Technology News

First YouTube Symphony Orchestra Picked

Source: All About Jazz
March 9, 2009

The auditions are over. The first YouTube Symphony Orchestra — selected by viewers of the Web site — will consist of more than 90 musicians from some 30 countries.

More than 3,000 videos were submitted by amateur and professional musicians from 70- plus countries. Musicians from professional orchestras including the London and San Francisco symphonies and the Berlin, Hong Kong and New York philharmonic orchestras picked 200 finalists.

The winners were then selected by voters on YouTube. “We are ...

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Desperately Trying to Quit Twitter

Source: All About Jazz
March 9, 2009

Twittering away ones own life Twitter is an online service you can use to send out short (140 characters or less) notes to the world via the Web, IM and text-messaging.

People use it to issue updates about what they're doing, eating, seeing, feeling, etc., to their family, friends and whoever else might be following them. ("Following" is Twitterspeak for signing up to receive somebody's “tweets," which is what the individual updates are, adorably, called. Tweets are a ...

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California Looks to Expand Data Breach Notification Law

Source: All About Jazz
March 9, 2009

California State Sen. Joe Simitian, the man responsible in large part for the nation's first data-breach notification law, has introduced new legislation that would require companies doing business in the the state to provide more information in their breach notification letters to consumers.

But Simitian (pictured at right) said getting consumers compensated for data breaches isn't high on the priority list for legislators.

Simitian, speaking at the Security Breach Notification symposium in Berkeley, said the new legislation would force organizations ...

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Cognitive Scientists Seek to Quantify Body Movement

Source: Michael Ricci
March 9, 2009

With a dozen high-def cameras and a couple of camcorders, plus pens, notebooks, sketch pads and laptops, more than 40 people spent three recent weeks in a black-box theater on the campus of UC San Diego documenting what was occurring there.

The object of their study was notoriously elusive: dance and the process of choreographic creation.

What happens, they wondered, when choreographer Wayne McGregor creates movement on (through? with?) the protean, hyper-articulated bodies of his Random Dance Company? How ...

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Cyber-Security Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover

Source: All About Jazz
March 7, 2009

Rod Beckstrm, the Department of Homeland Security's controversial cyber-security chief, has suddenly resigned amid allegations of power grabs and bureaucratic infighting.

Beckstrm — a management theorist, entrepreneur and author — was named last year to head up the new National Cybersecurity Center, or NCSC. To some, it seemed an odd choice since Beckstrm isn't an expert in security. But the hope was that he could use his management skills to help coordinate the nation's often-dysfunctional network defenses. Part of the ...

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Seattle Paper May Shift to Online Only

Source: PC Magazine
March 7, 2009

Hearst Corp, one of the largest U.S. publishers, has offered some of its Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) staff work in an online-only version of the paper, amidst speculation that the newspaper's print edition may be shutting down, according to media reports. Hearst Corp, one of the largest U.S. publishers, has offered some of its Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) staff work in an online-only version of the paper, amidst speculation that the newspaper's print edition may be shutting down, according to media reports. ...

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Twitter (Finally) Integrating Search Function

Source: PC Magazine
March 7, 2009

For all of that talk of Twitter being the next great search engine, the microblogging service has never exactly been aggressive about integrating the function. Users have traditionally had visit search.twitter.com in order to find anything on the site. That looks like it's about to change. Twitter is slowly rolling out its search function for some users. The move explains, in part, the mystery behind the site's shrinking logo -- Twitter needed a bit more real estate up top. To ...

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Jango Offers Indie Artists Pay for Airplay

Source: HypeBot
March 7, 2009

Payola. Pay-to play. Ugly terms from a different era or a new way to get exposure and monetize internet broadcasting? Jango, a US based music site with 6 million monthly listeners, has decided to find out. For $30 for 1,000 plays, indie artists get airplay to fans of setablished artists of their choice. If a band's fans say they remind them of U2; then that band can now target airplay to U2 fans only. A display ...

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