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Social Networks

Social Influence and the Wisdom of Crowd Effect 143

Posted by Soulskill from the none-of-us-are-as-dumb-as-all-of-us dept.
formfeed writes "A lot has been written lately on the crowd effect and the wisdom of crowds. But for those of us who are doubtful, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science has published a study showing how masses can become dumber: social influence. While previous studies show how groups of people can come up with remarkably accurate results, it seems 'even mild social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect in simple estimation tasks.' Social influence 'diminishes the diversity of the crowd without improvements of its collective error.' In short, crowd intelligence only works in cases where the opinion of others is hidden."
Advertising

Submission + - Facebook Sued For Using Children's Images In Ads (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Facebook is getting sued in New York over the use of kids' images in the social ads the site hosts. The problem is that the law says you need to get a parent's consent to do that. Facebook hasn't been asking. Oops.

Comment They are telephone manufacturers (Score 1) 451

by fidget42 (#35982030) Attached to: Figuring Out Why Android Wins On Phones, But Not Tablets
The Aandroid phone manufacturers were all cell phone manufacturers. Going to Android wasn't that much of a jump, they just changed the vendor of the OS. None of them have ever built a tablet before, or probable even dreamt of a tablet. They don't have any starting point so don't know what goes into making a good tablet.

Also, Android was good enough for a phone, but good enough doesn't scale.
Chrome

Google Adds Speech To Newly Stable Chrome 11, Pays Big Bounty 88

Posted by timothy from the tastiest-part-of-the-operating-system dept.
CWmike writes "Google patched 27 vulnerabilities in Chrome on Wednesday as it boosted the stable build of the browser to version 11 on Windows, Mac and Linux. The company paid out a record $16,500 in bounties to researchers who reported a majority of the bugs, beating the previous biggest payday by several hundred dollars. While Google listed more than 3,700 changes in Chrome 11, the only one it highlighted was the speech input feature. The combination of Chrome and Google Translate isn't flawless. In several quick tests by Computerworld, the browser and service transcribed most phrases accurately, but in one instance heard 'Good morning, sister ship' when the line was actually 'Good morning, Mr. Smith.'"

Comment Re:The other thing people dislike about Apple (Score 0) 194

by fidget42 (#35966512) Attached to: iPhone 3G and iOS4 Lack Chemistry
Where can I get a prescription to the drugs that you are taking? When Apple went from the 68K to the PPC, they supported 68K apps via a 68K emulator. When they transition to Intel, they supported (an still support) PPC via Rosetta.

Now, if you would have said that they don't feel a need to be held hostage to backward compatibility (in that the Intel Macs don't support 68K emulation), that would be correct. Plenty of time is given to allow people to transition away from reliability on older systems. After all, IMNSHO, Windows would be a far better OS if they didn't maintain compatibility with poorly written DOS and Windows 3.x applications.
Google

Why Google Should Buy the Music Industry 472

Posted by Soulskill from the alright-larry-here's-a-project-for-you dept.
Glyn Moody writes "According to one story about Google's attempts to launch its own music service, 'the search giant is "disgusted" with the labels, so much so that they are seriously considering following Amazon's lead and launching their music cloud service without label licenses.' So here's a simple solution: Google should just buy the major record labels — all of them. It could afford them — people tend to forget that the music industry is actually relatively small in economic terms, but wields a disproportionate influence with policy makers. Buying them would solve that problem too."

Submission + - Blackberry Playbook Disappoints

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: After months of anticipation, RIM's debut tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, is finally here. Good-looking, well-built tablet, the 14.4-ounce, 5.1-by-7.6-by-0.4-inch BlackBerry PlayBook features a black frame. Its 7-inch screen has a resolution of 1,024 by 600 pixels, which is lower than the iPad 2's, but since it's a smaller display, it actually seems sharper. The back panel features a 5-megapixel camera—far higher resolution than the rear-facing lens on the iPad 2. The 3-megapixel front-facing camera sits above the screen, and blows away the VGA-quality lens on the iPad 2. The bottom panel houses a micro HDMI output, a micro USB connector, and a magnetic charging port. The tablet supports 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. As far as the OS goes, the good news is that the user interface for the new BlackBerry Tablet OS is beautiful, graceful, and operates with a simplicity that rivals that of the Apple iPad 2 and bests the Motorola Xoom's oft-cluttered screens. The bad news is that, at launch, there are a lot of features missing.
Android

Submission + - Flash on Android: Look But Don't Touch (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister test-drives Flash Player 10.2 for Android 3.0 and finds its shortcomings too sweeping to be chalked up to beta status. 'The worst part is the player's inconsistent behavior. This gets really frustrating when there's lots of HTML and Flash content mixed on a Web page. The UI turns into a tug-of-war between the browser and the Flash Player, where each touch produces varying effects, seemingly at random,' McAllister writes. 'As far as I could tell, there was one thing and one thing only that the Flash Player for Android 3.0 accomplished successfully. On the stock Android browser, Flash content is invisible, so you don't notice Flash-based advertising. With the Flash Player installed, however, all those ads suddenly appear where once there were none, their animated graphics leaping and scuttling under your fingertips like cockroaches on a dinner tray — some achievement.'"
Android

Submission + - GrooveShark Pulled from Android App Market (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by maczealot
maczealot writes: Following Apple's removal of the GrooveShark app from their App Marketplace Google has followed with removing it from the Android Marketplace. The app is still available from the company's website for Android devices that allow sideloading and iDevices that are jailbroken. GrooveShark contends that they are like YouTube and as long as they comply with all DMCA takedown notices are within the confines of current law.

Comment Re:Was Microsoft Riight? (Score 1) 716

by fidget42 (#35707854) Attached to: Apple's Secret Weapon To Win the Tablet Wars
I see your assumption, but the Xoom has had quality issues (mostly thanks to Google), so I would not consider them to be equivalent. It may very well be that Google does not understand the "real public need." The 16:9 aspect ratio of the screen makes it too difficult for me to use. While it may be good for reading, the text is just too darn small for me.
Businesses

Submission + - Enterprise-friendly Cell Phones Lose Market Share (techtarget.com)

Submitted by
rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: "Android and iPhone continue to make significant market share gains, as RIM and Microsoft continue to bleed market share. IT seems to have stopped buying cell phones and is letting end users decide. From a support perspective, that means IT has to be prepared to deal with iOS and Android, and probably sooner than later."

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