Random Accesses

According to a study by the University of California at Berkeley, traditional search engines such as Google and Yahoo index only about 0.2% of the Internet. The remaining 99.8%, known as the "deep Web," is a vast body of public and subscription-based information that traditional search engines can't access.

To dig into this "invisible" information, scientists have developed a new search engine called Infovell geared at helping researchers find often obscure data in the deep Web. As scientists working on the Human Genome Project, Infovell´s founders designed the new searching technology based on methods in genomics research. Instead of using keywords, Infovell accepts much longer search terms, and in any language.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news140110066.html

The OpenAjax Alliance, an industry group that aims to advance emerging web standards, is assembling a list of the functionality that its members desire to enable next-generation web application development. The organization is calling for participants to vote on their favorite features and discuss the best strategies for encouraging their widespread implementation.

Modern web services are rapidly carving a space alongside conventional desktop applications, but the underlying technologies that power the web haven't always evolved fast enough to keep up. This disparity has burdened web application developers with limitations that stifle innovation and prevent the Internet from achieving its full potential. Pushing the web forward is a difficult challenge because the need for interoperability implies a need for broad consensus among the major stakeholders. The OpenAjax Alliance could build some much-needed forward momentum around standardization efforts by helping web developers articulate their collective requirements.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-four-things-that-need-fixing-to-secure-the-future-of-the-web.html

The film and music industries have been turned upside down by the arrival of the internet. Now it's the turn of telecoms, argues Howard Greenfield.

The internet is set to get louder with the talkification of the web. By adding telephone functionality to HTML pages, innovative software developers are about to give your browser a voice.

It's going to change the ways we interact on the web and will create some new rules for telecoms.

Over the past decade, as digital music, video and films have become the province of anyone with an ISP, whole industries have been transformed with each click of the mouse. And so telephony, or voice, is about to follow suit.

Source: http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39211279,00.htm

During the course of a day, the average person who works at a desk deals with torrents of information coming from many sources: e-mails, Web searches, calendars, notes, spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. Sorting through the information is tough, and for the most part, it's done in an ad hoc manner. But in the next couple of months, there may be a better way. Radar Networks, based in San Francisco, is releasing a free Web-based tool, called Twine, that it hopes will change the way people organize their information.

Twine is a website where people can dump information that's important to them, from strings of e-mails to YouTube videos. Or, if a user prefers, Twine can automatically collect all the Web pages she visited, e-mails she sent and received, and so on. Once Twine has some information, it starts to analyze it and automatically sort it into categories that include the people involved, concepts discussed, and places, organizations, and companies. This way, when a user is searching for something, she can have quick access to related information about it. Twine also uses elements of social networking so that a user has access to information collected by others in her network.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19627/

August 21, 2007 - Adobe, the San Jose software maker, announces that it is integrating a standard format for high definition video into the newest version of its immensely popular Flash video player. Flash players currently sit on 98 percent of all desktop computers and hundreds of millions of portable and handheld devices. Sites like YouTube, ABC.com and NBC.com favor Flash over competing players like Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s Windows Media, since Flash is relatively easy to develop for and videos play directly in the browser.

The high-def standard that Adobe is embracing is called H.264. It is the same video format used in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video players and the latest cable and satellite set-top boxes. Adobe will integrate support for H.264, and for the high-performance AAC audio standard, into the newest version of Flash, available for download today. But the changes will be gradually visible over the next year, as Flash video producers begin to encode their video in the higher quality format.

Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/coming-soon-web-video-in-high-definition/