Codex Sinaiticus: The World's Oldest Bible Goes Online

The Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest version of the Christian Bible in book form, and, according to many scholars, one of the world's greatest written treasures. The actual leaves and fragments from the book are in the British Library in England, as well as in various archives in Germany and Russia, and the St. Catherine's Monastery of Sinai, where the text was originally discovered. Starting today, however, anybody with access to an Internet connection and a modern browser can now see a virtual facsimile of the book online.

Sponsor

While large parts of the text are still missing (including most of the text of Genesis), this marks the first time that such a complete version of the Codex has been available to both scholars and the public.

The site is currently quite slow, thanks to some heavy demand right after launch, but we got a chance to test the site while it was still running smoothly. One nice aspect of the project's web site is that it was built with open standard and modern web development techniques in mind.

As these projects typically take years to come to fruition and have to conform to pretty stringent accessibility and long-term storage standards, their web sites often also look like they were developed five years ago. Here, however, the Codex Sinaiticus team did a good job at making the text accessible to the general public (with translations into German, Russian, and Greek), as well as students and scholars who need access to more detailed information and images taken under different lighting conditions.

As is also typical for these projects, however, there is no way for the public or other scholars to directly participate by fixing potential errors in the transcription or translation, for example.

Get More Info

The project website also has more information about how the book was digitized, and the philosophy behind the development of the site.

Discuss

Maybe Twitter Trends Shouldn't Be Entirely Automated?

Over the weekend, Twitter's trending topics were once again the target of an attack, this time implemented by the members of the infamous image board 4chan, the site known for their internet memes and pranks. As with previous attempts to pollute the trends with nonsense, the hashtag pushed into the leaderboard was yet another inappropriate term. Last time this happened, we saw Twitter pull the offensive tags from the trends section, a move which prompted us to cheer: Twitter censoring trending topics? Isn't it about time?  Again, it seems the company has pulled the same move. By the time tech blogs picked up the story, the term had disappeared completely from the trends section.

Sponsor

But maybe "trends" like this have no business ever making "trend" status at all. We have to wonder if censorship after the fact going to be good enough for Twitter going forward. As Twitter continues to grow, more and more people will want to get their keyword or hashtag featured in this popular section of the Twitter Search site. Perhaps Twitter should consider putting a human editor in charge of weeding through the supposed trends before they get posted.

Twitter Censoring Trends: Is it Enough?

At the end of the day, we agree with Twitter's decision to pull the obviously forced hashtag from the trends section just as they did the last time a bunch of folks thought they would have some fun by tweeting other offensive words and phrases. But these incidents have made us wonder: has Twitter trends outlived its ability to function properly as an entirely algorithm-based service? Given how many people rely on Twitter trends to track hot topics and breaking news, the section will be under constant attack from those who want to use the algorithm for their own purposes...and not necessarily good ones.

In some cases, like the latest 4chan move, the term-made-trend will be a somewhat offensive, but ultimately harmless prank. In other cases, the trends will be courtesy of some marketer pushing their hashtag up through the ranks thanks to their latest "tweet-to-win" contest. But do either of these cases represent an organic news-based trend that deserves the spotlight? Perhaps not.

Although censorship isn't something that most people would normally support, in these cases it would feel less like censorship than it would a simple act of filtering. It's easy to see that "trends" like these aren't really the sort of trends that the section was meant to highlight. However, by letting the algorithm do all the work, everyone with an evil plan to get their hashtag into the leaderboard has a shot at 15 minutes of fame. And on the real-time web, that's an eternity.

If, on the other hand, Twitter started pre-filtering the trends for relevance, there would long be a reason for hoaxsters, pranksters, and other trend-hogging marketers to attempt to game the system. Just by putting a human editor in charge of Twitter trends, "fake trends" like these could easily be avoided. Even if the company didn't want to go with full-on censorship, they could at the very least move the "other" trends off the main page by adding a link that said "More..."

Filtered Trends Could Delay Breaking News

But the drawback to a human-filtered trends section could be a delay in seeing breaking news make trend status - and that would be a disaster for a service that's all about immediacy. For some people, even the threat of a delay such as this would probably have them saying, "forget censorship and filtering - I want real-time trends, legit or not!"

But to those people, we ask: what about when Twitter becomes so uber-popular that the real-time trends section you crave becomes filled with junk trends thanks to internet memes and marketers' messages? Will you still prefer it then?

We're not sure if a human editor is the right solution for Twitter, but one day soon, something will have to be done. One commenter on a previous post mentioned some other ideas for filtering trends and hashtag spam, including having users tweet "#spam=hashtag" and suggesting Twitter adds a feature which would let us block hashtags from our streams. Another commenter suggested Outlook-like rules for hiding certain hashtags. If you have any ideas of your own about what Twitter should do, feel free to share them in the comments below.

Discuss

Terabytes Missing From The National Archives: Would the Cloud Be Safer?

Cloud computing might strike fear in the hearts of some, but at least your employees can't walk off with your hard drives. Since May, the National Archives and Records Administration has offered a $50,000 reward for a missing Clinton-era hard drive.

As of Sunday, it's been revealed that thousands of electronic devices containing sensitive and historically important data are missing from the nation's most important public repository. While IT tends to have a knee-jerk reaction in favor of traditional data centers, the situation at the National Archives shows the sense of false security they impart.

Sponsor

The Back Story

In May of this year, the National Archives issued a press release that admitted an external hard drive with two terabytes of data had gone missing. Within days of the disappearance, the agency was offering $50,000 dollars for its return.

Months later the money is unclaimed and the hard drive is still missing. Now, a criminal investigation by the inspector general of the Archives has revealed that thousands of electronic storage devices have been lost or stolen. From external hard drives to entire servers, exactly how many devices and how much data has been compromised is unknown.

Conclusion: It's Hard to Steal A Cloud

What is clear is that if the most important archival system in the country can't protect its data centers, it's likely that the enterprise is going to have problems too. The similarities between enterprise data management and the agency run deep. With facilities in 20 states, the National Archives deal with the entire spectrum of nightmare situations when it comes to data security.

What if, instead of a chaotic jumble of devices and data centers, the Archives simply put everything in the cloud? True, it would be vulnerable in many ways. But they'd be different ways than what plagues them now. It's hard to steal the server holding someone's social security number when you have no real idea where it is.

At this point, it might be ludicrous for anyone to put their most sensitve data in the cloud as a security measure. But the dire straits at the National Archives should stand as a warning for those who think traditional data security measures are without vulnerability.

Discuss

It's Here! iTwitter: The First Twitter App to do Push

Ever since Apple released iPhone OS 3.0, Twitter addicts have been waiting for their favorite iPhone application to implement the OS's new "push" technology which could deliver messages as pop-ups on the homescreen. Today, the first app to implement this feature has arrived, but it's not one of the popular apps as you may have expected. Instead, the brand-new app iTwitter (iTunes link) has beaten out all the other major clients to become the first push-enabled Twitter application for the iPhone.

Sponsor

About iTwitter

Despite the number of iPhone Twitter applications out there, most users have narrowed down the list of clients they use on a regular basis to one or two of the most popular apps like Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Twitterfon, Twitterific, Twinkle, Twittelator, Tweetsville, or something else entirely. Since these clients already have notoriety and a solid user base, we expected to see one of them emerge as the first Twitter client to introduce "push" technology. Imagine our surprise then when another application, a newcomer called iTwitter, beat out all the rest to achieve this claim to fame.

Having just launched yesterday in iTunes App Store, iTwitter is a robust Twitter application which offers all the features you would expect including access to your friends' timeline, direct messages, mentions (@ replies), favorites, following and follower lists, and a compose screen. Plus, it also throws in several extra features that may put it one notch above your current favorite app like its ability to display nearby tweets, integration with TwitPic (including an inline viewer), a fast re-tweet option, a landscape keyboard, custom searches and the ability to save them, and conversational threaded tweets.

Here Comes Pushed Tweets!

However, the feature which everyone cares about is not currently listed in the app's description on its iTunes page: PUSH. But a few hours ago, the app's dev team tweeted the big news: "iTwitter push notification is working perfectly now, enjoy it guys!"

The pushed messages arrive as pop-up messages on your homescreen, just like they do in other push-enabled applications like instant messaging clients Beejive and IM+. You can choose to "close" the notification message or you can tap "view" to launch iTwitter and view the tweet.

Unfortunately, there is a drawback to the way iTwitter implements the push technology. It pushes all mentions and direct messages...but only if the person sending them is using iTwitter, too. Sigh. So close, yet so far. We don't know why they would implement such a serious restriction and it is quite the disappointment. We guess the only way to work around this issue is to convince all our friends to ditch their current app and start using iTwitter instead.

At the moment, iTwitter is free, but if it remains the only available push client for too long, it wouldn't be a surprise if they started charging. Better grab it now just in case!

Update: As one commenter noted below, iTwitter isn't technically the first app to implement push Twitter messages - IM+ is. However, IM+ is more well-known as an instant messaging client, not as a standalone Twitter client. iTwitter is the first Twitter-only client to do push, an important distinction since many people prefer using a dedicated app with a lot more features.

Discuss

reQall for iPhone 3.0: This is What Push Notifications Were Made For

Earlier this year, we reviewed reQall, a very smart task manager, organizer, and 'memory tool' for the iPhone and BlackBerry, which combines a calendar, integration with Outlook and Google Calendar (in the paid version for $2.99 a month), and to-do list functions with a surprisingly useful 'Memory Jogger' feature that brings up reminders depending on the time of the day, date, and a user's location. When we reviewed the app, we noted that it was already a very interesting product, but that it would surely benefit from the iPhone 3.0 release with push notifications, and today this new release for the iPhone 3.0 operating system has finally arrived.

Sponsor

Free Transcriptions and Push Notifications

We got a chance to test the app out for the last few weeks, and the app does indeed make great use of the iPhone's ability to receive push notifications. This finally makes third-party calendars on the iPhone useful, and reQall is one of the first calendar/to-do list app to make really good use of this feature.

One of reQall's best features is that it can turn voice memos and free-style notes like "meeting with Marshall at 2pm on Friday" into formatted text and enter these as appointments into your reQall calendar. The voice transcriptions were generally spot-on.

The big difference with the old version of reQall is that you will now actually get an alert pushed to the phone that reminds you of that appointment you just dictated into your phone. Before, if you used the free version, you had to open up the app, and what's the chance of a user actually doing that?

In the pro version, reQall already send out SMS alerts, but now, even the free version of the app can send out push notifications. We have seen quite a few IM apps that used push well, but this is the first time that we have encountered an application that makes really good use of push notifications and that isn't an IM app.

Correction: reQall just told us that the free version will not support push notifications.

Locations

One of the apps' coolest features (though restricted to the pro version) is that you can also assign locations to tasks. Sadly, though, because developers can't wake up apps remotely and get a user's location without the app running, the app still has to be running for this feature to work well. You can, however, bring up a map and see nearby places that also have reminders attached to them.

The pro version of ReQall also nicely integrates with your contacts, which allows you to easily make calls or send emails right from your list of reminders.

Pro Version

To get the most out of reQall, however, you really need a paid account. At $2.99 a month, this is not a major expense, and, in return, you also get great features like easier voice memo recording by simply holding the phone to your ear (similar to how the Google Mobile app works on the iPhone), reminders by SMS, and access to a more fully-featured "memory jogger' function, which tries to remind you of items that you might just have forgotten otherwise. For professional users, the integration with Outlook is probably also another must-have feature that is only available in the pro version.

The exact difference are a bit complicated, but reQall provides its users with a nice table that lists all the differences.

Even the free version provides great features, however, and now that the app's pro version supports push notifications, it can finally live up to its promise.

Discuss