Barbie becomes Computer Engineer

source:http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/02/15/barbie-becomes-computer-engineer/1

Author: Gareth Halfacree
Published: 15th February 2010

The cause of equality in IT careers got a boost this month from a somewhat unlikely source: Barbie.

As revealed on the official website (warning, it's a PDF), every little girls' favourite vacuous blonde's 126th career is that of Computer Engineer - complete with "a shiny laptop" on which to do some 1337 code hacking.

Interestingly, the change of career appears to have given Barbie myopia, as she now comes equipped with "stylish pink-frame glasses" which she hasn't needed in any of her previous 125 careers - but stereotypes aside, Computer Engineer Barbie comes equipped with everything a modern geek girl needs: "a Barbie® smart phone, fashionable laptop case, flat watch and Bluetooth earpiece," alongside the aforementioned laptop making her "ready to conquer the day's tasks on the go or from her desk."

For those who are afraid that Barbie's journey into the world of computer science would mean she would have to give up on her noted sense of fashion, good news: Computer Engineer Barbie comes dressed in "a t-shirt featuring binary code and [a ] computer/keyboard icon along with a pair of black knit skinny pants," designed to be "representative of a real computer engineer."

Better yet, those deciding to buy Computer Engineer Barbie get "a special code to unlock exclusive online game content on Barbie.com," in order to "further experience the reality of being a computer engineer" - which is to say, playing on-line Flash games.

In all seriousness, the latest Barbie to come out of the Mattel factories has the thumbs-up from some pretty influential people in the computer science industry: no less than Nora Lin, the president of the Society of Women Engineers, believes that "as a computer engineer, Barbie will show girls that women can design products that have an important and positive impact on people's everyday lives, such as inventing a technology to conserve home energy or programming a newborn monitoring device."

The Computer Engineer Barbie is currently available for pre-order directly from Mattel, and will be hitting shops towards the end of this year.

Are you pleased to see Barbie getting a more modern career choice, or is the plastic wonder doing more harm than good to the cause of women in engineering? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

Quote from the pdf:

You voted and we listened! Consumers around the world

voted for Barbie® Doll’s next career and we are pleased

to announce that her 126th career will be Computer

Engineer! The winning careers were announced at New

York Toy Fair on February 12th.

Having Barbie® as an ambassador for female computer

engineers can help inspire a new generation of girls to hone in on

their computer skills and become a part of this growing profession.

“Girls who discover their futures through Barbie will learn that they – just like

engineers – are free to explore infi nite possibilities, and that their dreams can

go as far as their imaginations take them,” said Nora Lin, President, Society of

Women Engineers. “As a computer engineer, Barbie will show girls that women

can design products that have an important and positive impact on people’s

everyday lives, such as inventing a technology to conserve home energy or

programming a newborn monitoring device.”

To ensure the doll accurately refl ects this occupation, Barbie® designers

worked with the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of

Engineering to ensure that accessories, clothing and packaging were realistic

and representative of a real computer engineer. Looking

geek chic, Computer Engineer Barbie® wears a

t-shirt featuring binary code and computer/keyboard

icon along with a pair of black knit skinny pants.

Computer Engineer carries a Barbie® smart phone,

fashionable laptop case, fl at watch and Bluetooth

earpiece. With stylish pink-frame glasses and a

shiny laptop, she is ready to conquer the day’s

tasks on the go or from her desk.

For girls to further experience the reality of being a computer engineer, the doll

also includes a special code to unlock exclusive online game content on Barbie.

com. Computer Engineer Barbie is now available for pre-order at

www.MattelShop.com and will be available at retailers nationwide in

Winter 2010.

Please visit www.BarbieMedia.com for more information and images.

Media Contacts:

Michelle Chidoni, Stefani Green

Mattel

310-903-3412, 310-252-6514

michelle.chidoni@ketchum.com , stefani.green@mattel.com

Isle of Man schoolgirl becomes an anime star in Japan

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/07/rebecca-flint-anime-beckii-cruel/print

Rebecca Flint, 14 – aka Beckii Cruel – is an internet hit among anime fans and her debut album is tipped to top Japanese charts

• Paul Gallagher
• The Observer, Sunday 7 February 2010
• larger | smaller

Rebecca Flint, 14, performing as Beckii Cruel

Like most 14-year-old girls, Rebecca Flint likes to dress up and dance. But unlike most girls, she records and posts her performances on YouTube.

The results have made her an internet phenomenon in Japan, home of the anime cartoon characters she imitates. More than eight million people have watched Rebecca performing as Beckii Cruel, dancing to bouncy J-pop (Japanese pop music) and anime theme songs in the attic of her home on the Isle of Man.

Her success has led publishing giant Tokuma Japan to sign up Beckii, teaming her with 18-year-old French college student "Sara Cruel", from Lyon, and a 16-year-old student from Portsmouth known as "Gemma Cruel". The trio – Beckii Cruel and the Cruel Angels – release their debut album in Japan on Wednesday, when it is expected to reach the top of the charts.

Beckii's looks have created a sensation in Japan, where she has become a "moeidol", a female worshipped for her small face, large eyes and slender limbs, similar to those found in anime characters – the Japanese animation-style heavily influenced by manga comic books.

Anime has a huge following in Japan across all sections of society. Taro Aso, a former prime minister, is a self-confessed anime obsessive, reading up to 20 comic books a week.

"The perceived virtual existence and borderless nature surrounding Beckii are a catalyst for stirring fantasies," said Toshiyuki Inoue, an IT journalist, summing up the popularity of moe artists.

Kaori Sakurai, a freelance writer, said that the otaku – anime geeks who worship teenagers like Beckii – will often avoid pretty girls in real life, fearing that they would simply dismiss them. But they have been won over by Beckii, who appears as just another fan like them.

Beckii's popularity in Japan rocketed after her YouTube videos were picked up by popular Japanese website Niko Niko Douga. Her Japanese DVD debut, This is Beckii Cruel: Too Cute to be Real, was released last November and debuted at number eight in Japan's DVD charts. Beckii, who already features in Japanese TV commercials for chewing gum, performed live for the first time at Akihabara, home ofotaku culture in Tokyo, last October.

The daughter of a policeman and a former dance instructor, Beckii first became interested in Japanese cartoons and comics three years ago when she picked up a translated copy of Fruits Basket, a Japanese girls' manga created by Natsuki Takaya. Since then, she has been voraciously reading manga and watching anime, while also studying Japanese.

Beckii's idea to film herself in "cosplay" – derived from costume play – followed and an internet star was born. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese teenagers indulge in "cosplay", with conventions regularly held around the country. Tokyo Dome, home of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team, is a regular weekend hangout for teenagers dressed as their favourite anime or manga characters.

At a recent press conference in Japan alongside her father, Derek, Beckii said she was aware that her age and the nature of her videos would attract some unwanted attention. "I'm well aware of the dangers of the internet; my school back home on the Isle of Man is good at educating us on that," she said.

Beckii has had her own webpage since she was four – her older brother, Ryan had his at six. Ten years on from setting it up with her father, who says he has educated his daughter on the dangers of the internet, she now has the second most subscribed website among Japanese musicians. The expectation surrounding the release of her album this week suggests her incredible rise to fame shows no signs of slowing down.

Anime usually refers to a style of animation originating in Japan, influenced by the manga (Japanese comics) style and typically featuring characters with large eyes, big hair, exaggerated facial expressions and elongated limbs.

Cosplay (right) is a term originating in Japan based on the words "costume play", and involves dressing up as anime or manga characters.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Male Arrested in Japan for Uploading via Perfect Dark (Updated)

source:http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-01-27/male-arrested-in-japan-for-uploading-via-perfect-dark

posted on 2010-01-27 19:07 EST

1st arrest of anime file-sharer who used software that promised better anonymity

Kyodo News and other news sources report that Kyoto's High-Tech Crime Task Force has arrested a male suspect on Wednesday for allegedly uploading anime online, without the copyright holders' permission, using the Perfect Dark file-sharing software. Other people have been arrested foruploading anime online, but not for using Perfect Dark, a "next-generation" program which was intended to maintain its users' anonymity better than its predecessors. (The Perfect Dark file-sharing program has no relation to the Nintendo 64/Xbox Live Arcade game of the same name.)

According to the High-Tech Crime Task Force, the suspect uploaded the televised Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood anime in January. The suspect is accused of uploading over ten works in one day.

People Arrested for Using Earlier Share Program

Last November, police in Japan arrested 11 people for allegedly sharing films, music, anime, games, and other content using an earlier program called Share. The uploaded anime reportedly included Ranma ½, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Dragon Ball Kai, Fresh Precure!, Fullmetal Alchemist, andLucky Star. The first three people accused of using the Share file-sharing program were arrested in May of 2008 in three different prefectures. These three suspects reportedly shared anime from the Gundam franchise.

History of Winny, Share, and Perfect Dark

An even earlier peer-to-peer file-sharing software called Winny was developed in 2002 by a then anonymous computer engineering research assistant known as "47-shi" ("Mr. 47"). The software promised anonymity for its users, but the High-Tech Crime Task Force found flaws in its integrated forum feature. After two users were arrested for sharing copyrighted material using Winny in 2003, the developer was identified as Isamu Kaneko of the University of Tokyo and was also arrested. He was convicted and sentenced with a 1.5-million-yen (about US$12,000) fine, but was then acquitted last October.

During Kaneko's arrest and trial, another anonymous developer created the Share program which promised better protection of users' anonymity on Winny's file-sharing network. Since security researchers also found flaws in Share in 2006, other successor applications such as Perfect Dark have been developed.

Japan's Copyright Law prohibits unauthorized uploaders but expresslyallowed people to download for private use until this month. In June, the Japanese parliament passed an amendment that will make it illegal to knowingly download copyrighted material without authorization for the first time. The new law went into effect on January 1, 2010.

Source: animeanime.biz

Image © Hiromu Arakawa/FA Projects, MBS

Update: In a separate case, the Cyber Crime Task Force of the Chiba Prefectural Police and the Ichikawa Municipal Police searched four Manga Land Internet cafes on Tuesday on suspicion that they displayed anime without the copyright holders' permission. According to Japan's Association of Copyright for Computer Software (ACCS), the accused infringed on copyrights by showing the first episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam, Major, andDragon Ball to two customers between January 13 and 15. The three anime are owned by Sunrise, Shogakukan Shueisha Production, and Toei Animation, respectively.

ACCS alleged that the accused stored animation and other content on in-house servers, and allowed the content to be accessed from personal computers that were installed for customers to use without restrictions. The police confiscated three personal computers, seven servers, and 26 hard drives from the Motoyawata branch store. ACCS further alleged that the accused obtained the animation content via Share, Perfect Dark, and other file-sharing software. Source: animeanime.biz

Understanding the web to make search more relevant

source:http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/understanding-web-to-make-search-more.html

1/22/2010 10:30:00 AM

Last year at our second Searchology event, we announced Google Squared and Rich Snippets, two approaches to improve search by better understanding the web. Today, we're kicking off the new year with two improvements based on those technologies. First, we're applying the research behind Google Squared to add a new "answer-highlighting" feature to search, and second we're expanding Rich Snippets to include events.

Answer highlighting in search results

Most information on the web is unstructured. For example, blogs integrate paragraphs of text, videos and images in ways that don't follow simple rules. Product review sites each have their own formats, rating scales and categories. Unstructured data is difficult for a computer to interpret, which means that we humans still have to do a fair amount of work to synthesize and understand information on the web.

Google Squared is one of our early efforts to automatically identify and extract structured data from across the Internet. We've been making progress, and today the research behind Google Squared is, for the first time, making search better for everyone with a new feature called "answer highlighting."

Answer highlighting helps you get to information more quickly by seeking out and bolding the likely answer to your question right in search results. The feature is meant for searches with factual answers, such as [meet john doe director], [john lennon died], or [what was the political party of president ford]. If the pages returned for these queries contain a simple answer, the search snippet will more often include the relevant text and bold it for easy reference.

Consider the example, [empire state height]. The first search result used to look like this:

With today's improvements, the answer —1250 ft, or 381 m — is highlighted right in the search result:

This kind of quick answer only makes sense for certain kinds of searches. For example, the answer to [history of france] can't readily fit in a search snippet. However, for the kinds of information you can easily put in a table, we've been able to take what we've learned from Google Squared to make search better for a wide range of queries. Answer highlighting is rolling out during the next couple days on google.com in English.

Rich Snippets for events

Sometimes the easiest way to understand somebody is by having a conversation. The web is similar. As much as we're happy with the progress we're making with Google Squared, we also appreciate that a great way to understand web pages is to simply ask webmasters to teach us (and other search engines) about their content. To that end, we continue to make improvements to our search results with Rich Snippets, enabling webmasters to annotate pages with structured data in a standard format.

So far we've launched improved search result snippets for reviews and people. When your search results contain web pages with review information, you might see the number of user reviews on the page and the average rating in the search result. When your search contains a public profile page about a person from a social networking site, you may see the person's location and occupation, or a list of her friends.

Today, we're announcing support for a new Rich Snippets format for events. The new format improves search results by including links to specific event names, dates and locations. Here's an example of a new event result from livenation.com if you search for [irving plaza]:


The new result format provides a fast and convenient way to identify pages with events and click directly to the ones you find interesting. If you're into Hip Hop Karaoke, you can quickly find out when and where the next show is in Irving Plaza, and click for more info. We've been working with a few sites to ramp them up for our initial launch, but it will take time for other webmasters to start implementing the new markup. Check out our blog post on Webmaster Central for more details.

Posted by Kavi Goel and Noah Weiss, Product Managers

Links to this post

jardenberg kommenterar – 2010-01-23 — jardenberg unedited

The Best Rick Roll Ever. Unlucky God Channel. - Åhh, vilken perfekt inledning på helgen. Nu kör vi! Facebook Snatches User's Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International. - Bad Facebook. No cookie. ...

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Google Attempts Answers, Not Search Results

Helping computers understand language

source:http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/helping-computers-understand-language.html

1/19/2010 11:51:00 AM

An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers. We can write a computer program to beat the very best human chess players, but we can't write a program to identify objects in a photo or understand a sentence with anywhere near the precision of even a child.

Enabling computers to understand language remains one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence. The goal of a search engine is to return the best results for your search, and understanding language is crucial to returning the best results. A key part of this is our system for understanding synonyms.

What is a synonym? An obvious example is that "pictures" and "photos" mean the same thing in most circumstances. If you search for [pictures developed with coffee] to see how to develop photographs using coffee grinds as a developing agent, Google must understand that even if a page says "photos" and not "pictures," it's still relevant to the search. While even a small child can identify synonyms like pictures/photos, getting a computer program to understand synonyms is enormously difficult, and we're very proud of the system we've developed at Google.

Our synonyms system is the result of more than five years of research within our web search ranking team. We constantly monitor the quality of the system, but recently we made a special effort to analyze synonyms impact and quality. Most of the time, you probably don't notice when your search involves synonyms, because it happens behind the scenes. However, our measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports. We took a set of these queries and analyzed how precise the synonyms were, and were happy with the results: For every 50 queries where synonyms significantly improved the search results, we had only one truly bad synonym.

An example of a bad synonym from this analysis is in the search [dell system speaker driver precision 360], where Google thinks "pc" is a synonym for precision. Note that you can still see that on Google today, because while we know it's a bad synonym, we don't typically fix bad synonyms by hand. Instead, we try to discover general improvements to our algorithms to fix the problems. We hope it will be fixed automatically in some future changes.

We also recently made a change to how our synonyms are displayed. In our search result snippets, we bold the terms of your search. Historically, we have bolded synonyms such as stemming variants — like the word "picture" for a search with the word "pictures." Now, we've extended this to words that our algorithms very confidently think mean the same thing, even if they are spelled nothing like the original term. This helps you to understand why that result is shown, especially if it doesn't contain your original search term. In our [pictures developed with coffee] example, you can see that the first result has the word "photos" bolded in the title:


(Note that because our synonyms depend on the other words in your search and use many signals, you won't necessarily always see the word "photos" bolded for "pictures", only when our algorithms think it is useful and important to bold.)

We use many techniques to extract synonyms, that we've blogged about before. Our systems analyze petabytes of web documents and historical search data to build an intricate understanding of what words can mean in different contexts. In the above example "photos" was an obvious synonym for "pictures," but it's not always a good synonym. For example, it's important for us to recognize that in a search like [history of motion pictures], "motion pictures" means something special (movies), and "motion photos" doesn't make any sense. Another example is the term "GM." Most people know the most prominent meaning: "General Motors." For the search [gm cars], you can see that Google bolds the phrase "General Motors" in the search results. This is an indication that for that search we thought "General Motors" meant the same thing as "GM." Are there any other meanings? Many people can think of the second meaning, "genetically modified," which is bolded when GM is used in queries about crops and food, like in the search results for [gm wheat]. It turns out that there are more than 20 other possible meanings of the term "GM" that our synonyms system knows something about. GM can mean George Mason in [gm university], gamemaster in [gm screen star wars], Gangadhar Meher in [gm college], general manager in [nba gm] and even gunners mate in [navy gm].

Here are screenshots of those disambiguations of GM in action:

As a nomenclatural note, even obvious term variants like "pictures" (plural) and "picture" (singular) would be treated as different search terms by a dumb computer, so we also include these types of relationships within our umbrella of synonyms. Pictures/picture are typically called stemming variants, which refers to the fact that they share the same word stem, or root. The same systems that need to understand that "pictures" and "photos" mean the same thing also need to understand that "pictures" and "picture" mean the same thing. This is something that is even more obvious to a human but is also still a difficult task for a computer. An example of how this is difficult are the words "animal" and "animation," which share the same stem and etymology, but don't mean the same thing in standard use. Another tricky case that is very dependent on the other words in the query is "arm" vs. "arms." Arms might seem like the plural of arm, but consider how it might be used in a search: [arm reduction] vs. [arms reduction]. Google search is smart enough to know that the former is about removing fat from one's arm, and the latter is about reducing stockpiles of weaponry, and that arm/arms are dangerous synonyms in that case because they would change the meaning. These subtle differences between words that seem related is what makes synonymy very hard to get right.

Here are some other examples of synonyms we thought were interesting:

[song words], "lyrics" is bolded for "words".
[what state has the highest murder rate], "homicide" is bolded for "murder".
[himalayan kitten breeder], Google knows that "cat breeder" is the same as "kitten breeder".
[dura ace track bb axle njs], Google knows that "bb" here means "bottom bracket".
[software update on bb color id], "blackberry is bolded for "bb".
[bb cream dark], Google knows here that bb means "blemish balm".
[southeastern usa bb fitness & figure], "bodybuilding" is bolded for "bb."

Lastly, language is used with as much variety and subtlety as is present in human culture, and our algorithms still make mistakes. We flinch when we find such mistakes; we're always working to fix them. One of the best ways for us to discover these problems is to get feedback from real users, which we then use to inspire improvements to our computer programs. If you have specific complaints about our synonyms system, you can post a question at the web search help center forum or you can tweet them with the hash tag #googlesyns. You can also turn off a synonym for a specific term by adding a "+" before it or by putting the words in quotation marks.

Posted by Steven Baker, Software Engineer