Matrix RSS

Matrix RSS News Feeds automatically captures content from other websites. RSS or XML is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired News, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news.Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS.

For more examples on Matrix RSS, click on "Read more..." below.

• $4 Billion in Broadband Stimulus Grants Tied to Strict Net Neutrality Rules

  Two federal agencies are now ready to hand out $4 billion in grants and loans to help bring broadband to the people and stimulate the economy, but applicants have to promise to play fairly with whatever devices, applications and services users want to use.

  
  

  
  
  

• Clive Thompson on Cuba's Potential Tech Boom

  Back in the '80s, Ireland was one of the poorest countries in Western Europe, with unemployment as high as 17 percent. But the scrappy nation had one advantage: It always invested in education, so while the Irish were poor, they were smart.

  American tech companies like Dell and Intel eventually realized the island was full of underemployed brainiacs and opened up offices there. The Irish were soon performing tasks such as developing software and working in pharmaceutical manufacturing and research. By the late '90s, the influx of jobs turned the country around: Ireland was filled with people who were smart and also wealthy, among the richest in Europe. The Celtic Tiger was born.

  Is there another country today with the same potential, one that could erupt in an intelligence-driven boom? Yep, though it's probably not one you'd expect: Cuba.

  I visited Cuba a few years ago and was surprised at how much it reminded me of Ireland. Everyone was smart, skilled, and seemed hungry for opportunities to improve their lives—perhaps even more so than the Irish had been back in the '80s, because they'd spent decades under Fidel Castro's human-rights-crushing thumb. Now that President Obama is talking about opening up trade, Cuba experts predict that the country could explode with creativity and entrepreneurial innovation. "There's tremendous potential," says Gustav Ranis, an economic-development expert at Yale.

  Like the '80s Irish, Cubans are eerily well educated, particularly for such an impoverished people. Education is one thing Castro has done right: 99.8 percent of adults are literate, and nearly a third have graduated from high school, many with the sort of vocational training in mechanics and farming the US foolishly let slip a generation ago. Based on UN statistics, one out of five young adults in Cuba graduates college.

  Cubans also have a hacker mindset. They've needed it to handle the constant privation....

• Bing Snags Small Gain From Google

  Bing grabs a percentage point in the search wars, stealing a sliver of the search market from Google. Is it the beginning of a long march or just the product of an ad campaign?

  
  

  
  
  

• Pure Play iPhone App Startups Attract $100 Million in VC Bucks

  Venture capitalists drop $100 million into the coffers of software firms seeking to make their fortune selling apps for the iPhone. Clearly, the VCs are expecting consumers to keep falling in love with mobile devices and the apps that extend their usefulness.

  
  

  
  
  

• Pirate Bay Heading to Davy Jones' Locker

  The $7.7 million sale of The Pirate Bay spells its end as a file sharing maverick.

  
  

  
  
  

• Steven Levy on Neil Young's Massive Blu-ray Project

  Neil Young has been working on his Archives project for so long that the big news in the tech world when it was first announced was Windows 3.0. Back in 1988, the curmudgeonly musician conceived the mother of all box sets, a multimedia data dump that presents the breadth of his work—the good, the bad, and the ugly—in hi-def audio. Young envisioned Archives as not just a spiffed-up music collection but a virtual autobiography, including video footage, photos, press clips, and memorabilia such as original lyric sheets and personal correspondence, retained against all odds. To Young fans—and anyone interested in how digital media can enable new means of self-expression—this sounded pretty nifty.

  But in preparing this harvest of material, Young has made even Microsoft look like a short-order cook. Year after year, Archives remained in perpetual just-about-there mode. ("It's already together," Young gushed to an interviewer back in 1991.) Then, a couple of years ago, the advent of hi-def optical formats removed a significant barrier. Larry Johnson, Young's media wizard, explains that fans could at last enjoy super hi-fidelity audio while simultaneously poring over set lists from a 1969 coffeehouse appearance and newspaper reviews of Buffalo Springfield.

  Well, Archives has finally arrived. The full version includes 10 Blu-ray discs (128 songs in 24-bit/192 kHz stereo and a reissue of the seldom-viewed documentary Journey Through the Past), a 236-page hardbound book, a poster, and code for downloading the music (even though Young regards MP3s as the aural equivalent of Satan). And this is only volume 1, covering his prolific career up to 1972.

  Longtime Youngophiles like me will be giddily overwhelmed from the get-go. When you follow an artist closely for many years, your own consciousness inevitably becomes intertwined with theirs, and sudden access to their personal vault of unreleased tunes, alternative mixes, and private paraphernalia is a bounty that...

• Cool Search Engines That Are Not Google

  Google may be a verb that means search, but if you aren't seeing other search boxes, you are missing out. Wired.com takes a look at the rest of the search services on the net and finds some beauties.

  
  

  
  
  

• After Sale, Can Pirate Bay Survive?

  The Pirate Bay, the world's most notorious BitTorrent tracker, is likely to be lucrative for its new Swedish owners, Global Gaming Factory X AB. The site, which is expected to go legitimate, will probably rake in cash from its VPN venture and its YouTube-like service.

  
  

  
  
  

• Jackson's Death Puts Lucrative Beatles Copyrights in Play

  The King of Pop is dead, but controversy over his interest in the Beatles library lives on.

  
  

  
  
  

• The Wired Interview: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

  Facebook's founder and CEO talks about the limitations of walled gardens, the evolution of privacy online and why Home Depot should "humanize" itself.

  
  

  
  
  

• Photos: Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson's wondrous earthwork

  On the north side of the Great Salt Lake, far from civilization, is one of the grandest pieces of large-scale art in the world. Made up of volcanic basalt, Spiral Jetty is a Road Trip 2009 highlight.

• Wife exposes chief spy's personal life on Facebook

  The wife of the new head of MI6 reveals details of their vacations, their children, their celebrity friends, and even how he looks in swimming attire.

• Seattle fire knocks out service to Bing Travel, other sites

  At least two dozen sites experience protracted outage following Thursday night electrical fire at Fisher Plaza data center. Verizon's Seattle-area DSL service also gets temporarily disrupted.

• Report: Guilty verdict overturned in MySpace suicide case

  Lori Drew allegedly used a fake MySpace profile to harass a teenager to the point of suicide, but judge says prosecutors can't use the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act against her.

• DOJ opens formal investigation into Google Books settlement

  Government investigators will probe whether or not Google's agreement with publishers over the digital rights to index books violates antitrust laws.

• Ad industry groups agree to privacy guidelines

  Four trade groups, including the IAB, assemble a set of self-guiding principles for maintaining consumer privacy in connection with targeted advertisements.

• Microsoft chucks vomit ad

  The rather colorful ad--in which a wife pukes after seeing what her husband has been viewing online--has been removed from the Microsoft IE 8 "Browse Better'' campaign.

• Court: MySpace not liable for offline assaults

  Consistent with other federal rulings, court rules that a Web service can't be held responsible if a minor is assaulted offline by someone whom he or she meets online.

• Jammie Thomas will appeal, lawyer says

  One of Thomas-Rasset's attorneys says she will appeal and will argue that the $1.9 million in damages she was ordered to pay are unconstitutional.

• Usenet.com ruling, a 'whittling down' of Betamax defense

  Judge's ruling against Usenet.com, its lawyer says, undercuts classic immunity against liability in copyright cases. The RIAA disagrees.

• Facebook cleans up its privacy controls

  Will transition users to new settings through use of opt-in tool as it works to make more profile content public. Also, as expected, it does away with regional networks.

• Microsoft resorts to vomit to market IE 8

  In a new series of online ads for its Internet Explorer 8 browser, created by the team behind the Mojave Experiment, Microsoft goes beyond the pale. In fact, a bucket is required.

• Is Twitter freaking out over 'tweet' trademark?

  A developer was told by a Twitter employee that the company is "uncomfortable" with his use of the word "tweet"--as well as a user interface that bears a similar resemblance to Twitter's.

• RIAA triumphs in Usenet copyright case

  In a note posted on its site, music trade group for top music labels says court ruled in its favor.

• Road to Pandora now goes through Amazon

  Independent acts now have to be selling physical CDs through Amazon before Pandora will consider them.

• New dashboard shows where federal IT tax dollars go

  The U.S. government launches new Web tool, called IT Dashboard, that promises more transparency into its budget for information technology.

• Joost bows to YouTube, gives up consumer video

  It's the first bust for Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the duo that gave us Skype and Kazaa. Joost is dropping consumer service to focus on video platforms.

• 'Accidental Billionaires' is deliberately careful

  A scandalous tell-all about Facebook's early days? Alas, Ben Mezrich's tale isn't so titillating. That's either because of the threat of lawsuits, or Mark Zuckerberg isn't exactly tabloid-caliber to begin with.

• China delays rule for Net-screening software

  Beijing postpones a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam software for filtering Internet content. But it may be just a temporary reprieve.

• Swedish company to buy Pirate Bay

  Global Gaming Factory X, which develops software and runs a series of Internet cafes, is buying the file-sharing site for $7.76 million.

• Amazon positioned to win state tax battle

  Even if the dominant online retailer ditches its Associates program over its debated in-state presence, it could come out ahead. Amazon has done the math internally.