The upshot of this is that its recommendations should be pretty good. Immediately after I entered in my Webware link, Twine recommended to me a video of Eric Schmidt (Google’s CEO), a review of the Web 2.0 Summit Launchpad, and other items I thought I should definitely check out.

Twine uses item metadata as well as natural-language processing to extract tags from items you enter.

A "Twine" in the system is where users can add items and discuss them.

From all these tags, including tags that you manually attach to stories, Twine will then look up items that it thinks you will be interested in, as well as other Twine members that have similarly-tagged items in their portfolios. It also uses the strength of your connections to various other members to weight item recommendations.

Twine lets you create or participate in topic areas called “Twines.” Users post Web addresses, photo and video links, files, and text comments into a Twine. Twine goes to work analyzing the items and automatically finding tags for them. For example, when I created a “Web 2.0 reviews” Twine and added Webware, it automatically tagged it “applications,” “business,” “silicon valley,” and so forth, which are keywords that Webware.com pages has in its HTML source. The service also tries to divine meaning from the pages and add its own tags, and it attempts to figure out the people and the locations associated with an item, and put that information in as well.

This one is worth waiting for: Twine. Still in private beta, at its most basic it is shared bookmarking service. It blends additional concepts from newsgroups, forums, social networking sites, online databases, and wikis. There’s a lot of semantic Web theory (and technology) underneath the interface, which still needs to evolve a bit, but even in this early stage it’s a compelling product.

See also: JetEye, Plum, Squidoo, and of course Delicious.

The database that Twine builds is as open as the company can make it. All pages can alternatively be viewed in machine-readable RDF format, and a two-way API is in the works. That’s pretty cool, although Twine is neither a general-purpose social site such as Twitter nor a database such as Freebase, so I’m not sure who’s going to bother creating applications for Twine. Though if the social aggregators (such as FriendFeed and Plaxo) want to do so, Twine’s open strategy should make it easy.

It’s easy to get items into Twine. There’s a bookmarklet that grabs URLs and images, and, if the item comes from a source such as Flickr, YouTube, or Amazon, additional metadata as well. You can also e-mail items into Twine, either to your own (or other peoples’) Twine address or directly into a topic Twine.

In a nutshell, Twine builds a semantic web (small w) from all the items, people, collections, and tags that are contributed to it. I think it does a killer job of weaving everything together. However, it’s a rough cloth. The user interface appears straightforward at first, but it takes some study to understand what’s going on and how to exploit it. As other writers have said, even at this early stage, with only 30,000 users, it’s easy to see how Twine could contribute to personal information overload.

No word yet on when the site opens up to public beta. We had some invitations to the private beta, but they’re gone. We’ll update this post if we get more.

The basic card types covered are MS/MS Duo, SD/MMC/mini-SD, M2, micro-SD, SmartMedia/xD, and CF/Microdrive, but I was a little curious about how Belkin arrived at 56. Here’s the chart the company sent me to show what the device supports. By the looks of it, there’s probably little chance you’ll be able to stump this reader.

(Credit:
Belkin)

The Reader will be available in black or white models and each includes 1-foot and 5-foot USB cables making travel a little easier. Graphics on the faceplate mean even illiterate, nontechie types will be able to use it simply by matching the card in their hand to the picture on front. And when it’s not in use you can stand it on its face to protect the slots from dust and debris.

(Credit:
Belkin)

It’s true, despite only having six slots, this upcoming Universal Media Reader from Belkin is capable of reading 56 different memory cards. No adapters are necessary either, so no hunting for that full-size SD adapter for a miniSD or microSD card.

(Credit:
CNET)

Some users are reporting batteries are displaying error messages that read “Irreparable damage” or “Battery cannot be charged,” and others are reporting their battery runs only for a very short time or experiences a sudden drop in its fuel gauge. It’s known to occur on these ThinkPad models: T60, T61, R60, R61, X60, and X61.

Though it does not pose a safety risk, and it is not a product recall, Lenovo said, it will give those affected a replacement battery.

Lenovo's ThinkPad T61 is one of several notebooks known to have an error-prone battery.

On Thursday Alan Dechert, president and CEO of the Open Voting Consortium, Brian J. Fox and Parker Abercrombie of The Okori Group, and Brent Turner, met with CNET News and offered a peek at a different kind of electronic voting system to be demonstrated live at this year’s LinuxWorld in San Francisco.

It is pretty much agreed that electronic voting systems need to provide a paper receipt for auditing, but what if instead the electronic voting system printed out a unique ballot that could be scanned and tallied before the voter left the polling station?

Currently private companies provide electronic voting machines and services throughout the country, among them Premier Elections Solutions (formerly Diebold) and Sequoia Voting Systems. But doubt exists about the accuracy of these systems, in part, because the companies refused to allow third-party scrutiny. In 2007, the California Secretary of State Debra Bowen instituted a third-party review of the electronic voting systems used in the state and found various irregularities. In 2004, former California Secretary of State Kevin Shelly decertified several voting systems under increasing concerns over the integrity of those systems.

For the purposes of the demonstration at CNET, Dechert used a laptop and an inkjet printer. But what Dechert envisions is a touch-screen tablet PC physically attached to an inkjet printer with a single DVD-drive. He envisions such a machine costing around $400 to produce, and said that a production model could also be offered to consumers as well.

The Open Voting Consortium advocates the use of open-source tools to provide election officials with accurate electronic voting systems, systems they say will save countries nearly 90 percent of the cost of current electronic voting machines. They are currently concentrating their efforts within California. They hope to announce soon adoption by at least one large county in the state and perhaps be in a position to provide services to the entire state in time for the 2012 presidential election.

Once the bar code has been scanned, the vote entered, the paper ballot is put into a box. Later the paper ballots can be tallied if need be.

To vote, a person would use the touch-screen to make selections, as is the case with conventional electronic voting systems.

Dechert says his system is better because it doesn’t use fancy cryptography, it uses a simple chain of custody.

The Okori Group has designed a Web-enabled service for county officials to create their ballot design, with templates for multiple candidates, yes or no propositions, and other contests likely to appear in an election. Drawing upon a database of eligible local candidates and issues, an election official creates a ballot with the Okori Group’s online tool.

Attendees at this year’s LinuxWorld will have the opportunity use this open-source voting system to cast a mock ballot for the 2008 presidential election. They’ll also see first-hand how the votes are tallied every half hour and made available for recount using this system. LinuxWorld will take place August 4-7 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

An election worker would then scan the bar code to record the vote. At the end of the election or at choice points during the day, a tally sheet could be printed, also with a barcode. The barcode uses Open Source PDF-417, a standard that is also used in identification cards and inventory systems and can be read by most scanners. Within the two-dimensional bar code is a numerical-coded sequence that shows how a person voted. There is also a unique identifier so that the ballot cannot be counted a second time. The printed ballot cannot be linked with a specific person, but the ballot can be associated with the electronic tally stored in the computer.

Dechert said that the Open Voting Consortium system would allow for unique read-only discs to be burned for each machine within each precinct and ward. The local poll worker would load the bootable disc into a special computer and printer hybrid that is yet to be designed.

Another prestigious school is embracing Amazon’s Kindle e-reader.

Princeton University has announced that it will start printing Kindle-edition textbooks this fall, according to a story in The Christian Science Monitor.

Instead of having to thumb through pages, students can find text instantly with Kindle’s search feature. It also allows a user to highlight text and make notes.

Update 12:45 p.m.:
I’ve learned that there’s a strong bond between Princeton and Amazon. The company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is an alumnus of the university, class of 1986. I obtained the information from co-worker and former Tiger Caroline McCarthy (2006).

I wrote this week that I was putting off buying a Kindle until I learn whether I can read digital books on the
iPhone 3G, which goes on sale July 11. If the handheld enables me to read e-books well enough, I’ll probably pass on the Kindle. The reason is simple: the iPhone gives me much more for my money.

But the Kindle should appeal to university students better than other demographics.

Tip: At Amazon, Kindles are advertised now for $359, but it might pay to check out eBay. Ina Fried, my colleague here at CNET News.com, paid $329 at the auction site this week and used Microsoft’s Live Search cashback offer to get an additional 20 percent off. Total cost: $264.

Back then, I would have been glad to buy a Kindle.

Princeton follows Yale, Oxford, and UC Berkeley in creating textbooks for the Kindle. In the United States, there are about 2,500 four-year universities, so Amazon still has a long way to go.

It’s been a long time since I was in school, but I remember those long lines to buy books in September and January. Contrast that with Kindle’s wireless service and the ability to download books off the Web from almost anyplace.

A new feature has to be tested to make sure it is better than the old way of doing things and that it doesn’t mess anything else up.

One of the reasons that software development takes so darn long is the amount of testing it takes.

Leading the charge on this is Ronny Kohavi, who joined Microsoft from Amazon in 2005.

Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet had the scoop on this. Essentially, it is based on the longtime premise of A/B testing, that is giving one set of users one option and a second set another option and seeing which they like better.

Intel designed the PC for use in schools in developing nations. Local manufacturers build them with customized software configurations for the needs of specific local markets.

Though the Classmate is already available on the retail markets of India, Mexico, and Indonesia, this will be the first time the device has been for sale to consumers in the developed world.

Intel plans on expanding the distribution of its inexpensive, school children-friendly Classmate PC to U.S. and European retail outlets, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday.

More low-cost laptops are headed to a retailer near you.

The Eee PC certainly is bringing cachet to the tiny, Linux-based laptop segment, but will that translate to the cheaper Classmate PC? The Classmate is a bit clunkier looking, and has a silly-looking (though great for kids) handle on the spine, whereas the Eee comes in a variety of colors and looks like a laptop an adult wouldn’t mind being seen with at his or her local coffeehouse.

Intel's Classmate PC

The Classmate will sell for $250 to $350, Lila Ibrahim, general manager of Intel’s emerging market platform group, told Reuters. Apparently Intel has already been conducting pilot programs using the devices in classrooms in the U.S. and Australia.

The XO from the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which also builds low-cost notebooks for the same markets, has been available via retail in the U.S. for a while. OLPC had a promotion where consumers here paid $400, which bought one XO for them and one for a school kid in the developing world.

(Credit:
Intel)

The grilling is continuing as I type this, and is now on to the AOL merger.

Probably a good idea. In the first 30 seconds, Swisher fired off questions on everything from The Sopranos ending to, “Why the hell did you pay $850 million for Bebo?”

“No,” Bewkes said.

Jeff Bewkes

Amid the thrashing, Bewkes said he knew what Swisher was really thinking, pointing to how the company had transitioned from a subscription to largely free ad-supported business still earning $2 billion a year.

(Credit:
Time Warner)

“Yeah, no,” Swisher said. “I’m thinking you missed a lot of great opportunities.”

“Would you like to unload AOL?”

CARLSBAD, Calif.–Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and Sue Decker may have gotten a tough time from Walt Mossberg, but perhaps they should consider themselves lucky.

The grilling didn’t end with Swisher, however. When she opened it up to questions, the audience was hostile as well.

Swisher said the questions raised by the Yahoo executive were a bit like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Click here for full coverage of the D: All Things Digital conference.

Clearly prepared, Bewkes came onstage covering his crotch.

Updated at 3:47 p.m. PDT to include questions from audience.

Next up at the D6 conference here was Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. A humorous video poked plenty of fun at the executive culminating in a discussion of whether D host Kara Swisher would cut off Bewkes’ genitalia.

The first question was about why Time Warner gives an hour of air time to Lou Dobbs’ views, drawing a smattering of applause from the crowd. Next up was a Yahoo executive, armed with ComScore numbers, taking issue with many of the categories in which Bewkes had claimed to be No. 1. Bewkes said he had meant to say No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3.

Swisher pointed specifically to social networking, saying it should have been AOL, not Facebook, that capitalized on that move.

(Credit:
Fry's Electronics)

The “Channels” are programmable music stations that select songs at random from a range of playlists, radio stations, and other sources you preselect. We’re thinking that it bares similarity to how you might program Pandora stations.

Last week, a reader noticed that a new 120GB Microsoft Zune had simply been added to the shelf at his local Fry’s Electronics without fanfare.

Kudos to Zunerama and the Zune fans there who have been on top of this.

Now the Fry’s Electronics online store, Frys.com, has added a slim blue 8GB version of the Zune for $149.99 with a notably new set of features. The slim
Zune, which also comes in silver or black, will come with free games and the ability to create your own personalized soundtracks to your games.

“Access thousands of wireless hot spots around the country to automatically update your collection, browse Zune Marketplace, refresh Channels, exchange favorites with friends, or buy songs you’ve tagged from your FM radio,” according to the description on Frys.com.

New 8GB slim Zune shows up on Fry's Electronics online store for $150.

It also has the usual Zune wireless sync for your home computer and library, wireless sharing of songs or photos with other Zunes, and the ability to play a selection of videos and TV shows.

The slim Zune also includes an FM tuner and the ability to tag songs you hear on the radio to download when you’re back at your PC.

The thing is, we’re still waiting for the official press announcement, or something to pop up on the official Zune Web site. Is this a new nonmarketing tactic from Microsoft?

Last year, 20 universities from different countries competed and showed off their modular homes on the National Mall in Washington D.C. in October. The next competition is in 2009.

The Solar Decathlon is a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy to build the most compelling house that runs only on sun power.

(Credit:
JimmyJet Fossett)

Simulation of complex items, be it a
car engine or a house, makes a lot of sense. And it saves a lot of people a trip, to boot.

As part of the Federal Virtual Worlds Expo, Solar Decathlon Director Richard King will present slides from last year’s competition. Then they will teleport to a re-creation of the 2007 Universidad Polytecnica de Madrid Solar Decathlon home.

Even though virtual worlds are the hippest thing to come along to the online world in years, I still haven’t ventured into any. Now I may have a reason.

The Second Life island hosted by Solar Decathlon/DOE organizers.

It’s about time green architects invaded Second Life.

The Solar Decathlon is using simulation in ‘Second Life’ to demonstrate green building design.

(Credit:
JimmyJet Fossett)