Aloha

Anuradha Krishnamurthy
Publishing date: March 25, 2004

Royal Philips Electronics, Sony and display start-up E Ink announced on Wednesday that Sony would release an e-book in Japan in late April that uses a display based on E Ink's electronic-ink technology. The display aims to offer a paper-like reading experience with color contrast identical to newsprint. It is reflective and can be read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being seen from virtually any angle. Sony's e-Book reader LIBRIe' allows users to download published content, such as books or comic strips from the Internet, and enjoy it anywhere at any time. LIBRIe' can store up to 500 downloaded books. "

04.03.07 hp blog research

• Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious, Wired News, Amit Asaravala, March 5, 2004, Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62537,00.html

  The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs.

  Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- and they often do so without attribution.

  These findings are important to sociologists who are interested in learning how ideas grow from isolated topics into full-blown epidemics that "infect" large populations. Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group.

• tools sited in the article
  • blog epidemic analyzer - hp labs
  • blogpulse - intelliseek.
• resources
  • hp information dymamics lab blog project - Memes, Blogs, and iRank, Supplement for Implicit Structure and Dynamics of Blogspace.
  • hp information dynamics lab - the main research focus of the information dynamics laboratory is on the relation between the local actions and the global behavior of large distributed systems. Areas that we explore are distributed knowledge, ` aspects of bioinformatics, social organizations, and novel economic mechanisms.
    • "Privacy and Deviance, Bernardo A. Huberman, Eytan Adar and Leslie Fine
    • How to search a social network, Lada A. Adamic and Eytan Adar
    • Implicit Structure and the Dynamics of Blogspace, Eytan Adar, Li Zhang, Lada A. Adamic, and Rajan M. Lukose
    • Finding Communities in Linear Time, Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman
    • Conversational Structure in Email and Face-to-face Communication, Christoph H. Loch, Joshua R. Tyler, and Rajan Lukose
  • intelliseek - delivers actionable business intelligence solutions that drive ROI and decision-making for progressive marketers, researchers and government professionals. e.g. Power Shift: How the Internet Gives Consumers the Upper Hand - and What Proactive Automakers Can Do About It examines the reach of consumer-to-consumer discussions about autos on the Internet and lays out a plan of action for auto firms, agencies and others interested in capturing, understanding and acting on this online "buzz."

"[A] British software firm -- StarBrite has created another 'iPod killer' that in most respects is identical to the iPod -- and costs only $20. " .. Leander Kahney, Wired News, March 8, 2004

"According to a study issued Sunday by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 53 million Americans have used the Internet to publish content. The study showed that Americans in large numbers are sharing files, pictures and posting content through online discussion groups and blogs... Blogging has received a lot of media focus, however according to the Pew study, it is not the most significant form of content creation. "

Pew Internet and American Life Project

"Following weeks of campaigning, the International Red Cross was finally granted permission by the US Government to visit the former Iraqi Dictator to give an assessment of his health and to check he is being held to standards agreed in the Geneva Convention.

"The organisation believed that the visit would be more of a formality and the intention was to make the visit more for the principle of the matter than due to genuine concern for Saddam Hussein�s well being. However, after inspecting the prisoner, the medical examiners determined that the captured dictator was actually a mannequin from a local department store."