The New York Times: "Making Every Pixel Count"

IN real estate, a picture can be worth more than a thousand words. Much, much more. When selling properties online, agents and Web designers say that the pictures buyers see of houses and apartments for sale are often the first — and sometimes the only — chance for a seller to make a good impression. Less-than-flattering pictures can turn buyers off and lead to lonely open houses.

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Open source hardware is designed to be reprogrammed or physically modified to make it easy to install custom firmware and software to create entirely new products. The big idea: crowdsourcing hardware development will encourage innovation in unforeseen ways, much like how Creative Commons licenses have enabled artists to remix existing content to create new works.

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ABSTRACT. Meme replication is described as a 4-stage process, consisting of assimilation, retention, expression and transmission. The effect of different objective, subjective, intersubjective and meme-centered selection criteria on these different stages is discussed.

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Google, with the cooperation of prestigious libraries, has been digitizing books to make them findable. The practice excites futurists but angers some publishers. Of necessity, digitization creates virtual copies. The publishers claim that such duplication violates copyright, even if the book’s content is hidden from the public. The New York Public Library, one of Google’s partners in the project, recently hosted a public debate on the subject.

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