crowd-source

The 404 1,106: Where the legend continues (podcast)

We've heard stories about 3D printers being used for both good and evil, but we're not sure how to categorize a company in Japan offering pregnant women a 3D-printed model of their unborn fetuses. Gross. Other stories on today's podcast include a crowdsourced funding site for porn, Amazon accidentally shipping assault rifles, and a sealed first-gen iPhone hitting eBay for $10,000.

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Japanese companies offer a 3D-printed model of your unborn child.

- Offbeatr is the Kickstarter for porn.

- DC resident orders TV on Amazon, gets assault rifle instead.

- Sealed first-gen iPhone hits eBay for $10,000.

Bathroom break video: Olympic nutcracking… Read more

Kickstarter hops across the pond with U.K. launch

Kickstarter announced today that millions more people will soon be allowed to launch projects through its crowd-source funding platform.

The company broadcast the news via Twitter saying, "People in the UK will be able to launch projects on Kickstarter starting this autumn! More info soon!"

So far, only people in the U.S. can create projects and solicit funding on Kickstarter. The reason for this, according to The Verge, which first reported this news, is that the U.S. was the only place where Amazon Payments was offered -- the platform Kickstarter uses. However, as of March 2011, … Read more

The 404 889: Where we feel an urge to back you up (podcast)

Our guest on the show today is Jason Scott, computer historian and adjunct archivist at the Internet Archives, a nonprofit founded in 1996 to save a copy of every Web page ever posted. He's also responsible for the Netscape GIF graveyard you see above. Also related: "under construction" GIFs!

We want to hear all about the 500,000 books scanned so far in the Archive warehouse, but we'll also talk to him about the Wayback Machine, a tool that lets you click through snapshots of Web sites along a timeline--check out CNET back in October 1996!

The Archive's book-scanning division is the company's foremost project with donated texts making up a big portion of the collection, but the Web site also preserves live music footage, original audio recordings, and various moving images clipped from history, like this compendium of news footage documenting various news organizations' coverage of the September 11 attacks over the course of seven days.

We have a lot of topics to discuss with Jason, including his personal project to rescue data saved on floppy discs (we'll explain what those are in the show, kids) and his personal vendetta against Wikipedia. But we only have 20 minutes for the interview, so expect to see him back on the show in the future.

The 404 Digest for Episode 889

Is this the end for books? Internet archivist seeks 1 of every book written. Rescuing floppy disks, by Jason Scott. The great failure of Wikipedia, by Jason Scott. Ticketmaster tells you where your Facebook Friends sit. CorporateTwits--Trolling goes corporate How a Tweet Led to a full steak dinner delivered to the airport. Netscape GIF Graveyard Under construction GIF Graveyard

Episode 889 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Salesforce buying contact crowd-sourcer Jigsaw

Salesforce.com is buying business data provider Jigsaw for $142 million, a move designed to help customers more easily build contact lists in their Salesforce databases.

The deal to acquire the San Mateo, Calif.-based company was announced Wednesday.

Salesforce offers cloud-based CRM (customer relationship management) applications geared toward businesses that need to keep track of and communicate with customers, clients, and other contacts. But the process for finding, adding, and organizing contacts can be cumbersome, Salesforce noted, especially if people are manually entering that information into their databases.

Jigsaw offers a searchable online database of companies and key employees, … Read more

iPhone app tracks swine flu outbreaks

I'm writing this from under the covers. I mean, I know swine flu is going to get us all eventually, but I didn't know there were reported cases just 35 miles from where I live. Thank you, Outbreaks Near Me!

OK, I don't mean to make light of a very serious health issue, but this app kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies.

In a nutshell, Outbreaks Near Me lets you track--and even report--outbreaks of infectious diseases, including H1N1 (aka swine flu).

Created by Children's Hospital Boston and MIT Media Lab, it taps data provided by HealthMap, an … Read more

Intel's Think Link is a paradise for fact trolls

Intel is best known for making CPUs, but its research division continues to bring new ways for users to interact with data on the Web. Think Link, one of the company's most recent projects is attempting to help people spot misinformation, while providing the tools to correct it.

Similar to crowd-sourced typo-finder GooseGrade and SpinSpotter (coverage), Think Link is about bringing attention to mistakes, and inaccurate claims; be it blog posts, news stories, research papers or advertising. Where it differs is in giving users a relatively simple way to back up their claims of wrongness by linking to a reputable source, then letting others vote those ideas up (Google search wiki style), with the best rising to the top.

In other words: I make a mistake in an article, and instead of blasting me in the comments or via e-mail, you can very quickly create a case against something I've gotten wrong with a team of fellow contributors.

The only hitch is that to view and create Think Link content, users must have a browser extension installed. They'll then be able to see items other users have highlighted as disputed, or "interesting." Hovering over those items that have been disputed pops up with the most agreed-upon proof of something being inaccurate, or untrue.

You can also drill down to see arguments from both sides in something Intel calls the "argument graph." This tool pulls in data from related topics on Wikipedia, as well as other Think Link items, which can help whoever is reading a dispute to see a more complete argument with both sides.

What's really, really cool about this project is that… Read more

Play game to fight AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer's

Remember SETI@home? It enables people to put their spare computer cycles to work in discovering intelligent life beyond Earth. (And with election season coming to an end, it's pretty clear that not much is left here.) The SETI project is a pretty cool and relatively simple computer task.

Inversely, things like mapping protein folding, which is essential to understanding how a particular protein works (and thus helping to target it with drugs), can be a very hard problem for computers but not so hard for humans. If someone could make it easy for communities to contribute to mapping … Read more

Google Earth shows cows point north

My grandparents in England had cows on their farm so I've always had a lot of affection for them, and was delighted to read this story from the Los Angeles Times indicating a "hidden cow power." Turns out cows may have internal compasses much like birds and bees do for orienting themselves to magnetic north.

Using satellite images on Google Earth, German scientists were able to see that all over the planet, cows stand with their bodies pointing to magnetic north.

Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists Sabine Begall … Read more

Atten.TV: Letting others spy on your clickstream

Atten.TV is pure vanity.

It's also slightly creepy. Atten.TV is a Mac-only client that lets individuals sign up to have their clickstreams--or records of Web sites visited--recorded and sent to a server. Anyone can then opt to watch what these other random folks are browsing, in the same manner as one might watch television.

The Atten.TV player is a viewing window with a menu on the left that displays the clickstreams that can be tuned in. Eventually there will be an Atten.TVGuide that lists who's on. Clickstreams can be recorded and viewed later, or … Read more