Today in History - June 27

Today is June 27, 2008. It is the 178th day of the year. There are 187 days remaining until the end of the year. Important event on this day: On June 27, 1995, US space shuttle STS-71 blasted off in space to dock with the Russian space station Mir. It became the first shuttle to dock with Mir, and the first to conduct a Mir main expedition crew exchange. Aside from five American astronauts who conducted separate research in the Spacelab attached to the shuttle, on board were the Mir Expedition EO-19 crew of Budarin and Solovyov. Other events on this day: In 1693: The first women's magazine, The Ladies' Mercury, was published by John Dunton in London. In 1703: After winning access to the Baltic Sea through his victories in the Great Northern War, Czar Peter I founded the city of Saint Petersburg as the new Russian capital. In 1801: In Egypt, British forces defeated the French and take control of Cairo. In 1922: The American Library Association (ALA) awarded the first Newbery Medal, honoring the year's best children's book, to The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon. In 1937: San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological and artistic achievement, opened to the public after five years of construction. In 1940: During World War II, the Germans set up two-way radio communication to transmit information to German bombers in Brest and the port town of Cherbourg, employing their most sophisticated coding machine, Enigma, invented in 1919 by Hugo Koch, a Dutchman. In 1941: The British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000. In 1944: The Allies, as Hitler had anticipated, captured the fortified town and port of Cherbourg, in northwest France, freeing it from German occupation. In 1946: The foreign ministers of Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and France transfered the Dodecanese Islands from Italy to Greece, and areas of northern Italy to France. In 1950: The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution put forward by the United States calling for armed force to repel the North Korean invaders, two days after communist North Korean forces invaded South Korea; an action that provided the pretext for US intervention in the conflict and was the first time the Security Council had ever approved the use of military force. In 1953: National Book Award-winner Alice McDermott was born this day in Brooklyn to first-generation Irish-Catholic parents. She wrote books such as the A Bigamist's Daughter, That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and Charming Billy. That Night was nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer. In 1963: John F. Kennedy, an Irish-American and the first Catholic to become president of the United States, arrived in Ireland for a visit. In 1998: An earthquake struck the area around Adana in Turkey killing at least 120 and injuring over 1,500.

Strong earthquake hits India's Andaman Islands today(27 jun, 2008)

The Indian Meteorological Department says a 6.7-magnitude earthquake has stuck the Andaman Islands off the east coast of India. The office said the undersea quake struck at 5:40 p.m. Friday. A police officer in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman Islands, said the quake shook the islands causing panic among people. S. M. Tiwari said there were no reports immediate reports of damage of injuries and that no tsunami alert had been issued. The remote islands were among the many areas devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

India vs. Pakistan, 2nd Test

2nd Test Match - India Vs Pakistan Eden Gardens, Kolkata. Ind 616/5 Pak 456/10 Ind 184/4 Pak 195/4Mohammad Yousuf* 34, Younis Khan 100. Pak needs 150 runs to win. More information : December 08 2007 Match : Pakistan v India Week Day : Saturday Venue : M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore Type : 3rd Test match

Strong winds, mudslides batter Northwest

Hurricane-force winds and heavy rain battered the Northwest for a second day Monday, killing at least two people and leaving entire communities dark and isolated as the storms blocked roads with trees, power lines, high water and mud. Dozens of people stranded by flood waters required rescue as the second of two storms blew through, and Oregon transportation officials warned drivers not to attempt passage through the Coast Range. "This storm is hitting the coast so hard, it's not leaving any road open," Transportation Department spokeswoman Christine Miles said.

Ad targeting improves on Web sites

NEW YORK - Based on the weather reports and restaurant listings you check out online, Yahoo Inc. has a good idea where you live. Based on searches you've done, the Web portal might also know where you want to go. Don't be surprised then to suddenly see an advertisement on flight deals between those two places. It's what United Airlines did with an ad on Yahoo earlier this year as people browsed for something completely unrelated to travel. Elsewhere, online hangout Facebook is mining friends' buying habits, and major Internet portals have bought companies to expand their reach and capabilities for "behavioral targeting" — all so advertisers can try to hit you with what they believe you're most likely to buy, even as doing so means amassing more data on you. "When you are online today, you've been labeled and tagged as this type of consumer in milliseconds," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "All of a sudden you are exposed to a vast number of invisible salespeople who are peering over your personal details to figure out the best way to sell to you."

Klausner sues Apple iPhone over voicemail

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Klausner Technologies said on Monday the company had filed a $360 million suit against Apple and AT&T Inc over voicemail patents that Klausner claims the Apple iPhone infringes. New York-based Klausner said the lawsuit also names Comcast Corp, Cablevision Systems Corp and eBay Inc's Skype as infringing its patent for "visual voicemail." The plaintiff seeks an additional $300 million from the three. Klausner said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit in U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Texas. A copy of the filing was not yet available from the court. The suit alleges asserts that the defendants' Internet-based voicemail products and services violate a Klausner patent. It seeks damages and future royalties estimated at $300 million, according to the press release. The complaint involves U.S. patent 5,572,576, the same one at issue in a suit Klausner filed in 2006 against voice-over-Internet telephone service provider Vonage Holdings Corp. The two sides agreed to settle that earlier case in October 2007, according a spokesman for Klausner. Vonage is now a licensee of Klausner's voicemail technology for its Vonage Voicemail Plus service, as is Time Warner Inc's AOL for its AOL Voicemail services, Klausner said. A company spokeswoman said Apple's pioneering Newton personal digital assistant was covered under a licensing deal between Klausner and Japan's Sharp Corp, the manufacturer of the Newton, tied to Klausner's U.S. patent 4,117,542.

Gibson shows new self-tuning guitar

TOKYO - Musicians of the world are getting a new kind of artistic freedom with technology that eliminates the challenging chore of tuning. Robotics technology developed by German company Tronical Gmbh in partnership with Gibson Guitar Corp. enables Gibson's newest Les Paul model to tune itself in about two seconds. For users who purchase the add-on technology, the guitar recognizes pitch. Then, its processor directs motors on its six tuning pegs to tighten or loosen the strings accordingly. Tronical has offered its "Powertune System" online and through retailers in Germany since March, according to the company's Web site. The Gibson Les Paul guitar model with Blue Silverburst finish goes on sale globally this Friday. Nashville, Tenn., guitar maker Gibson and Tronical said Powertune is the world's first self-tuning technology, and Gibson says it is particularly useful for beginners, who tend to find tuning a headache. Musician Ichiro Tanaka, who tuned and played a sample guitar at Gibson's Tokyo office Monday, said the technology is handy for professionals too. If they use special tuning for just part of a concert, as he often does, it means they don't have to lug around an extra guitar with the second tuning ready.

Yahoo Japan, eBay unite in online auctions

TOKYO - Yahoo Japan Corp. and eBay Inc. agreed Tuesday to team up in online auctions, planning services for next year that will make it easier for consumers to buy things over the Internet from the U.S. and Japan. The move marks a return to Japan of eBay, which pulled out of the market in 2002, never able to compete against the domination of Yahoo here. Yahoo said by March, Japanese will be able to bid for items up for sale on eBay through the Yahoo auction site in Japan. By the middle of next year, similarly, a site will be set up that will allow Americans to buy Yahoo Japan auction items through the eBay site.

Gamers' world reveals secrets of the next epidemic

A plague carried around the world by travelers, pets and curious teen-agers may show that experts have not taken everything into account when planning for an outbreak of disease, researchers said on Monday. Luckily, the world involved is an Internet game. The outbreak of "Corrupted Blood" indicates that specialists trying to predict what the next pandemic will look like might make use of a real-world laboratory -- the culture of online gamers. "It really looked quite a bit like a real disease," Nina Fefferman of Princeton University, who worked on the report with her then-student Eric Lofgren, said in a telephone interview. This includes stupid behavior, near-instant international travel and infection by pets.

ComScore refines search measurements

Online measurement company comScore Inc. is refining how it presents data on search market share to reflect changes in user behavior. Generally, search market share statistics have been accumulated by counting the entries in the boxes at sites run by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other engines. Now comScore wants to capture searches done in other ways and on other sites — for information on Wikipedia, for instance, and product listings at eBay Inc.'s auction site and the Amazon.com Inc. retail store. "Search is no longer the box we're all used to," comScore Chief Executive Magid Abraham said during a private demonstration on his laptop. "A more fluid definition of the market necessitates looking at search more broadly."

Paramount to drop Blu-ray high-def DVDs

Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. will offer next-generation DVDs in the HD DVD format and drop support for Blu-ray, further complicating the race between the competing technologies. Monday's announcement affects the upcoming DVD releases of the blockbusters "Shrek the Third" and "Transformers," along with movies distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films. Movies directed by Steven Spielberg, however, will continue to be released in both formats. Paramount, which owns DreamWorks Pictures and handles home sales for the separate company DreamWorks Animation, previously released movies in both Blu-ray and HD DVD.

HiPiHi Seeks To Standardize 3D Worlds And Develop Interoperability

China’s answer to Second Life, HiPiHi, announced at the State of Play V conference in Singapore Monday its intentions to work towards standardized 3D worlds, with an aim of eventually delivering interoperability between various platforms. HiPiHi said it would cooperate with “global leaders in the Internet and communication industry to establish a set of relevant hardware and software standards for the development of the 3D platform.” The company would then work with other 3D virtual world providers to finalize these standards with the goal of allowing users to interact and transact between different virtual worlds. HiPiHi current platform is remarkably similar to Second Life in both looks and features, with users creating the world and being able to own land and objects. Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life has recently taken some steps towards opening its platform, including open sourcing the code for the Second Life client, however the Second Life world has remained closed to 3rd party servers. Linden Lab has previously said that they have “a vision of a globally interconnected grid with clients and servers published and managed by different groups” (indeed, they called it inevitable) so it will be interesting to see whether they join HiPiHi’s initiative.

Windows Live Messaging Coming To BeboBebo

Bebo has announced a new partnership with Microsoft that will see the introduction of the Windows Live instant messaging service to Bebo’s social network. The new service will allow Bebo users to chat to people outside of the Bebo network, from within Bebo itself. What makes the deal perhaps more interesting is that Bebo users will also now be recognized over the Windows Live platform; in effect the deal becomes a sort of merging of member databases. It’s also a first for Microsoft, who has remained somewhat distant from the growing social networking market to date. Bebo continues to trail behind MySpace and Facebook in the United States in terms of traffic, but as confirmed by comScore August 15, is the most popular social networking site in the United Kingdom.

Vlingo: Voice Enable Any Mobile Application

People really hate cell phone keypads for data entry. Anyone who’s called customer service knows voice guided phone applications aren’t new, but they’re a good way to navigate menus and enter text. And applications like Spinvox which incorporated speech recognition to turn verbal voicemails into written text messages, and TellMe, which uses voice recognition to power local search, are useful and popular. Cambridge-based Vlingo wants to make voice enabling applications easier, by using their own speech-to-text J2ME/Brew application API (Windows/Symbian later this year). With the API, developers will be able translate a user’s voice to text, and use it in their application as if typed directly into the program. One of their first examples was for local search and shopping. Vlingo voice-enabled a text box on the program you could fill out by holding down the talk button and saying a phrase, like “Pizza in San Francisco”. The system then fills in the form with what you said, letting you modify the text normally if it gets it wrong. In our trials the system generally worked with my Californian accent. However, an Australian accent had very little luck, highlighting the difficulties of internationalizing speech recognition. Often speech recognition companies make their jobs easier by limiting the vocabulary or training the system on a comprehensive lexicon of words and accents. But due to the breadth of their effort, Vlingo had to take a more general approach, using machine learning through statistical analysis so the system could work in a wider array of uses.

Zoho Goes Offline (in a good way)

Online office suite Zoho will launch offline functionality for Zoho Writer this morning, and other applications in their suite will follow shortly. The offline functionality was built on Google Gears, an open source project launched by Google in May 2007. Users will need to install a browser plugin to take advantage of the functionality. After that, an option will appear in the navigation bar to “Go Offline.” The feature works with Internet Explorer v.6 and higher, and with Firefox (including Mac) v1.5 and higher. For now they are offering read-only functionality offline. Read-write functionality will appear in 3-4 weaks, the company says. Zoho will also begin to roll out offline functionality for their spreadsheet, presentation and other applications in the coming weaks. Zoho, which competes head-on with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, managed to launch offline functionality on their product before Google did. The fact that they are using Google software to do this makes the story somewhat ironic.