The US Embassy is warning of a possible terrorist attack on Bali on New Year's Eve.

Dan Zambonini needed a way to automatically classify incoming tweets regarding customer service simply as positive or negative. He shares how he used naïve Bayesian classification and a couple of PHP classes, removed ‘noise words’ and created an interface that pulls tweets from …

According to a German court in Hamburg, Google's YouTube can be held liable for damages when it hosts copyrighted videos without the copyright holder's permission. This case centered around three music videos by classical crossover soprano Sarah Brightman, but this ruling will likely have far-reaching consequences for YouTube's operations in Germany. YouTube will now have to block access to these videos and disclose how often its users accessed these streams. YouTube will also have to pay damages based on the number of plays. Google plans to appeal the ruling.

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The German court ruled that simply asking users whether they have the legal rights to the material they are about to upload does not relieve the company of its legal obligations.

"The court concluded that YouTube was treating content uploaded by its users as its own. That leads to a more strenuous duty to check out the content. The court came to the conclusion YouTube did not fulfill this."

The complaint against YouTube was originally filed in October 2009. At that time, Google argued that it "works closely with many thousands of copyright holders worldwide to make sure that they can manage their rights on our video platform. Our state-of-the-art Content ID tools go beyond what the law recommends by empowering rights holders to block, authorize or monetize their videos on YouTube in a way that is simple and straightforward."

In this case, though, it seems as if Google's Content ID tools failed. In their complaint, the plaintiffs argued that they repeatedly asked YouTube to take the videos in question down but never received a reply from YouTube.

In an interview with German news agency dpa, a spokesperson for the court today noted that "the court concluded that YouTube was treating content uploaded by its users as its own. That leads to a more strenuous duty to check out the content. The court came to the conclusion YouTube did not fulfill this."

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The API team over at Google Buzz have been buzzing to say the least. If you recall the long lost Twitter feature known as Track whose disappearance spawned numerous impassioned pleased for return you'll appreciate the latest from Google Buzz.

Last week the Google Buzz API team updated their blog to announce the general availability for Track as well detailed error messages. This means that you can get started with Track right now in Google Reader.

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Some examples:

Here is the XML returned for the VMworld example

To illustrate this, I decided to add the "vmworld" example for my trip to VMworld 2010 and discovered a host of references that I can peruse in Google Reader.

As you might expect, you'll get the statistics as well:

Also, as you might expect with a conference the size of VMworld... I'm already behind!

What are some of your favorite Google Buzz queries that you've added to Google Reader? Let us know in the comments below!

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Nick Brewer's looking for support for his documentary on kickstarter:

Last December, in 70 cities across four continents, thousands gathered to celebrate Santacon. There are rules... you must wear a Santa suit, or some other holiday attire, a hat is not enough. Santa has to act like Santa, being jolly, handing out gifts, playing reindeer games, etc.

I decided to build a robot Santa suit for New York's Santacon in 2009. A month and a few hundred dollars later, it was done. The finished product stood almost seven feet tall, featured a box mounted on the chest that activated a voice changer, had Christmas lights around the arms, and a fan for the rocket pack on the back (Robot Santa doesn't need reindeer). The whole thing went over really well.

This year, myself and some friends are going to build a better robot Santa costume, film the building process, and then Santacon itself, for a short documentary in HD.

A portion of the funds will go directly to building the robot itself, but a large chunk is devoted to equipment and crew costs. Anybody who is forced to spend a day surrounded by thousands of very loud Santas while holding a heavy camera deserves some compensation. Same with the editor, who will have to use breakneck speed to finish the film before Christmas.

More:

• Knitted Santa Motorcycle Helmet
• Make: Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Santa Claus Machines
• HOW TO - Make a Halloween hangman (Dancing Santa hack)
• Holiday Project: Santa Peanut

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!

This one's a classic case of "easy when you know how." How many times have you grabbed a comma-separated string, exploded it into an array, and assigned each item in the array to its own variable?

If it's a small array, it may not be too much of a problem. But it quickly gets tiring to type out all those array assignments if you have a lot of them to do.

Fear not, there's a better way...

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The Slow Way The Nice Way

See the difference? Much better!

Photo by Book Glutton

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Facebook's desktop Website doesn't work quite right on the iPad, and the company has yet to announce an official client for the device. Social is the latest third-party attempt at filling this gap, offering a native Facebook experience and a number of perks.

USA Today
Duke Nukem Forever to see light of day after all
CNET
After well over a decade of "development," 2K Games announced today that Duke Nukem Forever will actually see the light of day. The publisher went on to say that Gearbox Software has taken the reigns on the project, rescuing it from ...
'Borderlands' studio Gearbox resurrecting Duke NukemUSA Today
Duke Nukem Forever development 'complete'Computerandvideogames.com
Gearbox Software Unveils Duke Nukem ForeverGamespy.com
GameSpot -Exophase -Co-Optimus.com
all 80 news articles »

CBC.ca
Toshiba Recall Signals Larger Trend for Hot Laptops
PC World
Toshiba is the latest laptop vendor to fall victim to overheating technology. The recall of approximately 41000 laptops resulting from more than 100 reports of melting laptop cases and minor injuries follows similar issues and ...
Toshiba recalling 41000 notebooks - AfterDawnAfterdawn.com
Toshiba Recalls 41K Satellite Laptops Due to OverheatingPC Magazine
Fire hazard forces Toshiba laptop recallAFP
DailyTech -Slippery Brick -CNET
all 141 news articles »

Illustrate how to embed a YouTube video into a web page, built a random play list and launch a video on the fly.

Illustrate how to embed a YouTube video into a web page, built a random play list and launch a video on the fly.

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Consumer Watchdog is running a 540-square-foot video billboard advertisement in Times Square, New York that shows Google CEO Eric Schmidt as an ingratiating ice cream truck driver who knows everything about everyone and happily offers free ice cream in exchange for full body scans. The group says its goal is to push Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track Me list, similar to the Do Not Call list developed to prevent telemarketers from aggressively calling consumers. 'Do you want Google or any other online company looking over your shoulder and tracking your every move online just so it can increase its profits?' writes the group's president, Jamie Curtis, at the group's web site. 'Consumers have a right to privacy. They should control how their information is gathered and what it is used for.' The FTC's consumer affairs group had no comment on whether the agency is considering creating a Do Not Track Me list."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The music identification app Shazam was one of the first must-have apps for the iPhone. Today, the company released one of the biggest updates in the app's history. Shazam for iPhone and iPod touch now sports an updated interface and support for fast-app switching in iOS4. The app now also features a new focus on music discovery outside of tagging. The new "Shazam Charts" highlight the most often tagged songs from 20 countries. Most importantly, though, the app now features an option that starts the music tagging feature immediately after opening the app without the need to click a single button.

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Today's upgrades are available for the free version of Shazam (limited to 5 tags per month) and the paid version (Shazam Encore). The (Product) RED version will get these upgrades soon.

According to Shazam's CEO Andrew Fisher, the service now has 20 million users on the iOS platform (up from 15 million in October). As usual, it is hard to pinpoint how many of these are active users, but there can be little doubt that Shazam is one of the iPhone app ecosystem's biggest success stories. Earlier this year, Fisher told TechRadar.com that Shazam was identifying about 2 million songs per day and that it was selling roughly 160,000 tracks daily. Now, with a significantly larger user base, chances are that these numbers are even higher.

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Macworld reports that Apple has added listings of showtimes to its movie trailer site, offering a slick HTML5 interface that utilizes geo-location to find theaters in your area.

When you visit the page, your Web browser will a...

The explosion, two days after another attack, killed at least 40 people, as militants intensify their campaign to destabilize the Pakistani government.

Private employers added 67,000 jobs, more than forecast, but governments shed jobs in August as the jobless rate rose to 9.6 percent.

The “Is My Husband Gay?” column brought new popularity to Christwire. Yes, it’s all one big joke.

A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck much of New Zealand’s South Island early Saturday. No tsunami alert was issued and there were no reports of injuries or serious damage.

Mobee's Magic Charger is an inductive charging mini-USB base station and battery pack that lets you keep your Magic Mouse charged without ever needing to remove its batteries.

Many Palestinian and Israeli commentators described this week’s talks in Washington as mere political theater.