DigitalGlobe, provider of imagery for Google Earth, said a new high-resolution satellite will boost the accuracy of its satellite images and flesh out its archive. Together with the company's existing Quickbird satellite, it will offer half-meter resolution and will be able to collect over 600,000 square kilometers of imagery each day, up from the current collection of that amount each week.

A new company founded by a longtime technologist is setting out to create a vast public database intended to be read by computers rather than people, paving the way for a more automated Internet in which machines will routinely share information.

Intelligence Amplification researchers are creating systems that approximate Artificial Intelligence by using actual human beings as part of computer programs. Humans are asked to perform quick actions (such as identifying a photo or song clip) that are trivial for humans but very difficult for computers. The resulting human input is then combined with computer algorithms to create smarter search engines or databases.

From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.

Search giant Google has been accused of being the "biggest threat to genetic privacy" for its alleged plan to create a searchable database of genetic information.

The U.S. has put thousands of untranslated documents, captured from the former Iraqi government, online in an experiment to see if volunteer researchers can find evidence of weapons of mass destruction or ties to al-Qaeda that the official intelligence agencies could not.

Google has struck a partnership with scientists building a huge sky-scanning telescope, with hopes of helping the public access digital footage of asteroids, supernovas and distant galaxies.

Feature article on the growing power and promise of collaborative software projects for business and science.

Users of Google's new massive database of satellite imagery are finding some surprises in the images such as street parades in California and bombs in Iraq. This development points to the growing relevance and power of satellite imagery but it also shows the promise of posting massive databases online and letting thousands of users sift through to find what they are interested in.

Researchers have proposed a new system of DNA analysis that would allow field biologists to quickly scan a specimen and compare it against a global database of identified species. The system of DNA 'bar codes' could assist in the urgent task of cataloging unknown species before their ranks are decimated by extinction.