Obama to Be Sworn in for 2nd Term at White House

Formally embarking on his second term, President Barack Obama was set to take the oath of office Sunday surrounded by family in an intimate inauguration at the White House, 24 hours before re-enacting the ceremony in front of hundreds of thousands outside the Capitol.

The subdued swearing-in at the White House Blue Room is a function of the calendar and the Constitution, which says presidents automatically begin their new terms at noon on Jan. 20. Because that date fell this year on a Sunday, a day on which inauguration ceremonies historically are not held, organizers scheduled a second, public swearing-in for Monday.

A crowd of up to 800,000 people is expected to gather on the National Mall to witness that event, which will take place on the Capitol's red, white and blue bunting-draped west front. Chief Justice John Roberts, who famously flubbed the oath of office that Obama took in 2009, was on tap to swear the president in both days.

Vice President Joe Biden was to be sworn in earlier Sunday at the Naval Observatory, his official residence. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was appointed by Obama during his first term, was to administer the oath of office.

Before the ceremony, Biden was celebrating an early morning Mass with friends and family. About 120 people were expected to be on hand to watch him place his hand on a Bible his family has used since 1893 as he takes the oath.

Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

Biden was then to join Obama at Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony.

Once the celebrations are over, Obama will plunge into a second-term agenda still dominated by the economy, which slowly churned out of recession during his first four years in office. The president will try to cement his legacy with sweeping domestic changes, pledging to achieve both an immigration overhaul and stricter gun laws despite opposition from a divided Congress.

But for one weekend at least, Washington was putting politics aside. Obama called the nation's inaugural traditions "a symbol of how our democracy works and how we peacefully transfer power."

"But it should also be an affirmation that we're all in this together," he said Saturday as he opened a weekend of activities at a Washington elementary school.

Only a small group of family members was expected to attend Obama's Sunday swearing-in, including first lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha. A few reporters were to witness the event.

Roberts was to administer the oath shortly before noon in the Blue Room, an oval space with majestic views of the South Lawn and the Washington Monument.

Named for the color of the drapes, upholstery and carpet, the Blue Room is not typically used for ceremonies. It primarily has been a reception room as well as the site of the only presidential wedding held in the White House, when President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsum in 1886.

Later Sunday, Obama and Biden were to speak at a reception attended by supporters.

The president planned to save his most expansive remarks for Monday, when he delivers his second inaugural address to the crowd on the Mall and millions more watching across the country and the world. Obama started working on the speech in early December and was still tinkering with it into the weekend, aides said.

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Blinded by sun? Let your steering wheel guide you

WORRIED that the sun in your eyes will impair your driving? For the first time, a vibrating steering wheel will tell drivers where to steer when undipped headlights or other visual impediments leave them temporarily blinded.

Eelke Folmer and Burkay Sucu at the University of Reno in Nevada, designed the steering wheel to help cut the accident toll caused by glare, especially in winter, when motorists are most likely to be dazzled by low sun and reflections from snow and ice.

Cars with vibrating seats can already warn drivers when another vehicle is approaching in their blind spot. But the team's design is the only one to help drivers steer using tactile cues. The system relies on car sensors like GPS and lane-keeping cameras to map the road ahead and work out where the vehicle is. When sensors detect the driver may be dazzled and drifting from their lane, the vibro-tactile system buzzes into action.

The vibrations are tuned to 275 hertz, the frequency that our skin is most sensitive to. And the cues are directional, so if a driver drifts left, the left side of the wheel will vibrate - a signal to steer right until it stops vibrating, just like a rumble strip. "It's fairly easy for the system to anticipate or sense glare conditions and activate itself," says Folmer. The system worked well in tests with 12 volunteers in a simulator, but the drivers' hands strayed from the left and right vibrators - so the devices may need to be more widely distributed around the wheel.

It's promising work, says Paul Newman, who is developing a driverless car at the University of Oxford. "Touch is an extraordinarily rich sensory pathway and is an ideal way to provide safety-improving hints. In this case, the hints are felt at the very place action is required - on the steering wheel itself," he says.

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Migrant Workers' Centre urges flexibility in Change of Employer policy

SINGAPORE: The Migrant Workers' Centre has urged the government to be more flexible in allowing foreign workers to change employers.

The centre's Chairman Yeo Guat Kwang told Channel NewsAsia that he is working with the Manpower Ministry to try and amend the policy.

The Migrant Workers' Centre said last year it received about 1,500 complaints from foreign workers, mostly for salary arrears cases.

Workers helping the Manpower Ministry with investigations are given a special pass to stay in Singapore under the Temporary Job Scheme.

Under the scheme, workers serving as prosecution witnesses may be allowed to find temporary employment while their cases are being investigated.

Migrant workers groups want the Temporary Job Scheme to be expanded to allow workers to remain in Singapore beyond the completion of their cases.

Mr Yeo said workers who are waiting for their workplace injury compensation should also be allowed to stay.

This, he said, could lead the way for a new transitional employment system for foreign workers.

Mr Yeo said: "If you say the only way for the workers is to go back, for some cases, it's not fair because they've only been here for a few months. I think we should amend this to make it easier for workers who unfortunately fall victim to one of these disputes, will be able to find employment with another employer.

"To me, I think it's good for the employer to employ these workers who are already here, rather than to go to the source country, and do a fresh recruitment, and these are workers who have already been here, we know how good their skills are."

Mr Yeo explained that making the Change of Employers policy more flexible is also in line with the MWC's call to improve the quality of foreign workers.

"At the end of the day, for us to be able to enable them to change employer and get re-employed, definitely this is a person that must have the right skill to work here," said Mr Yeo.

In addition, the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics believes the restrictions of the Change of Employer policy do not favour these workers.

The organisation's president Bridget Tan explained: "This is called the sponsorship system. A work permit holder is tied to the employer. The work permit holder if once he or she leaves the employer unless with the approval of the employer this work permit holder will have to go home, repatriated.

"They find it difficult to enforce their rights under work permit conditions because they are so afraid and often threatened. Going home for many migrant workers whether domestic workers or foreign workers is not a choice for them because most of them are in debt to agents back home, money lenders back home.

"And going back with nothing, with no hope and promise of another job and the chance to change employers, sometimes they allow themselves to be exploited."

Ms Tan added workers are not allowed to change the industry they work in.

She said: "For example, if you come in as a construction worker, you can only find a job as a construction worker even though you have qualification that can allow you to work for example, as a waiter but you cannot because you come in as a construction worker, you have to be a construction worker. There are restrictions."

President of the Association of Employment Agencies, K Jayaprema said employers have concerns with a more flexible policy.

Mr Jayaprema said: "When such transfers kick in, if the employees are not very responsible, the employer might be stranded without a workforce because employees do have a tendency to be working in one company, train themselves up there and when there's opportunities in another company with a little bit of better salary, they move."

Employers have to send their foreign workers back within seven days of the cancellation of their work permits or they could lose the S$5,000 security bond with the Manpower Ministry.

Advocacy groups for migrant workers argue a more flexible change of employer policy would create greater mobility for workers.

With this mobility, migrant workers will no longer be at the mercy of employers.

There will be more incentive for employers to retain these workers, and treat them fairly.

MPs are expected to raise questions on how the government can address the grievances of foreign workers at the next sitting of Parliament.

- CNA/fa

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Despite setbacks, airlines and passengers still on board the Dreamliner

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which has suffered through many years of delays and mechanical issues, is now grounded around the world after a series of incidents including two on-board fires. But experts predict the plane will still be a hit with airlines and passengers when it is once again cleared for takeoff.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner has suffered through a series of high-profile delays and setbacks, culminating in this week's grounding by the U.S. government, but thanks to its cutting-edge technology, it's almost certain the plane will thrive in spite of the repeated body blows.

The Dreamliner -- the much-heralded, next-generation plane that Boeing designed to offer airlines big fuel efficiencies and access to new intercontinental routes -- had already stumbled through more than three years of delays including an onboard electrical fire before the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounded the entire U.S.-based fleet this week in the wake of new on-board fires. Other countries quickly followed suit.

But notwithstanding those problems, the Dreamliner is one blessed airplane, given that while airlines and passengers are certain to be wary of it going forward, few are likely to turn their backs on it for good.

The basic features that got so many people excited about the Dreamliner remain the same, even as the headlines about its fleet-wide grounding blare: Airlines have ordered more than 800 of the new airplane because its first-of-a-kind composite fuselage and new-style engines promise them 20 percent fuel savings, as well as a long-haul range capable of opening up routes never before possible -- or at least, economical -- in a non-stop flight.

At the same time, passengers have been lining up to fly the plane because it's at the vanguard of both in-flight comfort and amenities, and recent excitement over the plane's arrival in new cities like San Jose, Calif. demonstrate just how enthusiastic some are to get on board.

A fire tied to lithium-ion batteries aboard an All Nippon Airways 787 earlier this week, coupled with a similar fire on a Japan Airlines 787 earlier this month, forced the FAA to take action. On January 16, the agency issued an airworthiness directive grounding the entire U.S.-based fleet of Dreamliners -- six United Airlines planes -- until the aircraft can be deemed safe. The two fires followed other recent mishaps on a number of Dreamliners including oil and fuel leaks, a cracked windshield, and false warnings from an electrical panel. "Before further flight," the FAA said in a statement, "operators of U.S.-registered, Boeing 787 aircraft must demonstrate to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that the batteries are safe."

But while Boeing is certainly reeling from the latest setbacks to the $32 billion Dreamliner program, the aviation giant should be able to put these latest episodes behind it and resume delivering the planes before too long, several experts told CNET.

"They'll work this out," said Bob Mann, president of RW Mann, an aviation industry analysis firm. "It's a black eye. It's not a knock-out blow."

To Mann, the likelihood of the Dreamliner program's future success boils down to the fact that the plane features "so much breakthrough innovation" as well as the reality that carriers around the world have made tremendous financial investments in the 787, not to mention that many have based their future business plans on being able to fly the kinds of routes that the plane makes possible for the first time. Plus, having planned for those new routes and fuel costs, they have nowhere to turn: Boeing's chief competitor, Airbus, doesn't have a plane in the works that can match the Dreamliner on these key features.

Though composite materials have been used in some planes for awhile, the Dreamliner is the first to feature a fully-composite fuselage. That makes the plane lighter, making it more fuel efficient, but it also helps make the passenger experience better, according to Mann.

That's because the composite fuselage is stronger than that on other planes, allowing the cabin to be more pressurized. The upshot, explained Mann, is that Dreamliner flights are pressurized to mimic being at an altitude of about 6,000 feet, a much more comfortable environment than on other planes, which are usually pressurized to about a 9,000- or 10,000-foot altitude. And the plane is also designed to have a much more comfortable level of relative humidity, Mann said, because the composite fuselage doesn't need to be kept entirely dry to avoid corrosion.

At the same time, the Dreamliner's fuel efficiency is also driven by the Dreamliner's "no bleed" engines. Boeing claims that "all of the high-speed air produced by the engines goes to thrust [while] pneumatic systems that divert high-speed air from the engines rob conventional airplanes of some thrust and increase the engine's fuel consumption."

For now, no one knows exactly what the root cause of the recent fires is, beyond being tied to the lithium-ion batteries used on the plane. Japanese officials have argued that the battery was operating above its designed voltage limits, according to CBSNews.com.

The 787 relies more than any other modern airliner on electrical signals to help power nearly everything the plane does. It's also the first Boeing plane to use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for its main electrical system. Such batteries are prone to overheating and have additional safeguards installed that are meant to control the problem and prevent fires.

GS Yuasa Corp., the maker of the lithium-ion batteries used in the 787s, said Thursday it was helping with the investigation but that the cause of the problem was unclear. It said the problem could be the battery, the power source or the electronics system.

And, of course, lithium-ion batteries have been blamed in fires in other products, like Chevrolet's Volt.

The prospect that the Dreamliner's battery system is fundamentally flawed, is, of course, a major concern for Boeing. But no one has yet definitely pinned the problems on the batteries. And to Chris Sloan, an aviation writer and enthusiast who runs Airchive.com, there's nothing particularly unique about the Dreamliner getting off to such a rocky beginning.

Many planes, Sloan argued, have had rough beginnings. Among them are the Lockheed Electra, which had three crashes in its first year; the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, which had a wide range of problems and was grounded following a massive crash in 1979; and the De Havilland Comet, which suffered through a series of stress fractures and crashes. In each case, Sloan said, airlines and passengers returned when the planes were once again cleared for flight. One significant difference between those planes and the Dreamliner is that no 787 has crashed, and no one has died aboard the plane.

Ultimately, said Imperial Capital aviation analyst Ken Herbert, Boeing is likely to be able to count on airlines and passengers continuing to support the Dreamliner because of all the plane's advantages, and particularly because so many airlines have invested so much in the aircraft. "I haven't heard any long term wavering on their desire to take delivery of the plane," Herbert said. "Airlines have planned on this [for years], and for them to change right now, if they're expecting one, it's not an easy switch to make."

To be sure, Boeing has a huge deal riding on the outcome of the investigations being done by the FAA and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. If the final determination is that the batteries are incompatible with the plane for one reason or another, it could be a major setback costing Boeing months and significant amounts of money. But short of that worst-case scenario, once the federal agencies sign off on the plane's airworthiness, Herbert has little doubt that the Dreamliner will once again be a favorite of the world's airlines and many aviation enthusiasts.

"I'm not expecting any public pushback or concern about flying on these planes," Herbert said. "Boeing has a lot at stake on her now, and the next few weeks are pretty important from a timing standpoint, and a public perception standpoint, and safety and reliability standpoint. They've got to be really careful that they don't do anything else to jeopardize (the public's) interest in getting on one of these things."

But will passengers come back? Herbert thinks so. "Generally, people still regard the industry as very safe, and they've got a lot of confidence in, [which is] rightfully well-deserved, the improvements Boeing and Airbus have made in their aircraft. Unless there's something else, people will move on quickly."

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Attack at Algeria Gas Plant Heralds New Risks for Energy Development

The siege by Islamic militants at a remote Sahara desert natural gas plant in Algeria this week signaled heightened dangers in the region for international oil companies, at a time when they have been expanding operations in Africa as one of the world's last energy frontiers. (See related story: "Pictures: Four New Offshore Drilling Frontiers.")

As BP, Norway's Statoil, Italy's Eni, and other companies evacuated personnel from Algeria, it was not immediately clear how widely the peril would spread in the wake of the hostage-taking at the sprawling In Amenas gas complex near the Libyan border.

Map by National Geographic

Algeria, the fourth-largest crude oil producer on the continent and a major exporter of natural gas and refined fuels, may not have been viewed as the most hospitable climate for foreign energy companies, but that was due to unfavorable financial terms, bureaucracy, and corruption. The energy facilities themselves appeared to be safe, with multiple layers of security provided both by the companies and by government forces, several experts said. (See related photos: "Oil States: Are They Stable? Why It Matters.")

"It is particularly striking not only because it hasn't happened before, but because it happened in Algeria, one of the stronger states in the region," says Hanan Amin-Salem, a senior manager at the industry consulting firm PFC Energy, who specializes in country risk. She noted that in the long civil war that gripped the country throughout the 1990s, there had never been an attack on Algeria's energy complex. But now, hazard has spread from weak surrounding states, as the assault on In Amenas was carried out in an apparent retaliation for a move by French forces against the Islamists who had taken over Timbuktu and other towns in neighboring Mali. (See related story: "Timbuktu Falls.")

"What you're really seeing is an intensification of the fundamental problem of weak states, and empowerment of heavily armed groups that are really well motivated and want to pursue a set of aims," said Amin-Salem. In PFC Energy's view, she says, risk has increased in Mauritania, Chad, and Niger—indeed, throughout Sahel, the belt that bisects North Africa, separating the Sahara in the north from the tropical forests further south.

On Thursday, the London-based corporate consulting firm Exclusive Analysis, which was recently acquired by the global consultancy IHS, sent an alert to clients warning that oil and gas facilities near the Libyan and Mauritanian borders and in Mauritania's Hodh Ech Chargui province were at "high risk" of attack by jihadis.

"A Hot Place to Drill"

The attack at In Amenas comes at a time of unprecedented growth for the oil industry in Africa. (See related gallery: "Pictures: The Year's Most Overlooked Energy Stories.") Forecasters expect that oil output throughout Africa will double by 2025, says Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of the energy and sustainability program at the University of California, Davis, who has counted 20 rounds of bidding for new exploration at sites in Africa's six largest oil-producing states.

Oil and natural gas are a large part of the Algerian economy, accounting for 60 percent of government budget revenues, more than a third of GDP and more than 97 percent of its export earnings. But the nation's resources are seen as largely undeveloped, and Algeria has tried to attract new investment. Over the past year, the government has sought to reform the law to boost foreign companies' interests in their investments, although those efforts have foundered.

Technology has been one of the factors driving the opening up of Africa to deeper energy exploration. Offshore and deepwater drilling success in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil led to prospecting now under way offshore in Ghana, Mozambique, and elsewhere. (See related story: "New Oil—And a Huge Challenge—for Ghana.") Jaffe says the Houston-based company Anadarko Petroleum has sought to transfer its success in "subsalt seismic" exploration technology, surveying reserves hidden beneath the hard salt layer at the bottom of the sea, to the equally challenging seismic exploration beneath the sands of the Sahara in Algeria, where it now has three oil and gas operations.

Africa also is seen as one of the few remaining oil-rich regions of the world where foreign oil companies can obtain production-sharing agreements with governments, contracts that allow them a share of the revenue from the barrels they produce, instead of more limited service contracts for work performed.

"You now have the technology to tap the resources more effectively, and the fiscal terms are going to be more attractive than elsewhere—you put these things together and it's been a hot place to drill," says Jaffe, who doesn't see the energy industry's interest in Africa waning, despite the increased terrorism risk. "What I think will happen in some of these countries is that the companies are going to reveal new securities systems and procedures they have to keep workers safe," she says. "I don't think they will abandon these countries."

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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Te'o Denies Involvement in Girlfriend Hoax

Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o told ESPN that he "never, not ever" was involved in creating the hoax that had him touting what turned out to be a fictional girlfriend, "Lennay Kekua."

"When they hear the facts, they'll know," Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap in his first interview since the story broke. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be a part of this."

"I wasn't faking it," he said during a 2 1/2-hour interview, according to ESPN.com.

Te'o said he only learned for sure this week that he had been duped. On Wednesday, he received a Twitter message, allegedly from a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, apologizing for the hoax, Te'o told Schaap.

The sports website Deadspin, which first revealed the hoax this week, has reported that Tuiasosopo, a 22-year-old of Samoan descent who lives in Antelope Valley, Calif., asked a woman he knew for her photo and that photo became the face of Kekua's Twitter account.

Te'o told Schaap that Tuiasosopo was represented to him as Kekua's cousin.

"I hope he learns," Te'o said of Tuiasosopo, according to coverage of the interview on ESPN.com. "I hope he understands what he's done. I don't wish an ill thing to somebody. I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."

Click Here for a Who's Who in the Manti Te'o Case

AP Photo/ESPN Images, Ryan Jones

Manti Te'o Hoax: Was He Duped or Did He Know? Watch Video

Manti Te'o Hoax: Notre Dame Star Allegedly Scammed Watch Video

Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video

Te'o admitted to a few mistakes in his own conduct, including telling his father he met Kekua in Hawaii even though his attempt to meet her actually failed. Later retellings of that tale led to inconsistencies in media reports, Te'o said, adding that he never actually met Kekua in person.

Te'o added that he feared people would think it was crazy for him to be involved with someone that he never met, so, "I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away."

The relationship got started on Facebook during his freshman year, Te'o said.

"My relationship with Lennay wasn't a four-year relationship," Te'o said, according to ESPN.com. "There were blocks and times and periods in which we would talk and then it would end."

He showed Schaap Facebook correspondence indicating that other people knew of Kekua -- though Te'o now believes they, too, were tricked.

The relationship became more intense, Te'o said, after he received a call that Kekua was in a coma following a car accident involving a drunk driver on April 28.

Soon, Te'o and Kekua became inseparable over the phone, he said, continuing their phone conversations through her recovery from the accident, and then during her alleged battle against leukemia.

Even so, Te'o never tried to visit Kekua at her hospital in California.

"It never really crossed my mind," he said, according to ESPN.com. "I don't know. I was in school."

But the communication between the two was intense. They even had ritual where they discussed scripture every day, Te'o said. His parents also participated via text message, and Te'o showed Schaap some of the texts.

On Sept. 12, a phone caller claiming to be Kekua's relative told Te'o that Kekua had died of leukemia, Te'o said. However, on Dec. 6, Te'o said he got a call allegedly from Kekua saying she was alive. He said he was utterly confused and did not know what to believe.

ESPN's 2 1/2-hour interview was conducted in Bradenton, Fla., with Te'o's lawyer present but without video cameras. Schaap said Te'o was composed, comfortable and in command, and that he said he didn't want to go on camera to keep the setting intimate and avoid a big production.

According to ABC News interviews and published reports, Te'o received phone calls, text messages and letters before every football game from his "girlfriend." He was in contact with her family, including a twin brother, a second brother, sister and parents. He called often to check in with them, just as he did with his own family. And "Kekua" kept in contact with Te'o's friends and family, and teammates spoke to her on the phone.

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Feedback: Excessive precision at rugby World Cup

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China working age population falls

BEIJING: China's working-age population declined for the first time in recent decades in 2012, the government said on Friday, detailing the extent of a demographic time bomb experts say is one of Beijing's biggest challenges.

China introduced its controversial one-child policy in the late 1970s to control population growth, but its people are now ageing, moving to the cities, and increasingly male, government statistics showed.

The world's biggest national population rose by 6.7 million in 2012 to 1.354 billion people, excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

Almost 118 boys were born for every 100 girls.

The working-age population -- defined as those from 15 to 59 -- fell by 3.45 million to 937 million, adding to concerns about how the country will provide for the elderly, with 194 million people now 60 or over.

It was the first absolute drop in the working-age segment in "a considerable period of time", said National Bureau of Statistics director Ma Jiantang, adding that he expected it to "fall steadily at least through 2030".

China's wealth gap and population imbalances are major concerns for the ruling Communist Party, which places huge importance on preserving social stability to avoid any potential challenge to its grip on power.

An estimated 180,000 protests break out across China every year, many of them sparked by a wide range of social issues, including wage disputes and rural workers being denied residents' rights in cities.

But the government faces a "major dilemma" over how it confronts the problem of a rapidly ageing population, said analysts.

"For older generations, life is going to be very painful," Sun Wenguang, a retired academic from Shandong University in Jinan, told AFP.

"The cost of 24-hour care in Beijing is probably 7,000 RMB a month, and how will this be funded? The average manual worker in China earns about 2,000 RMB a month (US$300), of course they don't want to share their money out."

Liang Zhongtang, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the government was reluctant to confront the population imbalance because of the sensitivity of the family planning policy.

"Actually the structural decline of the country's labour resources started long ago," he told AFP.

Most of the labour force was aged between 20 and 45, he said, with the proportion of older workers within that range increasing rapidly. "This means it is very hard for them to change their jobs or find a new employer", decreasing labour flexibility.

The problems of ageing and labour shortages were "severe" in the countryside, he said, but added: "Even though rural areas' social and economic problems are serious, they do not make onto the radar of mainstream (policy makers).

"They just ignore the problems plaguing this social stratum."

As late as 1982, the proportion of the population aged 60 or over in China was just five per cent, but it now stands at 14.3 per cent.

China's urban population rose to 712 million in 2012, up 21 million and adding to the strains on public services, while the rural population fell 14 million to 642 million.

Average per capita income was 26,959 yuan (US$4,296) in the cities, compared to 7,917 yuan in the countryside, the statistics said.

- AFP/xq

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What should Google do about Facebook Graph Search?

Mark Zuckerberg introduces Graph Search on Tuesday. Should Google worry?

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

When Facebook introduced its next-generation search product in Menlo Park, Calif., this week, the announcement was no doubt being watched closely in nearby Mountain View.

The data that Google engineers have craved for years -- rich portraits of connections between people, places, and things, all tied to real identities -- was suddenly searchable on Facebook. It's data Google is trying to replicate, using Google+ and other products, but there's no doubt that Facebook's billion-member network has given it the advantage. You can imagine the Google crew listening to Mark Zuckerberg describe the data that underpins Graph Search and wishing they could get their hands on it.

In fact, two of them did. Lars Rasmussen and Tom Stocky, who both worked on search products at Google, defected to Facebook and began working on a new kind of search product. In 2011 they started on what would be introduced Tuesday as Graph Search. From the get-go it was clear that searching your social network was materially different than searching the Web. Like the Web, it could provide answers (who's a good dentist?) and entertainment (show me photos of my friends in Paris). But social networks promise something more, the duo said in an interview this week at CNET headquarters: bringing you closer to friends by helping you share experiences.

Lars Rasmussen, a former Google employee, is leading Facebook's efforts in search.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

It's an approach that differs sharply from that of Google, where the search team is interested in getting users the best possible answers, at lightning speed, regardless of who their friends are. The question is which approach is better -- and, should Facebook's take on search prove popular with users, what Google should do about it.

Even though they built it, Rasmussen and Stocky say they can only guess at what social search will mean for the masses.

"This all remains to be seen," said Rasmussen, who previously started the company that became Google Maps and later created the more divisive Google Wave. "We're also curious about this question. Obviously we think there is something here -- otherwise, we wouldn't have spent so much time on it."

The power of social
One day Rasmussen opened Facebook to see that his friend Zuckerberg was listening to a song, which appeared in his news feed. Rasmussen, curious, clicked the link so he could listen along in real time. That prompted an embarrassed message from Zuckerberg: This song is terrible, Zuckerbeg said. Sorry about that!

"That interaction was much more valuable than just listening to the song," Rasmussen said. "Watching terrible movies with your best friends can be better than watching an awesome movie alone. Watching awesome movies with your best friends is where we're trying to get to."

In other words, social search promises to bring us more than mere answers -- it can also bring us into conversation.

"There's a little bit more to it than just finding the best place to have a meal tonight," Rasmussen said. "Knowing which of your friends recommended it, or which of your friends liked it, will help you have a more social experience."

Google has also introduced ways of making recommendations more social. Apps you purchase in the Google Play store will be displayed, along with your Google+ profile, when a friend searches for them. The same goes for reviews of places on Google Local. And if your Google+ friends +1 Web links, those links will rise higher in search results for you. For most people, though, Facebook better reflects a person's actual friends and family members than Google's social products do. Even if a healthy chunk of your friends and family members are on Google+, they might be lumped in with brands, publications, celebrities, and other people the user follows but doesn't have a personal connection with.

In short, it's easy for an average user to grok why they might search Facebook for "plumbers my friends like." Thanks to the fact that Graph Search is embedded at the top of Facebook, and can interpret natural language queries, it's easy to use, too. Google's social recommendations, scattered across various products, look weak by comparison.

Hey, 1 billion, meet 30 trillion
But what if the value of social search is overstated? Google sees your friends as important to answering search queries -- that was the point of Search Plus Your World, introduced last year -- but they're only one signal.

What are the other signals? Well, for starters, there are the 30 trillion Web sites Google has indexed, across 230 million domains. There's the Knowledge Graph, its database of 570 million people, places, and things, which now has mapped more than 18 billion connections. Google is betting that for most questions, that enormous database will provide better answers than the random sample offered by the average Facebook user's 150 friends.

Google declined to comment for this story. But its philosophy on search is readily apparent. Google wants to answer your question no matter who you are -- and, unlike Facebook, no matter who you know. The fact that you would have to rely on your friends having visited a good Chinese restaurant to get a decent recommendation is a huge bug, in Google's mind. Sure, it will show you suggestions from friends if it has some to share. But Google wants to answer your question well even if it doesn't.

At its announcement, Facebook made much of the difference between Graph Search and "Web search," which returns not answers but links to other Web pages that hopefully do. The thing is, Google has been trying to move beyond "10 blue links" for years now -- the Knowledge Graph is only the latest effort to deliver answers on the search results page itself. Even Facebook isn't above the blue links -- thanks to its partnership with Bing, you can perform Web searches inside the social network.

The battle to come
It's important to note that several major categories of Google search are as yet unaffected by Facebook's entry into the space: video search, product search, flight search, and maps.

But Graph Search is still in beta. Rasmussen and Stocky said they both have "years" of work ahead of them. So far Graph Search is available only in English, to a select few beta testers. It can't search status updates or notes. The recommendation engine for things like plumbers appears to rely heavily on "likes," and how many people have ever liked their plumber on Facebook? 

Still, it's easy to imagine where Graph Search might lead. And even in beta, there's one search Facebook does better than anyone else: photos. Facebook is the world's largest storehouse of pictures, and Graph Search makes them searchable in a way that is not only functional but fun. It handles vanity searches ("photos of me"), creeper searches ("photos of friends of my friends who are single"), and searches designed for pure exploration: photos of Paris, photos of puppies, photos from 1980. It's a rabbit hole every bit as fun to fall down as Wikipedia -- or, more to the point, Google Images.

If Facebook builds the rest of Graph Search as well as it did the photo components, Google may actually have something to worry about. In the meantime Google will continue building its version of the "Star Trek" computer, one that answers questions perfectly no matter your social connections. And while it does, a team led by its former employees will be busy upending our expectations for search.

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Opinion: Lance One of Many Tour de France Cheaters

Editor's note: England-based writer and photographer Roff Smith rides around 10,000 miles a year through the lanes of Sussex and Kent and writes a cycling blog at: www.my-bicycle-and-I.co.uk

And so, the television correspondent said to the former Tour de France champion, a man who had been lionised for years, feted as the greatest cyclist of his day, did you ever use drugs in the course of your career?

"Yes," came the reply. "Whenever it was necessary."

"And how often was that?" came the follow-up question.

"Almost all the time!"

This is not a leak of a transcript from Oprah Winfrey's much anticipated tell-all with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, but instead was lifted from a decades-old interview with Fausto Coppi, the great Italian road cycling champion of the 1940s and 1950s.

To this day, though, Coppi is lauded as one of the gods of cycling, an icon of a distant and mythical golden age in the sport.

So is five-time Tour winner Jacques Anquetil (1957, 1961-64) who famously remarked that it was impossible "to ride the Tour on mineral water."

"You would have to be an imbecile or a crook to imagine that a professional cyclist who races for 235 days a year can hold the pace without stimulants," Anquetil said.

And then there's British cycling champion Tommy Simpson, who died of heart failure while trying to race up Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France, a victim of heat, stress, and a heady cocktail of amphetamines.

All are heroes today. If their performance-enhancing peccadillos are not forgotten, they have at least been glossed over in the popular imagination.

As the latest chapter of the sorry Lance Armstrong saga unfolds, it is worth looking at the history of cheating in the Tour de France to get a sense of perspective. This is not an attempt at rationalisation or justification for what Lance did. Far from it.

But the simple, unpalatable fact is that cheating, drugs, and dirty tricks have been part and parcel of the Tour de France nearly from its inception in 1903.

Cheating was so rife in the 1904 event that Henri Desgrange, the founder and organiser of the Tour, declared he would never run the race again. Not only was the overall winner, Maurice Garin, disqualified for taking the train over significant stretches of the course, but so were next three cyclists who placed, along with the winner of every single stage of the course.

Of the 27 cyclists who actually finished the 1904 race, 12 were disqualified and given bans ranging from one year to life. The race's eventual official winner, 19-year-old Henri Cornet, was not determined until four months after the event.

And so it went. Desgrange relented on his threat to scrub the Tour de France and the great race survived and prospered-as did the antics. Trains were hopped, taxis taken, nails scattered along the roads, partisan supporters enlisted to beat up rivals on late-night lonely stretches of the course, signposts tampered with, bicycles sabotaged, itching powder sprinkled in competitors' jerseys and shorts, food doctored, and inkwells smashed so riders yet to arrive couldn't sign the control documents to prove they'd taken the correct route.

And then of course there were the stimulants-brandy, strychnine, ether, whatever-anything to get a rider through the nightmarishly tough days and nights of racing along stages that were often over 200 miles long. In a way the race was tailor-made to encourage this sort of thing. Desgrange once famously said that his idea of a perfect Tour de France would be one that was so tough that only one rider finished.

Add to this the big prizes at a time when money was hard to come by, a Tour largely comprising young riders from impoverished backgrounds for whom bicycle racing was their one big chance to get ahead, and the passionate following cycling enjoyed, and you had the perfect recipe for a desperate, high stakes, win-at-all-costs mentality, especially given the generally tolerant views on alcohol and drugs in those days.

After World War II came the amphetamines. Devised to keep soldiers awake and aggressive through long hours of battle they were equally handy for bicycle racers competing in the world's longest and toughest race.

So what makes the Lance Armstrong story any different, his road to redemption any rougher? For one thing, none of the aforementioned riders were ever the point man for what the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has described in a thousand-page report as the most sophisticated, cynical, and far-reaching doping program the world of sport has ever seen-one whose secrecy and efficiency was maintained by ruthlessness, bullying, fear, and intimidation.

Somewhere along the line, the casualness of cheating in the past evolved into an almost Frankenstein sort of science in which cyclists, aided by creepy doctors and trainers, were receiving blood transfusions in hotel rooms and tinkering around with their bodies at the molecular level many months before they ever lined up for a race.

To be sure, Armstrong didn't invent all of this, any more than he invented original sin-nor was he acting alone. But with his success, money, intelligence, influence, and cohort of thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers-and the way he used all this to prop up the Lance brand and the Lance machine at any cost-he became the poster boy and lightning rod for all that went wrong with cycling, his high profile eclipsing even the heads of the Union Cycliste Internationale, the global cycling union, who richly deserve their share of the blame.

It is not his PED popping that is the hard-to-forgive part of the Lance story. Armstrong cheated better than his peers, that's all.

What I find troubling is the bullying and calculated destruction of anyone who got in his way, raised a question, or cast a doubt. By all accounts Armstrong was absolutely vicious, vindictive as hell. Former U.S. Postal team masseuse Emma O'Reilly found herself being described publicly as a "prostitute" and an "alcoholic," and had her life put through a legal grinder when she spoke out about Armstrong's use of PEDs.

Journalists were sued, intimidated, and blacklisted from events, press conferences, and interviews if they so much as questioned the Lance miracle or well-greased machine that kept winning Le Tour.

Armstrong left a lot of wreckage behind him.

If he is genuinely sorry, if he truly repents for his past "indiscretions," one would think his first act would be to try to find some way of not only seeking forgiveness from those whom he brutally put down, but to do something meaningful to repair the damage he did to their lives and livelihoods.

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