Imagine, if you will, Arthur C. Clarke’s third law that states: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and that Harry Potter’s “magic” will soon be realised through advanced technologies that are nearing a “Singularity”, the dawn of a new civilisation.

For over three decades, futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected advocates of the role of technology in defining our intelligence. He presents the concept of technological change in which computers will surpass human intelligence in an inexorable evolutionary transformation, where man and machine will be merged.

Extrapolated exponentially into the 21st century, he foretells of the growth of intelligence that will become “increasingly non-biological” and “trillions of times more powerful” than it is today. This is the essence of the Singularity.

This technological Singularity is a hypothetical event whereby technological progress is due to become exponential due to positive feedback. In this brave new world, the distinction between reality and virtual reality, or human and machine, by means of nanotechnology, will be indistinguishable. Kurzweil argues that human ageing and illness will be reversed, pollution will be stopped and world hunger and poverty will be solved.

Vernor Vinge proposes that the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence would represent a breakdown in humans’ ability to model their future, while IJ Good’s “intelligence explosion”, talks of the increasing power of computers’ nano- and bio-technologies, through the amplification of artificial intelligence, that will one day re-write our source code so that we become far more intelligent than we are today.

Novelist William Gibson opined on Google’s role in this process: “In Google, we are at once the surveilled and the individual retinal cells of the surveillant, however many millions of us, constantly if unconsciously participatory. We are part of a post-geographical, post-national superstate, one that handily says no to China. Or yes, depending on profit considerations and strategy. But we do not participate in Google on that level. We’re citizens, but without rights.”

To back up these hypotheses, without being too Timothy Learyesque, scientists have created the first two-terminal memory chips using silicon to generate nanocrystal wires far smaller than circuitry in even the most advanced computers, which extends the limits of miniaturisation subject to Moore’s Law which describes the long-term trend in the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubling approximately every eighteen months.

In a review of “The Singularity Is Near”: “We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterised by technologically-driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google.”

To further Google’s cause, William Gibson maintains: “We have yet to take Google’s measure. We’ve seen nothing like it before, and we already perceive much of our world through it. We would all very much like to be sagely and reliably advised by our own private genie; we would like the genie to make the world more transparent, more easily navigable. Google does that for us: it makes everything in the world accessible to everyone, and everyone accessible to the world. But we see everyone looking in, and blame Google.”

Much of the discussions on Google centre on young people who expose their private lives via social networking. Apparently, Google is: “letting societal chips fall where they may, to be tidied by lawmakers and legislation as best they can, while the erection of new world architecture continues apace and that those who are indiscreet on the web will continue to have to make the best of it, while sharper cookies slouch toward an ever more Googleable future, one in which Google, to some even greater extent than it does now, helps us decide what we’ll do next.”

Kurzweil’s book envisions the world of the Singularity — a fusion of symbiotic advances in genetics, robotics and nanotechnology — where mankind’s technological knowledge is snowballing at an exponential rate in which a zero-energy-consuming computer with a memory of about a thousand trillion trillion bits and a processing capacity about ten trillion times more powerful than all human brains on Earth.

In 2009 the LA Times published a report that Ray Kurzweil and Google, as sponsor, were behind the move to form the Singularity University, which brought together the world’s top graduate and postgraduate students in ten diverse disciplines, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, medicine and law, designed to provide future leaders with an understanding of what is possible today as well as an understanding of where the real opportunities exist for innovation that might spring from converging technologies.

Earlier, published in 2005, The New York Times wrote: “We are fast approaching a time when humankind melds with technology to produce mind-boggling advances in intelligence. We will be able to play quidditch as Harry Potter does; we will control the ageing process; and we will be smarter by a factor of trillions.”

Maybe one day we will be so smart that we can actually understand what Ray Kurzweil is telling us.

V9 Design and Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) produce tasteful web design in Bangkok, Thailand, including ecommerce shopping cart solutions, with functionality that allows owners to set up and maintain their online stores.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Singularity, Google and the new civilisation

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A tanker carrying 9m litres (2.4m gallons) of diesel fuel has run aground off the coast of northern Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard has said.

The vessel, owned by Woodward’s Oil, hit a sandbar in the Northwest Passage, south-west of the community of Gjoa Haven in the Nunavut federal territory.

No diesel is believed to have been spilt, Coast Guard officials told CBC.

The Canadian authorities are reportedly working with Woodward’s Oil to get the tanker floating again, they added.

The Coast Guard told CBC that it was too early to tell when the ship, which was supplying remote communities in the region, would be able to move.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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Knowledge of VoIP has become so ubiquitous that many falsely believe it’s a simple, ubiquitous technology available to business environments of all sizes. The truth is VoIP integrated with PBX and SIP trunking services has a low penetration in small businesses, those with fewer than 25 seats.

The cost savings of moving to VoIP from existing phone systems is significant. Phone communications take place over Internet pipes, so users can get flat-rate plans with unlimited long-distance calling. For a small business on a tight budget, this has great appeal.

New technologies are bringing integrated VoIP and PBX systems with enterprise-class functions to the small business. And that’s opening new and interesting deployment and services opportunities for solution providers.

In addition, VoIP opens possibilities that weren’t available with traditional phone service. A company using a PBX system, for instance, is limited by hardware constraints. But the software in VoIP solutions makes it easier to add features and make improvements along the way.

When you consider the potential for cost savings and the ability to add useful features, you can see how small business VoIP PBX can address real customer needs, which ultimately is why the IT channel exists.

A few vendors have recognized that and have pushed the envelope to create business services and communications gateways that do a great deal more than just ring a phone. Vendors are looking to make VoIP a ubiquitous portion of IT services for the small office by offering a hybrid solution that rolls VoIP into a business appliance, which addresses a multitude of needs. It’s those additional capabilities that build the integration, support and training opportunities for solution providers addressing the market, which is a far cry from the install and forget approach normally associated with VoIP.

Businesses seeking cost reductions by running voice and data traffic over one network need to carefully weigh the growing number of hosted or managed VoIP service offerings. The good news is that an increasing number of providers are now taking business concerns into account.

For channel companies providing managed services to customers, VoIP lends itself perfectly to the model. A managed services provider that has taken on the responsibility for monitoring and managing its clients’ networks can get more revenue by adding voice technology.

Of course, channel companies that lack voice expertise shouldn’t promise their customers something they can’t deliver, unless they partner with a solution provider with a VoIP practice.

Both from a technology and business perspective, solution providers can make a compelling case to their clients about VoIP. And now that it appears customers finally are getting serious about the technology, it’s time to make that case.
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The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe harbor” from strict liability for copyright infringement to online service providers that satisfy its requirements.

A June, 2010 ruling by a U.S. District Court in New York in favor of YouTube established an important precedent for blog sites for avoiding strict liability for copyright infringement by blog posters.

The DMCA

Online service providers such as blog sites are vulnerable to claims for copyright infringement if visitors post infringing material on their websites, even if the service providers are unaware that the material is infringing. This unfortunate result – that’s often quite surprising to blog site webmasters who are unfamiliar with copyright law – is due to the strict liability principles of the U.S. Copyright Act.

Signed into law in 1998, the DMCA protects online service providers from strict liability for copyright infringement by their users if they:

* post a specific DMCA notice prominently on their websites,

* register with the US Copyright Office, and

* promptly block access to, or take down, allegedly infringing materials if they receive a notice from a copyright owner claiming infringement, or if the service provider has “actual knowledge” that it is hosting infringing material or if the service provider is aware of facts or circumstances that should make it “readily apparent” that there is infringing activity.

This protection by DMCA is known as a “safe harbor”; it completely protects the service provider from vicarious liability for copyright infringement.

The YouTube Case

YouTube’s online video sharing service permits users to post videos to the YouTube site which then can be accessed and viewed by anyone who visits the YouTube site.

Viacom International sued YouTube alleging that YouTube was liable for copyright infringement of numerous videos for which Viacom owned the copyrights. Viacom argued that YouTube was aware that some of its users posted infringing videos on the YouTube site and that this awareness disqualified YouTube from the safe harbor protection of DMCA.

The YouTube case involved the third bullet point above – whether YouTube’s general knowledge that some of its users post infringing content on the YouTube website can amount to either:

* “actual knowledge” of infringement, or

* qualify to make it “readily apparent” to YouTube that there was infringing material on the YouTube website.

The court rejected Viacom’s argument and ruled that YouTube was not disqualified from the DMCA safe harbor. Specifically, the court found that YouTube’s general awareness of infringing activity by some of its users did not rise to the level of “actual knowledge” or knowledge that would make it “readily apparent” which videos were infringing. The court noted that YouTube had removed allegedly infringing videos promptly after receipt of notice sufficient to identify specific infringing videos.

Finally, the court ruled that YouTube had no general obligation to police its website for infringing videos and to determine whether specific videos were infringing.

Conclusion

In general terms, the key rulings of interest to blog sites were that:

* YouTube had no general obligation to police its site for infringing videos, and

* that YouTube’s general knowledge of infringement, but not of specific infringing videos, was insufficient to disqualify YouTube from the DMCA safe harbor.

Blog site webmasters should be aware, however, that there are specific requirements that must be satisfied in order to take advantage of the DMCA safe harbor. It’s essential that these specific requirements be satisfied in order to qualify for DMCA?s valuable protections.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

YouTube DMCA Ruling is Good News for Blog Sites

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Greece has met the conditions to receive the second tranche of a 110bn euro rescue loan, the European Commission says.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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If you’ve got an internet business and interested in making more revenues, URL backlinks may be the secret to your success. Before anything else, what are URL backlinks?

Essentially, these are hyperlinks from other sites that point back to your site or blog. Because of backlinks, other people’s sites are going to be connected to your own. This short article presents the importance of inbound links for your online business and in what way article marketing can help you create backlinks.

It’s recommended that you receive in-links from first-rate web pages because these would boost your site’s ratings. A good illustration of a top-notch web page is authority websites. Authority sites contain plenty of content and people frequently visit these websites when they look for certain information. Needless to say, it is difficult, if not impossible, to challenge authority websites, so you should rely on them in order to pull in more page views and have more earnings.

You might be anxious to know exactly how you can achieve this without shelling out lots of money. Have you heard about article marketing? If you haven’t, then you are totally missing out on an excellent opportunity. Article marketing is a zero-cost as well as effective strategy to let everyone know about your web page, services and products. It involves the production and also submission of content pieces to various article directory websites to publicize your internet business. Unlike other tactics, you won’t waste your time and money with article marketing. As expected, there are some qualifications that you need to adhere to in order for this to be conceivable.

To begin with, this particular method is cost-free so long as you craft your articles yourself. If you choose to write your articles all on your own, be prepared to devote a great deal of time doing it. What you should do is to implement a schedule for content creation; this is important since you also require time to handle the other elements of your internet business. You should reserve a specific number of hours to craft your content pieces, and you should abide by that schedule without fail. You’ll need many content pieces on a single theme in order to be effective, and you can’t go around this requirement.

This might appear to be an unattainable task for many web-based business operators, including yourself. If you have no time to carry this out on a regular basis or do not have the self-assurance to craft impressive content pieces, you could give this certain activity to independent content writers or content creation services. Their rates are tremendously lower than those of regular ghostwriters, and they can create a significant amount of write-ups in a short time. It’s important that you contract skillful, experienced and also dependable copy writers to write your content pieces; the popularity as well as level of traffic that your site will have would rely on them, so make certain that you engage folks who really know what they are doing.

Each time your articles are posted on the web, your website or blog brings in more publicity. The link that you include at the conclusion of your content pieces would serve as a mini-advertisement for your online business. Article submission websites do not charge you whenever you put in incoming links for your site, so it is a win-win situation: you receive more publicity, page views and profits while article directory sites would have more users for their service.

You’re free to send as much write-ups as you wish. In fact, sending many content pieces is highly encouraged. Just make certain that you abide by each and every online directory’s author as well as sending protocols, peruse their list of frequently asked questions and stay away from trouble. Otherwise, your account is going to be suspended and your content pieces would not be posted. As with everything, you have to get used to the different policies, but the whole routine becomes simple after a few submissions along with a brief adjustment period.

If you are not employing article promotion to create URL backlinks, then you’re surely missing out. Why do you think there are countless write-ups in all those article directories? The answer’s obvious: most of the articles posted there are done by internet marketers. When you implement article promotion, you will see why many folks depend on this strategy to generate URL backlinks.

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Using Articles To Build URL Backlinks

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Shoppers in the US state of Pennsylvania are given the chance to buy wine from vending machines in a supermarket instead of a state-owned shop.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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Two interesting articles crossed my desk this morning, articles that everyone interested in getting the most out of their marketing should read. The first was published in Media Post’s Media Creativity written by Ari Rosenberg, called “The Problem With Online Ad Creative No One Wants To Hear.” Rosenberg states “The Web is overwhelmingly experienced in silence…” a problem we’ve been talking about for years. I would add that the problem is not just a silent Web, it’s a Web where audio is miss used and abused by advertisers who don’t understand how to use sound design and music to motivate audience action. You can read the article at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=132001&lfe=1.

The second item that should appeal to all those who pray to the god of media measurement; Abe Sauer writes “Media Too Quick To Label Old Spice Man a Failure.” Read the article in brandchannel at http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/07/23/Media-Quick-To-Label-OLd-Spice-A-Failure.aspx. In a nutshell the article uses the now famous Old Spice campaign to explain what we all know but just can’t accept and that is, there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

So think twice the next time your video producer tells you he’s going to just slap on some royalty free music instead of creating a signature soundscape, or when you make a marketing campaign decision based on statistics and analytics that you really don’t fully understand.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

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African Union leaders meeting in Uganda agree to reinforce their peacekeepers force in Somalia to counter al-Shabab militants.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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When people need information on any subject today, the first place they will look for it is on the internet. One of the best things to come out of the internet revolution is the search engine and the most popular search engine is Google.

Having the internet and Google has made for a quick and easy method of finding out whatever it is that you want to know. Not only does Google make it very easy to search for information but it also allows for fast growth of an internet based business for anyone who chooses to use Google Adwords as a means of advertising.

If you have never heard of Google Adwords this is a pay-per-click program that was started by Google ten years ago and it can be used to generate traffic to your website and increase the number of sales that you make. The way it works is that an internet business owner will pay Google for the amount of exposure Google gives them on the search engine.

There is an upside as well as a downside to using Google Adwords that you should be aware of before jumping in and using this type of advertising:

1. On the upside Google Adwords reaches an enormous audience. According to fairly recent research approximately 65% of all internet users will resort to Google when searching for information of any kind.

With this type of exposure one would automatically assume that by using Adwords advertising on Google your website would be displayed and bring interested buyers to your website, people who will purchase the products that you have on offer.

The advantage of this is that even if you are running your business on a limited budget you can still get your brand out there at least in the online world. By setting up your adverts and your landing pages correctly you are likely to not only recoup your advertising outlay but make a good profit as well.

One other good thing with using Adwords is that you only pay per click. In other words Google will only charge you when someone clicks on your link so no clicks no charge. Remember though that the position of an ad on the Google search page is dependant on the budget you specify and that is something else to think about. If you set the budget at 1 cent per day don’t expect your ad to be positioned in a prominent place as budgets can go as high as $100 per day and those people are going to get much better exposure.

With Google Adwords you have the flexibility to make alterations according to what you prefer – this is something that you cannot do with other forms of advertising and it only takes about 15 minutes to set up an ad on Google Adwords so it is no big deal to make frequent changes to it if you so desire. You also have the option of a multitude of languages and this allows you to cater for a niche audience.

Here is the downside!

One of the biggest downsides to using Google Adwords is that you will not be able to get any information on how well your competitors are doing. Google has a policy of not sharing this information and this can make it a bit difficult to strategize the best way to advertise effectively.

The other downside is that with Google Adwords you are very limited with the amount of copy space that you can use. You have only seventy characters with which to catch to prospective customers’ attention and this can be very difficult to achieve at times.

Even though there are these downsides when using Google Adwords it can still be a very profitable method of promoting your internet based business as it gives plenty of exposure especially with the internet being as overcrowded as it is today.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Google Adwords for Your Internet Based Business – The Upside and Downside

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