created for the film Funny People) started, as the stand-up comedian is convinced that Bieber’s latest hit, Baby, rips him off.

He sings like a girl

Listen to this before you argue with me, especially when you consider that in Baby, he’s pretty much singing the typical girl part in a hip-hop tune — it’s not hard to imagine Rihanna or Alicia Keys filling in for him. The only reason I deem this worthy of mentioning is that his career might not have much longevity when his voice breaks. I mean, he might end up sounding like this. But puberty is fickle.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): New Use For Web Stats: Finding Hot Markets, Offline

The Internet is huge but it's a hodgepodge of hundreds of thousands of smaller, private networks, connected through thousands of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and dozens of backbones operated by the large Telcos and service providers.

Moving data from one end of the Internet to the other can mean traveling across many different computers and different networks. Some of these computers and networks are old and inefficient while some are modern and very efficient.

They are all tied together into what we call the Internet, through a collection of standards. These standards determine how a packet of data can reach its destination, complete and undamaged.

Many large Internet companies own large chunks of the Internet through building their own data centers, networks, backbones, etc. This helps to keep their costs down.

Google is big...

Google is one of those companies that owns a large chunk of the Internet. It has more than 50 data centers around the world; it builds its own servers; it operates its own backbones that shuttle huge amounts of data across the world; it develops its own software for managing all of its data; it keeps banks of servers in the data centers of ISPs so that it can cache data closer to delivery; and more, much more.

How big is Google? asks Arbor Networks. It's a rhetorical question because Arbor knows, it sells network control and monitoring hardware used by the largest ISPs and corporations.

Arbor says that Google is very big:

I mean really big. If Google were an ISP, it would be the fastest growing and third largest global carrier. Only two other providers (both of whom carry significant volumes of Google transit) contribute more inter-domain traffic. But unlike most global carriers (i.e. the “tier1s”), Google’s backbone does not deliver traffic on behalf of millions of subscribers nor thousands of regional networks and large enterprises. Google’s infrastructure supports, well, only Google.

Based on data from 110 ISPs collected in the summer of 2009, Google was responsible for as much as 10% of all Internet traffic.

If a company wants to compete with Google on a large scale, the costs of shuttling data packets around, whether they be Twitter packets or video packets, starts becoming very important at these large scales.

Arbor says:

The competition between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other large content players has long since moved beyond just who has the better videos or search. The competition for Internet dominance is now as much about infrastructure — raw data center computing power and about how efficiently (i.e. quickly and cheaply) you can deliver content to the consumer.

And that's why Google has focused on building the most efficient, lowest cost to operate, private Internet. This infrastructure is key to Google, and it's key to understanding Google.

The cost of aluminum...

Google will locate its massive data centers where electricity costs are low, such as where there is hydro-electric power. There's a shortcut to finding these locations, look for places where there are aluminum smelters -- these use huge amounts of electricity.

[Back in 2005 I was tipped off by a source that Google was looking at places for new data centers, related to aluminum smelters. But I was unable to write about it directly. I put the scoop in the form of a cryptic sentence and called it a "Crypto-Scoop."

GOOG is prophetic, rather than superstitious,
about its interest in places of power,
associated with the 13th building block of the Original Design.

(Aluminum is the 13th element in the periodic table - a fundamental building block of the Universe.) I have no idea if anyone worked it out :)]

Power and computing costs...

Google knew back then that electric power costs would be important in determining the cost of data centers. Today, it is high on the list of priorities for all data centers. That's also why it has been investing in power generating technologies, such as wind, sun, and geothermal.

It has a key goal of generating electric power from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal-generated electric power. That would be an incredible achievement.

Always lower costs...

Google always focuses on finding the lowest costs even though it can easily afford to pay more. Google builds its own servers, made from off-the-shelf low cost components, with cheap hard drives. It has developed its own software that deals with component failure and moves work loads across huge numbers of servers. Managing failure is built into Google's data center operating systems.

It has bought up lots of "dark fiber," at a very low cost. This is optical fiber that hasn't yet been 'lit' but it is in the ground, in place, ready to be hooked up.

Because Google has so much fiber, it operates one of the largest backbones in the world. It also means that it can trade bandwidth with others.

Large Telcos and ISPs have peering arrangements with each other. This means that if they have the capacity, they will carry extra traffic for each other. These peering arrangements mean that Google's bandwidth bill for all that YouTube video is zero.

It's difficult to believe, but your bandwidth bill to watch a YouTube video is more than Google's. Because of bartering through peering agreements, its only cost is in maintaining its own networks and backbones.

Skipping the last mile...

Google still needs ISPs and Telcos for the last mile, to deliver its various services and products, to the end user/consumer. But it has been experimenting with going direct.

It has experimented with free municipal Wi-Fi, and more recently, it is setting up high speed bandwidth to communities with 500,000 people or less.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Google wants to become an ISP or a Telco. It is not a service organization and it doesn't want that headache, but it does want to spur ISPs and Telcos to develop high-speed data connections, so that it can deliver future products and services that require high speed data.

The Internet is becoming ever more Google's...

Googles growth means that it is building a much faster, and much more power efficient, and much greener Internet. And through peering agreements, it is carrying much more than just Google traffic, it is quickly, and quietly becoming an important carrier for all Internet traffic.

There are huge indirect benefits from Google's work that make the Internet a better service for every Internet user.

Essential facility...

What will this lead to? It's going to lead to regulatory scrutiny because Google will be increasingly seen as an 'essential facility' vital for the economies of regions, nations, and entire trading blocs.

Increased scrutiny by governments, and regulatory bodies, will make it more difficult for Google to execute on its business strategies. Combined with the increased scrutiny of Google's acquisitions by the Federal Trade Commission, Google's future ambitions will become ever more restricted.

Google sees the writing on the wall. It has boosted how much it spends on lobbying in Washington. [Antitrust Heat -- Google Spends Millions To Influence Washington - SVW]

A layer cake business...

Google might decide that its value lies in its incredibly efficient infrastructure, which is far more efficient and lower cost than the Internet as a whole.

Once you have the lowest cost infrastructure, you can layer and scale other business services on top. Such as payment systems, basic voice and data services, security systems, and commerce platforms (advertising).

Google might decide it doesn't need to own a Facebook, Twitter a Yahoo, or an Amazon -- when it can host all the data packets. It can carry and trace a data packet from source to destination and back again -- it can mine all that transactional data. That's extremely valuable.

It's a little known fact that Google keeps all of its data, all transactional data. It erases part of the identifiable meta data, but that can be reconstructed. [Google Keeps Your Data Forever - Unlocking The Future Transparency Of Your Past - SVW]

That transactional data is incredibly valuable, and even though we can't unlock it to its fullest value today, Google is working on it.

No umbrella...

By being able to build the most efficient, private Internet, Google makes it extremely difficult for any competitor to challenge it. There is no 'price umbrella' that competitors can use.

For example, there used to be lots of mainframe computer companies because IBM, the largest mainframe computer maker, used to charge very high prices. There was a substantial price umbrella set by IBM that sheltered competitors, and allowed them to sell IBM compatible mainframes and still make a good living.

You can see similar price umbrellas in other business sectors.

Google has made sure that by building the most efficient, lowest cost infrastructure, there is no price umbrella that could be exploited by competitors. It's more like a manhole cover, try to get under it, and you fall into a hole...

This strategy means that Google leaves money on the table, it could make more money over the short-term by creating a price umbrella. Instead, it has chosen a long term business strategy which doesn't give competitors any toehold, let alone an umbrella.

Its stock ownership is set up so that founder's stock has ten times the voting rights of public shares, this allows it to avoid shareholder pressure to pursue short-term business goals.

This all adds up to make Google into a truly formidable force, and one that continually amasses greater powers and influence. 'Do no evil' is the very least it can do.

• "Because real boxers don't hit like this [flails arms exasperatingly]"
• "It's also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters, platformers, well, anything that doesn't involve catching a big red ball."
• "C'mon, who wants to pretend their hand is a gun. What is this, third grade? Pew, pew, pew."

Continue reading PlayStation Move ad pulls no motion-controlled punches against Wii, Project Natal

PlayStation Move ad pulls no motion-controlled punches against Wii, Project Natal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

YouTube released a mind-boggling statistic today – users are now uploading 24 hours worth of video every minute.

This is up 20% from May of last year, when YouTube announced they were getting 20 hours of video uploaded every minute.

adidas Originals vient de mettre à disposition sur sa chaine Youtube son nouveau spot. C'est une suite logique de "House Party" mais s’intéresse cette année à « la rue, berceau de l’originalité ». Elle rassemble, dans un même quartier, un mélange éclectique de personnalités issues de la musique, de la mode et du sport, chacune d’elles possédant son propre sens de l’originalité et sa vision personnelle de la marque adidas originals.

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La bande-son est la chanson « Why can’t there be love » de Dee Edwards remixée par Pilooski, a été réalisée par Nima Nourizadeh.

Plus d'infos sur http://www.adidas.com/originals et sur Facebook http://www.facebook.com/adidasoriginals

• "Because real boxers don't hit like this [flails arms exasperatingly]"
• "It's also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters, platformers, well, anything that doesn't involve catching a big red ball."
• "C'mon, who wants to pretend their hand is a gun. What is this, third grade? Pew, pew, pew."

C’est juste énorme ! L’année dernière en mai, YouTube avait annoncé que l’équivalent de 20 heures de vidéo était téléchargées à la minute et aujourd’hui à la même période puisque nous sommes en mai, il nous annonce sans vraiment de surprise que c’est 24 heures de vidéo de téléchargées par minutes dans le même [...] Author: Jean-Marie Gall | Copyright All Rights Reserved YouTube annonce que 24h de...

Source : Jean-Marie Gall.com (s'abonner)

Image: S2-P2-P6, by sculptor Roxy Paine.

About a year ago I was wandering around Maker Faire Bay Area thinking about polymerization. Collin had recently posted his now-world-famous cymatics video, and I was standing around talking to the TAP plastics folks about whether it might be possible to "freeze" cymatic forms by applying the sound waves to some kind of polymer resin that could then be solidifed, almost instantaneously, by adding a drop or two of catalyst. I had, you will not be surprised to learn, been drinking heroic amounts of coffee.

But in the subsequent process of researching fast polymerization reactions, I came across an intriguing term: Explosive polymerization. Visions of exploding goo bombs pushed schemes for freezing cymatics to the back-burner, and I started Googling around excitedly, seeking the inevitable YouTube video that would show me exactly what an "explosive polymerization" looked like, and if it was as exciting as it sounded.

As far as I can tell, they're aren't any.

Moreover, textual information in the tubes is scanty. The phrase appears in the abstracts of a few articles in polymer science journals, and in safety warnings associated with certain chemicals that are prone to explosively polymerize and with those that are prone to initiate the process. (Including some safety nightmares that are in both categories.) Inevitably it's considered as, you know, a bad thing. An uncontrolled, useless, and probably dangerous process to be avoided if at all possible.

And I'm sure that's all true. But it sounds really neat. And I want to see it.

I mean, taking proper precautions, I can set off a firecracker or other small conventional explosive, film it, show it off to others, and generally have a good time learning something about the natural world. And even though I've got a graduate degree in organic chemistry, I know comparatively little about polymers, and I'm not about to start experimenting without advice from somebody who knows what from what-not.

So I'm crowd-sourcing the problem. Is there a specialist in the house who knows something about explosive polymerization? And if so, can you tell me: What is the polymerization analog of a small firecracker? Some kind of diminutive goo-bomb that will go off impressively but without injuring bystanders or spraying horrible toxins everywhere? I mean theoretically, of course. I can't promise to actually do anything unless I can satisfy myself it's really safe, but maybe somebody can point me in the right direction?

Lon S. Cohen is a freelance writer and is @obilon on Twitter. He’s also the Director of Communications at @ALSofGNY. This post was co-authored by Steve Cohen, who is the Founder of Baywood Consulting Group and the former CIO of M&T Bank. He can be contacted at baywoodconsultinggroup@gmail.com.

From felons on Facebook to tips through Twitter, social media is being used more and more by law enforcement agencies, and not just to fight Internet-related crimes. We’re talking about solving crimes that are happening on the street and in your community.

According to Lauri Stevens, founder of LAwS Communications and organizer of the SMILE (Social Media In Law Enforcement) Conference being held in Washington D.C. this April, adoption of social media is still in the “very, very, early stages,” but she sees it making an upward turn. “I expect 2010 will be a monumental year,” she said.

But many police departments that have embraced social media are still trying to figure it out.

“Most agencies … are not significantly proactive with keeping up with content and updates,” said Terry Halsch from CitizenObserver.com, developers of the tip411 system for police agencies. “There are some limitations because of uncertainty of how secure information is, how can it be efficiently maintained, [and] the risks and liabilities of entering the world of social media.”

Below are six different ways law enforcement is utilizing social media and real-time search to enhance tactics, disseminate public information, and ultimately prevent criminal activity.

A police blotter is the record of events at a police station. Traditionally, a desk sergeant kept a register of these events. Nowadays, Twitter feeds, blogs, YouTube, and Facebook Fan Pages are being used by captains and chiefs to put out the digital equivalent of the police blotter in real-time.

Publishing a register of crimes and arrests in an area has been an online activity for a while now, especially through local newspaper websites. But social media is allowing many police officers on the scene to report the publicly available details of a crime for themselves. Reporters are getting their facts directly from a stream of real time-data and blog posts coming from the department.

Individual cops aren’t about to turn into citizen journalists anytime soon, but the police are able, through social media and real-time updates, to provide essential information that the public and news gathering agencies need to know. Journalists today often use the web for their first line of research, and rely on web-based police reports for many of the details they need for a story.

“We don’t just release the police report; we write our own story and post it to our website,” said Mark Economou, the Public Information Manager for the Boca Raton Police Department in Boca Raton, Florida in a post on ConnectedCops.com. “Even more interesting, we are finding the media is just cutting and pasting our stories to their sites, both in television and print.”

The Boca Raton Police Department has developed their own branded web platform that they call Viper. Social media is a very important part of their strategy, and like anyone adopting social media into a plan, they use it to support and enhance the work they already do.

In the vein of an Old West “Wanted” poster, displayed in the most trafficked area of town, modern-day law enforcement agencies are posting descriptions of criminals on today’s most trafficked spots — namely the social web.

With millions of users, extraordinary reach, and the lightning-fast exchange of text, photos, and video, platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are ideal for getting the word out about wanted persons with up-to-the-minute updates.

The Boynton Beach Police Department is a good example. On their Facebook Fan Page, the department put up a post with the headline, “Police need help identifying motorcyclist who robbed man at ATM.” In the post there was a photo from the ATM machine of the crime in progress. The department also cross-posted the information to their Twitter page.

In the UK, the Leicestershire Constabulary is one of a number of police departments focusing on being hyper-local and involved with the community through social media. Their website has a section titled “Can you help?” which is formatted like a blog, and contains posts about ongoing criminal investigations, and a “Wanted Poster” and “Missing Persons” area with photos and requests for residents to respond with any leads they might have.

The stories are also fed to a Facebook Page that is very interactive and updated constantly. They also maintain a Twitter profile, a YouTube account, and the department offers the ability to subscribe to their news feed via RSS. It’s an impressive mixture of social media tools that seems to work fluidly and update automatically.

Tips from the community have been a time-honored way that citizens have worked with the public to fight crime.

Consulting companies are developing very sophisticated ways for the public and the police to interact online. The tip411 program developed by the CitizenObserver Corporation is marketed to law enforcement as a web-based notification toolset. Citizen participation has always been a big part of fighting crime, and the people at tip411 stress that social media “acts as a ‘force multiplier’ by empowering your community to get involved.”

“Anonymous text tip systems are gaining significant traction because they enable young people to provide information without fear of retribution, i.e. ‘Snitches get Snitches,’” said CitizenObserver’s Terry Halsch.

The program allows tipsters to send information anonymously through a variety of means including “anonymous web chat, text tips and secure social media publishing.” Filtered alerts can then be pushed out through a police department’s central location to other web mediums. Bundled with other offerings, tip411 can then be published with Google Maps to create a clickable, interactive crime “heat map” of sorts where others can click on links directly to add more information and tips based on location. This program is meant to encourage increased interaction between the police and the community through real-time web tools.

“It doesn’t matter to us where the information comes from,” said Detroit’s Chief of Police, Warren Evans, a tip411 user. “We just want the information so we can act on it. I want people to know that they can feel safe using this system to communicate with us directly.”

Social media advocates stress listening as a part of any brand’s online marketing strategy. Listening to the bad guys doing bad things has always been a part of police work. It’s important for police to search the real-time web to target particular keywords and phrases being passed around on social media. Use of social media monitoring has a strategic, tactical and operational application for law enforcement.

Boston Police Department Superintendent John Daly spoke about using Twitter search to monitor chatter around the Boston area in real-time. He’s very sensitive to the implications of engaging in this type of search, as many police departments are.

“We have to be very careful because there’s a Big Brother aspect to this,” Daly said.

He stressed that they were not looking at “everyday messages,” as he put it, but specific tweets that signaled something they should be looking into.

“But when people start saying, ‘What’s that smoke coming from the Hancock Tower?’ or ‘Why is everybody running around Copley Place –- is something going on?’ — if two or three things come in we look at patterns, trends, something maybe we should be paying attention [to]. So it’s sort of an early warning system.”

Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are popular with gang members, and police use this to their advantage. Law enforcement has been able to infiltrate street gangs by posing as fellow gang members online, making connections, and intercepting criminal communications as they happen. Information like photos, videos, and friend links help law enforcement understand the dynamics of gangs when investigating their activities.

“Investigators build phony profiles to ‘friend’ gang members either within YouTube, Facebook or Bebo, and then may migrate that friendship to another platform and gain trust and get their ‘friends’ to share useful information,” said SMILE conference organizer Lauri Stevens.

According to an article in 219magazine, police in Cincinnati used Facebook and MySpace to follow more than 20 members of a local gang, the “Northside Taliband.” The evidence they gathered helped law enforcement connect members to a multitude of crimes, including a possible homicide.

Other agencies have employed these tactics as well. The NYPD is using the Internet to monitor gang activity, as well, and in a story reported in the Daily News, cops said that gangs have been communicating on Twitter. They think that one Twitter exchange between gang members may even have resulted in the shooting of a youth. The police seek out code words and slang used by individual members to follow gang members online who are organizing illegal activities.

“It is another tool … just like old phone records,” a police source said in the article.

As we all know, Twitter has plenty of uses for individuals and companies. Law enforcement also uses the service to communicate with the public.

Stevens told us that she follows at least 700 law enforcement agencies worldwide on Twitter alone. Not all of them are active, but some have found unique ways to incorporate Twitter into their police tactics. “The LAPD used Twitter to monitor crowds during the Michael Jackson funeral,” for example, said Stevens, and the Boston Police have been using Twitter to alert followers of evolving situations in real time.

Sergeant Tim Burrows does media relations for the traffic services unit in the Toronto Police Service. Tim saw his traffic safety messaging hampered by the mainstream media’s editing time lines, so he started using Twitter to talk to the local media about ongoing situations and inform the public. He considers his tweets about traffic safety information a valuable public service.

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office took things a step further. When the police wanted to utilize social media they, like many agencies, felt that existing public sites were too unsecured and vulnerable for a system-wide roll out within the department. So inspired by Twitter, the department took things into their own hands.

“CyberVisor was my vision of Broward County Sheriff’s Office’s own controlled Twitter,” said Lynne Martzall, External Affairs Manager, who worked with webmaster Tony Petruzzi to create it.

Since it was rolled out, CyberVisor has been used to broadcast information about unfolding situations, such as crimes in progress, to put out information after a bank robbery and when the Sheriff’s Office was looking for an escaped convict. For now, the public can’t respond to CyberVisor — it’s broadcast only — but it has still be effective.

In one instance, they alerted followers to someone in South Broward County impersonating an officer. In another, they sent out a missing child alert from a local elementary school with a detailed description of the child’s physical appearance and where the child was last seen.

- The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
- How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data
- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
- 4 Ways the Entertainment Industry is Getting More Social
- How Musicians Are Using Social Media to Connect with Fans

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jodiecoston

Tags: BLOGS, facebook, law enforcement, police, social media, social networks, twitter, youtube

Google is working on Android-based set-top box software with Intel and Sony, the New York Times reports. It's the latest in Google's ongoing efforts to enter the TV industry.

Here's what we learn from Nick Bilton's article for the Times:

• Google is working on a platform called Google TV with Sony and Intel. 
• It's based on Google's Android OS, and will be open source.
• Users will be able to do Web stuff like search, plus watch Web video from sites like YouTube, and maybe Hulu.
• Google and Intel want to move into the TV business, where they have little presence. Sony wants to compete with Vizio on something other than price.
• Google wants software companies to write apps for Google TV, the same way they do for Android phones.
• Logitech is teaming up for peripherals, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.
• The companies are hiring for Android-related jobs.
• Google obviously wants to put ads on this system.
• Google has built a prototype set-top box, but the software might be built straight on to TV sets.
• Google TV will use a special version of Google's Chrome browser.
• Sony may develop a new brand for TVs running Google TV.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• Google’s Buzz Launch Was "Irresponsible," Says FTC Commissioner
• Google's Disruptive Vision For The Mobile Industry Is One Step Closer To Reality
• HTC, Not Google, Is The Biggest Nexus One Loser So Far

Twitter a dévoilé le service @anywhere, permettant à des sites Internet tiers d'intégrer un fil Twitter et donc d'offrir aux internautes un accès à leurs tweets sans se connecter à la plate-forme de micro-blogging. Pour l'heure, les partenaires sont surtout de grandes firmes américaines (The New York Times, Yahoo, Amazon ou YouTube). Un service qui devrait permettre d'élargir l'influence de...

Source : Informaticien.be (s'abonner)

Explorer : Informatique

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Next Big Sound

Quick Pitch: Next Big Sound is a tool that gauges the popularity of bands and artists via fan activity on a variety of social networking sites.

Genius Idea: As the music industry and the online world become more and more enmeshed, tracking band popularity via album sales — and even digital downloads (Hello, piracy!) — seems rather arcane. Just because a band isn’t moving a ton of CDs at any given time doesn’t make it less buzzworthy — especially as services like Pandora and Spotify continue to take off.

That’s where Next Big Sound comes in. The website is basically a tool for fans, artists, music industry professionals and journalists to track the popularity of an artist across 16 sites: Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, iLike, Wikipedia, Soundcloud, Reverb Nation, Pure Volume, OurStage, Vimeo, Bebo, Amie Street, Jam Legend and Virb. Fan interaction counts as plays, fans, views, likes, downloads and comments — depending on the site.

As of right now, the site functions like a wiki; you can add bands that have not yet been included (I added Everyone Was in the French Resistance… Now!). Currently, there are 699,328 artist profiles.

We tested out the service with YouTube darlings OK Go, banking on the fact that the social media space has been buzzing about them as of late.

As you can see, there’s a pretty visible spike in online activity around March 1, when OK Go’s new video premiered.

You can also compare bands to see who’s getting the most buzz. This could be a great tool for determining the breakout band during a festival like SXSW — or for bitter, insecure musicians to employ when their rivals hit the big-time. We tried it here with OK Go and smaller (yet perhaps more rad) band Surfer Blood.

Surfer Blood’s social media cache isn’t quite as big as OK Go’s, but there’s a visible spike in recent activity, which makes sense considering the band is playing SXSW today.

Next Big Sound makes it pretty easy for you to get in on the action — as least as a fan, I’m not in a band, so I haven’t tried out the “verify your band’s account” feature — you can star your favorite bands and have updates on their stats sent your inbox at whatever time you choose (either daily or weekly).

Right now, the site is collecting data on media mentions of SXSW bands to determine which are getting the most attention — it even has as online playlist of hot bands. This data is sure to be a godsend to music journalists, concert venues and labels following the fest, which is considered one of the top arenas for breakout bands to make their mark.

We’re down with Next Big Sound — as both a tool and toy for musicians and music enthusiasts. It’s cool to see a company change how it thinks about the music industry, which seems to be more in flux every day.

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: bizsparks, facebook, MARKETING, music, myspace, social media, twitter, youtube

The Discovery show "How it's Made" episode 14x09 just aired and one of the four 5-minute segments in that particular episode showed how headphones are made- more specifically the AKG K702. Check out the YouTube video to see the clip.

Filed under: Truck, Etc., Safety, Videos, Work

Click above to watch the video after the jump

Continue reading Video: This truck driver has got something on his nose...

Video: This truck driver has got something on his nose... originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A Saudi man who was arrested in January on charges of homosexuality, a “general security” offence, and impersonation of a police officer has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes, plus a fine of 5,000 rials (US $1,333) and a year in prison.

Authorities say their attention was drawn to his behaviour after a video he made was circulated locally via SMS, and later uploaded to YouTube. In the lighthearted video, the man is in a car, dressed as a Saudi police officer. He is seen dancing to club music, rubbing his chest, and flirting with the man holding the camera.

The video has since been blocked in Saudi Arabia.

Comments on the video and reactions to the punishment have been spreading throughout the blogosphere.

Saudi blogger Qusay, on the English version of his blog writes:

Most people have now seen the video or read the news of the guy dressed in an officer’s uniform and acting “homosexual” whatever that may be.
Now I am not a gay rights advocate, but I see no basis for charging him with a criminal offence…

He goes on to mention a different video he has viewed on YouTube which depicts Saudi men showering a dancer with money, which would also be forbidden behaviour. He points out that certain minorities are targeted over others, as well as commenting on the futility of policing the internet, stating:

What I want to say here... if they are arresting people for what they do on YouTube, they should not stop on those that they want, or do not conform to their standards, but go on a spree and arrest those that do everything illegal... good luck with that

Saudi blogger Majid mentions on his blog that when he viewed the video he thought it was funny- and indeed in many people's opinion it is a rather humorous and lighthearted clip, as some of the comments left on YouTube will highlight.

The maximum theoretical punishment for homosexual acts in Saudi Arabia is death. As such, sometimes the accused bring up certain mitigating factors. Here, some sources [AR] have stated that the man's family have claimed he is suffering from a hormone deficiency, others such as the Arab News article covering the story that the man has mental problems:

One newspaper interviewed the man’s father, who claims his son is mentally unstable and was seduced by his friend to perform for the camera.

Majid concurs, stating:

I see most homosexual acts in Saudi are all “mentally unstable”

-but here it is not because he condemns homosexuality, but because to behave in a homosexual manner is to invite trouble in Saudi Arabia. He says:

…the thing that is sad, no right what so ever will be considered for the Homosexual… What is even sadder is the fact the Homosexual is dealt with as sick people in the media and the society. if they are sick why put them in Jail where the WILL be abused further put them in a hospital.
drug addicts go to hospitals, Homosexual go to jail to be further abused.

Egyptian blogger Zenobia writes a post with the title incorporating a cynical “Why are you so shocked!!??“, and wonders:

But I will speak or rather wonder why a gay man who lives in a country like Saudi Arabia post a suggestive video online like that on YouTube !!??
I just want to understand what they were thinking when they uploaded this video !!?? Did they believe that this vice supervision authority or whatever is called will let them go !!??

However, the video, of course, may not have been uploaded by the man himself. As Majid points out in his piece, it is more likely uploaded through malice by someone else, given that the authorities' reactions and subsequent punishments are so predictable.

Sadly, equally as predictable are the knee-jerk reactions of certain Western blogospheres, who are often quick to condemn a whole people for the actions of their leaders (whilst simultaneously forgetting the errors of their own governments).

A commenter on Towleroad's post regarding this matter, states:

Every time this happens there's one of several predictable reactions from the gay peanut gallery here in America:
(1) Go back to your Middle Eastern, African, or Asian “hellhole”
(2) Cut off all foreign aide to these “barbaric” Middle Eastern, African, or Asian countries
(3) Cut off diplomatic contact with these “sub-human” Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries
(4) And in some extreme cases, there's even a suggestion that we should resort to military action.

The next time a Republican named Schultz, Kruger, or Metzger comes out in favor of criminalizing homosexuality, I want to see our activist friends demand that we lob a few bombs at Munich. Or suggest that we deport all German Americans to their backward, wretched homeland. I would really like to see that. Nobody's saying what's happening in Saudi Arabia is acceptable. What angers me isn't the anger itself. It is the blatant double standard that treats some human rights “offenders” as individuals and others as mindless automatons. You want to wage holy war on a billion Muslims over the bad behavior of the Saudi regime?

BarrioSquare, a FourSquare application for the Nokia N900, left private testing on Monday and is now available at the N900’s App Manager. You may have to enable the Extras-Devel repository. This is great news because now more Nokia N900 users can start using this app. Watch my quick overview of the app.

Checking in on Foursquare everywhere we go

You can also watch this video in HD on Youtube. Subscribe to the channel to preview the latest videos before they get published on the blog.

I like this application on the Nokia N900 because it helps me find the places nearby to check-in, instead of manually looking for them through the mobile Foursquare website. My only complaint so far about BarrioSquare is that lists sometimes scroll too fast. A workaround is to drag your finger diagonally instead of up and and down.

Update: Chris, the guy behind Barriosquare, answered some questions I sent him shortly after the release.

What triggered the decision to finally put BarrioSquare in the Maemo repository?

I figure it was better to get the app out to the general public sooner, rather than later, and given the entire uncertainty of ovi store publishing (dependency issues with python-qt4) I figure might as well just get it out there now that it is in a fully functional state.

Any features to look out for in upcoming releases?

• Ability to search for friends
• Ability to see nearby tips
• Ability to get a “popup” alert whenever friends check into a venue nearby
• Venue (and nearby) specials

What other apps do u have planned for Maemo?

• Google Maps type app using Google Maps flash API, PyQt-Webkit
• Maybe a gowalla app?
• Also building a reusable UI toolkit library to speed up application development

• Watch Out for BarrioSquare – A Foursquare App for Nokia N900
• TuneWiki SMP Now Available for Nokia N900 With Awesome Internet Radio
• Learn Something New with WikiHow for Nokia N900
• App Review: 2G/3G Mode Selection Applet for Nokia N900

Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Videos, Scion

Continue reading Video: Tanner Foust drifts Mulholland Drive in his 600-horsepower Scion tC

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YouTube’s users are uploading 24 hours of video every minute, the site’s director of product management Hunter Walk just announced. From Walks’s blog post:

YouTube’s users were uploading 20 hours of video per minute about ten months ago, the site announced last May, after reaching 15 hours of video in January 2009. In early 2007, YouTube was clocking six hours of footage every minute.

YouTube has been stepping up its efforts to monetize its vast amount of content; the site announced yesterday that it was opening up display ad overlays to everyone, which should lead to many more advertisers embracing the format.

Related content on GigaOm Pro: Not Your Grandfather’s Streaming Video Business (subscription required)

YouTube has just announced that it has surpassed yet another milestone, and this one’s a doozy: 24 hours of video is now uploaded to the social video site every sixty seconds. Every second you are browsing YouTube, a full 24 minutes of video is uploaded to the site.

On May 20th, 2009, YouTube announced that its users were uploading 20 hours of video per minute. That means in a 10 month time-frame, YouTube uploading has increased by over 17%. The feat’s incredibly impressive by almost any standard. More than two million hours of video (or 34,560 hours) is now uploaded onto YouTube per day.

The Google-owned video site even provided a graph depicting its growth:

Around April or May 2008, users were “only” uploading 12 hours a video per minute. In under two years, YouTube has doubled that influx of content. There’s no sign of it stopping

Tags: ONLINE VIDEO, video, youtube