Actually, a social network called Hyves is just doing that. They have used XMPP, you can import twitter-feeds and import photo's from Flickr via rss. They are working on connecting their services to Facebook, Myspace etc.

For those who don 't know Hyves, its a 5-your old network with 9 million members, most of which are Dutch. In fact, most Dutch have a Hyves profile.

They make good money with advertisements, including socalled 'hyvertisement' where members can advertise with their friend's friends for a couple of euro's. Also payed for services make a decent buck for them.

For now, they have resisted offers from almost all other networks. Facebook is getting bigger in the Netherlands, but still lagging way behind Hyves. Other networks, except maybe last.fm or linkedin, are virtually non-existant here.

When I go to my physician, he asks me questions, and feels and presses around the area I have pains to make a diagnoses. How on earth can a doctor in SL make a good diagnoses when he's not able to touch the patient?

The problem is not that some results are correct, the problem is that some results are not correct. So you do not know if google pours out the right answers. It is all about trust. And for now, Google Squared cannot be trusted.

(And poorly stated propositions? I could use bolean search etc, but very few people do that. These are the questions that a student uses if he/she wanted to make a table for a report)

I've tried several searches and found that all searches are completely false, misleading or screwed up.

Example 1: Dutch provinces. Wolfram accurately lists 12 and has the right names. Google lists dozens results, including Belgium rivers, shows the picture of a soccer player (with the same name as a

Example 2: Dutch prime ministers. Wolfram shows the current one correctly and some older ones. All the info Wolfram shows is correct. Google lists many. Mostly the names are correct, but there is a picture and description of a car salesman with the same name, among others.

Example 3: Countries in the EU. Wolfram shows 27 correct names. Google shows lots and lots of names. On the first pages it is ok, but on page threee, Sports is listed as an country (with the capital listed as $9500 ??) as well as Switzerland (not a EU-member) and English.

So the tables are completely useless, it also sources Wikipedia almost all the time.

Ergo: do not use it. Not yet in any case.

Ok, we all hate the RIAA etc. But fact is, audiovisual art costs real money. So how can we support the artists and make sure good movies are still made? How would you like to pay?

It is hardly a surprise that not many people really take time to consume news.

If you would look into the statistics of a news site, you would notice the enormous number of pageviews on the front page, how few people end up at the level of an article and how fewer people ever visit a back ground story.

The challenge for journalist is thus to engage readers, but also not to waste their time.

For that, journalists must carefully choose the media for telling the story.

Infographics can actually help in time management. Also assisting in block reading would be useful.

Examples:

• A headline, a short video of a fire, a Google map and some bullets for trivia you don't see on the video and there's the story of the fire. View and you'd know. More work to do, but probably faster to consume than text only
• Or the live coverage of a demo: live mobile phone webcam, Google map with the route, twitter alike list for instant updates, bullets for trivia (like how many people). Afterwards some pics would be nice. and voila... Fast, interactive, live and engaging;
• Political news? The issue in a small sentence, then a table with bulleted points from the parties and other stakeholders, maybe even with quotes or video's. Some photo's of the issue would be nice.

Harder to do then just plain text? Definitely! More compelling and giving more insight? Absolutely!

NASA isn't crucial for running the country nor for saving lives (directly).

AFAIK the public broadcaster NOS didn't get paid by Microsoft. They took the technology because it was better for the user experience then Flash (back then, Flash 9). If Flash 10 is better for a next project, I'm sure they will choose that. I think sports are the best for those tools: the events are scheduled before and are basically images/video combined with stats and facts. Right now there isn't a huge event.