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Blog fans in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, saw PittGirl as their masked superhero -- a comedian and local commentator who jibed the mayor without reserve and ranted freely about her hatred of pigeons.
Virginia Montanez says she was fired because she revealed her identity as a local blogger. But despite her effort to keep her real name secret, people started to figure out who PittGirl was.Feeling pressure to take control of her identity before someone else outed her, PittGirl on Wednesday posted pictures of herself on her blog and introduced readers to her real-world self: Virginia Montanez, a 35-year-old married mother of two who worked in the nonprofit sector.
"My friends and family call me Ginny," she wrote on her blog. "But you can continue to call me Your Majesty, because I've grown accustomed."
On Thursday morning, Montanez was fired from her job because of her online persona, she said.Montanez's and other online coming-out stories highlight the complicated way people view anonymity on the Internet and the high stakes that come with trying to keep up an online persona.
The reasons people want to be anonymous online vary. Political whistle blowers fear retribution; employees want to separate the personal from the professional; artists want their work to stand up without an attached biography; and some writers like Montanez take on a sort of Everyman quality by keeping their real names off their posts.source: cnn.com

Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library.
Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive.
They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle told BBC News.
"If this deal goes ahead, they're making a real shot at being 'the' library and the only library."
Back in 2008, the search giant reached an agreement with publishers and authors to settle two lawsuits that charged the company with copyright infringement for the unauthorised scanning of books.
In that settlement, Google agreed to pay $125m (£76m) to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers can register works and receive compensation. Authors and publishers would get 70% from the sale of these books with Google keeping the remaining 30%.
Google would also be given the right to digitise orphan works. These are works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 50-70% of books published after 1923. Comments on the deal have to be lodged by September 4th. In early October, a judge in the Southern district of New York will consider whether or not to approve the class-action suit. In a separate development, the US Department of Justice is conducting an anti-trust investigation into the impact of the agreement.
'Open access'
Critics have claimed the settlement will transform the future of the book industry and of public access to the cultural heritage of mankind embodied in books. The Internet Archive scans around 1000 books a day at 30 cents a page
"The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways - all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach," warned Mr Kahle. source: bbc.com

MySpace will acquire the popular music discovery service iLike that allows users listen to and share music across social networks.
iLike reportedly turned down an offer from rival Facebook, where it is the top music application. The company has 55 million registered users and has been prominent on most social networks apart from MySpace.
"The iLike acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation," said MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta. "Music entertainment is an important piece of people's lives," he told reporters in a conference call.
In a statement, iLike president Hadi Partovi said: "I'm enthusiastic about what this combination will mean for our users, artists, advertisers, and our staff. "We are beginning an exciting new journey together." The terms of the deal were not disclosed but the blogosphere has reported that iLike was sold "fairly cheaply" at about $20m (£12.4m). MySpace has been working to overhaul its business into one more focused on global music and entertainment. source: bbc.com

The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September.
The video-in-print ads will appear in select copies of the US show business title Entertainment Weekly.
The slim-line screens - around the size of a mobile phone display - also have rechargeable batteries. The chip technology used to store the video - described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards - is activated when the page is turned. Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video.
The first clips will preview programmes from US TV network CBS and show adverts by the drinks company Pepsi. VIDEO TECHNOLOGY
Screen uses liquid crystal display (LCD) technology Each is 2.7mm thick with 320x240 resolution Can store 40mins of video Battery can be recharged via mini-USB
Rechargeable battery lasts up to 70 mins Developed by LA-firm Americhip
They will appear in 18 September editions of the magazine distributed in Los Angeles and New York. It's believed the new technology will cost much more than normal print ads.
However, BBC correspondent Rajesh Mirchandani said that in an increasingly competitive market, advertisers have realised that it is more important than ever to create attention for their product. He likened the technology to the Daily Prophet - a newspaper with moving pictures described in the Harry Potter books. It is not the first time that publishers have experimented with digital technology in magazines.
Last year, for example, men's lifestyle magazine Esquire published the first using e-ink technology, with a cover that flashed in alternating patterns. E-ink is the technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle electronic books. Americhip, the developer of video-in-print, has also created magazine technology that appeals to various senses, including smell.
source: bbc.com

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better" -- Albert Einstein
This galaxy, as seen by Hubble, is 50 million light years away. The new telescopes promise even sharper images.
1 of 3 (CNN) -- It may not be possible to travel back in time, but seeing stars and galaxies as they looked millions or even billions of years ago is no problem thanks to telescopes, the closest thing we have to time machines.
Now, astronomers are holding their breath to see what they'll observe and discover with a new generation of huge telescopes set to be built around the world.
Peering ever deeper into space and further back in time, the powerful devices will be able to show what the universe was like when it was just a few hundred million years old and emerging from a period of total darkness after the Big Bang.
"[We'll be] looking at the first generation of stars forming in the universe, which is kind of a cool idea: The time when the lights went on in the universe. There was no light before that time," said Daniel Fabricant, associate director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
His institution is one of several research organizations and universities developing the Giant Magellan Telescope, to be built in Las Campanas, Chile, by 2018. source:cnn.com

Sony Entertainment has announced it is reducing the price of its PlayStation 3 games consoles.
In Europe the price has been lowered to 299 euros, in the US to $299 and in the UK to £249.99.
Sony made the announcement at a press conference ahead of the 2009 games convention - Games Com - in Cologne.
It also announced it was ending production of its current PlayStation 3 console in favour of a new lighter, slimmer model with a 120GB hard drive.
Growth of the PlayStation 3 has been slow compared to previous launches, which critics put down, in part, to an expensive price tag compared with its rivals, Microsoft's Xbox 360 at £149 and the Nintendo Wii at £169.
Speaking at Games Com, Sony Entertainment's head, Kaz Hirai, said the change in price for existing PlayStation 3 stock would happen immediately and that the new slim-line PS3 would be available from the first week of September.
"It has the same features and functionality [as the old PS3], but now it is 32% smaller, 36% lighter and consumes 34% less power," he said.
Mr Hirai said Cologne's Game Con was now the third major date for the games industry, ranking up alongside E3 in Los Angeles and the Tokyo games show.
Sony said there were now more than 23.7m PS3 installed worldwide, with just over 10m of those in Europe. Comics reader
Sony also said it was expanding its catch-up TV service - which includes the BBC iPlayer.
It announced it was about to launch a video delivery service, via the Play Station Network, that would allow PS3 or Play Station Portable (PSP) users to rent or purchase movies - both blockbuster and local market - in either standard or high definition.
That service goes live in the UK, France, Germany and Spain this November and rolls out across Europe throughout 2010.
The event also provided a first look at a new digital reader for the PSP - called Digital Comics - that will allow users to read Spiderman, Fantastic 4 and other DC comics on their portable, along with a range of graphic novels.
However, the new motion Sony Controller - which made its debut at the E3 Expo in Los Angeles in June this year - was not on show, with Sony saying people will have to wait until the Tokyo games show in September before it gets another public viewing. source: bbc.com

LOS ANGELES, CaliforniaThere is a "maker's movement" gaining prominence on a global scale.
Mister Jalopy works out of converted hot-rod repair shop. This is where he builds "the stuff of my dreams."
1 of 3 One of its pied pipers is a man known by his pen name, Mister Jalopy. His agenda is simple. "You need to be able to modify, hack, repair, rebuild and reuse the stuff that you buy."
Mister Jalopy's name comes from a blog he started years ago.
From his Web site:
"When I started the Hooptyrides blog, I pictured a modest used car lot of broken-down, flat-tired junkers that represented great promise and little else. Lit with strings of bare light bulbs, I dreamed of a little desert lot of plucky automobiles and a faded neon sign that erratically blinked 'Mister Jalopy's Hooptyrides.' "
Mister Jalopy owns a laundromat and a used-bicycle store, and he operates out of a converted hot-rod repair shop along an industrial strip of land in the shadow of Interstate 5.
He calls his workshop "Hooptyrides World Headquarters." "It's my personal shop where I do my writing, think up my crackpot business schemes, repair bicycles and do my auto maintenance ... where I build the stuff of my dreams." source: cnn.com
It's brimming with high-quality tools, odds and ends from 20 years of harvesting garage sales, and machines like a lathe and welder that would delight a working tradesman.

Hurricanes in the Atlantic are more frequent than at any time in the last 1,000 years, according to research just published in the journal Nature.
Scientists examined sediments left by hurricanes that crossed the coast in North America and the Caribbean.
The record suggests modern hurricane activity is unusual - though it might have been even higher 1,000 years ago.
The possible influence of climate change on hurricanes has been a controversial topic for several years.
Study leader Michael Mann from Penn State University believes that while not providing a definitive answer, this work does add a useful piece to the puzzle.
The levels we're seeing at the moment are within the bounds of uncertainty.
Julian Heming, UK Met Office
"It's been hotly debated, and various teams using different computer models have come up with different answers," he told BBC News.
"I would argue that this study presents some useful palaeoclimatic data points."
source: bbc.com

Google has lifted the lid on its updated search engine, which developers have nicknamed "Caffeine".
Although still in the testing phase, the firm says it is the "first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results".
The new engine will replace Google's current one after tests are complete.
Martin McNulty of search marketing specialist Trafficbroker said the upgrade threatened to put Microsoft's new engine, Bing, "in the shade".
"Google have let Caffeine quietly slip out. It talked about vertical specific searches while quietly doubling the speed and starts introducing real-time results and news feeds," he said.
"Bing was launched with a massive media budget.
"Trouble is, Bing presents itself as an alternative to something that users are still - for now - happy with," he added. source: bbc.com

With book deals, TV appearances and thousands of readers, moms who detail every moment of their domestic lives online produce some of the Web's most well-read blogs.
'Mommy bloggers' want to stem what they fear is a backlash against their profession.
Many of these "mommy bloggers" even draw the attention of companies that send them free product samples -- everything from toys to baby strollers to video game consoles -- in the hopes of getting positive coverage.
But to some, these freebies aren't necessarily a good thing. Readers have complained they can no longer trust their favorite blogger's advice. Veteran women bloggers grumble that newcomers sully the genre's reputation by demanding free products and trips. Newsweek.com published an article last month headlined, "Trusted Mom or Sellout?"
"There has been a turn of goodwill [against mommy bloggers]," said Liz Gumbinner, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Cool Mom Picks. "A year ago, bloggers were rising stars. Six months later, really big marketers like Wal-Mart got into the game and started backing bloggers.
"That created a new paradigm: An A-list blogger was not the one who wrote the best and had the most influence, but had the most marketing attention and free products," she added. "It created a new generation of bloggers who blogged to get free stuff."
So Gumbinner and other women bloggers are taking steps to become more transparent and stem what they fear is a backlash against their profession.

Rival environmental groups are lining up supporters to try to take control of a new net domain aimed at green groups.
At least two consortiums are known to be preparing bids to control .eco.
In March this year, former US vice president Al Gore backed a bid by the California group Dot Eco to operate the so-called "top level domain" (TLD).
But now a Canadian environmental group known as Big Room has launched a competing bid to manage the TLD, which is similar to .com or .uk.
Both firms plan to apply to Icann - the regulatory body that oversees domain names - for the creation of .eco early in 2010.
"We're two different applicants with two different business ideas," Minor Childers, co-founder of Dot Eco, told BBC News.
"Ours is to sell domain names to raise funds for organisations who can affect change."
He said the group had already entered into contracts with its supporters - such as the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Climate Protection - to give away 57% of its profits from sales.
"We could be one of the biggest contributors to environmental causes anywhere in the world," said Mr Childers. source: bbc.com

NASA's Kepler space telescope has already made a discovery, and its science operations aren't even officially under way yet.
The planet used in the test is a giant gas planet about the size of Jupiter that orbits a star called HAT P-7.
1 of 2 NASA scientists who put the telescope through a 10-day test after its March 6 launch said this week that Kepler is working well. Its ability to detect minute changes in light has enabled scientists to determine that a planet orbiting a distant star has an atmosphere, shows only one side to its sun and is so hot it glows.
Kepler's ability to take measurements that precise at such a great distance "proves we can find Earth-size planets," William Borucki, Kepler's principal science investigator told reporters at a recent briefing.
The powerful scope is looking at thousands of stars in its vision field in the Milky Way on a 3½-year mission to find planets the size of Earth and to determine how common these planets are.
The planet used in the test, a giant gas planet about the size of Jupiter, orbits a star called HAT P-7 in just 2.2 days and is 26 times closer than Earth is to the sun, according to NASA. It is called an exoplanet because it orbits a star outside the solar system.
Kepler detected the planet's atmosphere, demonstrating the telescope's capabilities and giving astronomers what NASA says is "only a taste of things to come."
"It learned that this planet is like 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That is so hot. And it's 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit just on one side only. The other side would be closer to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, " said Sara Seager, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Kepler science team member.source: cnn.com

Christina Cimino was logging onto Twitter on Thursday morning when something happened that she found deeply unsettling.
iReporter David Seaman says Twitter needs a competitor so users don't panic when it goes down.
1 of 2 "I got some weird error message, and I'm like, 'What's going on!?" the 24-year-old said.
That error message was the scourge of online social networkers worldwide on Thursday as cyber-attacks shut down Twitter and caused sustained glitches in other social-media sites like Facebook and the blogging site LiveJournal.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote the sites were the victims of what "appears to be a single, massively coordinated attack." And a pro-Georgian blogger, whose accounts on Facebook and Twitter reportedly were the targets of the denial-of-service attack, told CNN the online strike was timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Russia-Georgia conflict.
What may prove more lasting about the day social networking suffered its first major blackout is the degree to which people cared. Near-panic erupted in some corners of the Internet as people lost cherished links to their online friends, family members and news feeds. Watch CNN iReporters talk about the attack . source: cnn.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon is reviewing its policy concerning the access by military personnel to social networking Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The Pentagon is reviewing whether personnel's use of sites like Twitter and Facebook could pose security risks.
The review follows a Marine Corps ban on accessing such sites on its computers, due to security concerns. The ban announced Monday only applies to Marine Corps networks and computers, allowing Marines to access the sites on their own computers or at Internet cafes.
A policy review for the entire Department of Defense should be complete by the end of September, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Whitman said the Defense Department realizes that social networking sites have value, noting the Army recently ordered all U.S. bases to provide access to Facebook.
In addition, commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan have Facebook pages to share information about operations, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has 4,000 followers on twitter. cnn.com

Like an aspiring indie band, the Cybraphon has many instruments, plays them on an irregular schedule, likes to have an audience around it -- and obsesses over comments on its blog, the number of friends it has on Facebook and how many fans follow it on MySpace.
The Cybraphon plays music based on how well its blog and social networking pages are doing.
The difference is that it is a handcrafted musical robot and one whose emotion meter swings from delirium to desolation based on its online popularity at any given moment.
"The Cybraphon has an almost egotistical desire for fame," says Simon Kirby, one of the creators of the robot.
When the needle hits rapture, the Cybraphon's built-in orchestra of mechanized acoustic instruments clang in harmony to belt out an upbeat tune. But without online attention it slips into dejection and spews out a sad melody.
Three U.K. based artists -- Kirby, Ziggy Campbell and Tommy Pheron -- built the robot over eight months using a £5,000 grant. It's a mechanical marvel that stuns with its attention to detail and construction. An antique wardrobe houses more than 60 robotic components including musical instruments such as cymbals and an organ as well as electronic parts including a PC and a controller. Kirby and his colleagues first created a sketch of what they wanted and then sourced the parts from antique stores, junk shops and donations.

The Cybraphon's emotions are accessible via a Twitter feed but also appear on a on a 100 year-old galvanometer housed in the wardrobe (pictured above).

Kirby says the Cybraphon is devised as a "tongue-in-cheek comment on people's obsession with online celebrity." And it is almost Julia Allison-esque in its quest for attention. The device scours the web all day looking for mentions of itself and tracking how many friends it has on Facebook and MySpace. source: cnn.com

ROCKWOOD, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Four generations of Saylors have worked the family's dairy farm for nearly a century, but for the past three years, the cows have been doing something besides providing milk: They've been helping power the place. Growing up on the sprawling spread 90 minutes from Pittsburgh, 36-year-old farmer Shawn Saylor developed into a self-described science buff.
So it was no surprise that, when faced with rising energy costs, Saylor turned to technology.
He tapped into an abundant and easily accessible energy source: manure from about 600 cows. Watch how cow poo powers the farm »
"It's a pretty simple process. There's not really a lot to it," Saylor said. "Manure comes from the cows, and there's energy left in the manure."
The process is known as anaerobic digestion, and here's how it works:
With the help of a mechanical scraper in the barn, manure drops into a 19,000-gallon tank. The slurry then moves into the digester, which is 16 feet deep and 70 feet in diameter. It's heated there for about 16 days while the bacteria break down the organic matter in order to produce methane gas. That gas is burned in two engine generators to make electricity. See an interactive explaining the process »
Heat created by the generators keeps the digester hot, heats the buildings around the farm and helps provide hot water.
The electricity is used to power this farm and a dozen neighboring homes, Saylor said. And there's still some left over, which he sells back to the grid.
Overall, the poo power helps Saylor's bottom line.
"In savings, there's $200,000 a year, in either extra income from sale of electricity or cost offsets," he said.
"So you're talking about system project costs of over a million dollars to build the system but a payback of five years or less." Source: cnn.com

Microsoft has announced a UK service that will stream full-length videos of television shows for free.
The advertising-funded MSN Video Player will be available from next week and will include over 300 hours of shows.
Microsoft said it will continue to extend the service, adding content by working with broadcasters and studios.
The "beta", or trial, service features material from the BBC's commercial subsidiary BBC Worldwide and ALL3MEDIA, including Peep Show and Shameless.
Microsoft's Ashley Highfield on the new MSN Video Player
Programmes will be available in both Windows Media Video (WMV) and Flash formats, to cater for both PC and Mac users.
Initially, the pilot will not use Microsoft's Silverlight platform, widely touted as a flash alternative.
The project is an offshoot of the established MSN Video, which offers short video clips ranging from music to sport and news.
The video service ranked fifth in the UK in a recent survey of video-on-demand sites.
source: bbc.com

The world's most high-profile file-sharing website the Pirate Bay faces a new volley of legal action.
Thirteen Hollywood production companies have filed a new lawsuit to try to get the website shut down.
In April the site's founders were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.
However, the site has continued to operate, allowing users to share copyrighted films, TV and music.
"We have filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay because they have not stopped their activities after they were sentenced to prison," the studios' lawyer Monique Wadsted told AFP.
The lawsuit has been brought by Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Universal Studios and 10 other firms, many of which were due to receive damages form the April settlement.
The Pirate Bay was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.
Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.
No copyright content was hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead it hosted links to TV, film and music files held on its users'
computers.
Following the most recent lawsuit, the site was bought by Global Gaming Factory (GGF) for 60m kronor (£4.7m) who intend to turn the site into a legal, pay service.
The new owners have outlined a "give and take" model which pays users for sharing their resources.

Conventional wisdom has it that the first animals evolved in the ocean.

Now researchers studying ancient rock samples in South China have found that the first animal fossils are preserved in ancient lake deposits, not in marine sediments as commonly assumed.

These new findings not only raise questions as to where the earliest animals were living, but what factors drove animals to evolve in the first place.

For some 3 billion years, single-celled life forms such as bacteria dominated the planet. Then, roughly 600 million years ago, the first multi-cellular animals appeared on the scene, diversifying rapidly.

The oldest known animal fossils in the world are preserved in South China's Doushantuo Formation. These fossil beds have no adult specimens - instead, many of the fossils appear to be microscopic embryos.

"Our first unusual finding in this region was the abundance of a clay mineral called smectite," said researcher Tom Bristow, now at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "In rocks of this age, smectite is normally transformed into other types of clay. The smectite in these South China rocks, however, underwent no such transformation and have a special chemistry that, for the smectite to form, requires specific conditions in the water - conditions commonly found in salty, alkaline lakes."

The researchers collected hundreds of rock samples from several locations in South China. All their analyses suggest these rocks were not marine sediments.

"Moreover, we found smectite in only some locations in South China, and not uniformly as one would expect for marine deposits," Bristow said. "Taken together, several lines of evidence indicated to us that these early animals lived in a lake environment."

Remember Conficker?
The hugely talked-about computer worm seemed poised to wreak havoc on the world's machines on April Fool's Day.
And then ... nothing much happened.
But while the doom and gloom forecast for the massive botnet -- a remotely controlled network that security experts say infected about 5 million computers -- never came to pass, Conficker is still making some worm hunters nervous.
Phillip Porras, program director at SRI International, a nonprofit research group, said Conficker infects millions of machines around the world. And the malware's author or authors could use that infected network to steal information or make money off of the compromised computer users.
"Conficker does stand out as one of those bots that is very large and has been able to sustain itself on the Web," which is rare, said Porras, who also is a member of the international group tracking Conficker.

Still, computer users, even those infected with Conficker, haven't seen much in the way of terrifying results.source: cnn.com