A Very Public Hanging

Perhaps the largest new media story of the week is the continuing discussion around the dissemination of a video of Saddam Hussein's hanging on December 30. The unofficial footage, captured using a mobile phone, appeared on the Internet hours after the execution and swiftly became the most-viewed video on YouTube and other video-sharing sites. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Chancellor Gordon Brown have both condemned the manner of the hanging and the appearance of the video as "deplorable".

As well as being a human rights issue, the episode poses questions for social media as well. While the maker of the video may well be discovered and punished, the footage itself is seemingly beyond the law. Copied and re-submitted dozens of times, the film is obtainable by anyone with an internet connection. As Antony Mayfield says, social media has resurrected the public execution and allowed the production and distribution of a snuff movie. While copyright fears are often dismissed or belittled as a reason for closing down the freedoms offered by these sites, the moral repugnancy of the Saddam video rephrases those questions in a way even the most liberal opponent of censorship will find difficult to ignore.

Elsewhere:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6225337.stm
http://www.slate.com/id/2156776/fr/rss/

$100 Laptop is Go

The campaign to allow children in developing nations access to computing and the Internet is nearing completion, with the first of the 'Children's Machines' hoped to reach users during January this year. Trials of the machines are to be conducted in five countries - Brazil, Argentina, Libya, Thailand, and Nigeria. These countries have agreed to place large orders for the machines once its design is finalised. MIT chairman Nicholas Negroponte told the Associated Press news agency that three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks.

The One Laptop per Child association will produce the machines which will use flash memory instead of a hard drive and run a version of the Linux operating system. When it is not plugged in, a hand-crank or pull-string will allow the user to generate power. Ad-hoc wireless networking is intended to allow many children to share an internet connection.

Elsewhere:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6224183.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_Per_Child
http://www.prblogger.com/2007/01/100-laptop-is-nigh/

Second Life Approaches Trough of Disillusionment?

Second Life is a virtual world in which 'residents' craft and trade their wares for the world's own currency. Linden dollars, bought using US dollars, change hands at the rate of up to $1mn US every day. The service is owned by the company Linden Lab and has attracted the attention of a number of real world companies such as IBM, Sun, Starwood Hotels, Coca Cola, Adidas and Toyota, who have all developed their own presence in the virtual world including shops, offices and islands. The owners say there are currently 2.4mn residents (or accounts) on the system, with 879,000 users having logged in over the last two months.

In an interview with Reuters this week, Gartner analyst Steve Prentice says that, "I’d probably say we’re heading toward the peak of the hype cycle but we’re not there yet." Gartner believes that new technologies all follow a similar 'hype cycle' whereby innovations become the subject of over-inflated expectations, then rapidly lose popularity,entering the 'trough of disillusionment' before slowly regaining ground as users discover their real utility. Prentice continued: "Once you get past the backlash, things will come together. Technology problems will get resolved, expectations will become more realistic as people understand what it’s good for, and you get up to what we call the plateau of productivity, which is essentially maturity." He also speculated that Google would be at "the top of the tree" when it came to possible buyers for the service.

Elsewhere:
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/01/04/gartner-says-second-life-hype-near-peak/
http://www.nevillehobson.com/2007/01/06/growth-predictions-for-second-life/
http://tnl.net/blog/2007/01/05/running-the-numbers-on-second-life/

New Email and Website Rules

Companies in the UK face fines under the Companies Act if they do not update their email and web page footers to include specific corporate information. The legislation came into force on January 1st 2007, so it's worth a reminder for those of you still recovering from the shock of returning to work after the Christmas break.

The Register explains the basics of what you need to do:

Every company should list its company registration number, place of registration, and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985. The information, which must be in legible characters, should also appear on order forms and in emails. Such information is already required on “business letters” but the duty is being extended to websites, order forms and electronic documents.

There is a fuller and more technical briefing here.

Elsewhere:

http://www.out-law.com/page-431
http://www.blplaw.com/news_updates/ebrieflegalalerts/detail.cfm?contentID=7286
http://www.simonwakeman.com/2007/01/06/new-email-and-website-rules-for-uk-companies/

Google Launches Patent Search

Ever had a good idea and asked yourself "Why has no-one else thought of that?". Well, now you can find out using Google's latest addition to its search portfolio. Google patent search currently covers seven million US patents, dating from 1790 to the present. Similar to its book project, the site offers scanned images of the original filings.

Link:
http://www.google.com/patents