The US Embassy is warning of a possible terrorist attack on Bali on New Year's Eve.

Facebook has begun surfacing widely "liked" news stories from independent media organizations in its basic search bar today, it appears. First reported by watchdog blog AllFacebook, the change is something that seems likely to be understood as a challenge to Google. It's early days for the feature, but something to watch for sure.

Search for a phrase that's appearing in the news in the main Facebook search box and you'll see off-site links to news stories. "It's an interesting extension of what they did before in terms of off-site links," Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand told us by phone today. "It's not clear how exactly these stories are being chosen and it clearly needs more work. It could work like Google's Social Search, displaying items shared by your friends, but this remains something to watch and see rather than 'oh the revolution is here.'"

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Earlier this year, Facebook put up a blog post urging people to "Like" the pages of major news organizations, so that they would receive stories posted by those media outlets in their Facebook Newsfeeds . Yesterday the company began experimenting with a new method of subscribing to updates from high priority friends, family and other people.

Clearly when you put together 500 million people, their friend connections, their "like" affinities on and off-site, there are a whole lot of permutations that can be analyzed and surfaced in various contexts. Facebook search and subscription are likely to be very interesting for some time.

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Dan Zambonini needed a way to automatically classify incoming tweets regarding customer service simply as positive or negative. He shares how he used naïve Bayesian classification and a couple of PHP classes, removed ‘noise words’ and created an interface that pulls tweets from …

Salesorce.com acquired Jigsaw earlier this year. This past week, Salesforce.com unveiled the integration.

The service integrates Chatter, the Salesforce.com microblogging platform. When a contact is updated through Jigsaw, the subscriber gets an update in their Chatter feed.

Jigsaw for Salesforce CRM is an example of how microblogging services are becoming message platforms for crowdsourcing tools. Microblogging tools are serving as social middleware technologies that surface information from enterprise applications.

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It reminds us of services such as Socialtext Connect, which launched in June. The Socialtext service uses the Twitter Annotation spec to connect legacy apps by surfacing events that appear in an activity stream.

Jigsaw for Salesforce CRM also shows how combining services changes the ways applications update people. In the process, the UX transforms as new filtering is required and different systems for updating. Contacts or companies are identified in the Chatter feed as opposed to traditional methods such as an email about an update.

Spreadsheets are traded for business intelligence tools to some degree as the contact data is packaged with an analytics platform.

We are more interested in how Jigsaw for Salesforce CRM serves as an example of how microblogging is emerging as a platform for surfacing events. But in this case, we also have questions about how the contacts are developed in the first place.

Anyone can add contacts to Jigsaw. That's the power of the crowdsource model. But in some respects, privacy can be compromised. Salesforce.com maintains that contacts are contacted when they are added to the Jigsaw platform. They may opt out by going into Jigsaw and removing themselves from the database.

Contacts are also notified once a year about their inclusion in Jigsaw.

We wonder if that is enough and what other measures should be put in place when contacts are added to a service like Jigsaw. Salesforce.com does not notify contacts via Twitter or through other services. That would seem like a respectful measure to take but perhaps that is where things will go as we get deeper into the ways crowdsourcing is used for developing contact networks.

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Alan Argondizza of Ithaca, NY, wrote in to share the super cool skateboards that he builds from scratch using sheets of birch plywood cut with a jigsaw and hand-held router, then decorated by hand with paint pens, spray paint, and sharpies. Interested in making your own? Alan's provides an excellent how-to on his site.

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Transportation | Digg this!

According to a German court in Hamburg, Google's YouTube can be held liable for damages when it hosts copyrighted videos without the copyright holder's permission. This case centered around three music videos by classical crossover soprano Sarah Brightman, but this ruling will likely have far-reaching consequences for YouTube's operations in Germany. YouTube will now have to block access to these videos and disclose how often its users accessed these streams. YouTube will also have to pay damages based on the number of plays. Google plans to appeal the ruling.

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The German court ruled that simply asking users whether they have the legal rights to the material they are about to upload does not relieve the company of its legal obligations.

"The court concluded that YouTube was treating content uploaded by its users as its own. That leads to a more strenuous duty to check out the content. The court came to the conclusion YouTube did not fulfill this."

The complaint against YouTube was originally filed in October 2009. At that time, Google argued that it "works closely with many thousands of copyright holders worldwide to make sure that they can manage their rights on our video platform. Our state-of-the-art Content ID tools go beyond what the law recommends by empowering rights holders to block, authorize or monetize their videos on YouTube in a way that is simple and straightforward."

In this case, though, it seems as if Google's Content ID tools failed. In their complaint, the plaintiffs argued that they repeatedly asked YouTube to take the videos in question down but never received a reply from YouTube.

In an interview with German news agency dpa, a spokesperson for the court today noted that "the court concluded that YouTube was treating content uploaded by its users as its own. That leads to a more strenuous duty to check out the content. The court came to the conclusion YouTube did not fulfill this."

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Brisbane Times
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The API team over at Google Buzz have been buzzing to say the least. If you recall the long lost Twitter feature known as Track whose disappearance spawned numerous impassioned pleased for return you'll appreciate the latest from Google Buzz.

Last week the Google Buzz API team updated their blog to announce the general availability for Track as well detailed error messages. This means that you can get started with Track right now in Google Reader.

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Some examples:

Here is the XML returned for the VMworld example

To illustrate this, I decided to add the "vmworld" example for my trip to VMworld 2010 and discovered a host of references that I can peruse in Google Reader.

As you might expect, you'll get the statistics as well:

Also, as you might expect with a conference the size of VMworld... I'm already behind!

What are some of your favorite Google Buzz queries that you've added to Google Reader? Let us know in the comments below!

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Network World: "People continue to wonder how to make money in the free and open source software world. It's dressed up in discussions of how one makes money when you give away the software for free, or why developers are working for free."

USA Today
HOLY CRAP! Duke Nukem Forever gets a release date window
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It is the second time that a group of retailers have produced a prelude to London Fashion Week and this season's aims to be far bigger

Fabric is still being delivered, models are being cast, artistic temper tantrums have yet to be unleashed. But, as London Fashion Week designers battle on with their preparations for the event, which begins in two weeks time, the British high street is angling to get in on the catwalk action.

So far 23 high street brands have signed up to High Street Fashion Week, which begins on Monday. It is the second time that a group of retailers have produced a prelude to London Fashion Week and this season's aims to be far bigger. The event will feature public fashion shows and tutorials and will begin with "The Glammys". These inaugural awards will be voted for by the public and aim to acknowledge retailers who embrace wearable and relevant fashion for all ages.

High Street Fashion Week is an open retail event which focuses on the public, rather than the fashion press and buyers. Although many in the industry remain unenthusiastic, retail guru Jeff Banks insists the event is a positive move.

"I don't think the event goes far enough. I've been advocating this for years. London Fashion Week is a puff of smoke. Only 10 or so names who show there are serious businesses. It's about time we got real and did what we are good at."

To coincide with the event, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer are also striving to up their designer credentials. M&S is gearing up to stock designs by students from the Royal College of Art which it will sell alongside its Limited Collection.

John Lewis, better known for homeware than high fashion, is due to unveil one-off ollaborations with designers including Osman Yousefzada, Terry de Havilland and Philip Treacy at its Oxford Street flagship store before London Fashion Week. The designer stunt coincides with a £10m makeover of the store's fashion department. Peter Ruis, director of buying at the company, admitted that "shoppers already know that our basement is fantastic for food, our ground floor is brilliant for beauty but until now the fashion floor hasn't been as strong."

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Imogen Fox
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Ping is designed to let you follow artists and friends, share what music you're buying and are into, and discover what others enjoy. So is it worth the Apple-generated hype?

crimeandpunishment writes "It was the big deal Dell wanted in a big way. But now that it has lost out to Hewlett-Packard in the bidding war it started for 3Par, where does Dell go in its effort to diversify its business and move into the higher-profit area of selling technology to other companies? The company faces significant challenges, largely due to its lower-end focus, and because many of its competitors beat Dell into branching out. One analyst says, 'People see [Dell] as box-pushers'."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Renaissance artist Raphael's works are shown together for the first time after Vatican loans tapestries to V&A

The Renaissance artist Raphael may just have lived long enough to see the series of tapestries he designed for the Sistine Chapel in Rome. He died a few months after they arrived from the weavers in Brussels at the end of 1519. But it is certain he never saw them together with the cartoons he had drawn four years earlier as the basis for the tapestries. No one ever has. Until now.

Today staff at the Victoria and Albert Museum were putting the finishing touches to an exhibition of the tapestries, displayed for the first time alongside the cartoons which have been on display at the museum since 1865, and are among its foremost treasures. Curators and workmen were raising four of the heavy 494-year-old tapestries, woven in wool, silk and gilt-metal thread, which have been loaned by the Vatican - at its own suggestion - as an accompaniment toto mark this month's visit to Britain by Pope Benedict XVI. The cartoons and tapestries will be together on show for just six weeks.

"No one has ever seen them together before," said Clare Browne, the museum's curator of textiles, who described the tapestries as "among the most extraordinary productions of their era".

Watching with barely suppressed excitement was the V&A's expert on Raphael, Mark Evans, who has been studying the works since he was an undergraduate. "When the Vatican rang up in February and offered to loan us the tapestries for an exhibition, to say that my jaw dropped would be an understatement," he said. ". I had always thought the logistical difficulties and political support necessary would make it impossible. This is my opportunity to realise something that has been at the fringes of my thinking for 40 years. I know I will never do anything like this again."

The series of 10 tapestries, of events taken from the Acts of the Apostles, was commissioned by Pope Leo X in 1515. Raphael, a busy artist already at work on frescoes for the papal apartments, completed the designs, painted as full-size cartoons, within a year and it was from these that the finest weavers in Europe, based 1,000 miles away in Brussels, wove their work. It is estimated that each tapestry would have taken one loom a year to complete and at least seven were delivered to Rome in December 1519. So highly were they prized, that when Leo X died within two years, deep in debt, some of the tapestries were pawned. Only four of the surviving tapestries are robust enough to have been driven to London.

The cartoons themselves, which had been cut into strips so they could be placed under the loom and copied, remained in Brussels until they were bought a century later by Charles I. They have been owned by the royal family ever since and placed on loan to the museum for the last 145 years. Also in the exhibition are Raphael's preliminary preliminary drawings for the designs, loaned from the royal collection.

Had Raphael been able to compare his paintings with the finished designs, he would have spotted some intriguing differences. RapThe robe Christ is wearing in the work depicting his Charge to St Peter is a plain white, or pastel colour in the cartoon, but was decorated with gold stars in the tapestry. They went even further in the tapestry known as the Sacrifice at Lystra, showing the aftermath of the healing of a lame man by St Paul; probably believing the man did not figure strongly enough in the crowd, the weavers replaced the crutch Raphael had painted on the ground beside him with a wooden leg instead: the victim apparently having grown a new limb instead of merely having his own restored to muscled health. The Flemish tapestries have greater vivacity than one of the Mortlake copies, also in the exhibition, from 100 years later, which is evidently the product of reverent imitation rather than exuberant flair.

Evans said: "You can see the sheer visual intelligence of Raphael in these designs. It is very common today to be snooty these days about brainpower in comparison to emotions, but the painter's great narrative shines through. It is supercharged."

hael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, at the V&A South Kensington from 8 September to 17 October.

Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

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Stephen Bates
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Tech Comics: "The process of ending a friendship is far more complicated than it once was."

Panasonic's gone on a real tear here, releasing two new Toughbook models at once. While you grapple with the implications of such a thing, let's get down to details. The new 31 and 19 Series Toughbooks are 13.1-inch and 10.4-inch models, respectively, and as far as specs go, they both pack in a 160GB hard drive, up to 6GB of DDR3 SDRAM (with 2GB coming standard), and Intel QM57 Express chipset, and 1024 x 768 resolution displays. Both come with Windows 7 Professional pre-installed, and the Toughbook 31 has a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 CPU, the 19's go a 1.2 GHZ inside. Other than that they've both got Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, an HDMI slot, four USB ports, and an SD card slot. Of course, they're also drop resistant in addition to being dust and waterproof. They'll be available starting in mid-September in Japan.

Panasonic cranks out new 31 and 19 Series Toughbooks for Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The news of an upcoming announcement at PAX, followed by a tweet that showed the image of a flying pig. These were the hints pointed at a momentous occasion in gaming history: Duke Nukem Forever will see release late this year, or maybe next year, on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Gearbox Software will be taking over development from the now-defunct 3D Realms.

After the studio's closing, litigation began between 3D Realms and Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of Duke Nukem Forever. According to the Wall Street Journal, the suits have now been settled and neither side was willing to discuss terms. The game has not sat still, however:

According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing “Duke Nukem Forever” in late 2009. “Clearly the game hadn’t been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created,” he says. “The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn’t quite make it and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together. It’s the game it was meant to be.”

The game is actually playable at PAX, for both the press and the general public. If you're there and you get to play, send in your report. We'd love to hear what it's like to finally put your hands on it.

If the release slips into 2011, we won't exactly be shocked.

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A critical bug in QuickTime was reported to Apple two months before a second researcher independently revealed the vulnerability this week, according to the director of a bug bounty program who argues that companies must patch their bugs faster.