Google has publicly released a list of the top 1000 websites in the world, raking the Facebook social networking site as the leading Web property by unique users.
According to Google's AdPlanner stats, Facebook scores more than 540 million unique visitors per month, reaching a sizeable chunk of 35.2 percent of the Internet population.
Facebook not only has the most unique visitors in Google's stats, but also the most page views per month, a whopping 570 billion views, ahead of other properties like Craigslist (#49) with 14 billion views.
The AdPlanner list does not contain any figures for most of Google's own properties, like YouTube, Gmail, News, or Search, but gives an interesting insight into which top Websites do not serve advertising.
Wikipedia (#4) and Mozilla (#10) are the only two Websites in Google's top 10 not to display advertising. A noteworthy entry on the 18th spot in the AdPlanner rankings is Twitter (#18), with 98 million unique visitors per month, which doesn't serve ads.
Destinations portals such as Yahoo.com (#2), MSN.com (#5), Baidu (#8), Sina.com.cn (#11) and 163.com (#15) are also high on the list, probably due to the fact that many people use these sites as their home page.
Search engines also occupy several top places in the AdPlanner list (excluding Google's own Search). Live.com (#2) has over 370 million uniques per month, Bing.com (#13) with 110 million, and Ask.com (#20) with 88 million.
Blogging is also high on Google's list, with Blogspot (Blogger) situated in the 7th place with 230 million uniques, and WordPress.com in the 12th spot with 120 million uniques.
Several news sources made it into the top 100 as well: Cnet.com ranks as #35, BBC.co.uk on #43, CNN.com at #64, and NYTimes.com on #83.
Other entries worth noting among Google's top 1000 websites are Microsoft.com (#6), Adobe.com (#14), Amazon.com (#22), eBay.com (#24), Apple.com (#27) and Hotmail.com (#30).
Long running music service Napster has struggled to maintain relevancy in recent years. Today the Best Buy-owned property is making a major social media push to once again reclaim some of its former glory.
The pay-to-use streaming and download web application now includes Facebook (), Twitter (), YouTube () and Flickr () integration so that users easily share their music interests with online friends and consume social media content like Flickr photos and YouTube videos from bands and artists while they listen.
On the Facebook front, Napster has integrated Facebook Instant Personalization so that users can “Like” artists, albums and playlists. The “Like” functionality is the standard Facebook offering, so Likes are shared back to user profiles and users can see which artists and songs their Facebook friends Like.
Individual tracks now also include share buttons for posting to Facebook and Twitter. Even though Napster’s service requires a pay-per-month subscription plan, friends and followers will be able to stream and listen to the shared songs for free.
In addition, users can now experience artists’ YouTube videos and Flickr photos — think studio and concert shots — available on each artist’s page.
Napster’s also made improvements to album art and reworked the credit system so that user credit balances are up-to-date and always visible in the upper left hand corner of the screen.
The changes are significant and likely the company’s best shot at reclaiming user attention. We’re especially curious to see if this update spurs more interest and helps it become more competitive with music newcomers like Spotify () that operate under slightly different models.
BEIJING — China has quietly formed a new bureau expected to help to police social networking sites and other user-driven forums on the Internet, which are proving harder for the government to monitor and control than ordinary news portals.
The new bureau marks the latest outgrowth to a morass of agencies tasked with regulating online business and communications in China. People informed of the expansion say the authorities are retooling their media apparatus to deepen their leverage over the Web, and regulators are jostling for the growing power and privilege at stake.
The new agency, officially called the Internet news coordination bureau, is part of this effort to better monitor the communications of Chinese Web users, who total nearly 400 million by official estimates.
Chinese officials consider tools like social networking, microblogging and video-sharing sites a major vulnerability. In the past year, they have been forced to block access in China of overseas video and networking giants like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, and suspend several upstart Chinese look-alikes, over information they deem subversive.
In turn, China has promoted the use of local alternatives on sites like Sina.com, QQ.com, and the Web site of the Communist Partynewspaper People’s Daily, which are more cooperative with official mandates to filter the Web. Both the new and pre-existing bureaus are under the auspices of the State Council Information Office, which acts as a leading daily enforcer over news-related content on the Web.
For weeks, the head of the newly established bureau has represented it in meetings with foreign diplomats and in official propaganda conferences and training sessions.
But public acknowledgment of the addition only came last week, after The New York Times submitted a question about the overhaul. The next day, the Information Office altered a page on its Web site to reflect the new Internet bureau. It also unveiled another new bureau, devoted to regulating foreign news and information outlets that conduct business in China.
This week, in a faxed response, the Information Office said the Internet news coordination bureau, which it also refers to as bureau nine, “is mainly responsible for ‘guidance, coordination and other work related to the construction and management of Web culture.’ ” It gave no further details.
China already employs a sprawling bureaucracy of government, party, and industry bodies, and local affiliates down to the neighborhood level, to screen, filter, and steer public opinion online and regulate various facets of the industry.
But in response to a series of events the past two years, particularly ethnic riots in Tibet and Xinjiang, the release of the democracy manifesto known as Charter 08, and opposition protests in Iran — all of which were seen as proliferating via mobile and Internet communications — the Communist Party leadership has taken stronger steps. It has unleashed a propaganda buildup of multimedia arms acquiescent to the government, and a policy clampdown on more unruly foreign and private firms.
Previously, the Information Office operated a single Bureau of Internet Affairs, referred to as bureau five. It supervises sites that publish news in China and operates in close contact with many of their top executives and editors. That bureau traditionally worked on circulating official information and censorship guidelines, but with the evolution of the Web, it has become more occupied with monitoring public sentiment over news developments on user-generated services.
Now two bureaus will divide the labor. The older one will retain a focus on promoting the official line to domestic sites and international media, while the newer one will be devoted more to enforcement over news-related content on interactive forums, say scholars, diplomats and editors familiar with the reshuffle.
“So just from the viewpoint of personnel, you can see that the government is putting more and more emphasis on managing the Internet,” said an editor at an official media organization, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject.
Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting and Li Bibo contributed research.
Popular Web site Hulu lets you watch television shows over the Internet. But there are a wealth of new alternatives to the site.
TV or PC? That's the question I find myself asking these days when I'm in the mood to watch the tube. There are still plenty of reasons to opt for the HDTV in my living room: It's got the biggest and best picture, the most theater-like audio, and -- overall -- the best selection of stuff to watch. But so many popular programs are now available online that I'm just as likely to catch them on my PC.
TV on a TV may still be the most immersive experience, but TV on a PC feels far more personal. For one thing, most of it is available on demand, on your own schedule. For another, there's an ever-expanding universe of sites, services, and software designed to make it a cinch to find both shows you know you love and ones you haven't discovered yet, and then watch them your way. Such as these five winners, all of which work on both Windows PCs and Macs and are absolutely free.
Explore a site that's half TV Guide, half TiVo. You've got favorite TV shows, old and new. And Clicker is an extremely slick way to find everything from Lost to The Dick Van Dyke Show. It covers both free sources (such as Hulu and the sites of the major networks) and paid ones (like Amazon and Netflix), and lets you search by title or performer, or browse by category. You can add entire series to playlists and get notifications by e-mail when new episodes are available, making the service a sort of virtual DVR that helps you keep on top of your faves and play catch-up when necessary.
Make any computer a media center.Boxee is a hot piece of software that lets you browse and enjoy a bevy of digital content, including paid and free video on the Web, files on your computer or home network, music, photos, and more. It's meant to appeal to folks who have connected their computers to their TV sets: You can breeze through the whole user interface with a remote control, and everything's got a sheen that looks great in high definition. But it's fun to use even if just to watch TV on your laptop or desktop monitor.
Try a better Netflix.Netflix may still be synonymous with DVDs by snail mail in little red envelopes, but its Watch Instantly feature -- which gives every Netflix subscriber unlimited on-demand access to a profusion of movies and TV shows -- is one of the best ways to spend a few bucks a month on Internet content. Oddly enough, though, finding stuff to watch is surprisingly frustrating: when you search on the Netflix site, the Watch Instantly titles are often overwhelmed by the ones that are still only available on DVD.
Enter Instantwatcher.com, an ingenious, ingeniously simple site that does one thing: help you locate items you can Watch Instantly. It shows only films and episodes available for instant viewing, and it tells you what's popular right now. Find something that catches your fancy, and one click loads it up in Netflix's player.
Capture, convert, and move streaming video. Most free TV on the Web streams to your PC, which works just fine for one-time viewing on a broadband-connected computer. But you've got to be online to watch it, and can't save items for offline viewing or move them to gadgets such as your cell phone, media player, or game console.
RealNetworks' RealPlayer SP is a clever application that changes that. Install it, and you can download and save video all over the Web, then convert it and transfer it to your other devices. Other services and software offer similar features, but I don't know of any that make the job as easy as RealPlayer. The downside? It doesn't work with copy-protected content, such as most of the shows that big-name entertainment companies make available on the Web. That still leaves a wealth of stuff to watch, including most of YouTube.
"Google" your cable or satellite box. Did I say this column was about how to get more out of Internet TV? I fibbed a little. LocateTV is a search engine that lets you track down programming that's available via your cable and satellite subscription, complete with episode guides, reminders, and other features that are reminiscent of Clicker. Tell it your zip code and provider, and it'll restrict its results to shows available locally, and will give you the channel numbers you need to tap on your remote.
LocateTV is a vastly more efficient way to navigate through thousands of hours of programming on hundreds of channels than scrolling through a never-ending programming grid on your TV. It's pretty cool when you think about it: The Internet is so powerful a force that it can make TV better even when you aren't watching TV on the Internet.
Harry McCracken blogs at Technologizer, his site about personal technology. He's also the former editor in chief of PC World. Follow him on Twitter as @harrymccracken.
Google makes a ride on the Trans-Siberian express possible from the comfort of your own desk.
Thanks to Google, you can now ride the Trans-Siberian Express from your home.
NEWSCOM
By Fred Weir Correspondent / February 23, 2010 Moscow
Riding the exotic Trans-Siberian Express is one of those dreams that most of us have at some point, though few ever act upon it. But now, thanks to the convergence of Internet technologies and the seemingly boundless imagination of the folks at Google, time, distance, expense and logistical complications are no longer viable excuses for not trying it (see video link below).
Seated at your own computer you can – figuratively – settle in to a first-class compartment, put your feet up, and watch as the vast land-ocean that is Russia slips by your window, along with its endlessly fascinating pageant of people and remote whistlestops.
Google-Russia's virtual, multi-platform Trans-Siberian experience covers the whole 150 hours, 5,753 miles and seven time zones, every inch of the journey rendered in glorious August daylight.
The entire route is geotagged, which means you can locate the train's exact spot at any moment on a Google map, or jump ahead to whatever point you desire. There's also an amazing photo gallery,
The magic moments are marked on the Website, like chapter headings. For many, these include crossing the Volga River at Nizhni Novgorod, coming into the Ural Mountains near Perm and, of course, the magnificent spectacle of Lake Baikal, the pristine lake at Asia's heart which contains 20 percent of the world's fresh water.
All the videos are archived on YouTube and accompanied by the obligatory soundtrack of rumbling train wheels. Alternatively, you can choose a live feed from Radio Rossiya, or listen to a Russian-language audiotape of Lev Tolstoy's 1,400-page tome War and Peace or Nikolai Gogol's almost equally weighty Dead Souls.
The whole idea started as a scheme to interest Russians in traveling within their own country and English-language subtitles and directions were only added as an afterthought, says Google-Russia's PR manager Alla Zabrovskaya.
"Russians love to travel, but mostly they want to go to foreign countries," she says. "We thought it would be good to show them the beauties of Russia, and what better way than to recreate the world's longest train ride, which covers two continents and an amazing variety of natural wonders."
The whole thing took two Google teams a month to film last summer and Ms. Zabrovskaya says that, since they put it up earlier this month, the response has been overwhelming.
'Really cool'
"We've gotten a lot of comment from Russian users, but we were a bit amazed when the reactions started pouring in from all over," she says. "Basically, people think this is really cool."
The train passes through 87 substantial Russian cities, and 14 of them have accompanying video tours conducted by a perky, but surprisingly erudite, blonde Russian DJ named Yelena Abitayeva.
Ms. Abitayeva's explorations of modern art in Perm, wooden architecture in Irkusk and a Buddhist monastery near Ulan Ude are worth checking out, even for those who don't much care for trains.
Not so long ago it was illegal to make films from Russian trains, especially of strategic "objects" like bridges and ports. But Russia's state-run railway company gave Google full assistance with this project, apparently in the hope that more Russians will decide to take the trip, which is one of the signature experiences of their own country. Currently, about three quarters of the people who board the Trans-Siberian Express in Moscow each week are foreigners.
"This is the most famous train in Russia, it's the one we name the Rossiya, and we really hope that this Internet experience will be useful and inspirational for more people," says Sergei Slutskov, press secretary for Russian Railways.
For those who are inspired, a one-way first-class (two people to a compartment) ticket from Moscow to Vladivostok aboard the Rossiya costs around $500. Luxury trains feature many more perks, including stop-overs in places of interest and onboard WiFi -- the better to trace every minute of your journey on Google.
MEDFORD, Mass. — There are videos showing off card tricks, horsemanship, jump rope and stencils — and lots of rap songs, including one by a young woman who performed two weeks after oral surgery, with her mouth still rubber-banded shut.
There is also Rhaina Cohen’s video, working off the saying “You never truly know someone until you have walked a mile in her shoes,” and featuring the blue sandals from her bat mitzvah, the white sneakers she bought cheaply in Britain, and the black heels in which she “stood next to Hillary Clinton.”
It is reading season at the Tufts University admissions office, time to plow through thousands of essays and transcripts and recommendations — and this year, for the first time, short YouTube videos that students could post to supplement their application.
About 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants submitted videos. Some have gotten thousands of hits on YouTube.
Tufts, which, like the University of Chicago, is known for its quirky applications, invited the YouTube videos. Along with the required essays, Tufts has for years offered applicants an array of optional essays — “Are we alone?” is one of this year’s topics — or a chance to “create something” out of a sheet of paper. So it was not too far a stretch, this year, to add the option of posting a one-minute video that “says something about you.”
Lee Coffin, the dean of undergraduate admissions, said the idea came to him last spring as he watched a YouTube video someone had sent him. “I thought, ‘If this kid applied to Tufts, I’d admit him in a minute, without anything else,’ ” Mr. Coffin said.
For their videos, some students sat in their bedrooms and talked earnestly into the camera, while others made day-in-the-life montages, featuring buddies, burgers and lacrosse practice. A budding D.J. sent clips from one of his raves, with a suggestion that such parties might be welcome at Tufts.
A few students created elaborate productions.
“We’ve got some who are really good with the technology,” Mr. Coffin said. “There’s a real technical savvy out there in this generation, and this lets them show off their splicing, their stop action, their animation. Some of the engineering applicants show us what they’ve made. One kid is talking, and then all of a sudden, he’s in the water, to show off his underwater camera.”
While elephants are a common theme in the videos — Jumbo the elephant is Tufts’s mascot — only Michael Klinker went so far as to build a small remote-control blue-elephant helicopter that flies merrily around his backyard.
Some of the videos have developed a YouTube following. The popular favorite is probably Amelia Downs, with more than 6,000 views for her video combining “two of my favorite things: being a nerd and dancing,” in which she performs a bar graph, a scatter plot, a pie chart, and a sine and cosine graph.
“I tried tap dancing at first, because that’s what I do most, but we only have a cheap digital camera, and the sound came out badly,” said Ms. Downs, who is from Charlotte, N.C. “My best friend filmed me, and we did each shot once or twice. I did the editing in about an hour, and the computer crashed five times while I was doing it.”
Still, Ms. Downs said she thought it was “very cool” that Tufts invited videos.
Even without prompting, admissions officials say, a growing number of students submit videos. Maria Laskaris, the dean of admissions at Dartmouth, noticed the trend last year, and said this year had brought even more videos, mostly showcasing music, theater or dance talents.
For Tufts, the videos have been a delightful way to get to know the applicants.
“At heart, this is all about a conversation between a kid and an admissions officer,” Mr. Coffin said. “You see their floppy hair and their messy bedrooms, and you get a sense of who they are. We have a lot of information about applicants, but the videos let them share their voice.”
Videos are genuinely optional, he said, so not having one does not count against a student — and a bad video would not hurt an applicant’s admission chances “unless there was something really disgusting.”
Mr. Coffin remains committed to the traditional essay-writing requirement. “We will never abandon writing,” he said. “No matter what, it’s important to be able to express yourself elegantly in writing.”
But, he said, it is good for Tufts to show new-media savvy as well.
“Kids who are 17 and 18 are very facile with new media,” he said, “and one of the challenges for colleges right now is to stay ahead of that curve.”
To his surprise, about 60 percent of the videos are from women, and two-thirds are from financial-aid applicants, easing concern that the video option might help the already-advantaged affluent applicants.
Mr. Coffin said he never worried about YouTube privacy issues.
“These kids blog, they tweet, they don’t seem to worry much about privacy,” he said. “Maybe I was naïve, but it didn’t occur to me that these videos would be so public, and so followed.”
While the application allowed students to put their video on any easily accessible Web site, he said almost everybody used YouTube.
Having seen the popularity of the videos — and heard from current Tufts students who want their favorite applicants admitted — Mr. Coffin now plans to put the best ones into a “Tufts Idol” contest once admissions season is over.
“So much of what we do in admissions is opaque, and that contributes to all the frenzy,” he said. “This is something that’s completely transparent.”
The new feature, to be formally introduced on Tuesday, is a tool to make it easy for YouTube users to submit clips that news media companies can choose to highlight. The site plans to sign up other media partners.
“We’re trying to connect media organizations with citizen reporters on YouTube,” said Steve Grove, the Web site’s head of news and politics.
With the tool, YouTube, a unit of Google, seeks to further portray itself as an ally of media companies and other news gatherers. YouTube Direct could also bolster the Web site’s status as a source for citizen journalism video. The site has offered newsworthy clips during political crises, as in Iran’s disputed election this year, and after other breaking news events.
The tool could become a challenger to existing citizen journalism sites like iReport on CNN, where eyewitnesses can upload video of news events as well as their own opinions.
When users go to the Web sites of Politico or The Chronicle, for instance, they will be able to upload to YouTube and flag their video for review by the publication’s editors, who will have the ability to approve or reject the submissions.
Mr. Grove said that YouTube Direct would allow “news organizations to control their experience with users while tapping into the community where that activity is taking place, which is YouTube.”
NPR said it would solicit YouTube videos for WonderScope, a new, occasional scientific series on NPR.org that will invite users to “bring the abstract to life.” Time — as in, “how do you measure time?” and “how does time fly?” — will be the first subject for the series.
YouTube also envisions uses beyond the day’s news. The site suggested in a blog post that businesses could use the tool to solicit endorsements and that politicians could “ask for user-generated political commercials.”
YouTube said two television stations in Boston had also signed up as partners.
United Airlines learned its lesson the hard way that David Carroll was not just another customer.
After baggage handlers at United broke his guitar last summer and the airline refused to pay for the $1,200 repair, Mr. Carroll, a Canadian singer, created a music video titled “United Breaks Guitars” that has been viewed more than 5.8 million times. United executives met with him and promised to do better.
So how was Mr. Carroll’s most recent flight on United?
This Everyman symbol of the aggrieved traveler was treated, well, like just another customer. United lost his bag.
In an interview, Mr. Carroll said that for more than an hour on Sunday, he was told he could not leave the international baggage claim area at Denver International Airport, where he had flown from Saskatchewan. He said he had been told to stay because his bag was delayed, not lost, and he had to be there to claim it when it came down the conveyor belt.
“I’m the only person pacing around this room,” Mr. Carroll said, recalling how he was caught between an order from United staff members to stay and collect his bag, and a federal customs official telling him he had to leave the baggage claim area. The bag never showed.
A United Airlines spokeswoman, Robin Urbanski, said, “We will fully investigate what regretfully happened.”
Mr. Carroll’s life has taken more surprising routes than his luggage. He enjoyed modest popularity as a singer-songwriter in Canada until his video, which has made him a sought-after speaker on customer service.
His father-in-law, Brent Sansom, has become his business adviser to help him sort requests.
This latest episode provided him with fresh material for his most recent performance, which was why he was flying on United — to speak to a group of customer service executives on Tuesday (though without his best shoes and “United Breaks Guitars” CDs that were in his still missing suitcase).
When Mr. Carroll asked members of the audience if they ever had a similar problem, he saw a sea of hands.
“It crosses all income levels and languages and geographies,” he said. “We all don’t like feeling disrespected or insignificant.”
Greg Gianforte, the founder and chief executive of RightNow, a customer service software company, and the person who organized the meeting, said he was sorry to hear what happened to Mr. Carroll, even if it made for a livelier meeting.
“We were thrilled to have Dave come here,” Mr. Gianforte said. “But since United was the only carrier he could take from Canada to Colorado Springs, in a certain sense, we’re responsible.”
Mr. Carroll was reunited with his bag on Wednesday morning.
Australia's most successful YouTuber, Natalie Tran, is not a stripper, a file sharing pirate or a cy
ber bully as popular wisdom about the nature of YouTube might have you think.
YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, by Jean Burgess and Joshua Green analyses the most successful videos with some surprising results. This analysis of the most popular, most viewed, and most discussed YouTube clips found that it’s not just videos about cyber-bullying or bizarre accidents that top the charts.
In the case of Natalie Tran, she is a highly successful performer who is also deeply embedded in the social network of YouTube, treating it as a virtual community where she is on equal terms with her audience. Tran’s regularly produced YouTube act (which goes under the name Community Channel) is based around the idea of a ‘bedroom vlog’.
“The Vlog, or videoblog, where the performer speaks straight-to-camera from an everyday setting like a bedroom, is probably the video form that is most representative of YouTube’s community and culture”, explains Dr Jean Burgess, the Australian co-author of the first comprehensive book on the YouTube phenomenon. “Many of YouTube’s most subscribed channels are home-grown examples of this form, not "big media" productions”
Rather than simply trading in negative and harmful images, the book demonstrates YouTube is a place where people share jokes, ideas and intimate details of their lives. It also found that when it comes to traditional media, the site is one where people go to understand history and current affairs through the sharing of news footage and political speeches.
So while most of us use YouTube to catch up on the latest viral sensation or to find our favourite music videos, for a small but significant number of users it’s also an online community where, as Burgess says, "Thousands of active YouTubers like Tran share ideas, entertain us and each other, and form an active network of lead users with high levels of digital literacy."
When Heather McKibbon's bike was stolen in May, she didn't just get angry. She decided to get it back.
The 29-year-old project manager at a Toronto consulting firm alerted people to the theft through the social-networking site Facebook. Just hours later, a friend replied with a link to a bike for sale that looked like her own $1,300 Cannondale touring bike on eBay's Kijiji, an online classified-ads site. Ms. McKibbon recognized her bike and, posing as an interested buyer, arranged to meet the seller at a local subway station. She brought the police along as well, resulting in a small-scale sting operation.
Police arrested the man and returned the Cannondale to Ms. McKibbon, who claimed it with photos of herself on the bike, as well as its serial number. "It was a little overwhelming to realize that nobody in Toronto gets their stolen bike back, and here I was about to get my stolen bike back," she says.
Ms. McKibbon is one of a growing number of bike-theft victims who are using bike blogs and social-media sites such as Twitter to take matters into their own hands. These grassroots efforts come as bike theft rises in cities and college campuses around the U.S.
San Diego saw a 45% increase in reported bike thefts in the first half of this year from a year earlier. The police station covering the central part of downtown Los Angeles has seen a 72% increase in stolen-bike reports so far this year, the city's police department says. Austin and Philadelphia have seen increases for the past two years. The incidence of theft is likely even higher, cycling advocates say, because many victims don't bother reporting bike thefts.
The reasons for the theft boom are complex, including population growth in some locales, but generally, more people are biking these days—and they are riding pricier bicycles. Also, the economic downturn is contributing to the increase.
"Harder times mean more thefts," says Bryan Hance, founder of StolenBicycleRegistry.com, where people can list their stolen bikes free. Last month, the site received 335 listings, about twice as many as a year ago. "Bikes are a lot more expensive than they were five or 10 years ago," he adds. "The fact that they are worth more makes them more of a target."
Jonathan Maus, publisher of BikePortland.org, an Oregon blog that relaunched its stolen-bikes listings in June, notes that "a lot of the growth in biking is coming from new people. They may not understand how important it is to use a real lock."
Some cities are taking action in an effort to be more bike-friendly. In Austin, city officials are planning to curb theft through a new bicycle registry and an education campaign on how to correctly lock a bike. Last month, Boston launched StolenBikesBoston.com, where people can register their bikes and send out theft alerts on Twitter and Facebook.
So far, about 240 people follow the alerts on Twitter and 350 on Facebook. Boston police don't track bike-theft numbers, but "we wanted to head off the theft issue because as ridership increases, theft increases," says Nicole Freedman, director of the city's bicycle program.
Cities are also trying to provide safer bike storage. New York's city council passed a law last month requiring commercial landlords to allow the employees of building tenants to bring their bikes into their buildings—potentially making it easier for cyclists to store their bikes at work. Advocates of the law say that fear of theft is the No. 1 reason people don't ride their bikes to work. Some city employers, like Google Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG, already allow employees to store their bikes at work.
It isn't easy to park a bike in midtown Manhattan, says David Yassky, the city council member who introduced the bill. "A lot of people have put [a bike] in the street, and it has gotten stolen."
Many cyclists prefer to start their own grassroots movements against bike thieves. Senan Gorman, of Farmington, Conn., had his bike stolen a decade ago, but the pain is fresh. "It's still like it was yesterday," he says.
Two weeks ago, the 40-year-old flash developer launched an online community known as Karma Army for victims of sporting-equipment theft, focusing on bikes. Cyclists can send out Karma alerts about their stolen bikes to subscribers via RSS feed. He hopes to get police involved so that they, too, receive the theft alerts. The motto of the site, Mr. Gorman says, is simple: "It's bad karma if you steal someone else's stuff."
Mr. Gorman is also asking cyclists to record video messages telling bike thieves how they feel about having their prized possessions stolen and to upload the videos to YouTube. "Maybe there will be some [thieves] who will watch them," Mr. Gorman says.
The proliferation of sites puts more eyes on the road to identify thieves, says Mr. Maus of BikePortland.org. "We're trying to empower the eyes of the community to get bikes back," he says. The site had 80 listings for stolen bikes in July.
Even Lance Armstrong has tapped social media to cope with a theft. In February, the seven-time Tour de France winner used Twitter, which allows users to share content through short text messages, to tell fans about his stolen bike.
"Whoa!! They just came to my room and said our truck was broken into and someone stole my time trial bike!" he posted. "APB out to the twitterati." After the bike was returned to police in Sacramento, he gave his Twitter followers an update: "Oh!! And they recovered the bike!"
Cyclists who manage to locate their bikes online or on the streets should avoid confronting thieves themselves and should get local law enforcement involved, police say. "We can certainly set up a sting," says Lt. Paul Vernon, head of detectives for the Los Angeles Police Department's central division.
He notes that law-enforcement officials are seeing more "Frankenstein bikes," or those constructed from stolen parts, on the streets. "The trouble for many people is proving that [a recovered bike] is their bike." He recommends that cyclists record the serial numbers of their bikes or even etch their names into them for identification purposes.
Getting a stolen bike back may not mean your troubles are over. When James Selman's bike was stolen from his work studio in Portland in June, he posted an alert on BikePortland.org. A week and half later, Joe Wilson, a 27-year-old electrical engineering student, saw the bike, a Seven Cycles custom single-speed, outside his apartment and matched it to Mr. Selman's listing.
Mr. Wilson, who noted that the thief was wearing regular sneakers, rather than the special shoes that work best with the high-end pedals on the bike, emailed Mr. Selman to tell him that he was stalling the thief while calling the cops. The thief was arrested and the bike returned to its rightful owner.
Though Mr. Selman is grateful that the perpetrator was caught, he got the bike back with $850 worth of damage—an amount below his insurance deductible that he will have to pay out of pocket. His homeowners insurance would have covered the loss of the $5,500 bike. "The way the system works, I would have preferred for it to stay gone," he says.
Ms. McKibbon, who recovered her bike in Toronto, also faced new problems. Last weekend, her bike's rims, gears and other components were stolen on a busy street in Toronto.
But she has a message for bike thieves: Watch your back. "The world isn't as big as it once was," she says. "You never know who's watching."
Blog Tips - On entering the blog, you might try first going to the bottom of the page. This is where a bunch of gadgets which 'push' news to you are located. There are also a few which let you select from a new menu of news daily, or, in some cases, just as the news appears on the net. The top two are the 'breaking news' gadgets, one looking like a map which you can manipulate to get news from almost every country in the world. The one immediately below the map presents only breaking news programmed to reflect the six topics covered by the blog. Hit any stiry of interest to see the full-text behind the moving headline. In researching contemporary events, gadgets like these make your work easier, faster, and more complete.
Blog Tips - If you prefer not to read the blog in English, use the Translate This Blog gadget provided by Google) in the right sidebar, the FoxLingo webpage http://www.foxlingo.com/ or its Firefox add-on (most convenient so long as you are a Firefox user), or any other net translation resource.
Mashable, Ben Parr, June 14 - On June 12th, Iran held its presidential elections between incumbent Ahmadinejad and rival Mousavi. The result, a landslide for Ahmadinejad, has led to violent riots across Iran, charges of voting fraud, and protests worldwide. How can you best keep up with what’s happening in real-time, and what web tools can help us make sense of the information available?
This guide breaks down the best new media sources for real-time information, photos, and videos of the Iran situation, as well as ways to organize and share it with others.
If you have suggestions for additional online news sources and tools related to the Iranian election, please do leave a comment.
1. Track Iran-related hashtags and keywords on Twitter
Twitter is, far and away, the best social media tool for second-by-second information on what’s happening in Iran. People on-the-ground and across the globe are chatting about every breaking update, every news item, and every story they find. However, all this chatter can be overwhelming – here are some tips to help organize the noise:
Know your hashtags: The top hashtags and keywords being used by people talking about the Iran situation are #IranElection, Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, and Tehran. Track these keywords first.
Twitter Search: You can go to the source and search Twitter for keywords.
Monitter: One of our favorite tools, Monitter goes a step beyond Twitter search and allows you to watch the Twitter conversation around keywords in real-time. Create multiple columns or even embed them with a widget. This makes it much easier to consume all the information at once.
Please note that while Twitter is the fastest source of breaking news, it’s also sometimes a source of misinformation, and has a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
2. YouTube is your ally
Everybody’s favorite social video site YouTube () has been a central distribution medium for the Iran riots. Iranians have been posting videos nonstop of what’s happening on the ground. This really is the best way to see what’s happening without any filters.
Now, how to find the videos? We’ve picked out key YouTube accounts and search terms to track for the latest videos out of Iran:
While most news sources are now picking up on the Iran situation, the blogosphere has been far quicker with news and multimedia from Iran. Thus, your best bet for organizing all of this blog chatter is via Google Blog Search. Compliment this with Google News and you’ll have a fuller picture of the situation on the ground. Google ()’s algorithms have already pushed Iran election stories to the top of the pile, but you can dig deeper with specific searches for the Iran Riots, Ahmadinejad and Mousavi.
Extra Note: One blog stands out for its Iran coverage: Revolutionary Road has been bringing constant updates on the Iran Riots from the front lines. We rely on citizens like these to get us news from the ground.
The social media photo site Flickr () is brimming with some eye-popping and gut-wrenching imagery from the ground. Beatings, protests, military photos from the election…it’s all there, in full color.
Social media comes fast, and because of that, the information can be overwhelming. Use filters and tools to help you understand what’s happening in real-time. If you’re looking for background on the situation, get yourself up-to-speed using Wikipedia () (Iranian presidential elections 2009 and 2009 Iranian election protests are being constantly updated).
Finally, if you want to help bring awareness to the situation, then share! Share the videos you find via Twitter (), blog about the situation, email your friends: everybody can play a part in this new media ecosystem.
Mashable, Ben Parr, June 2 - Mahalo, the human-powered search engine and web directory, has been busy recently expanding it's array of content. In December, they launched Mahalo Answers, which offers payments to users that can provide the best answers. Yet, since it's a human-powered website, Mahalo has only been able to grow as fast as people have been able to create content. So now, it's turning to social media to fill in the gaps.
The company has just dropped the beta tag from their logo and launched Mahalo 2.0. Along with a new logo and a design facelift, the startup has improved user control of pages. Most notable of all, however, is that Mahalo has created a system that pulls information from multiple social media sources to create web pages for every search term.
Mahalo pages of old contained byte-sized summaries, questions and answers, quick facts, reviews, and some social media content, like Youtube () videos. Mahalo 2.0 has added a lot more content. The service is utilizing multiple social media APIs to add images (via Flickr ()), videos (via YouTube), and discussion of the specific topic on Twitter (). While we can't post the full screenshots (because these pages are incredibly long), take a look at Bob Dylan's page on Mahalo, before and after, to get an idea of what's going on:
Mahalo: Previous Layout
Mahalo 2.0 Layout
From what we can tell, this can nearly double the amount of content available on a Mahalo page. Unless of course, the search term doesn't exist in the Mahalo system, in which case it will create a page based on the same social media APIs. This means Mahalo can create a nearly-unlimited amount of pages with content - pages that can be indexed, shared, and edited.
User control has also gotten a boost. Users can edit these new, automatically-generated pages with a one-click interface and become page managers. This is important because page managers get 50% of a page's revenue, so this new release could spark a new push by regular Mahalo users to become the admins of these newly-created pages. Page managers can even embed pages on other websites. However, it still comes with a catch: you've got to edit the page every week or you lose it.
Mahalo is smart to create pages that users have not via social media. This content is rich, dynamic, and filled with the keywords and search engine optimization (SEO) juice that has helped Mahalo grow in the Google () rankings. Yet there has been controversy with Mahalo pulling questions from Twitter for its Mahalo Answers program, and it's possible that some users may argue that this as stealing their social content for Mahalo's gain. Regardless, Mahalo has become even more useful, if not a bit too cluttered.
Blogger seems now to have access to most (maybe all) the Google gadgets which can be added to an iGoogle personal homepage. There are tens of thousands of these handy tools. Since letting you do more net search easier and faster with better results is one main aim of this blog, I've put a small number of search-related gadgets at the bottom of this webpage.
Try them. They're easy to use. During your visit to Starting Points, you can do your own searches and customize them to a significant degree. The only exception is Breaking News which I pre-set to generate every few seconds self-refreshing current news on all the blog's subjects mentioned in its masthead. In Breaking News, you can click on any headline which appears to get the full story -- which will open in a new browser tab.
While I may change or add some other bottom-page gadgets as the blog evolves, here's a how-to on the other stuff there now as I write this.
TwitterSearch appears because I gradually became convinced Twitter could consistently yield useful results. Type in any searchword in any language and hit return. When the page is refreshed in your browser, or you return to the blog, the default search reverts to the last one carried out by any user of the gadget.
Easy Wikipedia Search lets you search nine different language versions of Wikipedia. Every version of Wikipedia has its own content. Non-English versions are not translations of the English version. Use the drop-down menu to choose a Wikipedia version other than the English one. The developer accidentally put French -- FR -- twice in the menu. Otherwise, the gadget seems to work well. Just remember to type your search keyword in the language of the Wikipedia you are using! For privacy and convenience reasons, your search keyword/s and results vanish after you leave the blog.
Google Mini Search lets you search three Google databases at once -- websites, videos, and blogs. Look for the three cute little boxes above each type of search result. By default, the first box brings just one result, the second brings up more, and the third brings up all Google's results for the search term/s. Again, your keywords and results are not saved on the blog page display after you leave it.
Search YouTube works simply. Type your search term/s and hit your keyboard's enter (return) key. You get a list of YouTube videos with image, filenames, and links. Just hit the image or link and you get taken directly to the video you select in a new tab. From that point on, you are operating on the very flexible YouTube site with its many options. Your YouTube searches vanish from this blogpage after you leave it. Others coming in at the same or later times will find the searchbox empty.
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