Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Online tool 'PlagSpotter ' allows for plagiarism checks


A Ukraine-based startup, Devellar, has launched an online plagiarism tool that checks online content to see whether it has been duplicated.
The beta version of PlagSpotter features an algorithm that "enables bloggers, journalists, writers, priests, politicians, or any type of public figure to track if someone posts any of their material online," the company said in a statement.
PlagSpotter offers free unlimited individual URL checks as well as three paid subscription plans for automated scanning and monitoring of web content for plagiarism.
For $49.95, the "Guru" plan allows up to 50 URLs to be checked for plagiarism daily, offers email notifications and day-by-day weekly reports. For $10.95, the "Master" plan offers 25 URL checks and email notifications, and for $7.95, the beginner plan offers 10 URL checks and email notifications.
Currently, the beta version of PlagSpotter offers free unlimited individual URL checks.
Devellar, which was originally founded in 2004 to develop products for its own use, is pitching its duplicate content checker as an important tool for preventing Internet copyright infringement, avoiding Google ranking penalties and improving search engine optimization.
Devellar said the tool can also be used by websites to ensure that they use only original content, thus avoiding any problems by easily identifying whether their content is truly original. Additionally, anyone who has written any original material can find out whether their material has been duplicated online without permission.
"Google constantly tries to provide the most relevant websites a searcher is looking for. If a website has too much duplicate content, then its SEO is compromised and can be put last in a Google search or removed entirely," Devellar said.
Computerworld tested PlagSpotter on one of its stories and the tool found 21 other sources that had quoted sections of the story.
"Duplicate content is becoming more important and relevant for websites as a result of Google's latest penalties and algorithm updates," Devellar said. "This means that websites that copy and paste stolen content unto their website risk not only poor SEO but copyright infringement as well."
Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.
Read more about internet in Computerworld's Internet Topic Center.

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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Space-station commander controls Lego robot on Earth with futuristic network


Late last month in Germany, a robot made its first moves on Earth under commands from an orbiting spacecraft.
Though that may sound ominous, it doesn't represent an impending threat to humankind. The robot was made of Legos, and it only traversed a European Space Agency test facility. The commands were sent by Sunita Williams, commander of the 33rd expedition of the International Space Station. The ESA-led experiment may have helped lay the groundwork for future expeditions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
ESA and NASA carried out the exercise to test Disruption Tolerant Networking, a set of protocols designed for communication across the void of space. Researchers created DTN to overcome problems that prevent space missions from using Internet Protocol, the system that runs the Internet and most other networks on Earth. In the process, they may create a technology that helps soldiers keep in touch across war zones and consumers use smartphones as they move in and out of cell coverage.
The Internet doesn't work in space because it takes too long to send data packets across the enormous distances. Even at the speed of light, a one-way transmission from Earth to the Moon has a built-in delay of 1.7 seconds, and one from Earth to Mars would face an eight-minute delay. Space networks also suffer from higher error rates than the terrestrial Internet does because of interference from solar radiation, and their transmissions can be blocked temporarily as celestial bodies move through space.
"As NASA extends its reach to the Moon and beyond, a networked architecture such as DTN will be required to successfully complete these missions," the agency wrote on its Web page about the project. NASA envisions DTN being used between assets on the surface of planets and sister spacecraft orbiting above, or between craft in deep space and command centers on Earth.
While IP expects a continuous, end-to-end data path between two devices using it, DTN sends data on its journey one "hop" at a time. At its heart is the Bundle Protocol, which stores bundles of data at each hop until the next link becomes available and then forwards them.
Spacecraft and all forms of surface vehicles have been communicating by radio ever since the dawn of the Space Age, but the technologies they use are specialized and custom-built. NASA and ESA hope to make DTN into the equivalent of IP for space, a standards-based, publicly available protocol. That would reduce labor costs for setting up communications for each mission, NASA said.
Having a standardized communication protocol will become more important if space exploration escalates to setting up bases on the Moon or other planets, said Adrian Hooke, NASA's space DTN project development manager.
"Just as you can communicate on Earth without the Internet, you could build such a space base without DTN, but its communications systems would be very expensive and unreliable, since there would be lots of custom and manual capabilities required that are already fully standardized by DTN," Hooke wrote in an email interview.
NASA has been working on DTN "in earnest" since 2000, according to Hooke. A key proponent of the technology is Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the current Internet. It has used the system successfully to transmit data through space. In the latest experiment, ISS commander Williams controlled the Earthbound robot in Darmstadt, Germany, for about 90 minutes and exchanged data with it. The network connection between the robot and the ISS, more than 200 miles above Earth, delivered 50 kilobytes per second down and 82 bytes per second up. Data took seven seconds to make the round trip.
The agency expects to be able to use DTN on missions that will launch around 2015. But the technology may also have more down-to-Earth applications. Because it's designed to handle intermittent link connectivity, or communication without a constant connection, it could be useful for military networks or for using any type of battery-powered mobile communications device that goes in and out of range of a network, NASA says.
There is no limit to how far DTN could go. "There are no limits -- DTN could run into interstellar space," Hooke wrote. "It's more a question of how long the user can wait for a response."
However, the hop-by-hop nature of DTN would require some nodes along the way. These could be supplied by spacecraft purpose-built as relays or by older craft that had already fulfilled their original purposes, according to Hooke.
The "Interplanetary Internet" that NASA envisions might be a network of networks all built on DTN, but with two sets of standard protocols.
"DTN can run over the terrestrial Internet protocols in small areas of space where the communications environment is a lot like that on Earth. However, the performance of the Internet protocols rapidly breaks down in long-delay or disrupted environments, so DTN will be the end-to-end protocol, traversing local "islands of IP" along the path," he wrote.
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com

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