theodp writes "Innovative Interactivity has a behind-the-scenes look at the Washington Post's On the Trail of a Serial Rapist series. Information Designer Kat Downs details her experience designing and building the impressive interface for the series, including the use of Google Maps to track the rapist. Wary, perhaps, that it might encourage vigilantism, the WaPo stopped short of allowing readers to add their own input to the maps and urged anyone with additional information to contact the police."

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The new managed self-service BI capabilities for reporting and analysis, leverages tools such as Excel 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

Hulu, the popular online site for watching television shows, plans to begin testing a subscription service as soon as May 24, according to people with knowledge of the plans. Under the proposal, Hulu would continue to provide for free the...

bbsguru writes "A court settlement has ended a controversial case of medical privacy abuse. From the NYTimes: 'Seven years ago, the Havasupai Indians, who live in the deepest part of the Grand Canyon, issued a 'banishment order' to keep Arizona State University employees from setting foot on their reservation, an ancient punishment for what they regarded as a genetic-era betrayal. Members of the tiny tribe had given DNA samples to university researchers starting in 1990, hoping they might provide genetic clues to the tribe's high rate of diabetes. But members learned their blood samples also had been used to study many other things, including mental illness and theories of the tribe's geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.'"

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thsoundman writes with this excerpt from The Gamers Blog: "No more manuals? Ubisoft announced last week that they will be ditching the trend of printing instruction manuals for new games under the 'green' initiative. While no other publishers have jumped on that 'green' train just yet it is likely that others will follow suit. Printed manuals have been part of gaming since you bought PC games in plastic bags. There have been many stand out eras for manuals such as the NES-era booklets to the manuals that accompanied Electronic Arts vinyl-sized game sleeves. Some may argue that the advancement in on screen contextual commands, first level tutorials have made the manual pointless but is this really the case?"

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Stoobalou writes "Sony's latest firmware update comes with a revised End User License Agreement which allows the company to change any part of the console's operating system without notification or permission. You might think you own the console you paid for, but Sony has a very different idea."

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A black market for satellite TV is booming in China as the middle class grows there, bringing foreign channels like CNN and MTV to a much wider audience than allowed by the government.

whychevron found a story discussing Hulu's plan to offer subscriptions. The rumor is that $10 a month will grant paying users the ability to get episodes older than the last five, while the current five episodes remain ad-supported. This starts pitting Hulu even more squarely against iTunes for anyone who watches more than a few shows a month.

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A California SWAT team member who used his city-issued pager to text both his wife and girlfriend sued the city after it read his messages. The Supreme Court has now heard the case, but the justices seem a little fuzzy on the technology involved.

Jamie found a nifty blog entry where Indy Game designer Jeff Vogel writes about game engine and art re-use. He is criticized for not rewriting his core engine for a decade. It's an amusing little rant with thoughts that actually might apply anyone working in engineering.

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Since Apple has barred Adobe from its lucrative iPad/iPhone business isn't it time for Adobe to make friends with Google and Linux?

Tracking developers in meat space

Developers attending today's Facebook conference, f8, are being issued with RFID badges integrated with their Facebook profiles for clocking into site locations.…

itwbennett writes "Peter Smith is blogging about day 1 of the Facebook F8 conference and Mark Zuckerberg's vision for Facebook, which, as it turns out, is somewhat confusing:'Zuckerberg clearly sees Facebook as a service. Facebook Connect, (the name), is going away and being replaced by the Facebook Platform. "Share on Facebook" buttons are being replaced with "Like on Facebook" buttons. And Comcast is now called Xfinity... what does it all mean to the end user? There's a new API to fetch data from Facebook more easily, which sounds great, if only I could figure out why I'd want to do that. The overall tone of the keynote was that Facebook was serious business and they were going to build the Social Graph, a vast network of connections between people and the things they like. Zuckerberg was a man with a mission."

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After fighting every step of the way to keep the ACTA secret, the USTR last week disengenuously proclaimed that it was finally time to make the international agreement public -- to "help the process of reaching a final agreement."

Marketeers like it - users not so much

Facebook rejigged itself again yesterday to become even more ubiquitous on the web in a clear battle cry against Google.…

phaic tan writes "Bridie Smith from the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the Hyabusa spacecraft returning to earth in June with samples from the Itokawa Asteroid: 'A Japanese spacecraft will land in Australia in June, bringing with it samples from an asteroid found 300 million kilometres from Earth. The unmanned Hayabusa spacecraft, launched in May 2003, will become the first spacecraft to bring asteroid material to Earth when it lands in Woomera, South Australia, later this year.'"

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phaic tan writes "Bridie Smith from the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the Hayabusa spacecraft returning to earth in June with samples from the Itokawa Asteroid: 'A Japanese spacecraft will land in Australia in June, bringing with it samples from an asteroid found 300 million kilometres from Earth. The unmanned Hayabusa spacecraft, launched in May 2003, will become the first spacecraft to bring asteroid material to Earth when it lands in Woomera, South Australia, later this year.'"

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Setting the robots on Cupertino

Linux developers have managed to get Google's Android OS running on an iPhone, providing an open OS for the most closed of platforms.…