Wikipedia Plans 24-Hour Blackout to Protest U.S. Piracy Law

Never mind taking over Wall Street - how about shutting down one of the most used resources on the web.That's what Wikipedia plans to to due in protest of the Stop Online Privacy Act.
Just this weekend, new tweeter, Rupert Murdoch attacked President Obama (when the White House expressed concerns about SOPA) and Google for profiting from piracy This fight will pit film studios/media companies/music studios against technology giants like Google/Facebook/Wikipedia.

Read More: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/17/bloomberg_articlesLXXMTT6S972A01-LXXTS.DTL

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where users contribute and edit entries, will shut the English version of its website for 24 hours tomorrow to oppose proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation.

The move is a protest against pending legislation including the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, bill, according to a statement by Wikimedia Foundation Inc., the non-profit organization that operates the encyclopedia

"If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States," Wikimedia said in the statement.

World Bank and Google announce Map Maker collaboration

This project will prove to be a critical component in providing aid during disasters in developing countries. By leveraging Google's map platform the World Bank and relief organizations will be able to pool their data/research to more effectively respond to disasters.
While some organizations see the benefit in leveraging what already exists - others can't resist the urge to try their hand at reinventing the wheel. The Moscow government is doing just that. They have decided to develop their electronic map service, which will be used instead of Google maps or Yandex. So far, 20 billion roubles have been spent in what officials claim will be a system that provides tighter integration into the local infrastructure. The site will be up in a month or so at atlas.mos.ru



Read More:  http://www.sofiaecho.com/2012/01/17/1746570_world-bank-and-google-announce-map-maker-collaboration
The World Bank and Google announced on January 16 2012 an agreement aimed at improving the ability of developing countries to access a web-based community mapping tool and data to help better monitor public services, and improve disaster and humanitarian response efforts.
Under the agreement, Google will provide the World Bank and its partner organizations - including governments and UN agencies - with access to Google Map Maker underlying geospatial data that includes detailed maps of more than 150 countries.

Apple Announces January 19 “Education Event” in New York

From AllThingsD - Kafka 
Apple is ready to take on text books in iTunes -- now your children may really need an iPad of their own. Hopefully Apple will unveil a $299 version of the iPad.

Read More http://allthingsd.com/20120111/apple-announces-january-19-education-event-in-new-york/
Sources close to the company tell AllThingsD that the event will involve an initiative related to iBooks in education, presumably with some sort of tie-in to iTunes U.
Details beyond that are slim, though we’re told that this is an effort Jobs had been involved with in the months prior to his death. That could mean that it’s the textbooks-on-iPads plan that Jobs famously discussed with biographer Walter Isaacson. Fox’s Clayton Morris is hearing something similar.
The textbook market is certainly ripe for digital disruption, but the players that have emerged so far are pumping in a lot of cash with little to show for it.

Tablet as Time Machine: Old Magazine Issues Are Finding New Life on the iPad

Tablets have created new opportunities to generate revenue from old magazine content, which 5 years ago didn't exist. I led a number of magazine conversion projects, the first one was for American Heritage Magazine and the publisher had difficulty generating revenue from quality content.  The tablet has been a game changer for archived content. Tablet users will continue to want to find that old copy of Time for old times sake....!

Read more at www.theatlantic.com

At Hearst Magazines, 30 percent of the single copies sold on tablets are back issues.

And Hearst isn't the only company to be benefitting from the sale of archival issues. Over at Popular Science, AdWeek reports, back issues have accounted for a whopping 40 percent of the single digital copies the mag has sold this year. And at Popular Photography, the single-copy number jumps to 41 percent.

Those stats aren't just good news for a magazine industry that's always on the lookout for new ways to make money from old content

Facebook Worm Siphons 45,000 Accounts

With Facebook's popularity comes the unwanted attention of hackers. While this attack on affected a smaller number of the total Facebook user population -  it won't be the last attack. Social media users will need add some variety when creating social network accounts. And yes, your shouldn't use the same passwords for every account you have.

 Information Week

A server housing tens of thousands of stolen Facebook credentials was discovered--and it turns out the attackers employed a new version of an existing worm to pilfer the goods.

Researchers at Seculert say the attackers used a new variant of the Ramnit worm, which is best known as a financial malware family that steals FTP credentials and most recently morphed into a Zeus-like weapon that performs HTML code injection into browsers to steal online banking credentials. Ramnit represents some 17% of all new malware infections, according to Symantec data. "This is a variant which expands the financial-stealing of the previous version and now steals Facebook login credentials," said Aviv Raff, CTO at Seculert.

$299 iPad 2 seen shaking up tablet market

I sure hope that this is true. A $299 iPad would likely cause a shock wave throughout the tablet market. Consumers who were on the fence about spending $500 on an iPad would only have to justify spending $100 more than on a Kindle Fire. More than just grabbing a few customers from Amazon -- Apple will remain the tablet market leader -- that is unless Google unveils something special later this year.

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Read more at www.appleinsider.com

The new take from Taiwanese industry publication DigiTimes offered on Tuesday projects that Apple will keep its current iPad 2 available after it launches a third-generation iPad in the coming months. At most, it projects that the iPad 2 price will drop to $399 for the entry-level model, which would be $100 less than the current cheapest model, and would be a strategy similar to what Apple has employed with its iPhone lineup.

But Apple could be even more aggressive and price the iPad 2 even less, potentially at $349 or even as low as $299, the analysis concluded.

In Flop of H.P. TouchPad, an Object Lesson for the Tech Sector

 H.P.'s Touchpad will long be remembered as the most noticeable tablet to flop ever and not so surprisingly it relied on technology from Palm, a company which hadn't be an innovation leader in more than an decade. But even a poor performing tablet running an OS which developers weren't eager to build for could have succeeded -- for many non-technical consumers price is the important specification. Once the H.P. tablet fire-sale started -- it became apparent that consumers would purchase this "Flop Tablet" at $99. Within days the sold out tablets were appearing and being purchased on eBay for $199.



NYTimes
The TouchPad tablet from Hewlett-Packard was one of the most closely watched new gadgets of 2011 — and quickly turned out to be the year’s biggest flop.