Inventec shipping 60,000 Chrome OS netbooks to Google

Yesterday, the Chrome OS-based Cr-48 notebook was announced. Today, Inventec is reportedly shipping 60,000 Chrome OS-based netbooks to Google.

[Image Gallery: Google's Cr-48 Chrome OS laptop]

According toֲ DigiTimes, the units “are expected to be used for testing.”ֲ So does that mean 60,000 people will be participating in the pilot program? Honestly…who knows? It’s possible that quantity could be solely for the test program, or a select number could be reserved for in-house at Google. (Hopefullyֲ ZDNet’s Christopher Dawson will selected as one of the lucky participants!)

But that figure is certain to grow whenever the Cr-48 is cleared for an official launch.

Related coverage on ZDNet:

• Google, Verizon promise free 3G data with purchase of Chrome OS netbook
• Google’s Chrome OS is here… sort of, kind of
• Google’s Chrome updates: Browser, Web store and notebook OS will redefine “cloud computing”
• Google’s Chrome Web store and the future blurring of Web, app design

Pearltrees brings curation to next level, adds Team feature

As the Internet grows, finding content that’s relevant to you becomes tougher. Sure, there’s your basic Web search and then there’s aggregation, similar to what Google and Yahoo do with news headlines. But another form of information discovery is starting to gain some momentum: curation.

Just about a year ago, I wrote a post about a French company called Pearltrees, which was just launching a service that was best described as bookmarking, but with a social twist. The idea is simple, really. When I come across something on the Web that interests me, I “bookmark” it in Pearltrees. When someone else puts that same URL into Pearltrees, we’re connected - not like friends on Facebook or a follower on Twitter, but simply as two individuals who shared an interest in a specific topic. And if there’s something else in that other person’s Pearltree that’s similar in topic, I would be able to see it.

Today, at the LeWeb conference in Paris, the company is launching Pearltrees Team, a collaboration tool that takes the curation concept and brings it to a group that may be working together on a common topic - something as critical as medical professionals gathering information on a specific disease to something fun like collecting information about local restaurants or attractions for an upcoming conference.

CEO Patrice Lamothe said that in the year that the company has been around it has grown to 6 million monthly page views and about 4 million pages curated. It didn’t seem like such a big number to me but Lamothe explained that the quantity of the pages in Pearltrees is less important than the quality of the content. The value of curation, he said, is the ability to add and delete pages.

After all, if you’re looking for quantity, you can simply do a Google search and sift through the hundreds of items that are returned in the query results to find the most relevant. Or you can start curating content into Pearltrees and possibly find others with common interests who have also been curating.

“The quality of the database is much more important than a number,” Lamothe said.

Related: Curation versus aggregation represents human web versus machine web

Two men held during caravan park raid in Argyll

Police raided properties at Glenfinart Caravan Park

Two men have been detained and a quantity of drugs recovered during a police operation involving armed officers at a caravan site in Argyll.

A number of properties were searched during the intelligence-led raid in Glenfinart Caravan Park, Ardentinny, at about 1030 GMT on Friday.

The raid also involved dogs branch officers and uniformed police.

Two men, aged 42 and 46, were detained and are said to be "assisting officers with inquiries".

18 tonnes of toxic sludge removed at Crumlin fuel plant

Eighteen tonnes of toxic sludge has been removed from the site of a fuel laundering site in County Antrim, HM Customs has said.

Vehicles were seized along with a large quantity of fuel at the site in an industrial area of Crumlin on Monday.

A man was arrested and released on bail. Customs said the plant could have laundered 6.2m litres of fuel per year - an annual tax loss of ֲ£4m.

Last week 2,000 litres of toxic waste was found at another plant in Toome.

Customs' Mike Connolly said the toxic sludge was "an environmental time bomb waiting to go off".

"The red diesel is put through a filtration process and the bleach, or whatever chemical or acid they're using to remove the colouring from the red diesel after it's been through the filtration process, that's discarded into the local streams, rivers, into the local environment," he said.

Mr Connolly conceded there was a market for the illegal fuel, but said people were often not aware of the damage it did.

"Everyone looks at it and thinks this is a bargain, but it's not a bargain," he said.

"There's acids, chemicals still remaining in the fuel - you may think you're getting a bargain but further down the road your engine will give in."