Bytes · Google's everyday firsts - Singapore - South Korea

• According to YouGov 'folksonomy', is the most disliked web term followed by 'Blogosphere'.
  
• Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, told the recent Supernova Internet conference, that the going rate for addresses and credit card numbers for fraud is $14.
  
  
• Udi Manber, vice president of engineering for Google, told the same conference that 20 to 25 percent of the queries Google fields every day have never been entered before.
  
  Maybe this might have something to do with the integration of Google Search much more easily in online research through browser extensions, like the one I have in Firefox which allows me to select any block of text and right-click then search from it, cropping back to find what I want quickly.
  
  
• Google Spreadsheets (which have been dramatically overhauled) now have Live Data linking to Google's lookup feature. The whole suite has been enhanced with folders - an interesting and apparently user-driven choice over tags.
  
• Clipblast is a very good new video search engine - especially for news.
• Playing with mash-ups and using every device, the Beeb is trying a Web 2.0 experiment with journalist Ben Hammersley covering the Turkish elections.
  
  
• Children of the Web: where globalization meets Web 2.0 [MPEG]
  How the second-generation Internet is spawning a global youth culture--and what business can do to cash in:
  

  "The idea isn't done somewhere in particular. It's just done. And it suddenly just happens. There are no borders. You can't control who sees it and comes to it."

• Following various court cases over Google News linking to and profiting from their content, newspapers are negotiating a new mechanism called the Automated Content Access Protocol which will allow search engines to recognise the terms and conditions of specific newspaper websites. Google doesn't like this, arguing that robots.txt exclusions are enough.
  
  
• Video: Singapore Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Dr Lee Boon Yang describing their amazing ten-year tech plan. Nearly half a million are already on free wireless.

  "By 2010, we target to have at least 80 percent of SMEs using broadband and having Web presence."
  
  

• Skrentablog: Are network effects getting weaker?
  

  MySpace is a tired social network that may have a ton of traffic but it has peaked. It doesn't have mojo anymore. Like AOL in 1999, it will take years before people realize it.

• Video: John Shepherd-Barron talking about his invention of the Cash Machine forty years ago. The machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance. The machine detected it, then matched the cheque against a Pin number.
  

  "I later worked out you would have to eat 136,000 such cheques for it to have any effect on you."

  
  

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OurKingdom covers the Open Rights Group's damning report on the e-voting trials during the May local elections.

Even if some thought that others were talking in code it looks like ORG’s message, that we simply cannot endorse the results of the e-voting/counting trials as being fair and democratic, is being taken on board. It was a shame we had no representatives from the vendors. They avoided the argument here but will undoubtedly be intensifying their lobbying following this report.

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Simon Bureau, managing director of business development consultancy Vectis International, told the recent CommunicAsia conference that the success of South Korea's broadband market provides important lessons for countries that are trying to promote broadband adoption.

Highlighting the role of the South Korean government as a key driver of broadband services, Bureau said the government has been aggressive in spearheading broadband adoption since the 1990s. "They've put in large amounts of money, not just in infrastructure but also in applications and content development," he noted.

The government has also adopted other creative ways to boost broadband adoption, including a system that rates buildings based on the availability of broadband services to households. "If you meet certain criteria and your building is qualified, you get tax breaks and your apartment prices will also get higher," Bureau said, adding that South Korea's high population density has also made it cheaper and more efficient to build broadband networks.