Who's your paddy? A precise examination of the genome of domestic rice has determined that one of the world's most ancient of all domesticated agricultural grains was first farmed in China.

Disruptive innovation is underway in higher education. While many will benefit, gaining access to personalized education at lower cost, some institutions will suffer if they fail to change now. Insights into the innovations coming to the university of the future is found in The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside [...]

An update from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for the week of  April 29  - May 6, 2011.

Business Calendar: May 13-July 11 Brookfield Elm Grove Now The workshop will be held in Room 121 of the Milwaukee County Research Park, 10437 Innovation Drive, Wauwatosa, from 9 am to noon. The fee is $35 per person, and $20 for each additional person from the same firm. Advance reservations are recommended. ... and more »

Daily Mail

Centre champions UK space innovation BBC News An innovation centre dedicated to finding new ways to exploit space has been officially opened in the UK. The Harwell, Oxfordshire, site will foster people and ideas that can grow an already highly ... International Space Innovation Centre in Harwell will help Britain to conquer ...Daily Mail A Royal Launch for UK Space Industry IncubatorSpaceosaur New £40m space science centre opensLittlehampton Gazette all 11 news articles »

Archinect

MIT, Going FAST After 150 Years Archinect In 2011 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology celebrates the 150th anniversary of its founding, an occasion marked with 150 consecutive days of activities commemorating its long history of technology innovation. The most prominent of the exhibits, ... and more »

VA Names New Industry Innovation Competition Winners Business Wire (press release) “These innovative projects will support Veterans starting a small business, and increase the use of new technology to deliver health care services Veterans have earned.” The new projects are funded by the VA Innovation Initiative (VAi2) and designed to ... and more »

We are busier than ever around here and our Signposts have been suffering. Please know that it's not because we don't care.

Silicon Valley is populated with people who fear sitting on the bench while someone else scores with a great idea, says Professor Baba Shiv. He argues that how people approach failure is a key to success.

Experiences are made up of multiple components that work together to afford the whole. It's easy to get caught up with the trend to include the newest, most amazing technology or affordance in anything we are designing (multi-touch screens, anyone?). Mateuz Zdziebko explores the notion that even the mundane pieces of our daily lives can be creativity combined to produce something delightful and transcendant. Turn it up.

Alright, even though you don't need a multi-touch screen, they can be kind of cool. Here's a restaurant tablet that lets diners order, pay, play games, and offer feedback from their table.

Maybe we missed this the first time around, but many of us have loved reading through, this Google-sponsored magazine/book : Think Quarterly.  (Admittedly, some of us love data a little more than is strictly healthy.) 

Speaking of data and the love thereof, Tufte's Sparklines are now possible on Twitter! "As Twitter now accepts Unicode, we can use the block elements to create a sparkline in our posts"

Will Apple pull the old chip switcheroo again, and embrace ARM CPUs on its Macs instead of Intel silicon? You bet it might, say new rumors, because it could mean your MacBook lasts pretty much all day on a charge.

Only a handful of years ago, Apple abandoned its long relationship with IBM and the PowerPC line of processors for shiny new Intel silicon. The switch from G5 to Intel caused an upheaval of epic proportions among the user community and for the people who code for Apple software--and even required Apple to nursemaid the transition with special dual-mode compatibility code in its OS X for years. But Apple's never looked back, and thanks to a few early-access treats from Intel, and special treatment like the unique one-off processor designed to make the original MacBook Air such a paradigm-breaking machine, the two have kept working together. That may, according to a new and surprisingly emphatic rumor, all be about to change.

SemiAccurate, a publication that was previously correct in predicting Apple would swing away from using Nvidia GPUs, is the source of the latest rumor. It's based on some insider information, and some smart deductive work: In just a few years, ARM is expected to transition its CPU design to full 64-bit addressing, which would significantly boost the computing power, while retaining the core light power requirements that's a characteristic of ARM's design. A transition to ARM CPUs in two to three years would enable Apple to quickly make use of a whole new class of super-powerful chips that eat batteries much less quickly than competing chip architectures. And it would come just a short while after Apple takes its first steps in incorporating lessons from iOS devices like the iPhone (which runs on an ARM chip) back into its computing operating system OS X, with the latest update into OS X Lion.

And don't forget Apple already has lots of ARM design expertise in-house, thanks to its acquisition of PA Semi for close to $300 million in 2008.

With two more generational tweaks to OS X, and continued development of iOS, Apple could easily make OS X work on ARM chips instead of Intel's. This would also align how code is written for pretty much every device Apple makes. Supplying an emulation system, like it did for the transition to Intel chips inside Macs, wouldn't be difficult, and the fact that Mac apps are now slightly cheaper to buy (thanks to the Mac App Store, and halo effect of the iOS App Store) would mean users wouldn't feel hard done by when, in say four to five years, Apple stopped supporting Intel x68-only software for its ARM-based Macs.

But there's one big reason Apple would want to pull off this trick, which would be timed to the A15 ARM generation: Mobile computing. There's an undeniable move away from desktop PCs that was initially driven by advances in laptop tech, boosted by the netbook phenomenon, and is now being rocketed into the stratosphere by the tablet PC paradigm. Users now expect ever-more powerful portable machines. And though Intel has teased its next-gen low-power 3-D chip solution, the main reason it's currently shut out of the tablet market is that its chip architecture simply can't compete with ARM chips in terms of power consumption.

The iPad works for around 10 hours on a charge, while the new 11-inch iMacs run reliably into four hours of usage, and Apple's existing bigger MacBook Pros can go up to 7 hours with the Wi-Fi on...all with existing tech. Imagine in 3 years' time, with evolutions in battery design, screen technology (so they consume less power when lit) and solid-state memory advances, a MacBook sporting a low-power-consumption, super-fast ARM chip. Hypothetically, that Mac could run for 18 hours or more on a single charge.

If Apple's desktop Macs ran ARM chips, too, then perhaps they'd need much less cooling--leading to quieter, more efficient power needs. And who wouldn't like to run apps on a top-end Mac Pro with four ARM CPUs aboard, sporting up to 32 separate processor cores?

[Image: Flickr user junesey]

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Most Innovative Companies 2011: Apple.

Christina Norman told the audience at our Innovation Uncensored event last week how she was visibly unsure about joining OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network as its CEO. Even a star-powered, deeply funded network is a lot like a small startup, full of twists and turns. In the latest twist a week later, Norman herself has been let go.

Photo: Brigitte Sire

Now that Oprah Winfrey herself has announced she'll be turning her full attentions to her OWN network and plans to bring along her new show, Oprah's Next Chapter, in Jan 2012, she's overseen the network's first big staff move, too: dismissing CEO Christina Norman. The dismissal comes after the network has failed to outperform the channel it replaced, Discovery Health, Brian Stetler reports today on the New York Times' Media Decoder blog. Peter Liguori, chief operating officer for Discovery Communications, takes over immediately--at least through the rest of 2011.

Norman just told us last week about how her first big visit with Oprah was a flop. Oprah had to cancel--her dog died. In case that wasn't a bad enough omen, a second meeting went horribly, Norman said, adding that she was visibly ambivalent about the opportunity.

[video_twistage 1]

Norman was so bad in the interview, she said she remembered Oprah saying, "I thought you needed hormones or something." Norman also admitted: "This is not the kind of job, the kind of person you half-ass it for." She let the bad interview pass but later came to her senses. "I called everybody I knew to get back in it," Norman told her panel's moderator Linda Tischler. But months later, she heard Oprah was still on the hunt for a CEO. So she threw her hat back in the ring. She landed the position.

Until today. Norman never seemed to be kidding herself about the challenges she faced at the network. It is very much a startup, Norman told Fast Company last week, after, it's now being reported, the OWN board had already made the decision to dismiss her--but before the news was announced. "Is it going to work, is it going to fail?" Norman asked about the network. "It's going to be a roller coaster, and how do you sort of lead and navigate through that?"

[video_twistage 2]Video editing by Adam Barenblat

Micro-finance is terrific in concept. All it's missing is a winning platform. In this installment of Work Smart, John Ferber of Microgiving.com describes the important differences between loansharking and micro-giving and lending that's estimated to have helped a billion people in need. Plus, learn about a few micro-lending and giving sites, including a Google-style search site for micro-finance services--proven to do good. 

 

New York Daily News

With Budget Unveiling, Bloomberg Draws the Battle Lines WNYC "We are forced to do the best we can with what we've got. The state has shifted the burden from them to us." Following the unveiling of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's final budget, the battle lines are now drawn between the mayor and City ... Bloomberg to cut more than 6000 NYC teaching positionsCNN International Bloomberg's $65.7 Billion New York City Budget Proposes 6000 Teacher CutsBloomberg NYC Mayor's Budget Would Cut 1 Out Of 12 TeachersNPR Brooklyn Daily Eagle -Patch.com -The Associated Press all 331 news articles »

Inside Intel's plan to rethink how its chips work.

This week, Intel announced that it would use a new design for the billions of transistors that make up each of its next generation of chips. These 22-nanometer transistors, which Intel calls "tri-gate," have a three-dimensional structure. The company says they will enable chips that are 37 percent faster and use half the power of the company's current generation of chips, which use 32-nanometer transistors of a conventional two-dimensional design.

The Administration is currently negotiating U.S. entrance into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a new vehicle for trade and economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region including Australia, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Vietnam, and others. It is imperative that in the TPP the U.S. negotiates a strong, comprehensive accession agreement that includes the highest standards of intellectual property protection, eliminates non-tariff barriers such as standards manipulation, achieves transparency on government procurement provisions, and ensures that U.S. standards and laws are reflected in the agreement. Will the Trans-Pacific Partnership be a gold-standard trade pact—or WTO lite? Please join ITIF and an all-star panel as we release a new paper and discuss how the United States should craft the TPP as a model trade agreement for the 21st century.

Hospital Executives Gain Insight into Business Development Strategies Through ... Business Wire (press release) (BUSINESS WIRE)--Aegis Health Group, the nation's leading provider of business development strategies for hospitals, announced the launch of its multimedia blog, “HI 4 : Hospital Intelligence, Insight, Innovation and Impact. ... and more »

Globe and Mail

PlayStation Network back online very soon, says Sony Christian Science Monitor ... personal information had — or had not — been taken. Thoughts on the PSN breach? Drop us a line in the comments section below. In the meantime, for more tech news, sign up for the free Innovation newsletter, which is emailed out every Wednesday ... Sony is still an online king - whether PlayStation Network is down or notComputerandvideogames.com all 6,272 news articles »

Forbes (blog)

Patent Budget Cuts Could Have 'Devastating Effects' on US Innovation PC Magazine Bijal Vakil, an executive partner at White and Case's Silicon Valley office, thinks the move could have "devastating effects" on American innovation. "Why are policy makers diverting the funds [away from the USPTO]? It absolutely contradicts the ... The Patent Office Dilemma: How Congress Robs Peter to Pay PaulForbes (blog) all 5 news articles »

Dismissed Oprah Network Chief Christina Norman Was Ambivalent From The Start ... Fast Company Christina Norman told the audience at our Innovation Uncensored event last week how she was visibly unsure about joining OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network as its CEO. Now she's been dismissed. Did she see it coming? Now that Oprah Winfrey herself has ... and more »

Aleem Walji of the World Bank Institute's Innovation Team on the Future of ... Huffington Post (blog) In both roles, I'm interested in how innovation and technology can enable and accelerate progress in fighting poverty. I don't think incremental change is sufficient to solve the hardest problems in the world. Given the urgency of so many challenges we ...

InQuira Wins Fifth TSIA Recognized Innovator Award for Innovation in Knowledge ... Marketwire (press release) "Technology innovation is a driving force for businesses in every sector of the market," said John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research for TSIA. "InQuira was selected as a winner for its leadership in developing an innovative knowledge ... and more »

Seminar focuses on innovation in produce industry The Packer That's what participants heard at a May 5 United Fresh Produce Association global conference on produce technology innovation. The seminar followed United Fresh 2011. “Innovation is the key to your business, all of your business,” said Angela Paymard, ... and more »

Photographs Jason Madara

Eight Sparks of Inspiration.

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AS A GLOBE-TROTTING principal designer at architecture giant Gensler, Steve Weindel is not unfamiliar with the drudgery of air travel. But with the design of San Francisco International Airport's newly renovated Terminal 2, which opened in April, he believes he has built a winning experience. "We strived to completely turn things around," Weindel says. That includes big moves -- like an expansive post-security seating area filled with art -- and green ambitions. "It's on track to be the first LEED Gold terminal in the U.S.," he says, pointing to extensive natural light, energy-saving ventilation, paperless ticketing systems, toilets that use reclaimed water, and local- and organic-food vendors. But for all those progressive ideas, Weindel trusts the tried and true when it comes to an architect's tools.

Architectural models

In a modern world of digital renderings, Weindel stresses the importance of physical models [1]. "Architecture is three-dimensional -- there's no substitute when it comes to really studying spatial aspects."

Carved fisherman figure

"The story of the Inuit tribe that makes these carvings [2] is really tragic," says Weindel. "They live on this very thin island off the north coast of Alaska, and because of global warming, it is slowly disappearing. This reminds me that what we do has a huge impact on the earth."

Eames photo

Kept at Weindel's desk, this shows a mountain of parts used in Eames chairs [3]. "My favorite quote about design is from Charles Eames," he says. " 'Thinking of how a chair looks comes pretty far down the list of things I worry about when designing one.' Beauty comes from solving the problem."

Alvin architectural scales

The big brothers of ordinary rulers, these scales [4] help architects measure and draw building plans. Weindel's vintage models have been through years of abuse but are still going strong. (From $11, dickblick.com)

Addfeet Junior

"One of my first jobs was checking shop drawings for stone paving," says Weindel, who bought this abacus-like machine [5] to help with the task. "There was no calculator back then that could add up fractions of inches and turn them into feet. This does it." ($75, ebay.com)

Prismacolor pencils

Weindel always keeps this brand of colored pencils [6] nearby. "There's nothing like them," he says. "When CAD was becoming common, clients would ask, 'Why aren't you using the computer on my projects?' We've come full circle. They love hand-drawn work again." ($19 a set, officedepot.com)

Daredevils

Weindel's son and daughter love jumping off of rocks into water. Over the years, he's amassed almost two dozen photos of them in free fall [7]. "They're risk takers," he says. "These photos remind me to take a risk every now and then."

Calligraphy brushes

Though Weindel is struggling to learn Chinese calligraphy -- "I'm an amateur at best," he says -- he keeps these brushes from Hong Kong [8] in a glass jar on his desk. As sculptural pieces, they serve as examples of "how beautiful simple things can be."

A version of this article appears in the May 2011 issue of Fast Company.

The Russian-born industrialist billionaire, who made his fortune in chemical and natural resource companies after the fall of the Soviet Union, just bought Warner Music Group, the record label that manages Cher, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Waka Flocka Flame.

Access Industries will acquire Warner Music Group, for $3.3 billion in cash, it was announced today. Access gets all of WMG's goodies: all its recorded music and music publishing businesses, according to the announcement. Access Industries, headed by the Russian-born American businessman Len Blavatnik, has long held a minority stake in WMG, and is said to be buddies with Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman, who assured everyone today that the move "serves the best interests of stockholders as well as the best interests of music fans, our recording artists and songwriters, and the wonderful people of this company."

This doesn't come totally as a surprise; WMG had been at auction for months--Sean Parker was bidding, among others--and Access's former investments signaled a real interest. Still, there's an element of strange bedfellows here. Access has become one of those amorphous mega-companies whose various holdings must make for the strangest office Christmas parties.

At the next holiday gathering, what will be the topic of conversation between Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips and the CEO of "Boomerang Tube," whose 120-acre production facility in Liberty, Texas makes welded tubes and line pipe? Will a Ukrainian TV mini-magnate make small talk with the Goo Goo Dolls? Will a higher-up at O-Zone Networks, India's "leading public Wi-Fi mobility operator," get tipsy on the egg nog and make a pass at Cher?

I think I see it now: the products division manager of LyondellBasell thinks he sees a spark in the young, aimless Waka Flocka Flame. He takes the rapper by the shoulder and leads him onto the patio, away from all the noise. "Waka, I have one word for you ... plastics!"

Access does, of course, have a number of media holdings; Bronfman cites Access Industries' "fresh entrepreneurial perspective and expertise in technology and media." Time will tell what that amounts to, in terms of steering Warner's future and that of its stable of A-list artists. In the meantime, shareholders will soon be smiling on their way to the bank; Access spent $8.25 per share, a 34.4% premium over the average share price (over the last six monhts) of $6.14.

Follow Fast Company on Twitter. Email David Zax, the author of this post, or follow him on Twitter.

The Fast Company reader's essential source for breaking news and innovation from around the web--updated all day.

Facebook Pays Users To Watch Ads

Facebook will be shelling out 10-cent virtual credits for watching certain advertisements, which can be redeemed on many of the social network's most popular programs, such as FarmVille and Causes. Even if Facebook payments are low, they might inadvertently trick users into believing they actually like the ads, with a psychological phenomenon known as "cognitive dissonance."

Video Games Honored At Smithsonian

Take that, Roger Ebert! Video games are now officially art, and will be showcased at the Smithsonian's "The Art of Video Games," March 16 through September 30, 2012--three months before the world ends. Blasts from the past, like The Secret of Monkey Island will live along side perennial greats SimCity and Super Mario Brothers.

Ultra-Thin, Bendable Phone

Researchers at Queen's University in Canada have developed a paper-like phone with bending gestures. Now PR and government folks won't have to buy cargo pants to have enough pockets for all their phones. [youtube Rl-qygUEE2c]

Mom, Put Down The Facebook

Thought getting kids to drop Facebook and go play outside was the problem? Maybe parents are really the ones with the problem, as this new playful PSA by Gerry Graf shows social-networking addicted moms ignoring their children. [youtube x4VgObInXHA]

Sources: All Things D, CnNet, BusinessInsider, Adweek

[Image: Flickr user d3stiny_sm4sher]

If you're into technology that can stroll convincingly like a human, or creep, roll, climb, spy, and even deliver drinks with uncanny mechanical smoothness, then you've come to the right place.

In our second installment of This Week In Bots we share tiny flying drones, amazing magnetic climbing spy machines...and a friendly NASA thespian robot.

Ship-climbing magnetic spy bot

ReconScout already has a line of "throwable" small-scale spy bots, but their latest one has a very specific target: ships. In an age where pirates seem to be capturing cargo vessels left, right and center, the little spy bot has an admirably handy feature--it can use its magnetic wheels to crawl up the sheer metal walls of a tanker. When aboard, it streams live video back to its operators, and can even see in the dark thanks to IR cameras and illuminators. Now all they have to do is fix it with a taser, and Somali pirates would have a weapon to truly fear.

[youtube 5fzi7fxknIc]

Tiny quadrocopter, the future of flying spybots?

Quadrocopters have taken to the skies these days--thanks to the advances in powerful, lightweight motors and batteries and semiconductor-scale high-accuracy accelerometers and gyros. But we're used to seeing these super-agile machines measuring about two or three feet across. Which is why CrazyFlie is incredible: It's just 4-inches on a side, and is so tiny its PCB acts as the main structural member. Somehow its makers have crammed enough computing power, sensors, and battery life aboard the 20-gram vehicle that is can fly for about four minutes, carry out its own balancing corrections, and be steered by remote control.

In some senses this hobby bot is a very early taste of what future lightweight flying spy drones for police and military forces may be like. If only they could tackle the motor/rotor noise, that is.

[youtube XRuWf2h7_5Q]

POLYRO--the open source android

Open source robotics is a growing phenomenon, based on a number of different designs, all with a similar goal of promoting robo-education and advances in robot design through crowd-sourced solutions. Most of the bots are pretty simple though, essentially smart evolutions of the "turtle" robot that got many of us our first access to a robot in the 1980s. Not POLYRO, though.

His name stands for "oPen sOurce friendLY RObot," and with his child-like stature and cutesy face he's pretty adorable. He's also no techno slouch--a Willow Garage TurtleBot is his core mobility system, but the 1-meter tall machine also incorporates a netbook, two arms with three degrees of freedom, USB webcam eyes and 11 servos in total. He costs $2,000, which even a stretched Computer Science major's budget might be able to manage.

Teaching computer science with a bot

It's an age where the first time kids use a computer or smartphone the experience is so slick, so removed from raw bits of machine code or C++ that teaching computer science is becoming trickier.

Which is where Carnegie Mellon's Finch robot comes in. He's a small two-wheeled device with a rugged design, temperature and light sensors, accelerometers, impact sensors, LED lighting, speakers and a socket in its tail to take a pen so it can act as a turtle. It's only $99, and CMU hopes to sell it to try to encourage young techno-tinkerers to get interested in the mechanical nitty-gritty of programming a real computer-based object.

[youtube 8Imq5lo3HuE]

NASA loves a robot actor

NASA is all about humans and space and long-term projects like the colonization of Mars--and development of a genuine U.S.S. Enterprise (we kid, mostly). But it's also all about robots, from robotic planetary-investigation devices to the humanoid Robonaut aboard the ISS. But it's also bought a Robothespian--a sophisticated android with many realistic movement degrees of freedom, and special skills as an actor/educator. It's now emerged that the device will be used to greet and amuse the 1.5 million visitors a year that go to the Kennedy Space Center museum. Robothespian is no Robonaut, for sure, but he'll definitely help promote NASA's high-tech plans.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Two prominent advisers to the Joint Chiefs of Staff think adopting social and environmental change is the best path to maintaining America's global hegemony.

Two prominent advisers to the Joint Chiefs of Staff think that the future of U.S. global dominance isn't in more bombs or faster jets. Rather, it's a question of focusing more on making sure we're taking care of the people on the home front, with universal health care; the environment; and the rest of the world, with renewable energy and humanitarian aid. This argument just came out in an influential policy paper that has Washington talking.

Captain Wayne Porter of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Colonel Mark Mykleby, who wrote the paper for the Woodrow Wilson Center, argue that the United States has its policies all wrong. America's greatest national security threats aren't terrorism or foreign armies--they are a crumbling infrastructure at home, the depletion of natural resources, climate change, and an overdependence on what they call “defense and protectionism.” Counterintuitively, this paper from special assistants to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, argues that America's best hopes for world leadership lie in classical left-wing tropes of conservation, soft power, and aggressive humanitarian work abroad.

Here are their four biggest (and most controversial) suggestions:

Turning American foreign aid policies upside down. According to Mykleby and Porter, the United States should be "out-competing the grey and black market, funding research to develop alternate and sustainable sources of energy, adapting farming for low-water-level environments, anticipating and limiting the effects of pandemics, generating viable economies to relieve urbanization and migration, marginalizing extremism and demonstrating the futility of anti-modernism [...] better managing the global information grid." In other words, we should be directing funding toward innovating global solutions, not military technology.Massively increased spending on third-world humanitarian projects and aid projects at home for the United States' poor and lower middle-class. First on the list? America's health and educational systems, along with illiteracy and climate change abroad. According to the authors, preserving American global dominance is best served by preventing the conditions for chaos abroad and keeping America's infrastructure and population competitiveThe creation of a "National Prosperity and Security Act" along the lines of the 1947 National Security Act. The 1947 act was responsible for the creation of the Department of Defense and provided the blueprint for the Central Intelligence Agency's early years. Porter and Mykleby's version would be equally heavy-duty, boosting funding to government agencies dealing with environmental issues and sustainability while forcing research agencies to pour big bucks into research into renewable-energy tech.Cutting down on military spending, especially for ventures abroad. Porter and Mykleby write that "for too long, we have underutilized sectors of our government and our citizenry writ large, focusing intensely on defense and protectionism rather than on development and diplomacy." Strange words coming from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This is a policy whose vagueness gives it a good shot at being implemented. Porter and Mykleby work as special assistants to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and have spent over 20 years in service each. To be blunt, strategists for the Joint Chiefs of Staff don't release policy papers through think tanks that argue for drastic changes in government activity without at least unofficial sanction from their bosses.

As could be expected, reaction to the paper is mixed. CNN's Fareed Zakaria thinks its a coded call to shrink the military and the right-wing Heritage Foundation sort of agrees, calling it a “not very assertive” document.

But for people wondering if the military is going soft, Porter and Mykleby's paper was released at an extremely providential time. With Osama Bin Laden's death at the hands of highly trained military operatives in an old-fashioned, top secret operation, many of the people who push the levers of the government and military are wondering what comes next. If this paper has its way, it will be "homeland sustainability” instead of “homeland security.”

[Image: Flickr user Isafmedia]

For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Email Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, here.

Read More: War-Zone Videos Get On-Demand Treatment in New Defense Department Project

Despite the ongoing rush of alternative-fuel tech, the gasoline engine's having a moment thanks to advances from Jaguar and the Department of Energy.

Jaguar CX75 million-dollar hybrid

Last year Jaguar teased an incredible concept car, the CX75, that had an electric engine in each wheel and a pair of high-performance gas turbines in its truck to provide the electrical power. Now the luxury car firm has decided it's actually going to turn this dream of eco-friendliness(ish!) into a real production car, albeit a ridiculously high-end one. Only 250 of the cars will be built with the help of Formula 1 team Williams, starting in 2013, and will rock in with a price tag close to $1 million. 

At first, the cars will use a conventional gasoline engine--your typical small-scale four-stroke unit with a turbocharger--to spin a generator powerful enough to drive the all-wheel electric motors. The car could, of course, be run from batteries...but at the kind of performance the car's designed for they wouldn't last very long. That's because this is less of an eco car, and more a proof of concept "it could be green if we wanted it to be" machine. With a 0-60MPH time of a scant three seconds.

The best bit? You'd know that as well as turning heads with the sleek looks and what's sure to be awesome sound of the thing gliding along, you'll be able to drive your million-dollar supercar with a relatively clear conscience. It's a hybrid, after all.

Gasoline-plus-diesel design wins

The battle between gasoline-powered internal combustion engines and diesel-powered ones goes right back to the invention of the engines themselves. Diesels are much more fuel efficient, but are rarer in the U.S. because by the very nature of their design they pump out more nitrous oxides and hydrocarbon pollutants. Gasoline powered engines are thus de riguer in the U.S., while diesels are more common in Europe, where there are slightly laxer anti-pollution laws. The thing is, gas engines are often only around 20% efficient in turning fuel into miles driven, while diesel engines can reach around 40% fuel efficiency--which actually challenges some of gasoline's eco-cred.

Now research by the Department of Energy and the University of Argonne in France has suggested there's a way to combine key parts of diesel technology into gasoline engines, pushing their fuel efficiency up to around double what it is today (and with gas-guzzler SUVs roaring across the U.S., going twice as far as before for each buck of fuel spent sounds pretty tempting). 

The trick is that gasoline engines work by injecting fuel into the cylinders, then compressing the fuel-air mix and igniting it with a spark plug. Diesels simply compress the air, then inject the fuel under pressure--the fuel/air mix is actually self-igniting (like hypergolic rocket fuels), which results in a more efficient burn and thus greater fuel efficiency--at the expense of nitrous oxide production and soot due to the way the flame propagates through the air-fuel mix.

Now the science team has worked out that it's possible to inject gasoline directly in much the same way, building up enough fuel density to spontaneously ignite the mix by repeatedly pushing in puffs of fuel, rather than the single squirt a diesel fuel needs. It's a relatively simple adjustment to the design of engines, and it could give the gasoline engine a much-needed kick of extra life before the all-electric revolution kicks in. In fact, it could even significantly boost the eco-cred of hybrid car designs. There's only one drawback--the power output of the gas engine is slightly decreased, meaning Americans would have to forgo their muscle-cars.

Chat about this news with Kit Eaton on Twitter and Fast Company too.

Read More: Laser Spark Plugs: The Internal Combustion Engine's Last Bid For Relevance?

IBM has announced the 50 recipients of its “Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Awards” and $10,000 grants for designing classes geared toward the technologies, markets, and applications in which IBM has a vested interest. Including one particularly gnarly Chicago transit hub.

On Thursday, technology giant IBM announced the 50 recipients of its inaugural “Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Awards,” in essence a $10,000 grant for designing classes geared toward the technologies, markets, and applications in which IBM has a vested interest--urban transportation and health care apps, for example.

Pace University associate professor Christelle Scharff, an associate professor of computer science, won for “Across Cities for Cities,” which would connect students in New York with teams in Delhi, Dakar and Phnom Penh to develop mobile apps for each city, such as one locating the nearest public transit or emergency room. San Jose State’s Chris Tseng will set his students to work designing healthcare informatics apps. And students at Australia’s RMIT University will learn how to deploy sensors across cities and generate new streams of data. Grants will be distributed to researchers at 40 universities in 14 countries, with the classes in question beginning next fall.

The program is a no-brainer for IBM, mobilizing university resources and training the next generation of programmers to grapple with the complexities of urban computing. But what if the smartest solutions to urban problems don’t necessarily lie in computer science departments? Shouldn’t they be teaching this stuff in architecture and planning departments as well?

They are--at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago this semester. The class is the brainchild of George Aye, a professor of design at SAIC, a former IDEO consultant, and the founder of his own Greater Good Studio.

“The premise was: all of these corporations--IBM, Apple, Facebook, GE--are saying, ‘We have data, we’ll get the data, look how awesome the data is,’” Aye said. “It’s an information land grab. It’s like gold dust. But no one is asking what happens once you get it,” or realizing just how incomplete it is. So he and his 18 graduate students (only one of which had studied programming) would figure out what to do with the data at hand.

For help, Aye turned to Urbanscale founder and Everyware author Adam Greenfield, and to John Tolva, the former IBM executive appointed last month to be the new CTO of Chicago. After a series of boot camps to bring both the teacher and students up to speed, they set out to tackle the infamous six-way intersection in Wicker Park known as “the Crotch.” Aye, who himself served time at the Chicago Transit Authority, chose the Crotch after a former Chicago Department of Transportation employee-turned-bicycling advocate named Steve Vance published a Google Map mash-up of bike crashes across the city--the Crotch was one of the worst. Dividing his students into teams, Aye asked them to imagine “smarter” traffic incidents--how to prevent them, and how to resolve the tangle of victims, witnesses, bystanders and police more quickly when they do happen.

What the prevention team came up with had less to do with technological smarts than good-old-fashioned traffic engineering. Their solutions to lessen pressure on the intersection was to close Milwaukee Avenue--a major bike corridor--to non-commercial traffic during non-peak hours, create special loading areas for taxis and trucks (to reduce double-parking), and institute a “scramble cross walk” at the intersection to stop pedestrians from darting through traffic. “You’re encouraged to do the right thing,” which is wait for the walk signal, said Aye. “But you’re incentivized to get across the intersection as fast as you can.”

The reaction team was quick to deploy software, imagining a system of networked traffic signals (which doesn’t currently exist), and an algorithm capable of real-time traffic rerouting to an ever-widening series of lights. A new “traffic TiVo” would digitally record a 30-minute HD video loop of the intersection, and cops would carry handheld devices integrating police records, the TiVo feed, and perhaps even the cell phone records of the driver(s) in question--to determine whether they’d been twittering or texting in the moments before a crash.

These proposals--crafted by a group of early twentysomethings--belie a number of assumptions about the smarter cities we can look forward to the students of today building tomorrow. One is that they have no meaningful expectations of privacy, perhaps to a fault. When I pointed out to the students that perhaps the Chicago Police shouldn’t have real-time access to our phone records, they just shrugged it off.

“It’s a generational thing,” said Karl Williamson.

“As we go down the rabbit hole, the hesitations are being erased,” added Josiah Ball.

“You have to convince people of the benefits,” suggested Kristen Campbell Hansen, pointing out that a smart, secure bus stop was worth the trade-off of constant surveillance.

Another implicit assumption was, in the words of Ball: “If it can be imagined, it can be engineered.” They refused to get hung up on the fact that traffic signals aren’t, in fact, networked, but rather operate independently. The (probably correct) assumption is that they will be. They also didn’t get hung up on the paucity of data that exists today. That won’t be the bottleneck in the future. Or as Aye put it: “Step one is data, data, data. Data is great, but it’s still missing context. Next is: what would we do with the data if we had it? And finally: what should we do with it? No one is thinking of that.”

The next step for the class is to pitch Aye’s former employers at the CTA on piloting the concept. “The chance to put design into public policy is still an enormous opportunity for designers,” he said, explaining why someone with absolutely no computing background decided to cobble together a course on smart cities. 

In the meantime, the students appear to have grasped the twin truths of the smarter city movement. They’re not really designing smarter streets, “we’re actually designing new behaviors,” Williamson said.

And second, “it’s also going to be incredibly lucrative,” Ball said. “This is going to be hot for the next 10 or 15 years.”

[Image: georgeye.com]

Read More: Most Innovative Companies: IBM

I love me some rocking chairs but worrying sucks. It often leads to over-analyzing and stress and drama and bad skin and bad TV and thinking it’s ok to tweet your ex at 1:30AM. No thanks. I’ll take less worrying and more rocking.

If you live in a tiny apartment like me, maximizing each square inch becomes crucial. Imagine an intense game of Tetris that forces you to stack belongings in weird places. Yeah, my Cosby sweaters are stored in the kitchen cabinets, what of it? Let’s just say keeping things separate requires some creativity. Morgan over at [...]

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending PSFK’s NY Conference. It brought together some heavy-hitting creatives (I’d suggest watching the talks from Airbnb, Thrillist and Kickstarter) but the most compelling (and best executed IMO) came from Aaron Dignan. He’s not only a Jason Schwartzman look-alike but a new author and successful trends [...]

Digg is the second tool in my 7 social media channels series (blogging was the first). Using Digg can be a great way for you to gain an audience and create a place for people to come and share not only your links, but the links that you find interesting. This video will discuss the purpose of Digg and how you can use it effectively. [...] Related posts:

1. Social Media Channels: How do I blog?
2. 7 social media channels – and when to use them
3. Digging the new Digg

I’ve just read two scholarly articles, both by Professor Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo and colleagues, that review the many studies that compare solo individual learning with collaborative group learning.* The first article, published in Science magazine 11 March 2011, reviewed all studies of non-lecture innovations in college classes in biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics. The most common innovative [...]

DigiTimes says so, citing component maker sources.

The rumor mill has been set whirring. DigiTimes, which claims "upstream sources," says that Amazon will be releasing a long-awaited Kindle tablet in the second half of 2011. Some outlets had previously reported that Samsung would be building the tablets; that bit has not been confirmed in this rumor (or, more properly, that other rumor has not been lent any further credence). Reports say the tablet would run the Android operating system, which makes sense; Amazon already operates its own app store for Android devices.

Project Morpheus is testing a greener propellant, and hazard detection technology.

Space Adventures announces a tourist seat aboard a new moon mission.

As yet another biofuels company prepares for a stock offering, some wonder if the company is worthy of going public at all.

In 2004, a startup called Nanosys tried to go public. It had recruited some of the world's top nanoscientists for its board and had bought up hundreds of nanotech patents. The idea was that it could revolutionize TV displays, batteries, and maybe even golf balls. It had no product, but so what? Nanotech seemed like it could change everything.

The World's 26 Best Cities for Business, Life and Innovation The Atlantic The report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Partnership for New York City graded 26 metro powerhouses from Stockholm to Santiago on business opportunities, culture, livability, and innovation. Here is a gallery of the results. ...

Inventors Digest

Facebook for Patents Huffington Post (blog) The essence of America has been an embrace of innovation in all its forms -- politically with democracy, economically with highly developed capitalism, and scientifically through the protection of invention. It is in this last area of scientific and ... Celebrating Heroes of Invention at the Temple of InnovationIPWatchdog.com all 4 news articles »

CTV.ca

IMS to Highlight Green Technology Inside INdiana Business (press release) The company was started by James Allison, one of the original founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and has a long history of technological innovation. For more information about the company, please visit www.allisontransmission.com. ... The 100th Anniversary of Indy 500 Marks Brickyard Return of Innovation ChallengeNew York Times (blog) all 1,443 news articles »

ASU Poly students show their high-tech savvy Arizona Republic 6, 2011 12:42 AM Students at Arizona State University's College of Technology and Innovation showed off what they learned this year at its first Innovation Showcase, a display of solutions to industrial and community problems. ... and more »

This post orginally appeared here on OPEN Forum Idea Hub. It’s nearly impossible to go a week without some news of a disruptive business model threatening to shake up the market: Facebook becoming your bank, Facebook offering movie rental, Google … Continue reading →

Can you imagine a global network that focuses on open innovation, social media tools and thought leadership and connects people and companies – virtually and physically – in order for everyone to learn and network…

The likely Republican candidates might not be saying much about their candidacies just yet. But, as the saying goes, the medium is the message. Facial decoding firm Sensory Logic has figured out ways to interpret their messages.

Although President Barack Obama is substantially boosted by the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and a relatively unknown few Republicans debated last night in Greenville, South Carolina, Campaign 2012 nevertheless is starting to take shape. During the campagign, many Americans will meet GOP contenders for the first time. But what the presidential hopefuls say may not matter that much. Their faces may be doing the heavy lifting. A scientific, emotional “facial coding” of the candidates and their expressions may determine who gains traction and who gets the nomination.

Campaigns and the public will soon be inundated with information on how candidates are tracking and their odds for success ("the horse race"). Politicians and the populace will turn to social media to influence and gauge our opinions and moods. But few candidates and voters are likely aware of “facial media” (you heard it here first) and the science of “facial coding.”

After the 2010 the midterm elections, more campaigns than ever began using neuromarketing techniques, that is, studying the brains of voters in order to craft messages that would appeal to them and win votes at the polls. Turning the tables now in 2011, neuromarketing researchers can measure candidates’ own brain-driven facial movements and emotions, in order to assess their performance, fine-tune campaign marketing, or even predict election outcomes.

Dan Hill, president of Sensory Logic and author of Emotionomics and About Face, is a facial coding expert who works with leading Fortune 150 companies, professional sports teams, and government agencies (e.g. TSA). Sensory Logic works with clients who market to consumers by measuring their emotional facial responses to various stimuli in an effort maximize appeal. Companies also hire Hill to help with employee recruitment and talent management.

Hill has been diagnosing candidates and predicting elections since 2004. In October 2007, he had Obama 2-1 emerging as the Democratic presidential nominee when a famous former White House advisor and current GOP pundit had him at 20-1. He was ahead of the pack in predicting the demises of Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. Historically, Hill says, the happier candidate triumphs (think frowny Dole, Kerry, McCain, etc.). Sensory Logic uses proprietary Cartesian Graphs to measure and score the impact, appeal, and engagement, emoted and emitted, by the candidate’s face. A person can show four types of smiles but a “’true smile’ which is a strong natural smile seen around the eyes and mouth” is more rare, distinctive, and powerful. Hill’s analysis suggests when a politician should drop out or not even enter the race (when his heart, or face, is not in it).

Fast Company, exclusively, met with Hill to understand his methodology and get an initial read and deconstruction of the Republican faces of 2012. This first-ever facial coding of the full presidential field is based on Hill’s methodology, which correlates 23 Facial Action Units to 7 Core Emotions plus the widely accepted Big 5 Personality Traits model producing Sensory Logic’s EmoTraits®. [The methodology builds off of a 19th century foundation laid by biologist Charles Darwin and refined more recently by Paul Ekman.]

Several of Hill’s conclusions drawn from the candidate analysis:

• "Chris Christie (who says he won't run for president) is the most negative, making him a logical VP choice to tap into the Tea Party's anti-establishment anger."

• "Mitch Daniels and John Huntsman are the antithesis of Trump: Trump is most intense, while they are the least intense and the most understated."

• "If Romney wins the nomination, Buddy Roemer could be a natural VP choice--fellow businessman and the same emotional profile while adding regional diversity.”

For our own visualization of Hill's full analysis of the current crop of prospective candidates--and what their faces are saying about their mood and their odds, click here.

But how reliable and useful are the analyses and findings? Hill tells Fast Company he has not been hired by political campaigns; but his client list is growing, diversifying, and becoming more global, he says. Recently Sensory Logic clients asked that their names be removed from the firm’s Web site due to project confidentiality and competitive reasons. With the assistance of Ekman, the CIA uses their own facial coding and “microexpressions” analysis in recruiting and conducting espionage. What did they recently glean from Bin Laden’s facial gestures? Hill also revealed he was asked though the BBC by an unknown sponsor to interview and code people in Karachi, Pakistan (he declined).

Fred Davis, a seasoned political consultant who has advised George W. Bush and John McCain on their presidential campaigns (he will soon work for former US Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, Jr., whose entry into the presidential race is all but assured), extols the tactics of neuromarketing and has confirmed their use in his past campaign work. He thinks Hill’s facial coding approach and findings are interesting but says perhaps just a "clearly written analysis of what people feel in their gut when they see a candidate … I'd put this technology in the category of extensive focus groups on demeanor and personality. Nice to have, but quite a luxury. [It] probably never would be given significance."

Hill concedes some challenges and limitations of political facial coding. The data is based on his own observation and coding and using other (not as proficient or expert) coders might mean less reliability and consistency. Also, the analysis and findings derive from a limited sample of candidate speeches. What if the sample pool happens to be based on a candidate’s few bad hair days? And while politicians cannot fake their facial muscle movements and those corresponding “core emotions,” they could fudge to a degree and manipulate the "personality traits" they want to project.

Darryl Howard, who has applied the neuromarketing methods of "muscle, pupil, and skin response" on a number of successful GOP campaigns, finds Hill’s facial coding approach useful and the data valuable. "Hill’s understanding of how the human body gives information both voluntarily and involuntary is brilliant. And this [facial coding] information can be very helpful to the voter in making their choice in an election."

Hill thinks the data can also help a candidate understand how he or she can differentiate from the field--as a brand, (e.g. if the pack shows anger, then stand out as bright), or to assess the competition, strengths, and weaknesses. The coding may point to the need for a candidate to be truer to his or her authentic emotions versus being staged (think Gore), or to be more singular and polar emotionally and personality-wise, instead of all over the map and bland.

The 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debates famously underscored the power of mass media and ascendant television to shape elections and shined a harsh light on candidate facial expressions. In 2008, no one exploited the power of emerging social media channels more effectively than Barack Obama. In 2012, who can turn facial media and smiles into victory?

The longtime VP tells us how a simple call for a pizza delivery influences the company's thinking on local products and searching.

Yesterday Google introduced a new feature for its Google Places pages: Business Photos, which essentially brings Street View into the interiors of businesses. Just as Google started providing panoramas of the insides of museums with its Google Art Project three months ago, the new Business Photos will enable restaurants, shops, hotels, and other businesses to have a Google photographer come take a panorama of their interiors--for free--and post it to their Places page.

The feature goes live next week in the United States, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. It was unveiled at the Social Loco conference in San Francisco by longtime Google executive Marissa Mayer, who now, as VP for Local and Maps, is responsible for products like Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Places, and Google Street View. Fast Company caught up with Mayer to learn more about Business Photos and Google’s location strategy in general.

How does Google Business Photos fit into the larger Google location strategy?

About 20% of searches done on Google today are local. We want to have the best possible answers when our users come to us with those local queries. So if we can show them a picture of what a business looks like inside, and have the hours it's open and its menu and other great photos, those are all things that help people get the most out of a Google search for local information.

Are you thinking about how you’ll monetize it? Or is it about driving more search usage? Or is it simply an experiment at this point?

At our core is search. That said we think there are a lot of different ways people like to find information. Sometimes it’s very active, like a search. Sometimes it’s very passive, like: Show me where I am on a map, and show me what things are around me that I would like.

We are really playing with the other side of the coin, which is exploration and doing things like recommendations on Google Places, based on [a user’s] ratings and reviews.

How do you decide what to have your team work on? There are a million opportunities to pursue in this area, but resources, even at Google, always have limits.

I think of our location strategy as having two prongs. Maps is one prong, which is obviously very successful, both on desktop and on the phone. That’s always geo-spatial: You see a map, you see yourself on a map, you see how to get from one place to another. The other side is local, or what we call Places. It gives you textual descriptions, photos, as you search through things like business listings.

Coming from those two use cases--a user who might want to use a map, or a user who might want to look at different local businesses--[we ask ourselves]: What kinds of things can we do? Can we give great recommendations? Can we get better, higher-quality data around where a business is? Can we use something like Google Latitude and use location in your phone to help you not only tell people where you are but also to help you find your friends?

Where is the sweet spot in this space for Google?

We want people to be able to find things in the real world that they’re going to really like, the same way they do with search. And we love data problems. We like them when they’re big. We like them when they’re messy. The local data space is a big messy data problem.

Here’s an anecdote around a use case that is not that well served at the moment--and it’s good to see that it’s not well-served, because it means there’s an opportunity there.

I was with some friends at a ski house. It was my job to provide Saturday night dinner. I thought, "OK, pizza and Caesar’s salad all around." I did my research in the morning. I found this nice little place where they delivered. I was set.

I came back after a day of skiing and figured I’d just quickly call in our order. I call the place, and they say, "We do deliver, but we don’t deliver to where you are." Now I’m in a scramble: Who delivers pizza to the place that I’m sitting right now? It was a 45-minute to hour-long task [to figure that out].

It shows you: Local is just a really messy data problem.

So sometimes [the thing we’re working on is] a data problem. Sometimes it’s an interface problem. Sometimes it’s just a search problem. But that’s all the sweet spot--[that's] what we’d like to do.

[Image: Flickr user TechCrunch50-2008]

E.B. Boyd is FastCompany.com's Silicon Valley reporter. Twitter. Email.

Emily White offers further validation that the secret sauce in the deals space isn't savings. It's sharing and serendipity. And no one shares the serendipity like Facebook.

When Facebook launched their new Deals service last week, they were inevitably accused of tromping on Groupon’s territory. (Groupon likely saw it that way.) But Facebook Director of Local Emily White said that's not the case. Facebook wasn’t so much interested in deals for deals’ sake, she said. Instead, the company was interested in deals that enabled people to do things together. This is the company, after all, who says its mission is to make the world more connected.

Fast Company caught up with White on Thursday to learn more--and understand what Facebook’s entrance into this space does indeed portend for Groupon and others in the deals industry.

“For us it’s around sharing commerce experiences with your friends online and off,” White told Fast Company, sticking close to Facebook's vision. “We are going for social experiences that are distributed, and shared, and happen in a social manner. We believe that people come to Facebook to interact with their friends. To the extent that we can make that happen even more easily is really cool for us and for the users.”

White described how placing Deals in the Facebook ecosystem creates a cycle, the company believes, that both produces high-quality experiences for users but also benefits merchants.

The system does a lot of filtering for users, White said, so that, when a user decides on a deal, they have greater confidence that it’s one they’re going to like. While some users rely on Deals emails to learn about opportunities, most discovery, White said, happens either in the Newsfeed--when a friend posts a Deal they took advantage of--or when a friend shares a deal with another friend--both of which offer a measure of validation. (It's the sharing power, we've said before, that's the true power behind deals.)

“The best conversions for us are when I find a deal, and I share it with my friends. Which is not a surprise, because that’s what people come to Facebook to do,” White said.

Added to that, when a Facebook user runs across a deal at a merchant that a friend of theirs already frequents, that friend’s check-in will appear in the deal message (assuming they’ve given permission for check-ins to be shared)--providing further validation that this might be a worthwhile experience.

White also said the social nature of the deals that Facebook offers increases the chance that merchants are going to reap users with the potential to become loyal customers, rather than people solely on the hunt for a discount.

“Maybe you like a restaurant and you see a deal for it, and you want to go,” White said. “And you bring [two other friends] who have never been there before. What better new customers to bring to a restaurant than the friends of a fan?”

“And then it’s about taking a photo at that dinner, of the three of us, eating together and uploading it [to Facebook], and eventually tagging the business, and that showing up on the business’s Wall, and the owner being able to see that and get that feedback,” she continued. “And it builds on itself. Another friend of yours goes and looks at that [business’s] page and sees that you had an interaction with that place.”

Given Facebook’s focus, White said, the company isn’t necessarily competing with other deal companies.

“If you look at the deals that we are running and the way we’ve constructed it, you can tell that this is not in direct competition with Groupon,” White said. That compay is in a wide variety of spaces, including “Home & Garden, selling window cleaning. That’s just not [what we’re focused on].”

Read More: Most Innovative Companies 2011: Facebook and Groupon

[Image: Flickr user qianshuo]

E.B. Boyd is FastCompany.com's Silicon Valley reporter. Twitter. Email.

Rupert Murdoch's baby unveils its own data tip line, SafeHouse, but will it attract whistle-blowers? And can it fix security issues?

The Wall Street Journal quietly launched a WikiLeaks competitor yesterday, SafeHouse, a data dump and tip site for government and corporate wrongdoing. The attention-capturing power of WikiLeaks has often compelled reluctant partnerships with legacy media outlets. Founder Julian Assange's personal life and insistence on selectively handing out evidence to multiple outlets puts publishers in the awkward position of negotiating with a liable upstart muscling in on their territory.

SafeHouse will surely be the first of many WikiLeaks alternatives attempting to cut out the anarchistic middleman. Ultimatley though, data dump sites will have to attract the leakers themselves, but poor shield laws, insufficient security, and editorial bias may convince whistle-blowers to stand by the original Wikileaks.

SafeHouse

SafeHouse (or what will surely be known to some as WSJileaks) bills itself as a secure document and database tipline, fully admitting that disclosed data is "the key to modern journalism."WikiLeaks has had a huge amount of impact on the journalistic landscape," said WSJ Managing Editor, Kevin Delaney, to Forbes, "They’ve been a watershed."

First and foremost, SafeHouse wants leakers to feel that there's no breadcrumb trail back to their doorstep. Emails contain traceable information, and given the U.S.'s aggressive search for Assange, government whistle-blowers can expect the full investigative powers of the federal government to hunt them down.

Thus, rather than an email attachment, files are encrypted and information is kept hidden from "third-party" partners, which is most likely other media institutions, analytics firms, and advertisers.

Additionally, uploaders can secure files with the WSJ's public Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption key, a security standard that has so far eluded federal authorities hoping to break it. Finally, for the uber-paranoid, SafeHouse recommends traffic-masking software, such as Tor, which has been used by the likes of Chinese citizen journalists to disguise their location from trackers.

Problems and Solutions

Ironically, security expert and Tor developer, Jacob Appelbaum, lashed out at SafeHouse over Twitter hours after the launch, blasting the WSJ for a laundry list of amateurish security flaws and questionable tattle-telling fine print. Applebaum said:

"I’m sure they’ll fix this in good time, but to give you an example, I thought about leaking them all this information through their leaking interface, but I couldn’t use their interface with Tor. And I’m a Tor developer."

Even worse, the fine print leaves open the very real possibility of revealing sources, as the WSJ says, "We reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities." In response to criticism, spokesperson Ashley Hutton offered a PR-rish statement that looked like it had been run through their legal mill more than once. After reaffirming their committment to sources, it said, in part:

"...Because there is no way to predict the breadth of information that might be submitted through SafeHouse, the Terms of Use reserve certain rights in order to provide flexibility to react to extraordinary circumstances...

Fast Company reached out to The Wall Street Journal for clairification on both security and legal matters, and received immediate notification that we would get a response, but are still waiting (we imagine their legal and technical teams are prepping a fuller rebuttle for later today and will update this post if and when that happens).

In the end, the WSJ is likely to get the security aspect fixed, since encryption might be as much for the safety of WSJ editors as it is the leaker. In 2005, federal investigators successful cracked New York Times journalist Judith Miller after nearly three months in prison for refusing to divulge her source related to the Vice President's aid, "Scooter" Libby. The Obama administration-supported detention (and suspected torturing) of alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning would mean that changes in political party aren't any indication of friendlier whistle-blower treatment. in other words, WSJ reporters have no interest in warming the beds at Gitmo for their sources.

Still, SafeHouse is only one leak site, and uncertainty over security measures necessary to dodge the government watchtower might spook potential sources into going with the old online stalwart. Leakers are often not prodigy hackers: Manning allegedly used a CD-RW and a Lady Gaga diversion story to download diplomatic cables, which were apparently as secure as an open cookie jar.

In other words, what the Wall Street Journal is missing is why leak to SafeHouse?

Diversification

Media outlets have differed dramatically in both their interpretation and release of classified information. As such, Wikileaks has played a clever game of releasing information to several outlets at a time, fully knowing that competition for traffic rewards a race toward more transparency. The Wall Street Journal, especially then, would be a curious choice given its more conservative stance on government transparency. The Journal has refused WikiLeaks cables in the past, and has been the home of critical op-eds condemning Julian Assange as an "enemy" of the U.S. (including another one yesterday).

The concern that editors may self-censor information may be a weakness of newspaper-based leak sites in general. For anyone who has risked Gitmo-style torturous conditions to steal incriminating documents, why not submit them to an organization that releases to multiple publications?

Two potentially attractive features of SafeHouse are 1. A guaranteed spotlight for less-than-juicy stories and 2. A prudent choice for data related to life-endangering military operations. The public appetite for fraud stories is limited, meaning that there will likely be a parallel market for whistle-blowers competing to cut through the WikiLeaks noise. For leaked documents of shady pharmaceutical dealings or unscrupulous bankers, a megaphone like The Wall Street Journal might be willing to negotiate an exclusive for promoted coverage.

Second, past leakers have been concerned with the inadvertent casualties of exposure. A Wall Street Journal op-ed reports that Pentagon Papers source Daniel Ellsberg deliberately withheld diplomatic information because, as he said, "I didn't want to get in the way of the diplomacy."

In this regard, the WSJ's reticence towards transparency might be a selling point for those wishing to minimize collateral damage.

The market for both leak databases and leakers is just beginning to play out, and with this technology a new chapter in journalism begins.

Follow Greg Ferenstein on Twitter. Also, follow Fast Company on Twitter.

[Image: Flickr user aturkus]

Read More: WikiLeaks, Twitter Records Case Heads Back To Court

Content farms scored a win in the battle against Google's anti-spam search algorithms today as Demand Media, the company behind eHow, Cracked, and Livestrong, announced a quarterly revenue of $79.5 million--up 48% from the same quarter last year. Demand also reported a 32% increase in page views on owned and operated websites, but this doesn't mean that the company can rest easy quite yet.

After Google made its first anti-spam search algorithm change in February, eHow (Demand's biggest site) actually saw a jump in page views. But Google wasn't done weeding out the content farms; in April, the search engine tweaked its algorithm again, and eHow suffered. Compared to levels before the first February algorithm change, eHow saw a net decline in search engine referrals of approximately 20%--all attributable to Google's tweaks, explained Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media, on a conference call this week. Overall, though, page views for eHow dropped just 12% because the site "has other sources" of growing traffic--sites whose primary function does not involve gaming Google results. If anything, Google may cause Demand to shift more of its priorities to those higher quality holdings.

"This was a real impact to our business, and we take it very seriously," Rosenblatt said. So seriously, in fact, that Demand is trying to improve its content so that it can win on Google once again.

These improvements include running all new content through an editorial process, taking down eHow stories that doesn't meet certain standards, and putting up more feature content across Demand's sites. Feature stories are written by experienced journalists, and "incorporate original reporting, exclusive quotes, side bars, and have word counts north of 850 words," according to Demand's investor press release. This doesn't mean that Demand is necessarily getting in the business of breaking news, however. Sample feature stories include a piece about 2011 wedding season trends and a look at the heirloom produce craze.

Google's algorithm changes may not have killed Demand Media, but they did spur the company to at least try to improve its content. For everyone who spends time weeding through eHow articles on Google, this is a good thing. And in the end, it might save Demand.

Read Also: New Google Search Updates Seem To Be Putting The Kibosh On Demand Media Sites

[Image: Flickr user delphic]

Reach Ariel Schwartz via Twitter or email

Ethonomic Indicator of the Day: 1,000 liters--the equivalent amount of gas you would need to get the nuclear fusion power of one liter of seawater.

Nuclear power is having a bit of a low moment these days. But that's just because we don't know how to do it right, the way the sun does. General Fusion--a startup that just announced that Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos is providing financial backing as part of a $19.5 million funding round--claims it's going to solve the nuclear problem by creating clean, harmless nuclear power from water.

You read that correctly--Bezos is betting on nuclear fusion, the holy grail of nuclear nerds everywhere. Today's nuclear plants generate power from fission, a process that splits atoms to release energy as heat. The simple version of the nuclear fusion process--which is what happens on the sun--goes something like this: isotopes of hydrogen atoms fuse together to make helium. The reaction releases incredibly large amounts of heat, which is used to power steam turbines.

The amount of hydrogen isotopes found in one liter of water could generate the power of 1,000 liters of gasoline. Some of the hydrogen isotopes for the process can be found in seawater, and others can be found in lithium. This means that nuclear fusion should be able to provide virtually unlimited amounts of clean energy (according to General Fusion, we have enough lithium for 23,000 years of fusion energy). There is also no risk of meltdown or production of long-lived nuclear waste. In other words, there will never be a nuclear fusion Fukushima disaster.

In the past, fusion has only happened in nuclear explosions. No one has able to do it in controlled settings, so General Fusion sounds a little crazy in saying that it can. But the company is confident, claiming that it will have a full-scale proof-of-concept fusion generator within four years. The key, according to General Fusion, is its Magnetized Target Fusion technology, which traps plasma in a magnetic field and then compresses it to high temperatures and density.

If the plan works, General Fusion's nuclear plants could be cost-competitive with the capital and operating costs of today's coal plants. It all sounds a little too good to be true: scalable, ultra-safe, reasonably priced, and unlimited nuclear power? It's the kind of breakthrough that really gets a tech billionaire's heart pumping--but we'll have to wait four years to see if General Fusion can actually save us from our energy woes.

[Photo by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center]

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