Enemybook.info, for one, “remedies the one-sided perspective of Facebook by allowing you to manage enemies as well as friends.” Created in 2007 by MIT graduate student, Kevin Matulef, Enemybook is an application that allows Facebook users to add people as enemies,specify why they are enemies, share the new status with enemies, see if anyone lists them as an enemy, and even become friends with the enemies of their enemies.

 

Another site, Hatebook.org, looks and operates much like Facebook with an evil twist. As described on the site, “Hatebook is an anti-social utility that disconnects you from the things YOU HATE.” Essentially an open forum for hating and being evil, the site pays homage to Dr. Evil of the famed Austin Powers movies and lets you befriend “other haters” in your neighborhood, track enemies on a Google “Evil Map,” as well as accumulate hate points to “show how evil you are.”

 

What’s the appeal of antisocial sites? “The temptation to poke fun at social networking sites probably stems from the fact that many people don’t know how to make use of the personal connections they’ve forged online, said Michael Arrington, editor of Techcrunch, a blog about web startups, in Wired.

 

‘There are all these great social networks out there — Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn. But for the most (part) they exist to celebrate your connections,’ Arrington said. ‘People don’t really know what to do once you’re connected to somebody.’"

 

As much as these sites celebrate being antisocial, the fact remains that they are actually bringing people together in an online forum that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

 

By Kathleen Clark

 

Kiva.org, a San Francisco company founded in 2005 by husband and wife Matt and Jessica Flannery, is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending Web site. Featured in President Clinton’s book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World and on Oprah Winfrey’s talk-show, the site has enabled individuals to become micro-bankers and connect with entrepreneurs in the developing world through small business loans. Fiona Ramsey, the company spokeswoman, explains how Kiva (which means ‘unity’ in Swahili) can change the world $25 at a time. 

 

 

Well microfinance has been around for about 30 years but with the 2005 international year of micro credit and Muhammad Yunus (the founder of Grameen Bank and pioneer of micro-lending) winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 there is of course a new interest in microfinance.

 

A lot more people are learning about it. There is a different feel to it than your traditional philanthropy where people give money to an individual or an organization. In this case the recipients are receiving loans and there is a huge element of self-dignity to it.

 

A lot of the enthusiasm around microfinance is because of the idea that once you get a business up and running it will continue to grow and the loan will be repaid. And there is also a phenomenon that I call “nation fatigue”. People are a little bit exhausted with images received through the media about poverty. They are looking for something different and Kiva is filling that gap. Americans want a lot more accountability for where their money is going and they also want a closer connection to the actual recipients of their loans. Kiva lenders want to know who they are helping but can’t always afford to go to Africa. With technology and the web we all have the ability to be connected with people in Africa and in the developing world.

 

We are financed by donations and grants. When we can say to a lender “if you lend 25 dollars to a person that person will receive $25 dollars”, that’s really powerful. Paypal is letting us do it for free (by not collecting its usual fees).

 

What makes Kiva different is that we want to be very clear about what goes to whom.

 

The entrepreneurs pay interests to our field partners who update lenders on the progress of each loan.

 

Kiva is an open platform where people who want to lend can connect with people who need a loan through organizations that are very successful lenders. People can make a choice based on a lot of information that we can provide on our website. And that is really what we want to do: empower the lender rather than having this very passive experience where you just send some money away and hope that it ends in the right hands. We really want to make it a more active and engaged philanthropic experience.

 

 

Part of what makes Kiva feel different is this business feel. The majority of people that work here have a corporate background. We definitely treat Kiva like a business. And that’s how we wanted to operate to be most successful.

 

A lot of the issues that we talk about are business issues because we want this to be the world’s largest database of micro-entrepreneurs online. We want to be really driven. You can see the growth that we have achieved so far (Kiva has increased its total loan portfolio to more than $25 million) and that really relates to the strong business feel that we have in the office.

 

We look at people with whom we interact as our customers. We have a strong social mission but that doesn’t mean that we can’t see it as a business with customers we need to satisfy. We are not interested in having pictures of people looking miserable. We are interested in having pictures of entrepreneurs and a business description of what they are doing.

 

We are not writing stories about poverty but stories about entrepreneurship. People have been so overexposed in the media with these images of poverty and sadness. We want to get away from that. We are not doing charity here. We expect the money to be paid back. Philanthropic people are very used to encountering images and language that really focus on tragedy.  But somebody in California has no way in the world to relate to pandemic disease or war or famine or natural disaster. What Kiva is doing is trying to bring you back to something that’s very easy to relate to. Most people in the United States used a loan to go to college so it’s something that they can relate to.

By Anne Senges, for Atelier

For more information,visit www.kiva.org

Related article: Kiva.org: When peer2peer lending helps in the fight against poverty

Google and the National Hurricane Center are teaming up to deliver personalized hurricane data.

 

The program, hoped to be available this hurricane season (June 1^st to November 30^th), will tell people if a storm surge threatens their particular home.

 

A storm surge is the massive amount of water a hurricane propels onto land, and it is considered one of the most deadly and destructive elements of a hurricane.

 

The new program will combine existing hurricane forecasting data with a Google application so that "People can plug in their address and see at what level they are at risk," Bill Read, head of the National Hurricane Center, told Reuters.

 

The National Hurricane Center currently uses a program called SLOSH (Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes) that estimates storm surge heights by taking into account the size, internal pressure, forward speed, track and wind strength of a hurricane.

 

By combining this information with Google’s accessibility, people will know whether to leave certain areas, potentially saving lives.

 

It is meant to alleviate the amount of phone calls that flood local emergency systems during storms. Numerous people call emergency services with concerns about flooding in their area, and by making the information public, people can not only get real-time information about how storm surges will affect them, but in doing so they can free up phone lines for emergencies.

 

In addition to the collaboration with Google, the National Hurricane Center will provide color-coded graphics to show storm surge probabilities of affected areas and the time it will take for the surge to exceed five feet. Such graphics will help emergency services determine road closures and other vital decisions.

 

With such advancements, hopefully we can see technology save lives.

 

By Danny Scuderi

 

Fouad Moutada was sentenced to three years in prison and given a 10,000 dirham ($1,370) fine on February 23, 2008 after creating a Facebook profile of King Mohammed VI’s younger brother.

 

Under strict Moroccan law, any voice of scrutiny against the royal family can be prosecuted.

 

Moutada claimed that he created the account out of fun and admiration for the prince, and that he had no malicious intent. His lawyer, Ali Ammar, and thousands of supporters defended him by saying that many celebrity profiles are created on Facebook and other social networking sites, and that Moutada’s incident was just as harmless as those.

 

The arrest and sentencing drew the scrutiny of the Moroccan blogosphere as well as free speech supporters around the world. Thousands of Internet groups protested, and Moroccan bloggers even stopped writing in solidarity to the computer engineer.

 

The pardon, one of 566 by the Moroccan king, was granted as part of a tradition of announcing pardons on the anniversary of the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed.

 

It also shows the effort of the Moroccan political sphere to highlight the social progress it has made since King Mohammed VI took power in 1999 after the death of his father, King Hassan II, who had an appalling human rights record.

 

Still, journalist Ahmed Benchemsi faces up to five years in jail after writing an article about a speech by the king. Nadia Yassine, an Islamist leader, is also facing prison time by stating she is in favor of the country becoming a republic.

 

With Moutada’s case, the discussion of the Internet and international free speech continues.

 

By Danny Scuderi

 

A computer bug similar to the Y2K bug is expected to affect UNIX-based systems by the year 2038. The bug, known as the "2038 bug," is a threat to UNIX where time is kept in a 32-bit variable which will reach its maximum in January 2038. Times beyond this moment will "wrap around" and be represented by a negative number. This means that programs will fail since they will see these times not in 2038 but rather in 1901 resulting in flawed calculations and, ultimately, disaster.

 

Project 2038, a site dedicated to 2038 preparedness, offers advice for programmers:

Newer versions of UNIX and Linux ported to 64-bit or 124-bit platforms may be immune to the 2038 bug, but there’s no easy fix.

Example showing how the date would reset (at 03:14:08 UTC on 19 January 2038):

“Even if every PC in the year 2038 has a 64-bit CPU, there will be a lot of older 32-bit programs running on them.  And the larger, more complex, and more important any program is, the better are its chances that that it’ll be one of these old 32-bit programs” warns programmer Robert M. Wilcox.

 

Fortunately, software programmers still have 30 years to find a solution or replace systems vulnerable to the bug.

 

By Kathleen Clark

 

CafeMom.com, co-founded by actor Andrew Shue and Michael Sanchez, is the largest and fastest growing social networking site for moms with membership that surpassed the one million mark in just over a year after the initial launch. 

 

October 2007 numbers from comScore revealed CafeMom as the number one site for women with an impressive total of 90 million page views.

 

The social networking site for moms is now reporting 6 million monthly visitors and 120 million page views, showing fast growth beyond the comScore data.

On the whole, CafeMom isn’t going away any time soon now that it has total funding of upwards $20 million with the previously raised $8.3 million from the Web site’s prominent investors Highland Capital Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Launched in late 2006 and dubbed the “myspace for moms,” CafeMom is a remarkable platform where moms can create a profile, add a photo or choose from pre-made avatars, customize their profile’s color scheme and background, send messages and build a network of friends.

 

Moms can also create sub-profiles for kids, list interests, upload and share photos, write a journal and tag interests that connect them with others who share similar interests. Other features include advanced privacy controls to limit who can see their profile. The journal and photo sections both include tagging and YouTube-style filtering that allows for narrowed searches through the most viewed, most popular and most recent blog entries and images. A clever feature within the journal section allows for embedding YouTube clips and browsing posts with embedded videos.

 

By Kathleen Clark

 

Almost everyone uses the internet. Almost everyone uses a credit or debit card. Everyone is worried about identity theft.

 

Now, most credit card companies are offering disposable credit card numbers as a way to ease the worry.

 

The virtual credit card number, as it is properly called, is a one-time use only credit card number good for only one website. Also, it expires after, at most, two months of being issued.

 

Therefore, if someone obtains your online purchasing information during a transaction, he/she will not be able to use it, and they will also be cut off from any other personal identification information associated with making online purchases.

 

The disposable credit card numbers have been around since 2000, but new research aims to take the risk and inconvenience out of setting up and using them.

 

“It complicates the user experience and the result has been less-then-stellar adoption rates," Mike Rothman, head of Security Incite in Atlanta, told LiveScience.

 

CitiBank’s Virtual Account Number option, Bank of America’s ShopSafe program and Discover’s Secure Online Account Numbers are all established disposable credit card number programs, but to set up the accounts the consumers must enter their credit card numbers online.

 

Entering your credit card number online in order to avoid entering your credit card number online to make purchases is a conflict, one that researchers at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K. are hoping to resolve.

 

They suggest obtaining the one-time use numbers through a combination of store information–probably sales price–and the actual credit card number. This new hybrid number would be issued by the credit card companies to the consumer. Consequently, neither the store nor a hacker could read or understand the number.

 

Though a viable aid in reducing identity theft online, disposable credit card numbers cannot be used for all transactions. Purchasing theater tickets, airplane tickets, or booking hotels requires the physical credit card when finalizing these transactions. With the disposable number likely expired by this time, it cannot be used.

 

In addition, with fraud protection and a card holder’s liability of only $50 for a lost or stolen card, some argue that it doesn’t make sense to add the virtual credit card number to the mix.

 

The purpose is to avoid the hassle, on both ends, of dealing with a stolen card number. By preventing the possibility of theft, the virtual credit card number eliminates the problem of contacting credit card companies, filling out paperwork, and going through the rigors of canceling a card and obtaining a new one.

 

It is for the merchants as well, as fraudulent purchases cost online stores millions of dollars in chargebacks each year.

 

Electronic payments accounted for more than two-thirds of the $93.3 billion non-cash transactions in the U.S. last year. Even so, more and more people are curtailing their internet purchases out of fear of identity theft, according to the Wall Street Journal.

 

Although it seems like a hassle, virtual credit card numbers are becoming easier and safer to use and in turn making your online shopping easier, safer and, like all good things, hassle-free.

 

By Danny Scuderi

 

About a year ago, San Francisco-based Twitter started registering on the Web 2.0 radar in a big way after it became hot news at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) all the way in Austin, Texas. This year, Twitter returned to the show where many attendees who had since then become Twitterers used the service to stay in touch, find parties and vent against Sarah Lacy. Apparently, Twitter is here to stay and several competitors are joining the competition.

 

I will let a self-proclaimed Twitter addict describe what it is all about. Laurent Pantanacce’s devotion to the service led him to create a Twitter directory which, on a recent day, listed 941,943 twitterers. A definite Twitter member body count is hard to come by.

 

“For me, Twitter is a communication tool on the border between blogs and instant messaging. It makes it possible to publish short notes, which is why we talk about micro-blogging. In addition, you can manage your circle of friends within Twitter, adding a social dimension to a simple communication tool. Because the published notes are short and broadcast to a circle of friends who tend to respond, it makes the tool akin to collective instant messaging,” Pantanacce explained on a French blog.

 

“Real life happens between blog posts and emails,” seriously states a video titled Twitter in Plain English on the company blog (or there on YouTube). The bite-sized messages (they must be under 140 characters) that a Twitter member receives from her friends help her stay connected, and even learn things she never knew about them. These messages are all answers to the simple question “What are you doing?” and can be sent on the Internet or from a cell phone.

 

Twitter could also be described as a hipper version of Facebook for the in crowd. It has some of the same basic elements: creating an online circle of friends, updating them about your whereabouts and letting third-party developers create new applications. But Twitter has a more manic feel to it because of the constant updates. Isn’t turning our friends into paparazzi following our every move a bit too much? Twitter aficionados would disagree, of course, and they would say that Twitter is also a great tool for professional networking and for technology watch. Like Facebook, Twitter is said to have spurred the development of hundreds of related applications including TwitterFeed which merges any RSS Feed into Twitter or an interface to Outlook.

 

 

Twitter might retain its lead, but several competitors have appeared. The two main ones are Jaiku and Pownce. Finland-based Jaiku is considered to be better designed and to have better mobile integration. Yet it has never really taken off. Will its recent acquisition by Google bring new life to the “activity stream and presence sharing service” as its two founders describe Jaiku? Those interested in joining the beta program might learn the answer more quickly.

 

And then there is Pownce, a newcomer with a famous godfather in the person of Digg founder Kevin Rose. On Pownce, you can send text, but also links and files. Here again, users who have compared the different services find Pownce to be technically and aesthetically interesting. The problem is that, if your friends are on Twitter, that’s where you want to be too. But for those who want it both ways, TwitKu makes it possible to follow and post to both Twitter and Jaiku on one interface. “Refuse to choose” proclaims TwitKu. The micro-blogging version of nirvana.

 

By Isabelle Boucq

 

Marketers are proportioning as much as 20% of their advertising budgets to online marketing, and they, as well as their clients, are interested in how online ads compare to TV advertising and affect brand image.

 

While TV ads are long, disruptive and easily avoidable, most of the online advertising is concise and must be watched, whether it is a banner ad on a website or a mini-commercial before an online program begins.

 

Also, using targeted ads online means that different viewers see different advertisements on the same page.

 

Marketing research companies like IAG Research and ARSgroup have developed different methods to gauge how effective ads are in TV and the Internet.

 

IAG uses incentive-based internet polls to see what TV ads viewers remembered, and they place “cookies” on hard drives so they know when panelists are exposed to an online ad. ARSgroup tests how engaging ads are in TV, internet and movie theaters.

 

The use of these tools is still in its infancy, but recent research suggests online advertising is more effective.

 

NBC conducted an online survey of its NBC Rewind viewers and says its internet ads elicit higher brand recall than those on TV. They found that the ads are more entertaining, engaging and, most importantly for the viewer, less disruptive.

 

Peter Naylor, senior VP of digital media sales at NBC Universal said, “These research results show that when the right message is tailored to the right medium, this engaged audience really responds and our advertisers win.”

 

These results combined with the Internet’s growing presence in everyday life may lead to online advertising becoming more important than TV ads.

 

By Danny Scuderi

 

Scientists are now studying ways to test new treatments for HIV and brain disorders by using virtual humans on computers and “labs on a chip” reports MSNBC.com. 

 

University College London scientists, for one, are presently defining a new way to simulate the internal workings of the human body through a super computer linked to networks of computers around the world.

 

Known as Virtual Physiological Human (VPH), the computer simulation could provide doctors with faster and more refined treatments for patients. HIV patients who have developed resistance to a form of drug treatment, for example, could benefit from the research as doctors are better able to find replacement therapy.

“I would predict that this century is going to be dominated by our ability to handle biomedical problems in a computational domain,” said Peter Coveney, director of the Centre for Computational Science at University College London, also reported on MSNBC.com.

Andre Levchenko is an associate professor of biomedical engineering and an affiliated researcher with the Institute for NanoBioTechnology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He and his colleagues are using plastic-like chips or “labs on chips” to understand the billions of neurons in the brain and how they react to various signals.

“After a stroke, a huge part of the brain tissue may become disabled,” Levchenko said. “If one understands how this network is put together in the first place, it’s possible to predict what should be done to put the tissue back into place after the trauma.”

The chips could eventually be used by scientists to engineer basic brain tissue or to explain the complicated interactions between different cell types such as neurons and muscle cells.

These advancements in Biomedicine, should they work the way researchers hope, could lead to less reliance on animal testing and better personalized medicine, and more importantly a greater understanding of the complexity of the human body.

By Kathleen Clark