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svonkie writes "25 percent of the planet will be connected to the Internet by 2012, according to a Jupiter Research report, with highest growth rate in areas such as China, Russia, India and Brazil. Many of these users will be able to understand each other's language, says Ray Kurzweil. He cites current developments in the speed and accuracy of statistical translation systems, which have improved exponentially in the past 10 years, such as Language Weaver's automatic language translation software, which can now translate between 2,000 and 5,000 words per minute on a single CPU, using proprietary statistical translation algorithms."

Brendan Koerner reports in Wired Magazine that a growing number of ventures are using people, rather than algorithms, to filter the Internet's wealth of information. These ventures have a common goal: to enhance the Web with the kind of critical thinking that's alien to software but that comes naturally to humans. The vogue for human curation reflects the growing frustration Net users have with the limits of algorithms. Unhelpful detritus often clutters search results, thanks to online publishers who have learned how to game the system.

Svonkie writes "If you're reading these words, the chocolates and flowers are on their way. Because given the gazillion draws of modern life — the cellphone, the BlackBerry, the boss, the kids, the TiVo, the dog — it's a small miracle this sentence has made it into your day. Our fast society is only getting faster, putting inordinate demands on our time and prompting the people and companies that service our lives to come up with ways to help us reclaim some of it. Don't have time to read all those magazines you subscribe to? Not a problem. A new website called Brijit — at www.brijit.com — offers one-paragraph summaries of even the most complex and deeply researched tomes. "It's like drinking from a fire hose these days," says founder Jeremy Brosowsky. "There's more good stuff than ever, but the problem is consuming it day to day." — From Services cater to our speeded-up lives , published January 28, 2007 by Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY "
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2008-01-27-speeded-up_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

svonkie writes "Microsoft plans to end most sales of Windows XP on June 30, despite a deep reluctance by many business and individuals about moving to Vista. InfoWorld believes such an expensive, time-consuming shift with problematic benefits should not be forced on Windows users, so the IDG tech news and information provider has decided to rally XP users to demand that XP be kept available. In the last weekend alone, 5,000 signed the petition to save Windows XP at http://www.savexp.com/ InfoWorld Executive Editor Galen Gruman was interviewed on Tuesday, January 15th for "The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Jane Norris" on WFED in Washington D.C. about the effort. Here is a link to an audio file: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/emedia/104372.wma"

svonkie writes "I read The New York Times Sunday Book Review every weekend because even if I don't have time to read many books these days, the Book Review allows me to maintain a semblance of cultural literacy. I can learn something about the books people are talking about. If one looks really appealing, I'll take the time and effort to buy the book and read the whole thing. In this era of time starvation and information overload, a Web company called Brijit fills a similar niche, but on a broader, multimedia scale. Brijit's professional editors guide a stable of writers to craft 100 word abstracts of high quality news and feature stories regardless of format (print, radio, and television). The stories are then rated by Brijit's readers, separating the wheat from the chaff with surgical precision. Links to the full stories are included as well, with no strings attached. Sources include BusinessWeek, The Economist, The New Yorker, Wired, Barrons, This American Life (Public Radio), The New York Review of Books, Charlie Rose (PBS), Harper's, Salon, Rolling Stone, and dozens of other quality outlets. In Monday's Washington Post, Frank Ahrens writes, "just scanning Brijit could make you the smartest person at your next cocktail party.""
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/28/AR2007102801135.html