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Today’s Internet is governed by the idea that crowds of people can create the news, share information and collaborate on online projects.

So when Wikipedia, the user-written encyclopedia that’s built an empire on this ideal, decided this week to add a layer of oversight to its system, the Web erupted in debate.

The popular encyclopedia, which has drawn criticism for inaccuracies, says it will try assigning editors to some of its entries. These trusted volunteers likely would have to approve public edits before they’re published to English-language stories about living people.

Some see the move as a shift away from Wikipedia’s core values and a sign that crowds of people aren’t able to produce a usable and accurate body of information.

Others see the change as a sign that these communities of online volunteers are getting more complex and they may need more rules.

Since Wikipedia was founded in 2001, a number of sites have popped up employing its basic philosophy that users can control the content of the Web.

Some, like YouTube and Digg, leave control almost totally in the hands of their online communities.

On the other end of the spectrum are sites like Flickr, the photo-sharing site, or CNN’s iReport.com, which have structured community guidelines and are maintained by community managers to promote a respectful and productive experience for users.

The idea that a user-submitted content site like Wikipedia can be a free-for-all has passed, said Caterina Fake, the founder of Flickr. She cheered Wikipedia’s decision, because without rules like those the site is testing, the encyclopedia would devolve “into chaos,” she said.

“It would basically be like a wall of graffiti in a bathroom,” said Fake, who runs a site called Hunch. “It’s not going to be a very high level of discourse.”

She also believes the changes will help Wikipedia address its problems with inaccuracies.

In January, for example, Wikipedia entries about Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd falsely stated both U.S. senators had died.

Wikipedia in the past has frozen some of its pages about people or events that have become sensitive. That leads Fake to argue that the changes to the Wikipedia editing process actually make the site more democratic.

“If you really want to participate in Wikipedia, it is open to you so long as your contributions are benefiting the community and everybody kind of collectively decides that your contributions are good,” she said.

But others see the changes as a move away from Wikipedia’s idealistic roots.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, lead writer at the blog ReadWriteWeb and author of a guide to online community management, said Wikipedia’s shift is a sign that user-generated content sites are outgrowing their limits.

“As things get more and more popular online, some of these [Wikipedia-style] experiments realize they need to temper some of their experimental nature and learn from more traditional forms because they’re just not sustainable,” he said.

“It makes me shed a little tear, too, because presumably it will lead to a slowdown of new content creation, and it does seem like a departure from the essential nature of Wikipedia.”

Mia Quagliarello, a community manager at YouTube, declined to comment on Wikipedia, but said that YouTube relies on its community to make decisions about what’s important and useful.

Like on Digg, a site where people share and discuss news stories, YouTube gives its users mechanisms to vote videos up and down based on whether the content is worthwhile or offensive.

“We give them the tools to hopefully let the best comments bubble up to the top,” Quagliarello said. “You can ‘thumbs down’ anything you don’t think is productive.”

John Abell, New York bureau chief for Wired.com, a technology site, said the change at Wikipedia is a cultural “tipping point” for online communities.

But it doesn’t mean Wikipedia is failing at its mission, he said.

“They’ve made a leap here,” he said. “I think it’s a good leap, a necessary leap, a righteous leap. In the history of Wikipedia, this will probably be seen as a pivotal adjustment.”

A spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the site, did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment for this story.

Online communities — particularly those like Wikipedia, which are run by volunteers — evolve just like real-world societies, said Amanda Michel, an expert on citizen journalism and editor of distributed reporting at ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization.

“As these sites evolve, we should expect them to develop more sophisticated methods, whether they’re social methods or technical methods, of quality control and of production,” she said.

Neowin recently reported that it looked as if the next version of OS X, dubbed Snow Leopard, would arrive to customers on August 28th. Apple today updated its online store to reflect this leaked date and it is now officially confirmed.

You can head to Apple’s site right now and place an order for the new operating system for $29.00 with free shipping.

“Upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard with Snow Leopard, a simpler, more powerful, and more refined version of Mac OS X. It delivers a wide range of enhancements, next-generation technologies, out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange Server, and new accessibility features. It’s the world’s most advanced operating system, finely tuned from installation to shutdown”

Refined, not reinvented.

Mac OS X is renowned for its simplicity, its reliability, and its ease of use. So when it came to designing Snow Leopard, Apple engineers had a single goal: to make a great thing even better. They searched for areas to refine, further simplify, and speed up — from little things like ejecting external drives to big things like installing the OS. In many cases, they elevated great to amazing. Here are just a few examples of how your Mac experience was fine-tuned.

A more advanced, more nimble Finder.

The Finder has been completely rewritten in Cocoa to take advantage of all the modern technologies in Mac OS X, including 64-bit support and Grand Central Dispatch. It’s more responsive from top to bottom, with snappier performance throughout the Finder. And it includes new features such as customizable Spotlight search options and an enhanced icon view that lets you thumb through a multipage document or watch a QuickTime movie.

Faster to wake up and shut down.

With Snow Leopard, your Mac wakes from sleep up to twice as quickly when you have screen locking enabled. And shutting down is up to 80 percent faster, saving precious moments when you’re trying to head home or to the airport.

Faster, more reliable installation.

Upgrading your Mac has never been easier. For Snow Leopard, the entire process has been simplified, streamlined, and is up to 50 percent faster, yet more comprehensive and reliable.2 For example, Snow Leopard checks your applications to make sure they’re compatible and sets aside any programs known to be incompatible. In case a power outage interrupts your installation, it can start again without losing any data.

Smaller footprint.

Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing about 7GB for you — enough for about 1,750 more songs3 or a few thousand more photos.

More reliable, higher-resolution iChat.

Having a video chat using iChat is more reliable and more accessible than ever in Snow Leopard.4 It includes technology to address many common router incompatibilities that can interfere with connections. And if iChat can’t make a direct connection, it will use the AIM relay server to create a successful chat session.

Now more people can have high-resolution, 640-by-480-pixel video chats, because the technical requirements are less demanding: You need only one-third the upstream bandwidth previously required — 300 Kbps instead of 900 Kbps. And finally, iChat Theater now offers 640-by-480 resolution, four times greater than before.

Intel has quietly snapped up two software companies in the last 30 days with aim of boosting development of applications that take better advantage of chips with more than one processing core.
The chipmaker acquired Cilk at the end of last month and then Rapidmind earlier this week. Both are small companies that employ under than 50 people. The acquisitions follow the purchase of software company Wind River Systems in June.
“Over the last few years, there has been a gradual emergence of multicore microprocessors. It’s put parallelism in more and more machines,” James Reinders, chief evangelist and director of marketing and sales at Intel, said in a phone interview Friday, explaining why Intel bought the two firms.
“If you look at traditional applications, ones that we use everyday, it’s fair to say that most are not exploiting parallelism–at least not to the full extent,” Reinders said.
A multicore processor is defined as any chip with more than one processing core. Today, almost all Intel chips that go into laptops, desktops, and servers have at least two cores. The challenge for Intel is to make sure that applications take advantage of all the cores–so-called parallelism. This has historically presented a challenge for software programmers.
“The operating system does stuff for applications in parallel,” Reinders said, referring to operating systems such as Windows. “But considering that we can produce more and more cores every year, to truly get the benefit of what the future holds, applications need to change. And most applications haven’t changed,” he said.

Read more @ Cnet

Microsoft announced its retail store locations late last month in Scottsdale, Arizona and Mission Viejo, California. Now is your chance to grab a position at the first two Microsoft stores.

According to Microsoft’s Jobs Blog: “We’re looking for new store employees who love technology and teaching and helping others. In particular, we’re looking for people with technical backgrounds who can help customers choose the best Microsoft products and services for their needs and troubleshoot any technical issue they may have.”

The positions range from Retail Assistant Store Manager to Retail Trainer. If you want to be a Technical Advisor then Microsoft requires that you have “an elite level of product knowledge in all Microsoft retail product and service offerings.”

It’s not yet clear what the associated salaries are for these positions or whether similar positions will be made available for other Microsoft Stores in the near future. Earlier this year, documents leaked of what the Microsoft Stores will look like and revealed a focus on Windows 7, Xbox, Windows Media Center (Including Surface) and Windows Mobile. Earlier this month Microsoft revealed the official Microsoft Store Logo to be used across all Microsoft stores in the US and internationally.

 Black ones are shadows, white ones are the real camels !!
The snapshot has been taken from top…

3 in one

Nail Utensils

Perfect Dosage Spoons

Hot Dish

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502), reinforcing its “dynabook SS RX2
series” of notebook PCs offering light weight, slim lines, and
long-lasting battery operation, today announced the introduction of the
top-of-the-range “dynabook SS RX2/WAJ,” world’s first⁽¹⁾ PC
integrating 512GB SSD (Solid State Drive). The new model is available
in two versions from today at Toshiba’s on-line shop for the Japanese
market.

The new, Toshiba-developed 512GB SSD employs a 2-bit-per-cell
multi-level NAND flash memory to realize, the world’s largest capacity
SSD, with four times the density of SSD integrated into currently
available products⁽²⁾. Furthermore, a new controller that
realizes high-speed parallel processing with the multi-level NAND flash
memory boosts data access speeds by approximately 230%⁽³⁾ for read (max. 230MB per sec) and 450%⁽³⁾ for write (max.180MB per sec), compared with SSD integrated into current PCs. It also boosts data access speed by approx. 300%⁽³⁾ for read and 250%⁽³⁾ for write, compared to a hard disk drive (HDD)⁽⁴⁾.
SSDs are free of mechanical structures such as a rotating disc, and
ideal for integration into mobile notebook PCs, making them more
resistant to vibration and shock.

The dynabook SS RX2 is a mobile notebook PC created to the design
concept of “true mobility”. Its light (approx.1,095g), thin (19.5mm to
25.5mm) design integrates capabilities essential for mobile notebook
PCs, including long-time battery operation (12 hours)⁽⁵⁾ and a ruggedness that sailed through tests⁽⁶⁾
by an independent certification organization. Integration of an SSD
reinforces the hallmark performance excellence of the RX2, making the
notebook perfect for use on the go. The RX2 also achieves an
energy-saving design that cuts power consumption by adopting an
ultra-low voltage CPU, a transreflective LCD that uses natural sunlight
to make screen images more visible even without switching on the
backlight, not to mention the power-efficient SSD.

Toshiba will continue to meet users’ needs by developing and
commercializing notebook PCs integrating advanced features and
functionality.

A homeless South Korean unable to withdraw his life savings because he could not remember his real name has died in poverty, officials said.

The man, believed to be aged 56, died of cancer last month, leaving 128 million won (just over 100,000 dollars) in a bank account that was opened in early 1993 under the alias of Na Hae-Dong.

The account was frozen several months later when a law took effect to ban accounts held under false names, as an anti-corruption measure.

Deposits were still allowed but the account holder had to register a real name to withdraw money, something “Na” could not do.

“He didn’t know what his real name was or where he was born. We tried but failed to identify him,” Yoo Joon-Soo, the senior official of Yongbong district in the southwestern city of Gwangju, told AFP by phone.

The man collected scrap iron and other junk and slept on his cart under plastic sheets before moving in 2007 into a makeshift shelter made from a shipping container.

Though he could not withdraw from the account, he kept putting in savings.

“He used to say he wanted to buy a home with his savings,” Yoo said.

“Last month, we applied for court approval to create his new ID and the court procedure was under way.”

A local court is expected to order that the savings revert to the state, he added.