News Track

CHINA’S NETIZENS ON RISE

The Chinese government has announced its Internet population soared to 210 million people, putting it on track to surpass the U.S. online community this year as the world’s largest. According to government officials, China is only five million behind the U.S. online, a figure consistent with some U.S. estimates. But China still lags the U.S. in several respects. China’s online penetration rate is placed at 16%, the point Americans hit in the mid-1990s. About 75% of U.S. adults are now online; penetration is higher when teens are included. Internet penetration in China holds a different meaning, however, where cyber cafes serve as the main entry to the Web for many people. Still, say officials from both sides, China’s online growth is significant.

 

TECHNOLOGY INFLUENCERS

Intel recently organized a panel of experts, including academics, journalists, and independent third parties, to vote for the 45 most influential figures in technology over the last 150 years. The top 10 vote grabbers are:

 

1. Tim Berners-Lee (World Wide Web founder)

2. Sergey Brin (Google co-founder)

3. Larry Page (Google co-founder)

4. Guglielmo Marconi (Inventor of the radiotelegraph system)

5. Jack Kilby (Inventor of the integrated circuit and calculator)

6. Gordon Moore (Intel co-founder)

7. Alan Turing (Pioneer in deciphering German code in WWII)

8. Robert Noyce (Intel co-founder)

9. William Shockley (Co-inventor of the transistor)

10. Don Estridge (Led development of the IBM computer)

T. BERNERS-LEE

 

For the full list of technology influencers, which includes Bill Gates (#31), Steve Jobs (#14), and Vint Cerf (#13), see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/tech- nology/technotes/jan08/ mostinfluentialtechies.htm.

12 April 2008/Vol. 51, No. 4 COMMUNICA TIONS OF THE ACM

BETWEEN ADS AND FRIENDS

The MySpace generation wants less space devoted to online advertising. In fact, the ads on social networks like MySpace and FaceBook have become so widespread—and annoying—that users are beginning to opt out. BusinessWeek reports the average amount of time users spend on social networking sites fell 14% in four months, with MySpace slip-ping from a peak of 72 million users last October to 68. 9 million last December. Besides slowing user growth and declining time spent on these sites, users appear to be less responsive to ads. If advertisers can’t figure out how to reverse these trends, social networking could end up as a niche market in the cyber ad world, slashing valuations across Silicon Valley.

SMART BADGES

In other news (and forms) of social networking technology, smart conference badges might be able to help people venture out, form new connections, and gain insight into how they interact with others at such events. Technology Review reports MIT researchers tracked the social interactions of a select group of attendees at a conference using a smart badge incorporating an infrared sensor, wireless radio, accelerometer, and microphone to log the bearer’s behavior. The data from the sensors was wirelessly transmitted to a computer that produced a real-time visualization of the event’s social graph. The project illustrates the increasing popularity of sociometrics, a discipline in which sensors collect fine-grain data during social interactions and software makes sense of it. Similar tags from Intel are being used to help monitor the health and behavior of the elderly. Rick Borovoy, co-founder and CTO of MIT’s spin-off company nTag, contends this form of “reality mining” creates a sense of community and identity. “It’s a way to subtly intervene and disrupt conventional networking patterns.” ^c

DOI: 10.1145/1330311.1330314