Gabriel wants to combine his music and tech passions. He says being bombarded by data only serves to discourage people from hunting for what they want.

Say, for example, you like film director Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The Filter can use that to suggest certain songs.

Sure, the 58-year-old is famous for his stands on social issues, in addition to churning out hit songs for more than 40 years. (Ask yourself if we would love Lloyd Dobler or boom boxes as much without Gabriel’s help in the cult film Say Anything).

Peter Gabriel wants to save Internet users from drowning in information

“At the moment, there is nothing in Google that I know of that allows me to put in my taste and get recommendations,” Gabriel said. “I can research and go quite deep in one direction. One great navigation tool is your taste. We allow you to integrate your taste and choices with your friend, your favorite musician, film director, or whatever.”

According to Gabriel, The Filter’s system sizes up a lot of information before spitting out suggestions.

Internet users are awash in information every time they search for new videos, music, or books online, says rocker Peter Gabriel.

Freedom from choice

Gabriel isn’t slumming it in the tech sector.

“When you drown people in an ocean of information, you’ve got to give them navigation tools.” –Peter Gabriel

One of the founders of the rock group Genesis and the creator of the iconic solo album So, is an investor in The Filter, a recommendation engine that now offers to help users cut through clutter on the Web and find the kind of content that will appeal to them.

“I inherited my father’s enthusiasm for technology, but not his skills,” he quipped.

Until now, The Filter has operated mostly in Europe as a music discovery service. A redesigned site is now offering to find a much wider array of content, Gabriel told CNET News.com on Monday. On Tuesday, the service is scheduled to begin allowing invitees to help test the site, which will be opened to the public sometime next month.

He co-founded On Demand Distribution, once the largest digital-music service in Europe, before selling it in 2000 to Loudeye, a company acquired by Nokia in 2006 that provided music delivery platforms. Gabriel also helped develop games on CD-ROM.

The son of an electrical engineer, Gabriel said he has never written any code, but he loves kicking ideas around with creative people.

It runs a person’s past searches, purchases, and site visits through a new set of filters that may include the opinions of friends, favorite critics or reviewers–whatever the user wants. Executives at The Filter also say their algorithm can make recommendations that cut across different entertainment platforms.

When it comes to improving the experience of searching the Web for music and other entertainment content, technology has mostly come up short. Despite a plethora of specially designed search engines, it’s still not easy to find material that appeals to you. Certainly, few search engines, if any, provide better results than Google.

He remembers a conversation he had years ago with a friend about how much freedom the Internet provided. His friend said something that stuck with him: “Maybe there is a deeper yearning out there for freedom from choice.”

(Credit:
Petergabriel.com)

In an attempt to better show what its software is up to, Google has released the source code of its Google Update software, a project code-named Omaha that can automatically install new versions of programs, including the Chrome browser and Google Earth.

Sharing source code can allay concerns about what exactly software is up to, but Google also hopes that others will be able to use Omaha.

“Some users can be surprised to find this program running, and at Google, we don’t like disappointing our users. We’ve been working hard to address these concerns, and releasing the source code for Omaha is our attempt to make the purpose of Google Update totally transparent,” Myles Jordan of Google’s software engineering team and Michael Smith of its product management team said in a blog post Friday.

The company also released an Omaha developer guide for those wishing to use the software. Omaha is governed by the Apache License 2.0, Google’s preferred open-source software license.

“Keeping software up-to-date is hard. So if you’re thinking of developing your own auto-updater, or have already started, we hope that the code we are releasing today will be helpful to you,” the Google employees said.

(Credit:
Phil Ryan)

Sony also said it will address “the full spectrum” of Alpha products this year, which to me foreshadows a few more product announcements. That’s all Sony shared today, but we can expect more details around Photokina this fall.

As expected, Sony quickly followed its 24-megapixel full-frame sensor announcement by revealing that its previously alluded-to pro model will use the new chip. Since there’s a Super SteadyShot housing for the new chip, we can also expect the camera to have in-body image stabilization. The camera is scheduled to “launch” by the end of this year.

Just ahead of Yahoo’s formal announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site that talks had broken down Microsoft’s public position for some time has been that it was no longer interested in an outright acquisition, though executives said the company was “reserving the right” to renew its bid.

“The conclusion of discussions follows numerous meetings and conversations with Microsoft regarding a number of transaction alternatives, including a meeting between Yahoo and Microsoft on June 8, in which Chairman Roy Bostock and other independent Board members from Yahoo participated,” Yahoo said in a statement. “At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo, even (in) the price range it had previously suggested.”

The announcement comes as Yahoo and Google are set to announce a search deal of their own, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Microsoft went public with a $31-per-share offer for Yahoo on February 1, but it was rebuffed. In May, it indicated its willingness to go up to $33 per share, but it pulled its bid on May 3. The companies later said they were in talks on a deal short of an acquisition, though Yahoo also said it continued to pursue its talks with Google.

News.com’s Dawn Kawamoto contributed to this report.

During the weeks that Microsoft and Yahoo have been discussing alternative deals, at no point did Microsoft offer any buyout price–at any price, noted the source.

Yahoo, which is trying to fend off a proxy fight from Carl Icahn, will be embarking on a road show with investors and would have likely felt some pressure from shareholders to explain where things stood with Microsoft. However, the source said that the announcement was not timed because of the road show.

Yahoo had originally hoped to make its announcement after the markets closed and in conjunction with its Google advertising deal, a separate source told CNET News.com.

The search company said that, at a meeting on June 8, Microsoft indicated that it is no longer interested in Yahoo even at the $33 a share it had previously said it was willing to pay.

Updated 12:05 p.m. with Yahoo confirming talks concluded; 12:45 p.m. with additional details, Microsoft comment.

Yahoo’s shares dropped more than 12 percent following the news, changing hands recently at $23.05, down $3.10.

“In the weeks since Microsoft withdrew its offer to acquire Yahoo, the two companies have continued to discuss an alternative transaction that Microsoft believes would have delivered in excess of $33 per share to the Yahoo shareholders,” Microsoft said. “This partnership would ensure healthy competition in the marketplace, providing greater choice and innovation for advertisers, publishers and consumers.”

Who is the big loser in today’s Yahoo/Microsoft/Google news?
(surveys)

Yahoo said it also decided that a search-only deal with Microsoft is not in its best interest. “With respect to an acquisition of Yahoo’s search business alone that Microsoft had proposed, Yahoo’s board of directors has determined, after careful evaluation, that such a transaction would not be consistent with the company’s view of the converging search and display marketplaces, would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future, and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders.”

“The hope was to announce them together to help (cushion) the stock,” the source said.

Microsoft’s efforts to reach some sort of arrangement with Yahoo have broken down again, Yahoo confirmed on Thursday.

The addition of the phone as a new security factor means that even if someone steals your password, they won’t be able to get into your OpenID-protected accounts unless they also have access to your phone. Furthermore, if you get an authentication call from MyOpenID that you’re not expecting, it serves as an immediate warning that your password has been compromised.

The CallVerifID service is optional. If you’re a MyOpenID user but don’t want this level of security, you don’t have to use it at all. However, I recommend it. One of the scary things about OpenID is that if someone gets access to your account through your password, they immediately get access not just to all the accounts that you access via OpenID, but a roadmap to each of them as well, via your OpenID authenticator site’s dashboard. This system, while incompletely implemented, gives OpenID a big security boost, at only a small penalty in convenience.

On Monday, JanRain, which makes the clever multi-service OpenID login box, OpenID Selector, is expected to announce a security improvement for its own MyOpenID service. The new system, CallVerifID, uses your mobile phone to perform an extra security measure before it will authenticate you on its service. It works like this: When you want to authenticate a site using MyOpenID, first you sign on as usual, with your user ID and password. Then the service calls your phone at the number you’ve given it. All you have to do is pick up the phone and press # to confirm. If you don’t, sign-on fails.

Of course, if you have turned on phone authentication and you forget your phone (or are in an area with no mobile service), and you want to get into a protected account, you’re up a creek. And you will definitely want to use your mobile with this service, since you can have only one number per account–it won’t call multiple numbers (like home and work).

Way better than carrying around an RSA token card: CallVerifID uses your phone as the second factor in two-factor security.

SendMeHome is a new and free lost and found database. It works by having users register their personal effects with little stickers that have special “phone home” codes on them. If someone finds something you’ve lost with one of these codes on there they can plug it into the service and get whatever contact information you’ve left–hopefully bringing you and your lost
iPod (or whatever) back together.

Related:
TheFoundBin re-creates the joy and sorrow of losing things

An open-source approach to tracking stolen laptops

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

The service is being promoted as a good way to get textbooks back, which in a college campus could be downright worthwhile. Things like personal electronics and valuables are clearly less likely to be returned. One thing that is really nice either way is that it’s completely free to register items with the database, so whatever is added will remain there “for life.”

Similar programs for bicycles have existed for years, and there is definitely a rate of return, although it obviously depends on what you lost and who has found it. SendMeHome’s entire system relies around the stickers, which you can either print out with your own materials or custom order from the service for a small fee. These packs run anywhere from $3, all the way to $17, which includes 60 various sizes you can stick on all your stuff then write the codes on with a permanent marker.

Vendors shall always provide, at a minimum, API level access to all customer data as described above. This API level access will allow the customer to write software which, when executed against the API, allows access to any customer maintained data, either in bulk or record-by-record as needed.

commentary

Cloud computing promises to liberate its adherents from the bother of messy implementations of software, while also freeing them from the constraints of hardware capacity. At the same time, however, cloud computing has the potential to deliver the ultimate in vendor lock-in.

My colleague, James Urquhart, has put together a proposed “cloud computing bill of rights” to help guide would-be cloud customers to those clouds best able to guarantee their freedom. Just as some are now clamoring for open-data commitments, James’ suggestions are intended to deliver the value of the cloud without the lock-in:

The Cloud Computing Bill of Rights is far more extensive than this, but I invite you to visit James’ post to comment and help improve it. For the open-source friendly among us, we’re going to have to look beyond licenses to protect essential user freedoms in the world of clouds, as Tim O’Reilly insists. James has offered a good start on how to go about doing this.

commentary

So, thank you, Zimbra, for providing offline access to my corporate e-mail (We use Zimbra here at Alfresco), and for helping to enrich Yahoo’s e-mail experience. But it’s just insurance to me now. You’ve converted me to life in the browser. I’m not going back.

It’s a pretty significant move since it means that Zimbra is now reaching more than 250 million people, instead of the “mere” 11 million that it was touching before. That’s even more than the number of people currently using
Firefox. Next time your mom asks what open source is, you can tell her “Zimbra” or “Firefox.” She’s likely to appreciate the value of open source (and the job you do) between those two examples.

The ironic thing for me is that despite berating Zimbra for a year to develop an offline version of its excellent software, I almost never use it anymore. E-mail for me has become a tab in my Firefox browser. Sure, if I get on a plane then I’ll use Zimbra Desktop, but even with how much I fly (125,000-plus miles each year), that’s still only 1 percent of my life). I almost never need it.

I’ve embedded the widget below. Feel free to give it a spin.

You love this story and you want to Digg it. Or maybe you want to put it on Reddit. Or maybe you’re just in love with Delicious and feel like saving the story there. We’re open to anything, but we don’t always know your tastes.

The same goes for a lot of sites, which is where Add to Any has created a really smart sharing tool that will read your browser’s mind instead. Well, actually it will just give your history a once over to do the heavy lifting. Based on where you’ve been the most, relevant sites for sharing will come up in the very top of the menu. If none are there you can also expand the menu downward to choose from one of the 200 other sharing and bookmarking sites.

Hunch is a decision-making site, customized for you. Which means Hunch gets to know you, then asks you 10 questions about a topic (usually fewer!), and provides a result–a hunch, if you will. It gives you results it wouldn’t give other people.

Look. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly. What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Does my hipster facial hair make me look stupid? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What toe ring should I buy?

It’s dark and lonely work. Coin-flipping, I Ching consultation, closing your eyes and jumping, postponing the inevitable, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and asking your sister are all time-honored means of coming to a decision–and yet we think there’s room for one more: Hunch.

Will it fly? Who knows, but in the midst of this miserable economic depression, there probably are lots of people out there who feel as if they don’t have a clue anymore.

What is it? I’ll hand the reins over to Fake and let her explain:

Fake, the co-founder of Flickr, announced on her blog Friday afternoon that her new start-up, Hunch, is sending out invitations to try the service, now in beta test.