Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

This amazing video has been viral since early Feb. I picked it up from John Battelle's Searchblog.

Security Scanner Can See Through Clothes

source: WiredNews

By TERRY TANG
Associated Press Writer

Sky Harbor International Airport became the country's first to begin testing a controversial new federal screening system that takes X-rays of passenger's bodies in an effort to find concealed explosives and other weapons.

The Phoenix airport started testing the new technology on Friday. It can see through people's clothes and show the body's contours with blush-inducing clarity.

During testing, the machine will be used only as a backup screening measure. Passengers who fail the standard screening with a metal detector will be able to choose between the new device or a pat-down search.

"It's 100 percent voluntary, so if the passenger doesn't feel comfortable with it, the passenger doesn't have to go through it," TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said.

Passengers selected for screening by the device are asked to stand in front of the closet-size X-ray unit with the palms of their hands facing out. Then they must turn around for a second screening from behind. The procedure takes about a minute.

"It seems faster. I'm not uncomfortable with it,"

said Kelsi Dunbar, 25, of Seattle, who chose the machine.

"I trust TSA, and I trust that they are definitely trying to make things go quickly and smoothly in the airport.

Startup hopes to modernize parking hunt

Finding a parking spot often requires drivers to summon their inner caveman: Scan the horizon for the target, then bag it before someone else does.

A startup company is betting it can chip away at that anachronism and transform the search for parking just as eBay Inc. changed auctions.

SpotScout Inc. hopes to create an online marketplace where drivers armed with mobile phones can not only reserve private spaces in garages and driveways, but also swap public parking spots in real time, with vacant spaces going to the highest bidder.

Full-story HERE: Yahoo!News

10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get RSS Readers Visiting Your Blog

source: Problogger

how do I get my RSS readers to visit my actual blog?

Before I give a few tips of how to do this - it is worth noting that for some bloggers this is not a major objective and they are quite happy to have their readers engage with their content where ever the reader wants to.

I totally respect this approach and feel similarly. However there are reasons why it can be beneficial for a blog to have actual readers and not just RSS subscribers. Two main reasons come to mind:

• Interaction - to this point RSS doesn’t do interaction very well. If you want comments - you need to get people over to your blog.
• Monetization - If you’re interested in monetizing your blog then you’ve got a better chance of doing so with actual visitors than RSS readers. While there are a variety of RSS advertising options for bloggers - in my experience none perform as well as on blog advertising (although I’m open to hearing about people who’ve found a more profitable method).

If those two things don’t interest you the following 10 tips might not be up your alley. If they do - read on for a few brief ways to convert RSS readers to actual blog readers:

1. Actively encourage comments - Last year I did a little analysis of the posts that got the most most clicks in my feeds (Feedburner offer these stats) and there was a direct correlation between comment numbers and clicks. Further analysis showed that those posts that had high comment numbers and high clicks were posts where I…. (wait for the secret)…. asked questions. Want some examples? - how about these three ‘open mike’ posts.

2. Show Readers Comment Numbers - Another way to encourage comments is to show how many others have already commented. I do this using Feedburner’s Feed Flares in my feeds.

3. Use Polls - In a similar way - running polls on your blog and announcing them in posts will draw readers to your actual blog. In fact any interactive tool or feature that can’t be carried out via RSS can bring on readers (eg, quizzes, chat tools etc).

4. Interlink posts - If you have html activated in your feed (it’s usually automatically that way if you publish full feeds) link to other posts, pages or categories within your blog as you write. Make them relevant links that fit with your post and that will give your RSS readers something useful when they follow the link. For example - this is what I did a couple of paragraphs back with my links to open mike posts.

5. Related posts - A more automated way of giving readers something to click on that will lead them to your blog is to use a ‘related posts’ section at the end of posts (in a similar way to the ‘related posts that many bloggers have at the end of posts on their actual blog). These are becoming more and more common (although I’m not sure what tool people use to do it - let us know in comments if you use one). Keep in mind that you don’t want to clutter your RSS feeds.

6. ‘Best of’ posts - The interlinked posts on steroids is the ‘best of’ post. It isn’t something you’d want to do everyday - but occassionally it can be a great way to draw readers over to your blog by pulling together a number of older posts. I learnt the power of this late last year in my Best of ProBlogger 2006 post which was one of the most clicked upon posts in my RSS feed.

7. Use Video - This is something that is changing but until recently very few feed readers allowed their users to see embedded video. These days feed readers like Google Reader do allow video (and others are following suit) but it’s still something that might work to some extent depending upon which aggregators your readers are using.

8. RSS and Bookmarking - I’ve chatted with a few ProBlogger readers recently who say they use the ‘Digg This’ link in the bottom of my feeds and that after doing so they keep coming back both to the Digg page and the post itself to see if it’s gotten popular. I’m not sure this is something many do - but it does have the potential to leverage RSS readers to help spread the word about your blog.

9. Design Changes - Once again - this isn’t something you’d want to do simply to get RSS readers to come and visit, but one of the added benefits of making design changes to your blog (and announcing them) is that you’ll often get people coming over for a look. This happens both when you completely relaunch your blog and also when you make ‘tweaks’ like adding new features to your sidebar, navigation menus etc.

10. Excerpt Feeds - I’ve left this one until last because it’s pretty obvious and is one of the main reasons that I hear bloggers giving for not moving their feeds to ‘full feeds’. I’m not going to rehash the debate here over full vs partial feeds but while full feeds is one of the ways to get more subscribers - having partial ones is a way to get people who do subscribe to come visit your blog.

A Word of Warning

As I’ve written this post I’ve felt like making disclaimers all along the way because while the above techniques will draw readers from your RSS feed into your blog - some (or most) of them can also be sure-fire ways to become so annoying to your readers that they unsubscribe from your feed in frustration.

Don’t tease your readers, don’t try to manipulate them and don’t attempt to force them into actions that they don’t really want to do.

Create a user experience IN your RSS feed and you’ll find that the benefits will flow on. You might not draw all your readers over to your blog every day - but they will come across from time to time and more importantly many of them will find what you produce useful enough to pass it on to others.

Wal-Mart Dives into the Movie Download War

source: TechCrunch

After dabbling in movie download tests, Walmart is now jumping into the movie and television download business head first, and will launch their new site later today at walmart.com/videodownloads.

This is an extremely crowded market already, although Walmart has locked up deals with all of the major studios - Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal. See the chart included in this post for the studio deals locked up by other movie download services - CinemaNow, MovieLink and Amazon Unbox all have similar deals as well. iTunes and other competitors don’t.

Television networks who’ve agreed to provide content include Fox, CW and Viacom’s MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Logo and VH1. The television download market is currently dominated by iTunes.

Prices for movies will be $10-$20. Television shows will be $2. Downloading and watching content will require a Windows PC, as with all of the services mentioned above except iTunes.

Will This Be Successful?

Walmart has had mixed results in their online initiatives. They’ve completely bailed out of the movie-rental-by-mail market when they couldn’t make headway against Netflix. In this case, however, there is no established player to try to kill. The movie download market is in its nascent stage and anyone can win.

CinemaNow and MovieLink should be particularly worried. They operate on very low margins, are being attacked by iTunes and others already, and now have to contend with Walmart. It’s unlikely they’ll have the staying power to make it, and it doesn’t look like any of the major sites are looking to buy in this space. It’s cheaper to build a Windows-based DRM-laden player and do deals with studios directly.

However, iTunes still has the only service that works cross-platform, plays on an iPod and now on the living room television with Apple TV. And they already dominate the television download market. Walmart will not be able to easily hurt iTunes in the short term.

And don’t forget that Netflix has already released a very, very good free(ish) movie and television download service, and Joost is another service coming soon. None of these companies are going to lie down in the face of competition from Walmart, and they know that Walmart will bail out of markets that they can’t dominate.

All of this is good for the consumer, but prices are still too high. Movie downloads are still more expensive than simply buying a DVD.

Blogumentary: documentary about blogs

Chuck put his entire documentary feature film online.

It's called Blogumentary and it documents the rise of political and personal blogs, from the early days up through the Iraq War and Dan Rather's downfall.

excerpt from BoingBoing

Seth's Top Ten of All Time (sort of)

From Seth Godin's post titled, "The Top Ten Ways to Blog the Easy Way"

Seth gives us the all time list of top 10 lists.

Check out his post HERE so you can click on each number (1 - 10) and read the individual posts.

There's obviously some decent top 10 lists here or they wouldn't appear on the Purple Cow's blog...check 'em out.