The cost of online content continues to climb, but Internet retailers are not paying the full price for producing it, sources are telling United Press International's Networking column.
Rather, they are getting it wholesale, acquiring "syndicated" Web content, produced by product manufacturers, like Estee Lauder, Sony, Palm and others, and customizing and integrating it on to their own sites, with just one line of HTML code. The content includes not only product descriptions — as in a catalog — but also interactive demos, buying guides and educational content. By Gene Koprowski


Networking: Syndicated online content

The cost of online content continues to climb, but Internet retailers are not paying the full price for producing it, sources are telling United Press International's Networking column.
Rather, they are getting it wholesale, acquiring "syndicated" Web content, produced by product manufacturers, like Estee Lauder, Sony, Palm and others, and customizing and integrating it on to their own sites, with just one line of HTML code. The content includes not only product descriptions — as in a catalog — but also interactive demos, buying guides and educational content. By Gene Koprowski

http://www.upi.com/Hi-Tech/view.php?StoryID=20060619-084736-7451r

The Pentagon pays a private company to compile data on teenagers it can recruit to the military. The Homeland Security Department buys consumer information to help screen people at borders and detect immigration fraud.

As federal agencies delve into the vast commercial market for consumer information, such as buying habits and financial records, they are tapping into data that would be difficult for the government to accumulate but that has become a booming business for private companies.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have completed a prototype device that can block digital-camera function in a given area. Commercial versions of the technology could be used to stymie unwanted use of video or still cameras.

The prototype device, produced by a team in the Interactive and Intelligent Computing division of the Georgia Tech College of Computing (COC), uses off-the-shelf equipment – camera-mounted sensors, lighting equipment, a projector and a computer — to scan for, find and neutralize digital cameras. The system works by looking for the reflectivity and shape of the image-producing sensors used in digital cameras.

Gregory Abowd, an associate professor leading the project, says the new camera-neutralizing technology shows commercial promise in two principal fields – protecting limited areas against clandestine photography or stopping video copying in larger areas such as theaters.

Following up on my post discussing the uselessness of Frank Gehry's "BP Bridge" at Chicago's new Millennium Park, a story in today's printed version of the Chicago Reader speaks to some other problems with the park.

This time the issues are not so much with the design, but with its use. In keeping with the contemporary trends of privatizing public space, Millennium Park is a copyrighted public space.

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has alarmed civil libertarians by promoting the company's subcutaneous human tracking device as a way to identify immigrants and guest workers. He appeared on the Fox News Channel earlier this week, the morning after President Bush called for high-tech measures to clamp down on Mexican immigrants.

Privacy advocates Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre are warning that a government-sanctioned chipping program such as that suggested by Silverman could quickly be expanded to include U.S. citizens, as well.

WASHINGTON - Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.

These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and even acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents gathered by congressional investigators and provided to The Associated Press.

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, June 6 (UPI) — A middle-age Serbian man set his car on fire rather than pay a $90 fine for illegal parking.

An attendant at a parking lot for impounded vehicles said the man looked calm when he tried to collect his car. When he was told what the fine was, he asked permission to collect a few things from the vehicle, Belgrade's Press daily newspaper reported Tuesday.

While doing so, however, the man opened the vehicle's hood and set the engine on fire. He then rode off on his bicycle, the newspaper said.

By MIKE SEELY

Pristine architecture, toasted ravioli, and Anheuser-Busch headquarters aside, Saint Louis is the Battlefield Earth of American cities. It's so bad that it's good.

Dubbed the "Gateway to the West" at the turn of the century, the Lou was once destined to be a great world metropolis, ranking as the country's fourth-biggest city at roughly one million strong. But as gallery owner Robert Powell puts it, the gateway slogan was a double-edged sword, as it essentially gave passers-through every reason to stop, stay awhile, and bail, moving forward to coastal hinterlands like, well, Seattle.