Search for Sailor Called Off: MASSIVE HIGH-TECH EFFORT BY `FRIENDS OF JIM' REVEALS NO FRESH CLUES
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By Truong Phuoc Khanh, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Feb. 17--Three weeks after Jim Gray, a renowned and beloved computer scientist, sailed out of San Francisco and vanished, a happy ending would have been miraculous.
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And rocket-powered cars Letters Sad news this week as California coastguards were forced to call off the search for Microsoft researcher Jim Gray who has been missing since setting out in his yacht last Sunday. A respected IT personality and database developer, Google chipped in with an offer to use its high resolution satellite imagery to aid the search:â¦
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The search site still lacks the right stuff.
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Also: Vigilante hackers target the wrong guy. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
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Google Earth unearths a Navy blunder in California.
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Following the disappearance of Steve Fossett, Amazon.com and Google joined forces to coordinate a âdistributed searchâ for the millionaire aviator and adventurer. Welcome to the new world of search and rescue.
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Tools from Google Earth and Amazon.com are being applied by users to help in the effort to find missing aviator and adventurer Steve Fossett.
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The Coast Guard planned to call off its search early Thursday for an acclaimed computer scientist whose sailboat has disappeared off Northern California.
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After spending billions on Rube Goldberg contraptions, the military notices commercial devices already exist. Could a TiVo-like gizmo help them find a car bomber? In Danger Room.
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By Mary Anne Ostrom/  The search for Jim Gray, the missing Microsoft engineer, was extended to Mexico on Wednesday, said Mike Olson, an Oracle vice president and a spokesman for the private search effort. Olson said U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican officials have been notified.
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Plus: Geek squad comes to the rescue. [News.com Extra]
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Did you notice when Slashdot's  search was down for the past few days? (It's back up now.)  Turns out that in a stunning case of irony, it had been hammered into  submission by thousands of people attempting to use it.        However, unlike CmdrTaco's regimented DDoS attacks, this one is carried out  with malicious intent as opposed to mere sociopathic inconsiderateness.  It also highlights a potential threat from one of the biggest weblogging  services out there.
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(InfoWorld) - Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk is enlisting human eyes to help in an online search for missing adventurer Steve Fossett. Mechanical Turk is a Web service hosted by Amazon that lets anyone combine human intelligence with computer programs. The site aims to make up for a specific failure that persists in computers. "Humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs -- something children can do even before they learn to speak," the site explains. Friends of Fossett have set up a project on Mechanical Turk that could help identify the location of his airplane. Fossett set out in the plane in Nevada on Sept. 3 and hasn't been heard from since. Anyone can visit the Mechanical Turk site and lend a hand. Instructions on the page ask participants to view satellite images within Google Earth of the region where Fossett is thought to be. If they see anything that might resemble the airplane, they can mark the satellite image as containing an object that should be looked at more closely. Participants are asked to mark an image if they are at all suspicious that it contains something of interest. The project also cautions people not to worry that missing a detail will be tragic, because many people will look at the same image. Marked images will be further examined by experts. Mechanical Turk was also enlisted in the hunt for Jim Gray, a prominent computer scientist who went missing after setting off on his sail boat earlier this year. He has not been found. The Fossett effort also includes airplane and helicopter searchers. Fossett is well-known for being the first person to fly a plane solo around the world without refueling and also for making it around the world in a balloon. He has set 115 world records or world firsts, has swum the English Channel and completed the Iditarod, a dog sled race in Alaska, according to his Web site. While people helping to hunt for Fossett and Gray are volunteers, other Mechanical Turk projects pay participants, usually less than $0.25 per task. Mechanical Turk isn't the only online service that relies on human intelligence. ChaCha.com, a search engine launched last year, uses human "guides" to provide search results. A user inserts a search term and a remote worker searches for the answer, sending links to Web pages back to the user. The guide may be an expert in the subject the user is searching for so may be able to find better results than other search engines, according to ChaCha. Mahalo.com is another search site that uses people to compile results for common search terms. Workers weed out spam sites, pages with overbearing advertising and sites that use information without giving appropriate credit to the source.
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The Coast Guard on Friday suspended its search for six boaters and said it was investigating the distress calls about their small craft taking on water as a possible hoax.
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The search for missing aviator Steve Fossett has generated Internet tips and volunteer pilots, though whether the extra aid is helping or hurting the rescue effort is still an open question.
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By Tom LochnerLegend is full of unsolved mysteries of ships that vanish without a trace. Port Costa offers a variation on the theme: the ship that appeared, apparently out of nowhere.
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Despite a heroic search-and-rescue effort, Microsoft researcher Jim Gray's disappearance off the California coast continues to baffle authorities.