It sometimes feels like all the good topics are taken online — it’s uncommon to find a promising but untrampled niche for a new website. The folks behind The Awl hope they’ve found one in a new site up in beta today called Splitsider. (It’s password-protected for now; it’ll be public next week.) It’ll cover the comedy industry for a ready audience of comedy nerds/lovers, and it’s the first evidence of the Awl expansion plans we wrote about in June.

Last week Adam Frucci, who is going to head up Splitsider, said goodbye to his readers at the Gawker Media site Gizmodo. Reflecting on his four years there, he asked: “What other job pays you to test drug paraphernalia and sex toys, to create goofy videos and unscientific quizzes? No other job, that’s what.” But there is still plenty in store for him at his new gig, where his colleagues will include Gawker veterans Choire Sicha and Alex Balk.

I spoke with Frucci about why moving on to Splitsidder was so appealing, considering his success at Gizmodo. “I’ve been at Gizmodo for four years,” he told me, “but I was never going to run Gizmodo.”

He’s in the process of sorting out what kinds of posts he wants to write himself and which contributors he plans to tap for regular features. “It’s been a lot of back and forth with writers,” he says. “I want people to be excited about what they write about.” Contributors will be unpaid, at least at first. (When I asked if he can guarantee book deals, like the kind Awl contributor Chris Lehmann landed for his unpaid column called Rich People Things, Frucci deadpanned, “I promise 100 percent if you contribute, you’ll get a book deal.”) He says the core of the site will be a running stream of newsy posts from him about things like which shows and writers getting deals, plus columns on specific topics.

The site will compliment The Awl, posting content that at least some Awl readers should find interesting. That cross-promotion will help push early readers to the new site. But it’ll have a slightly different tone: Publisher David Cho told me that if The Awl is all about voice, Splitsider will be all about showing they can do “newsy voicey.”

Cho told me that the combination of content opportunity and voice is what made this an appealing prospect. “To have a great writer and a topic that no one else owned, that’s a huge opportunity,” he said. “I think from a content perspective, it might even have more potential than the Awl.” This spring, The Awl was up to about 400,000 pageviews per day. The bread and butter of Splitsider will be the die-hard comedy nerd (“they have nowhere to congregate now,” Cho says), plus the casual reader.

Frucci and Cho are optimistic, but there’s obviously risk involved. Frucci’s contract offers him the perks of getting to build and shape the site, plus a share of site revenue. But, if the site doesn’t take off, there’s no base salary for him to rely on. His old job at Gizmodo paid him a base plus bonuses for big traffic.

Cho agreed there’s a risk, but said he wouldn’t push him into something he thought would definitely fail. He added that you pretty much need a sink-or-swim personality to make this kind of project work. If you’re looking for stability, “I don’t think that’s the type of person we’d want for a job like this,” Cho said. “That’s the type of person whose going to get burn out.”

Frucci mentioned his idea for the site to Cho, who had his eye out for talented writers and good ideas for sites. Why launch with Cho and share revenue rather than go it alone? “I have no experience launching a site or selling ads,” he told me. “Basically, it makes it possible to do.” Cho says he “can get him a significantly higher CPM than if he were trying to do it on his own.”

Cho told me back in June that he hopes to launch several new sites this year. He’s keeping his eye out for interesting ideas and great writers to lead them. The details on the other sites are under wraps, but Cho did say “in a lot of ways, this site is a pilot.”

Wii; £39.99; cert 16+; Team Ninja/Nintendo

Super Metroid remains one of the best ever Nintendo exclusives, so the franchise's first proper outing on Wii was always going to be highly anticipated. However, Other M is literally a game of two halves that will not appeal to everyone.

Let's start with the most obvious and debatable design decision: the perspective. Most of MoM is played with a fixed 3D camera angle that tracks your progress from one location to another. These locations can be played in either first or third person perspective, and switching perspective merely involves pointing the wiimote at the screen. In FPS mode, your position is fixed and the game becomes a more House of the Dead style shooting gallery. In the default 2D mode, the action scrolls from left to right and the controller is held sideways, with D-pad for movement and A & B buttons for all the weapons, jumps and defenses.

All this is rendered and animated with due reverence to the SNES original, making the look of the game instantly familiar. However, this time the Samus must tell her own dull backstory through annoyingly long (and frustratingly unskippable) cut-scenes. Luckily, her sulky new voice has not diminshed her fighting skills, with many of her signature moves and weapons incorporated into the game, those familiar wall jumps and an all new dodge move.

Moves and weapons are released to you throughout the game, which is par for the series and yet, compared to the balletic combat of previous games, MoM is a curiously disjointed affair. It's not just memorising all the button presses on a sideways-held controller (which is disorientating in itself) – it's being forced to switch perspectives at key points in the game just to survive. This is especially noticeable during boss battles that can't simply be dispatched by relying on Samus's auto-targeting system. Because you can't move or jump in FPS mode or fire missiles or scan the locations in the other, you're forced to shuffle between the two perspectives, usually getting pummeled while you decide whether to switch or not.

Which begs the question of what was so wrong with the game's original two dimensions – not least when it delivered a superior game on vastly inferior hardware? Yes, 3D and talking heroines are what the market wants but an unashamedly mute, 2D Metroid for Wii was what true fans of the series wanted even more and I'm afraid I'm one of them.

Rating: 3/5

What humanitarian crisis management has to do with brand monitoring and natural language.

Information management is easily the greatest challenge of the digital age, only intensifying as we go forth. While most of us make do with a careful selection of tools and a handful of trusted content curators, a holistic solution to information overload has been largely missing. Until now. Enter SwiftRiver, a brand new open-source intelligence gathering platform for managing real-time streams of data.

Developed by our friends at Ushahidi, whose platform of crowdsourced crisis information was the single most effective data management platform during the Haiti earthquake, SwiftRiver offers five different web services for validating and filtering real-time information:

• SiLCC is a natural-language processing tool that extracts semantic value from text — essentially, figuring out the human meaning of digital bits
• SULSa adds location context to content, which can be a life-or-death factor when responding to crisis information
• SiCDS reduces the number of duplicates, such as RT’s on Twitter that relay identical information without adding semantic value
• Reverberations measures the influence of content by weighing its popularity as it propagates across the social graph
• River ID scans the other four services to determine what and who is of value to different communities

Swift isn’t about replacing humans — it’s about maximizing their time.” ~ Jon Gosier

What makes SwiftRiver particularly noteworthy is its incredible range applications — from humanitarian crisis management to brand monitoring to political intelligence and beyond. What’s even more valuable is the multi-dimensional, relational way in which it approaches content — because the value of information is rarely absolute but, rather, relative to the context of who we are, what we do, where we live, and what else we know.

We have high hopes for SwiftRiver as the first tangible ray of hope for “curaggregation” — the holy-grail intersection of curation and aggregation. Give it a try.

via White African

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Commodity traders are following farmers on Twitter, hoping for clues about crop forecasts and such.

Last week Grisafi started receiving tweets from European farmers saying the weather was hotter and drier than weather reports indicated. He'd been short the wheat market on the assumption that prices would fall. After reading the tweets, however, he realized the commodity might be in shorter supply than the market expected and got out of his position, avoiding a loss as prices rose.

As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O'Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O'Neill's exclusive – only follow-up stories by rival news organisations such as The Guardian and ITN.

Within the next several weeks, the New Yorker magazine will be publishing big pieces about a pair of digital icons located on the East and West coasts–an assessment of the turnaround at AOL by staff columnist Ken Auletta and a profile of Facebook Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Huffington Post senior contributing editor Jose Antonio Vargas.

For the Zuckerberg piece, Vargas was given a lot of access by the social networking kingpin, including allowing rare interviews with Zuckerberg’s inner circle and also longtime girlfriend and fulltime med student Priscilla Chan.

And Auletta–whose big New Yorker takeout on Google (GOOG) turned into a book that is now being turned into a movie–will be assessing the turnaround efforts at AOL (AOL), which is now being led by former Google exec Tim Armstrong.

The Internet icon has seen troubled times in recent years, including a spin-off from Time Warner (TWX), which should make for interesting fodder for Auletta.

Also in the tech-topic kitty at the New Yorker, sources said: A profile of trouble-making Gawker Media impresario Nick Denton by Ben McGrath, which I am hoping will include his terrific tour of Chinese markets near where he lives in Manhattan’s SoHo.

Specialist publisher announces paid-for iPad app, looking to increase return from digital operations

Future Publishing is to launch a bespoke iPad edition of its gadget magazine T3, buoyed by a sixfold increase in US print sales of the title since the iPad launched in April.

T3: iPad Edition marks the specialist publisher's move into publishing tailored editions of its magazines for tablet devices, following the release of iPhone apps for its Total Film and MacLife titles.

Development of the T3 iPad edition will be led by Future's in-house team and built on the WoodWing Digital Magazine Tool platform, which also hosts the Sports Illustrated iPad app.

The app will showcase exclusive video, 360-degree animation and interactive image galleries. Although T3's print edition is currently hosted by Zinio for digital browsing, the new app represents Future's first bespoke paid-for edition for the Apple iPad.

Nial Ferguson, publishing director for Future's entertainment and tech lifestyle portfolios, said: "The natural synergies between T3 and the iPad create a dream union for both consumers and our commercial partners. Our research tells us that T3 readers are high-spending early-adopters, who already voraciously consuming media on the platform.

"We've worked very hard and liaised with Apple to ensure that T3: iPad Edition will give our readers the quality and authority of the print magazine, combined with the unique interactivity and functionality the iPad platform provides. Early testing among consumers and commercial partners has been very positive."

After posting better-than-expected financial returns for the six months to the end of March, Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future Publishing, told the Guardian that digital publishing represented "more than a quarter" of its revenue in the given time and suggested that there were opportunities to develop its brands further in the space.

"The iPad could be a bubble or it could be a bandwagon," said Spring, reflecting on the significant increase in sales of the magazine since the US launch of Apple's tablet device. Spring said the publisher's existing stock of iPhone apps for its titles, which are a mixture of paid-for and free, were "partly promotional, partly experimental".

If the biggest technological leap since the Industrial Revolution is to benefit us all, governments and educators have work to do

The prefix "nano" is gaining an increasing presence in public consciousness, from invocations of the nanometre (nm) as a unit of measurement for our burgeoning silicon technology's tininess (as in Intel's latest 32nm processors), to the hubristically named iPod nano, which is a bit smaller than the others. The prominence of this word in our culture is set to rocket over the coming decades as more tightly defined "nanotechnology" becomes available – for example, Nokia is hoping to release a nanotech phone that it calls the Morph in 2015.

A commonly accepted definition of nanotechnology is that it deals with devices smaller than 100nm in size. A nanometre is one billionth of a metre. A single atom is between a tenth to half a nanometre across; a million or more of them stacked on top of one another would equal the thickness of a piece of paper. Nanotech machines will use individual atoms and molecules as mechanical moving parts, and will enable us to take apart and rebuild just about anything atom by atom.

If this sounds like science fiction, consider that you're carrying trillions of proofs of concept around inside you that could only be viewed with an electron microscope; every time your DNA is transcribed into RNA, or your muscle cells use fuel from food for movement, or your immune system fights off an infection, the work is done by nanomachines – devices built out of atoms and molecules which do mechanical work.

In his book, Engines of Creation, K Eric Drexler reminded readers that every manmade and natural object around us is an arrangement of (mostly very common) atoms and molecules. The ability to arrange those molecules more regularly will allow us to build materials many times stronger and lighter than those used in engineering today. This could bring a space elevator within reach, allowing us to explore the solar system and exploit the resources of the planets and asteroids cheaply. In the body, nanomachines could fight disease, or even aging, one atom at a time, restoring them to the configurations characteristic of healthy tissue.

An advanced nanotechnology would be capable of repairing the damage we have done to our environment, capturing carbon out of the air and salting it away under the earth, or using it to build the light, strong, diamond-like materials the nanotech-enabled human-scale technology will depend on. Ultimately, the most basic and useful elements we will need (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc) can be harvested out of the air and dirt, and assembled into useful configurations with barely an hour of work. Nanotechnology has the potential to build a post-scarcity material economy – with the same implications we are so awkwardly working through in the post-scarcity information economy.

Drexler didn't shy away from confronting the negative possibilities of uncontrolled nanotech development in his book, and he and other scientists, such as those at the Centre for Responsible Nanotechnology, attempt to raise public awareness of the coming developments, which will inevitably grow out of research into molecular biology and computing (specifically, artificial intelligence and computer-aided design).

There are many terrifying possibilities for nanotechnology; military nanomachines could infiltrate human bodies and systematically tear them apart using the same principles medical nanomachines will use to repair them. An uncontrolled nanomachine designed to replicate itself could lead to the "grey goo" scenario that once panicked Prince Charles. Monopolistic practices on the part of the corporation or government that first produces a workable nanotechnology could hoard its benefits for one segment of the population, denying the rest of the world the massively increased prosperity it offers.

The solutions will have to complement one another if this, the biggest technological leap forward since the Industrial Revolution, is to benefit everyone. The most important is collaboration and diplomacy; the democracies that lead the world in scientific research need to collaborate in development and come to agreements that will share benefits and severely restrict weaponisation. Nanotech treaties will have far greater import for the survival of mankind, and of Earth as an ecosystem, than any nuclear treaty. Even "rogue" states need to be included in these efforts, simply because the new technology will be so desirable that if they are not included, they will push forward with their own, more dangerous and less controlled research.

The other aspect of preparation is education. The electorate need to be adequately informed to understand the debate that will take place and to put pressure on their leaders to choose the right paths. This means that formal science education in schools needs continued support from the ministers setting curriculums, and higher education and research needs support and funding so that we continue to have scientists and engineers capable of contributing to research and to public debate.

We need a forum for discussing the implications and direction of technological change in a way that is open and comprehensible to the public, and whose conclusions and advice ministers take seriously and do not dismiss on ideological grounds. Drexler proposes that such a forum needs the credibility of due process present in a court of law, and the scientific reliability that stems from peer review. Most of all, we need politicians with the courage to resist the temptation to short-termism that comes with limited terms in office, who realise that the debates arising in the coming years will see them legislating the shape of the future.

Samsung enters mobile computer market with 7in Galaxy Tab, launched at IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin

Samsung made its eagerly awaited new entry into the mobile computing market today with the launch of the Galaxy Tab, and hinted that further versions will be unveiled next year.

The 7in Android-based tablet computer with built-in phone capabilities is expected to challenge the Apple iPad.

However, with pricing details still not available today, it is not clear quite how the Tab will compare with other products.

Weighing in at just 380g, the Galaxy Tab is being pitched as a single portable device that can be used to browse the internet, make video calls, watch television or listen to music.

"This is not just another tablet. We call it a Smart Media device," Thomas Richter, Samsung's head of product portfolio, told a packed press conference at the at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin.

Samsung executives said that the company will probably launch several more Tab models next year, possibly with different screen sizes, to target different audiences.

"Based on our research, customers have different needs ... next year you might see very different tablets coming out of our company," hinted DJ Lee, a senior Samsung executive.

The Galaxy Tab has a 1024x600 TFT colour screen, which can flip between portrait and landscape view dependng how the user holds it. It will be sold with 16GB or 32GB of memory, expandable with another 32GB. It has two built-in cameras for and will be shipped with several applications from Google pre-installed, including Maps and Places.

The Tab also supports a wide range of connectivity methods, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HSDPA and HSUPA. and includes a GPS chip. It will also run HTML5 and Adobe Flash.

"At this size and weight, the Tab is just as portable as a mobile phone," Richter said. Samsung said that the Tab's battery would support seven hours of continuous video playback.

There was some disappointment at IFA that pricing details were not available. Samsung said this would ultimately be determined by operators. Vodafone has already said today that it will offer the device, which will be launched in Europe in October.

"We will work very hard to deliver a very competitive price," said DJ Lee.

Analysts at CSS Insight said that the Tab is likely to be positioned as an "operator-friendly alternative to iPad", but warned that pricing will be "crucial in the competitive tablet market."

The ability to make voice and video calls over the Tab may be a key differentiator in the competitive tablet PC market. According to Richter, mobile operators who sell the Tab are likely to offer a "two Sim" solution, so that a customer could run the Tab and another mobile phone on the same phone number.

The Tab runs the latest Google's Android mobile phone application, and will have full access to the Android Marketplace of applications. Lee said that "80% to 90%" of Android applications will work on the device, but he admitted that some of the most popular applications did not run well – probably due to its sreen size. He said Samsung had been working with Google and the developer community to fix this problem.

Ebooks are also supported on the device. "We expect Tab to play an important role in the digitisation of printed media," said Richter.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs ups company's social media game with Ping – a music recommendation and sharing feature that has been added to the latest version of iTunes

Apple has ditched the CD in the iTunes logo, upgraded its iPod range and revamped Apple TV, as we learned last night. Chief executive Steve Jobs also upped Apple's social media game with Ping – a music recommendation and sharing feature that has been added to the latest version of iTunes, iTunes 10.

Users with an iTunes Store login (there are 160 million of those worldwide, and they are the engine behind Apple's money-making content machine) can now click the 'Ping' tab in iTunes, create a profile and begin following and being followed by like-minded music fans.

However, initial reviews of Ping have not been flattering. No-one I follow had a good word to say about it:

@Moleitau: OK, Ping is terrible so far *apart* from being able to follow Rick Rubin and find out he digs Arvo Pärt

@Matt B: wow, Ping's personal artist follow recommendations are terrible.

@scobleizer: "The Who." Fail. "Beatles." Fail. "Elton John." Fail. Just what kind of musician IS in Apple's iTunes Ping? @myspace wins.

@DamoBiddles just downloaded iT 10 and 'ping' - monstrous. buggy. evil. Also seems weird being built into an application UI. not great so far.

Photo by striatic on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

A music-orientated social network is a great idea because Apple has a captive and very active audience among its iTunes user base. Privacy settings are simple – share everything with anyone, share a bit with people you approve or don't share at all. Where Twitter is all things to all people, Ping could become the default network for music chatter – gig reviews, album recommendations and so on – one of those niche social networks we thought might take off a few years back.

But there are problems, and not just that recommending Katy Perry and US to everyone is not a good idea. At startup, you can only pick three genres of favourite music; I picked singer-songwriters, blues and alternative. Where would you classify Katy Perry under those? Because that's what I was served up. Those of us used to Last.fm, among others, expect far more from music recommendation.

It is a strange experience using a social network locked within a tab of an already-busy programme. If I wasn't already (occasionally) using iTunes for music there would be zero incentive for me to use Ping at all. And I use iTunes more for apps than music... where's the social network for apps?

Apple's modus operandi seems fundamentally opposed to the nature of social networking, which is all about openness. Without importing existing networks from Twitter or Facebook (inviting friends through Apple Mail is not enough), there's a significant investment of time needed to set Ping up. Now social networking is more mature, there's less appetite for putting in that groundwork – and why should we have to when our networks already exist? Look at the success of Twitter, built on third-party development and off-site interaction. Ping could have pulled in existing intelligence about artists and public profiles of followers. It could have populated user profiles with your most listened-to tracks; a few album covers aren't enough for data-loving music fans. It could have thrown up the most listened to or downloaded tracks through iTunes in real-time. Buy Songkick or something, FFS. Where is everybody?

It's static, detached, and outdated. Perhaps we'll revisit it when it grows up.

A poor effort, Apple.

Il ben noto ed affermato lettore online di feed-RSS targato Google di certo costituisce uno degli strumenti maggiormente diffusi ed utilizzati dall’intera utenza poiché, tenendo ben presente il buon grado di comodità e praticità, va a configurarsi come una delle risorse più apprezzate lungo l’intero web.

Tuttavia, l’applicazione di ulteriori ed utili aggiornamenti non guasta mai, per cui, al fine di rendere ancor più pratico ed efficiente l’utilizzo di Google Reader, il gran colosso del web ha ben pensato di offrire ai suoi utilizzatori la possibilità di sfruttare il lettore di feed direttamente in formato fullscreen, massimizzandone dunque l’usabilità.

Ebbene si, cari lettori di Geekissimo, Google Reader risulta ora visualizzabile a schermo intero direttamente dal proprio browser web preferito, il tutto semplicemente previa pressione del tasto F sulla pagina web relativa al tanto amato lettore di feed, consentendo dunque di concentrare al massimo la propria attenzione su quelle che sono le news d’interesse ed evitando quindi eventuali distrazioni che, si sà, non mancano mai!

(...)
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Google Reader si aggiorna: ora è possibile visualizzare i propri feed-RSS in modalità fullscreen!, pubblicato su Geekissimo il 02/09/2010

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