Archive for June, 2008
mattnyc99 writes “The FBI has confirmed to Popular Mechanics that it’s not only adding palm prints to its criminal records, but preparing to balloon its repository of pics, which an agency official says ‘could be the basis for our facial recognition.’ It’s all part of a new biometric software system that could store millions of iris scans within 10 years and has privacy recommends crying foul. Quoting: ‘The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which could cost as much as $1 billion over its 10-year life cycle, will create an unprecedented database of biometric markers, such as facial images and iris scans. For criminal investigators, NGI could be as useful as DNA some day — a distinctive scar or a lopsided jaw line could mean the difference between a cold case and shut one. And for privacy watchdogs, it’s a dual threat — seen as a step toward a police state, and a gold mine of personal data waiting to be plundered by cybercriminals.’”
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Posted by: in Rights Online
I Stated More Ham writes “Minnesota’s attorney general will drop the state’s efforts to fine underage buyers of violent videogames after a high court struck down a say law as unconstitutional. The Entertainment Software Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case, announced Monday that the state paid $65,000 in attorney’s fees and expenses.”
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Posted by: in Rights Online
mattnyc99 writes “The FBI has confirmed to Popular Mechanics that it’s not only adding palm prints to its criminal records, but preparing to balloon its repository of photos, which an bureau official says ‘could be the basis for our facial recognition.’ It’s all part of a new biometric software system that could store millions of iris scans within 10 years and has privacy suggests crying foul. Quoting: ‘The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which could cost as much as $1 billion over its 10-year life cycle, will create an unprecedented database of biometric markers, such as facial images and iris scans. For criminal investigators, NGI could be as useful as DNA some day — a distinctive scar or a lopsided jaw line could mean the difference between a cold case and shut one. And for privacy watchdogs, it’s a dual threat — seen as a step toward a police state, and a gold mine of personal data waiting to be plundered by cybercriminals.’”
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Posted by: in Rights Online
mbarulli writes “Clipperz and Richard Stallman recently launched a joint call for action to bring freedom and privacy to web applications. ‘The benefits of web apps are many, but quite often users lose their freedom to study, alter and discuss the source code that powers those web apps. Furthermore, we are forced to have faith in third parties with our data (bookmarks, text documents, chat transcripts, financial info … and now health records!) that no longer resides on our hard disks, but are stored somewhere in the cloud.’ Clipperz and RMS urge web developers to adopt the new AGPL license and build their applications using a ‘zero-knowledge architecture,’ a framework for web services that has been derived from Clipperz on the internet password manager. A smooth path toward web apps based on free software that know nothing about you and your data.”
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Posted by: in Services
Filed under: Pic, Web services, web 2.0
 Web based image editors have been popping up for some time now. Even the de facto image editor Photoshop couldn’t resist setting up shop. But sometimes you just want to simply resize or crop a photo and not be inadated with a multitude of tools and swatches. Enter picjuice, an online image editor with simplicity in mind.
As soon as you pull up the site it’s clear that “ease of use” was the main objective here. The only tools available are Crop, Resize, Flip, Rotate and Adjust.
The controls for each tools are simple as well, depending on the tool selected you either get an A or B option, a slider or in the case of the Crop tool, a cross hair to choose the area you want to use. These simple controls will aid in a shorter learning curve over the more feature rich sites.
In our testing we actually found the resizing tool here better than the one available from Photoshop Express. In Express, the resized image looked jagged but not in picjuice . However, the site seemed to be only compatible with JPG or PNG files as when we tried a GIF file picjuice would hang when we tried to edit the image.
Currently in beta, picjuice joins the already crowded on the internet imaging arena. Hopefully, its limited get down to business attitude will help to differentiate itself from the competition.
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Posted by: in Services
Filed under: Audio, World wide web, Video, Web services, Search, web 2.0
We’ll let you in on a little secret: There are a ton of music videos and live performances on YouTube. What? You knew that? Well, then you also probably know how hard it can be to find every song on an album and play it in order. YouTube is really designed for searching for videos one at a time. But Jogli helps organize the mess.
Jogli is basically a search engine and music video player. Search for an artist and Jogli will bring up a list of possible results. Click an artist name and you’ll find a list of albums. Click an album and you’ll be presented with a list of songs. In many cases not each song is clickable, but many are.
When you hit the play button, a YouTube video will start playing in the corner. But you can also queue up additional songs and even search for new songs without stopping your recording. Jogli is a lot like MyStrands, another site we covered earlier this year. But the way Jogli organizes songs by artist and album sets it apart from the competition.
Thanks Chen!
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Filed under: Industry, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising, Entrepreneurs
 This post is part of our Huge Company, Small Town series, featuring massive companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Pilgrim’s Pride’s home roots in the small town of Pittsburg, Texas, perhaps explain why it is the largest chicken producer in the U.S., even ahead of competitor Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN) in Arkansas. In 1946, Lonnie “Bo” Pilgrim dressed like a standard Pilgrim and tucked a small chicken under his arm when completing orders for customers. He gave away free chicks when he sold chicken feed as a way to expand his market for chicken feed. As of this day, Pilgrim’s Pride operates chicken processing plants in 13 states and Mexico and processes 44 million chickens per week, resulting in 9 billion pounds of chickens per year and over 528 million chicken eggs per year.
Pilgrim’s Pride’s operations are nearly exclusively located in the U.S. close to its farms, and it has become the second-largest chicken supplier to Mexico as well. It does have processing plants in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Along with such massive chicken-producing numbers come a few problems, as a massive product recall in 2002 due to Lysteria contamination killed seven people and made over 40 customers sick. In 2004, more than 24,000 hens were destroyed after a strain of avian flu was found in Hopkins County, Texas.
Pilgrim’s Pride is still based in the same location where it was founded over 60 years ago, but today stands as a totally vertically-integrated company: it owns each process and facility from egg to table, as it states. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Publix Super Markets (OTC: PUSH) and KFC, a division of Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) ,can be counted as some of Pilgrim’s Pride’s largest customers.
Be sure to check out more Huge Company, Small Town posts.
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Filed under: Launches, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), Viacom (VIA)
Rhapsody, a music download service owned by Real Networks (NASDAQ: RNWK) and Viacom (NYSE: VIA), will make yet another run at Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes. According to Reuters, “Digital music seller Rhapsody is launching a $50 million marketing assault on Apple’s iTunes, offering songs on the internet and via partners including Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Verizon Wireless.”
Why the venture thinks it will have real success is anyone’s guess. Downloading to Verizon Wireless phones is not exactly the kind of novelty that is likely to draw customers. The service will have one important new feature, though. Rhapsody subscribers haven’t been able to play their music on iTunes. Under the new push, that will change.
Memo to Rhapsody: The horse has already left the barn. Keeping the service off of the iPod for so long has helped iTunes move into a unassailable position.
Real Networks, which dominated the multimedia market with its Real Player from the late 1990s until about five years ago, was slaughtered by Apple when it offered a device coupled to a music store with the launch of the iPod.
There’s no catching up now. The race is over.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
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coderrr writes “New research could grant ISPs to selectively block or slow down your encrypted traffic even if they cannot snoop on your transmitted data. Italian researchers have found a way to categorize the type of traffic that is hidden inside an encrypted SSH session to around 90% accuracy. They are achieving this by analyzing packet sizes and inter-packet intervals instead of looking at the content itself. Challenges remain for ISPs to implement this technology, but it’s clear that encrypting your traffic inside an SSH session or VPN connection isn’t a solution to protect net neutrality.”
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