Finally! When I was beginning to think and fear, for that matter 
, that Google will be the mastermind of all information around the globe, here comes a google-competitor. Cuil.com, pronounced cool , is a search engine that not only provides results faster than google, but organizes information upon relevancy. God, that is refreshing! Continue Reading →
I don’t know about you, but I have Ymess since 1998. So that makes approximately 10 years … OMG, until I wrote these words, I did not even realize so much time passed by …
NLP made me perceive the world with all senses opened and better prepared for the large amount of info I have to process. And to process wisely, I might add.
The next three days I’ll be again on a training session for NLP, I can’t wait to work on the new techniques. The very first sign that is obvious for me after taking those NLP trainings is the awareness I have for the sensorial perceptions in other people intends and forms of expression. Continue Reading →
I’ve chatted with a friend of mine about this (and also bragged to him that my blog is now linked by cnn on the article of cybercrime 
) and he gave my an interesting thought. The calls may be also categorized as of urgent, normal and low importance.
Word goes that cyber crime experts from around the world will meet in Brussels this week to discuss how governments should counter attacks aimed at crippling the Internet and hitting users with data loss, identity theft and fraud.
“The European Union’s anti-terrorism has voiced concerns about cyber attacks and said the block was working on new laws addressing the increasingly common phenomenon” CNN comments.
While in Bucharest, the NATO summit beginning this Wednesday will also address the same issue.
Cool! 
Image (c) abanet.org
Suppose I need to give you a phone call. But we have a very complex relationship – like we are friends, and we also go to the same 7 month training, and we work in the same business for competitors and, in particular, we try to build a project together. So when I call you, you couldn’t tell if it is a private problem, something about the courses we do, or about the project we work on. Maybe I just want to chat with you about the movie I just saw, or it is about important business. Continue Reading →
Well, after announcing the instant messaging service for Facebook users a few days ago, now this worldwide community website makes a new move on globalizing its messages into all possible languages on Earth by involving its users into translating the interface …
Aren’t we transforming ourselves into a folklore society … where everything has no particular author, just vast groups of people making the final message in a process of collective work? Yes, I think a new middle ages awaits us … Continue Reading →
Identity once again on my blog and at the O’Reilly ETech 2008 conference in San Diego. Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO at Sxip Identity gave a talk on personal identity in online medium for the Web 2.0.
Take a few minutes to see his brilliant presentation: Continue Reading →
ETech conference took place in Sun Diego three days (3 – 6 March). Hot topics and brightest brains in the online business gathered to discuss and brainstorm on emerging technologies. Continue Reading →
Here is Chris Anderson, Wired’s Editor in Chief, in a video about businesses and services becoming free over the internet. I do agree, things become free for the user, but they will most definitely stay payable for the entrepreneur. I mean, yeah, Google gives free services for the end-user… but google advertisement is paid by the ones that want to be advertised. Continue Reading →
Browse an interesting presentation about how spiders and servers and business people relate to your blog from the moment you posted a new entry.
As I’ve said earlier in my posts, this page will make history. Pretty soon we’ll experience new ways of interaction with mass-media. The name will change as well .
I was talking to a friend today about web crawlers and he told me that when google was indexing the server, all employees at his former work place were looking anxiously to huge raise in sales 
.
Everyone receives Google these days with lots and lots of love, but will there be a time, when things will be the other way around? When one or some very powerful spiders may be regarded as the sentinels in the Matrix? Is China in this situation already? Continue Reading →
I am goood! I am sooo goooood!
While I was having these thoughts on privacy matters (the last 4 posts on surveillance society), Europe was having a two day meeting for setting compulsory changes search engines need to apply in order to reach a normal standard of privacy
Read International Herald Tribune article on this matter.
Talking to some friends today about this issue, it hit me that there is a potential need for online “swiss banking accounts” for online processed personal data. You place the sensitive information in the black box, and the end-program that needs authentication takes from there the cryptic info, not the real data (real person identification).
Second life is about a virtual world. How about inventing a virtual Switzerland?
the saga continues
What do you think is the first thing I do when entering my blog’s admin panel? The very first thing is to go to the counterize section to see what IP’s have visited me, who is online now and what pages were most visited today… of course, I also get all sorts of statistics from google analytics. Continue Reading →
First of all, I have to say that I do not believe in the conspiracy theory. Anyone who has read Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum”, knows why.
Now this being said, today I will share my thoughts on the limitations of privacy policies through internet.
We all know what spam is, right? Someone has stolen your e-mail address (or you have given it to a certain company that Continue Reading →
Bill Gates speaking about the future of technology. Continue Reading →
Hurraaaaaaaaaaaay !!!!
Stephen Hawking will host his own TV show on Channel 4 about how the universe works. Well, more precisely, it will be about how different physicists believe or predict it works 
… Looking forward to finding the show on some torrent …
I have read today one of the most impressive article on universe and physics. I don’t recall having such a great intuition over the theory of everything and the superstrings as the one today. It’s really impressive to have such an all-of-a-sudden crisp-clear understanding… by just using a metaphor.
I would say that definitely black holes are ripples of the outer dimensions, but for light and gravity I would have to think through…
CNN has decided to open an I-Report hub in Second Life, encouraging residents of Second Life to share their own “SL I-Reports” about events occurring within the virtual world.
This I-Report hub includes a news desk where CNN producers will hold weekly editorial discussions, and an amphitheater for larger in-world events, such as training sessions and appearances by CNN anchors and correspondents.
CNN’s first in-world training session will be held Tuesday, November 13, at 5 p.m. ET at the I-Report Hub , that is, if I’m guessing correctly, on the 14th around 1 o’clock in the afternoon.
Not everyday we live to have this type of news. Japanese researchers at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan, the “Belle collaboration”, recently announced the discovery of an exotic new sub-atomic particle with non-zero electric charge. This particle Continue Reading →
On this site, you can tell every little nasty thing about your neighbors… and of course, you still have the advantage of anonymity. That’s nice. Bucharest isn’t yet covered, but trust me, once the word is spread, it will be full of red houses … Continue Reading →
So, as we’ve seen earlier this month, I have been baaged ;;) Today I’ve received the invitation to join and have a look at this tool.
Well, I like it 
. So far it is in the beta version, so I expect many improvements and tools to be developed until the final release. I like the fact that it is all modular and interactivity is taken to its extreme. I checked the source, it’s all JavaScript or so it seems… niiice job, guys.
Can hardly wait to see the release. I would add a more sense of the community, right now it’s a little hard to see what is happening in the community, unless you type search terms and find other people’s baagz.
Way to go! Nice job!
As Wired blog says here, the robots used in military actions sometimes do terrible mistakes and seem to have a life of their own.
The first European Machinima Festival took place this weekend in Leicester, UK.
Not very sure what you know about this form of animation films, I encountered the term machinima in 2005 at Linz Ars Electronica where there was a full seminar on this subject alone. Machinima, pronounced ma-shin-i-ma means making movies using video games, the word being an amalgamation of machine and cinema and it is a fusion of film-making and gaming. Continue Reading →
Developed by exalead.com team, baagz.com [currently in its beta form] aims to become a new form of social networking. Sharing multiple forms of content, not just a mere profile of oneself is the target for the baagz team.
Short dictionary – extract from the baagz brochure
baagz is the name of the service
a baag (plural baagz) is a shared interest
baagboyz and baaggirlz is what you expect, and they are all baagerz
to baag an information is to put the information into a baag
let’s bag it! is what a user say when finding a cool site
I am waiting to be accepted as a user (so far registration is only by means of invitation, so I have to wait for now) and dive into this new social networking ubercool site 
Just seen on Euronews a documentary on Second Life and its legal issues. Apparently, there are some lawsuits regarding the ownership of land and property in Second Life.
In May 2006, Marc Bragg has filed suit against Linden Lab for “a virtual land deal gone sour.” According to the press-release issued by Bragg, “The suit seeks financial damages in the thousands, in part for a breach of a virtual land auction contract and for violation of the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law. This suit is unique because the land doesn’t actually exist.” Technically, the land does exist – both as data, and as a user experience – but not as terra firma and he argues that when you mention the term “own” by no means can it be made to signify “licensed” or “rent”.
Property is an interesting concept if we relate it to virtuality. ownership is by no means related to physicality, that’s something we all agree (copyright on an idea is one very good example) and exchange is what gives value to the owned property.
I’ve tried Second Life just today and it seems addictive, but honestly, I would not spend a dollar on things that are a simulacrum of reality. I would most definitely spend money on new inventions, objects, be they as weird as they might be… It’s a brilliant idea for the Linden Lab, I cannot argue, but my take on this is a no.
And then again, in love and science, never say never 
The success of Second life (haven’t tried it yet – Ruxi, you should be ashamed of yourself) has taken industry leaders into creating avatars that can access all virtual worlds and use universal tools. Yesterday and today at Virtual Worlds Conference and Expo the top of this industry discuss the future of media and communication.
The challenge IBM and Linden Lab has put themselves to is Continue Reading →
Apparently Asia followed up Europe so that, for the moment, governments and companies can register interest in specific domain names, such as www.younameit.asia while the general public will get a chance to snap up their own .asia domain when the land rush starts in February 2008.
Can’t wait to get my www.europe.asia domain.
or 
www.europe-better-than.asia
Take a look at this Swiss tool for keeping track of user comments on different collaborative tools such as blogs, flickr, digg etc. -> www.cocomment.com
“coComment keeps track of all the online conversations you’re following in one convenient place, and informs you Continue Reading →
… and sometimes you might even get a Nobel prize for it.
Fathers of mp3 industry, France’s Albert Fert and German Peter Gruenberg win the Nobel prize in physics for independently discovering a physical effect in 1988 which has led to Continue Reading →
Such a nice robot, reminds me of when I was working on a project of artificial intelligence… pattern recognition (first project in university) and I thought that determining an object by its contour was such a simple thing …. yeeaaah right! discovered only a few hours later that humans are quite marvelous beings … and the most simple things we do, take such vast computation in computer realm .. Continue Reading →
How about that for protection!!!!
Love you guys! Please cut the crap and get me my account back, there’s noone to be protected from, except some nice friends of mine that have a nice server that sends the same 5MB tiff file over and over again. Pleeeeaseee let me send e-mails… it’s times like now when I realize how internet addicted I am…
Niiice! Don’t you think?
Don’t know if you’re familiar with the John Maeda’s laws of simplicity, but www.phillipsdepury.com is sooooo illustrating these laws.
for those of you who already have a phd in information systems, computing or maths, this job might be of great interest
deadline October 4th.
“This is an exciting opportunity to join the Multimedia Group as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the EPSRC MC² (MPEG-7 Content Modelling Communities) project. MC² aims to develop a software platform for enabling user communities, such as those found on YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us and Wikipedia, to create multimedia metadata collaboratively. The successful applicant will work with Dr Harry Agius (the Principal Investigator), Professor Marios Angelides (the Co-Investigator) and Cambridge Imaging Systems (the project partner).
Applicants must hold a PhD in a relevant discipline, have experience with software development and research methods, and be competent with XML (prior experience with MPEG-7 is not necessary since it is XML based). Good research writing and oral presentation skills are also expected.
Situated in Brunel University’s leafy suburban campus in west London, the School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics is made up of over 100 academic staff and was awarded a 5 in the last RAE for the ‘international standing’ of its research, making it an advantageous environment for researchers.”
Full description here
As if I sensed something in the dusty air of Bucharest , more precisely of Apple’s update of iPod’s screen with the one of the most praised iPhone ;;) … I just bought myself a little and very precious sidebed lamp for late at night novels and art/psychology/computer reading.
The one and only Vico Magistretti‘s 1965 revival of white DALU lamp ….
Great design asks for great design in return , or so they say
BBC again with a very good interview with Vinton Cerf Continue Reading →
Good news that AT&T is no longer the sole operator of iPhone. As George Hotz shows on his blog on thursday, there are 10 steps to break in …
BBC reads that “Before George Hotz’s announcement on his blog, the iPhone was made to work on overseas networks using another method, which involves copying information from the Sim (Subscriber Identity Module) card.
However, special equipment was needed and the actual phone was not unlocked, with each Sim card having to be reprogrammed for use on a particular iPhone.”
George, do us all a good favor and unlock it for the European market… we love iPhone just as well !!
Interesting material invented by Steven Kistler in 1930s over a bet … This material now revived by NASA appears to be the material for the future. Prevents pollution, insulates from extreme temperature … global warming, watch out!
I’ve just read on CNN.com that Google has acquired a stake in Chinese community Web site Tianya.cn.
What seems interesting is that percentages are subject of speculations .. from under 10 to as high as 60. Continue Reading →
Casey Reas and Ben Fry will release a book on their renewed program Processing at MIT Press this September. I have worked a little bit with Processing, it is really fascinating, point is Romania has no market for it. Or maybe I just haven’t got the insight so far.
The book will turn interesting to designers and developers, I’d like to have one copy when it’s released.
a little old, but good to be kept on file
