Amazon Patents Blurbs; Google Patents Snippets

On Tuesday, Amazon.com was granted a patent for Personalized Selection and Display of User-Supplied Content to Enhance Browsing of Electronic Catalogs, which the three inventors note covers authoring and posting pieces of content, referred to as 'blurbs,' for viewing and rating by other users. The patent claims cover blurbs generated using a blurb authoring pipeline ('internal blurbs') as well as those obtained from external sources via RSS feeds ('external blurbs')." The details show that the patent is for personalizing these "blurbs," but it's difficult to see what's patentable here. Reading through the claims, there doesn't seem to be anything that's new here. All it's really doing is creating personalized blogs based on a combination of external blog content, catalog content and user reviews. In other words, it's aggregating a personal feed of content from a variety of sources. There are plenty of solutions out there that do this already -- it's just that they don't all refer to the content as "blurbs" as Amazon does, and they don't make it as explicit that it will include catalog content. But, aggregating content in a personalized manner is aggregating content in a personalized manner -- and it's been done by plenty of people well before Amazon bothered to patent the idea.
In the meantime, anyone else find it funny that Amazon has patented "blurbs" at about the same time that Google has patented "snippets"? Now wouldn't that make for an interesting patent infringement lawsuit? Google's patent appears to be about taking a document and coming up with an automated summary "snippet" that can be displayed with search results. Again, it seems like a stretch that this should be patentable, but the patent office clearly feels differently. So, let's see... if both blurbs and snippets are patented, what's next? Clips? Who wants to patent clips? Yahoo? Microsoft? eBay? Anyone?

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In 2007 - JibJab's Annual Year In Review Video

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Perino On CIA Tapes: ‘Nothing I Have Said Has Been Contradictory’ — Just Evasive

After the White House complained about a “subheadline” in today’s New York Times — which read “White House Role Was Wider Than It Said” — Dana Perino announced that the paper would “retract that headline, and they are going to run a correction tomorrow.”

At today’s press briefing, the White House press corps bombarded Perino with at least 20 questions on the issue of whether the White House had previously acknowledged the involvement of other staffers in the destruction of the CIA tapes. Perino argued the Times story was “saying that I had misled the American public on this. And I have not. There is nothing I have said that has been contradictory.” Watch it:

Perino may not have been contradictory, but she has been evasive, repeatedly refusing to address the White House’s role. For example, when asked on Dec. 7 whether there was “any White House involvement in approving or commenting upon” the tapes destruction, Perino responded that she “couldn’t answer”:

Q: Was there any White House involvement in approving or commenting upon their destruction?

MS. PERINO: As I said, the President has no recollection knowing about the tapes or about their destruction, and so I can’t answer the follow-up.

In today’s briefing, CNN’s Ed Henry pointed out that the White House has privately been telling reporters that it was urging the CIA not to destroy the tapes:

In fact, right after the story first broke, people within the administration did say privately that, in fact, Harriet Miers had told the CIA not to destroy the tapes, and that that suggested that the White House, in fact, was saying, Don’t destroy. Now, this New York Times story is saying four people in the president’s or vice president’s inner circle actually talked to the CIA about it. So that does suggest a wider role.

Perino countered that she is “not accountable for all the anonymous sources that you turn up.” And yet, the media pursues anonymous sources because Perino continues to be evasive about the role of White House staffers in the destruction of the tapes.

UPDATE: Steve Benen writes that the White House response is missing the big picture: “After we learned about the torture tapes, the official White House line was that Bush’s lawyers urged the CIA not to destroy the videos. … And now the NYT has spoken to some officials who insist Bush’s lawyers actually did the opposite.”

UPDATE II: Dan Froomkin suggests, “The best indicator of how seriously this White House is involved in a political scandal may be how emphatically it refuses to comment.”

(Via Think Progress.)

NYT Changes Subhead After Perino's Bitching [Dana Perino]

After the White House released a statement lambasting the New York Times for a freaking sub-headline, the NYT has decided to play the bigger man by changing it online and issuing a correction. The controversial headline — “White House Role Was Wider Than It Said” — has been replaced with “Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of Tapes.” As the Times’ DC editor told Politico, however, “If they want to quibble with the deck, they have a legitimate point. But nobody is raising any questions with what the story is about, and what the story said.” Indeed, and now probably twice as many people have read the damning story. So Dana Perino continues to be a dumbshit, and the world is as it was.

(Via Wonkette.)

Shocker: White House Pissed at NYT [Dana Perino]

Dana Perino, you icy chamberpot of talky talky death! Only one day after your pals Blackwater shot the New York Times’ fucking dog, and you’re releasing a statement condemning its headline this morning? For being misleading? You, the White motherfucking House is calling someone else misleading? If you weren’t so damn pretty, I’d curse you out several more times.

Indeed, Dana Perino had no sympathy for the precious murdered pup Hentish this morning. Instead, she released an extensive statement condemning the NYT’s story on the White House’s involvement in destroying those CIA tape things:

The New York Times today implies that the White House has been misleading in publicly acknowledging or discussing details related to the CIA’s decision to destroy interrogation tapes.

The sub-headline of the story inaccurately says that the “White House Role Was Wider Than It Said”, and the story states that “…the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes…was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.”

Under direction from the White House General Counsel while the Department of Justice and the CIA Inspector General conduct a preliminary inquiry, we have not publicly commented on facts relating to this issue, except to note President Bush’s immediate reaction upon being briefed on the matter. Furthermore, we have not described - neither to highlight, nor to minimize — the role or deliberations of White House officials in this matter.

The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling, and we are formally requesting that NYT correct the sub-headline of this story.

It will not be surprising that this matter will be reported with a reliance on un-named sources and individuals lacking a full availability of the facts — and, as the New York Times story itself acknowledges, some of these sources will have wildly conflicting accounts of the facts. We will instead focus our efforts on supporting the preliminary inquiry underway, where facts can be gathered without bias or influence and later disseminated in an appropriate fashion.

We will continue to decline to comment on this issue, and in response to misleading press reports. (emphasis ours)

So now she’s gloating about her widespread “no comment” policy, rather than viewing it as a source of embarrassment? Usually you want to bring out an “oh snap” with a direct statement like this, and that requires providing new information. Give it up reporters! “No comment” is the new American foreign policy, and all rogue commenters will be frozen or have their dogs shot.

Dec. 19 Statement by the Press Secretary [White House]

(Via Wonkette.)

Columnist: Microsoft could learn from Apple's Family Packs

Newsflash: Microsoft messed up. Yes, I know, that doesn't come as news to most of you (that's why you're here), but Joe Wilcox over at eWeek was surprised by the fact that while Apple's Leopard Family Pack pricing lead to some nice sales numbers, Microsoft instead decided to discontinue their family pack prices. Basically, you could buy OS X 10.5 as a single copy for $129, or a "family pack" (installations for 5 Macs) for $199. And a whopping 33% of Leopard sales were of the family pack version, even though OS X doesn't require any validation at all-- users could just have bought the $129 version and installed it five times.

What's the difference? Wilcox says that Apple trusts their customers, and as a result, users who feel the family pack is worth it are willing to pay. Microsoft, on the other hand, demands validation from their users. Wilcox also quotes an analyst (which in this case is Latin for "he who states the obvious") saying that Leopard had a blowout launch, much better than Vista. But that's a big duh, so I won't even bother comparing OS X to Vista-- I'll leave that to the Mac commercials.

What else do you need to know? Clearly, Microsoft is just plain doing it wrong.

Read

(Via TUAW.)

Facebook Friend Lists let you manage your “friends” more effectively

This morning Facebook launched a new “Friend Lists” feature that will make the problem of organizing your hundreds of Facebook friends a little easier.

Facebook wants their “social graph” (your friend list) to represent the real-world as accurately as possible. However, previously there had been no robust way to distinguish between your best friend and someone you just met at a conference (except for listing “how you know this person”). While this is a complex problem, users are clamoring for more efficient ways to set different boundaries with different types of “friends.”

Currently, Friend Lists lets you 1) organize people into lists (but only for the sake of your own management - these lists don’t show up anywhere on your profile page), and 2) bulk message everyone on a Friend List easily. As I speculated when hints of this feature first showed up back in August, I would expect Facebook to add privacy controls to Friend Lists as well. This is a major challenge, but helping users organize their Friend Lists over time will make Facebook more usable to those with hundreds or thousands of Facebook friends every day.

(Via Inside Facebook.)