This page is a place to post interesting, relevant articles you come across. Please try to include some descriptive information about any links you post here so they can be clearly identified by others. Using something close to keywords or a brief summary is ideal. Periodically RMM will move these around and organize them, but for now just feel free to add to the list.
Article found on Media Consumption, very interesting to ponder how much we actually do consume and absorb in today's data driven world.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.2f36cdb119be57424fd3704ce738c7f7.961&show_article=1
Here is an interesting video about Google Wave. It's the Google Wave Developer Preview presentation at the Day 2 Keynote of Google I/O. It's a bit long; even if you don't watch the whole thing, it'll give you a really good idea of what Google Wave is all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ
To learn more visit http://wave.google.com.
The newest TED talk by Anthropologist Stefana Broadbent talks about how social media is promoting greater intimacy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lk5nU8FrXo
And current Daily Show points about news responsiblity
American government: It's always subsidized commercial media
[SOURCE: Online Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Geoffrey Cowan, David Westphal]
A mythology about the relationship between American government and the news business is again making the rounds, and it needs a corrective jolt. The myth is that the commercial press in this country stands wholly independent of governmental sustenance. Here's the jolt: There's never been a time in U.S. history when government dollars weren't propping up the news business. This year, federal, state and local governments will spend well over $1 billion to support commercial news publishers through tax breaks, postal subsidies and the printing of public notices. And the amount used to be much higher. After backing the news industry for more than 200 years, the government should assess how it can be most helpful now, when the future of news and information is so uncertain. As it debates possible forms of support, the government should consider these principles: First and foremost, do no harm. A cycle of powerful innovation is under way. To the extent possible, government should ! avoid retarding the emergence of new models of newsgathering. Second, the government should help promote innovation, as it did when the Department of Defense funded the research that created the Internet or when NASA funded the creation of satellites that made cable television and direct TV possible. Third, for commercial media, government-supported mechanisms that are content neutral -- such as copyright protections, postal subsidies and taxes -- are preferable to those that call upon the government to fund specific news outlets, publications or programs. However policymakers proceed, they should do so based on facts rather than myth. The government has always supported the commercial news business. It does so today; and unless the government takes affirmative action, the level of support is almost certain to decline at this important time in the history of journalism.
http://www.mediaite.com/print/ap-free-will-cost-us-all/
“AP Free” Will Cost Us All
Attention readers of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune or any of the Tribune Co.’s dozen other publications: something is missing from your paper this week. The Tribune Co. is struggling. Struggling to keep readership up, costs down, and its news empire afloat. So this week, as an experiment, they taking a week-long break from the Associated Press. (To understand the complexity of this decision, let me point out that I read about this on the Chicago Tribune website – in an AP story.)
Rupert Murdoch is trying to remove News Corp sites from Google and turn them into pay sites. link with interview:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/11/09/rupert-murdoch-to-remove-news-corp-sites-from-google-institute/
FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-150467.html
More on Cell Phone eaves dropping:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/remotely_eavesd_1.html
Other links regarding cell phone monitoring:
http://www.converanet.com/information-technology/blog/monitoring-cell-phone-and-internet-use-after-911
http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?s=9346833
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/1-26-2006-87410.asp
Apropos of today's conversation on privacy:
Peek inside a file that Google has on you
A new Google service dubbed Dashboard gives you a concise overview of the data associated with your Google Account. It’s part of Google’s new initiative to give users greater control over their privacy and content.
The future of print media?
Pat Bagley, a cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune, voices his ideas. http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/2269/tumblrks0w6pyszb1qz7fh0.png
"31 years ago, in 1978, the television program 60 Minutes put on an episode about the awful threat of "video piracy" to the movie industry. Featuring the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the episode focused on how the VCR was going to destroy the movie business because anyone could copy and watch a movie in the privacy of their own home... [snip]"
Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell
"Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success.... [snip]"
Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter
Last August, the people who putatively run Twitter — the small crew that three years ago launched the world’s fastest-growing communications medium — announced a relatively minor change in the way the site functions. The tweak would have a small effect on retweeting, the convention by which Twitter users repost someone else’s informative or amusing message to their own Twitter followers.... [snip]
Perfectly Accurate Pie Chart:
COMCAST CHALLENGES BITTORRENT DECISION [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
In a filing at the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington (DC) Comcast says the Federal Communications Commission's BitTorrent decision was hardly modest (as the FCC claims), was done without the requisite notice, and was unenforceable. Comcast was responding to the FCC's argument in its brief to the court last month that it had the authority to take action against Comcast for "covertly interfering" with BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic in violation of Internet openness principles -- and doing so in an adjudicatory proceeding rather than a rulemaking. Comcast argues that the FCC violated "basic rules of fair notice" because the conduct it targeted--reducing peer-to-peer traffic on the network--did not violate any FCC rules. "[T]he unenforceability of the Policy Statement has now been confirmed by the initiation of a rulemaking to establish the Policy Statement (and two new principles, including non-discrimination) as enforceable regulations," said Comcast in its brief. ! Comcast also argues that the FCC's invocation of "virtually the entire Communications Act" for its authority is a regulatory theory that "would free the agency of any meaningful statutory limits on its power, restrict Congress' role to prohibiting agency action rather than, as present law establishes, authorizing such action."
85% of Mac users also own a PC
The NPD Group has released some interesting data regarding a survey of platform penetration in U.S. homes. In 2008 it was estimated that 9% of households in the U.S. that own a computer have an Apple computer. In 2009 this statistic rose to about 12%, however, 85% of the 12% also own at least one more computer that is a PC.
Facebook: Holidays Make People Happy, Death Makes Them Sad
Want to know how the US is feeling on any given day? Facebook is now attempting to tell you, through what it calls the Gross National Happiness Index. The prototype application analyzes status updates to determine the collective mood of the social network’s 300+ million users. Facebook writes in a blog post, “examples of positive or happy words include “happy,” “yay” and “awesome,” while negative, or unhappy words, include “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic.”
EARN YOUR PLUG ON THE NEW JAY LENO SHOW
[SOURCE: Hulu/NBC]
The new Jay Leno Show is aired on NBC (GE) and this particular episode he has guest Julia Louis-Dreyfous, actor of Elaine Benes on Seinfield. When Julia Louis-Dreyfous wants to show a clip from her new series "The New Adventures of Old Chrstine" which is on CBS (Viacom), he makes her 'earn her plug' in order to get airtime on the rival network.
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, "An occasional webcomic detailing the adventures of Babbage and Lovelace. Much of the dialogue and ideas taken from Babbage's autobiography and Lovelace's letters, thereby proving that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. The artist is an animator and it shows in the splendid life and expression of the artwork."
INTERNET SPEEDS ARE OFTEN SLOWER THAN WHAT CONSUMERS PAY FOR, FCC FINDS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
According to Federal Communications Commission National broadband Plan staff, actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by as much as 50% to 80%. So more than half the time, and sometimes as much as eight out of ten times, consumers are paying for slower Internet access speed than they signed up for. Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst at Consumers Union, says he's heard many such complaints from users and has pushed for the Federal Trade Commission to take up a review under truth in advertising laws. A spokeswoman at the FTC said the agency doesn't publicly disclose all of its investigations. "This speaks to consumer empowerment. And if you are advertising one speed but delivering another, that takes power away," Kelsey said. "Consumers can't make accurate decisions based on quality of service from one provider off another."
FACEBOOK'S ONLINE POLL CROSSES THE LINE
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Not content with more conventional ways of expressing disapproval, an unidentified Facebook user recently posted a poll asking whether President Obama should be assassinated. The poll was outrageous, and Facebook forced its removal even before the Secret Service called. The larger questions raised by the incident, however, are how much control companies should exert over the use of the megaphones they provide online, and how much information social networks expose about the people who use them. Facebook gives developers the ability to collect a stunning amount of information about the people who use their applications. Unless they're savvy enough to change their privacy settings, users not only automatically reveal the personal data they've entered into their Facebook profiles, they also disclose similar information from their friends' profiles. Those disclosures and connections could prove a gold mine to investigators, exposing people to scrutiny simply becaus! e a friend gave the wrong answer on the wrong Facebook poll. Before that happens, Facebook should do a better job of teaching users how to guard their privacy against the risks posed even by seemingly innocuous applications.
Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking
About two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers — and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley.
[SOURCE: Forbes, AUTHOR: Tim O'Reilly, Jennifer Pahlka]
[Commentary] Web Squared is less a new direction than an exploration of what becomes possible when the building blocks of Web 2.0 (such as participation, collective intelligence and so on) increase by orders of magnitude. There's also a qualitative change happening as the Web becomes more closely integrated with the real world via sensor-based smart phone applications. Web Squared is another way of saying "Web meets World." The first generation of Web 2.0 applications harnessed the collective intelligence of users typing on keyboards. Whether it was links and clicks (Google), articles and edits of shared knowledge (Wikipedia) or votes (Digg), the application was driven by explicit human actions. Five years in, collective intelligence applications are increasingly driven by cascades of sensor data being thrown off by devices, often without explicit human intervention. Today's smartphones contain microphones and cameras, as well as motion, proximity, location, and direction se! nsors. They have their own eyes, ears, and sense of touch. Revolutionary new applications connect those senses to cloud databases and programs running on massive server farms. Where the Web Squared world gets really interesting, though, is when applications use all the senses of a device, coordinating them much like the human brain coordinates our senses, to draw conclusions that would be difficult with one sense alone.
By blocking Google Voice calls to certain rural areas, AT&T has lodged complaint that Google violates carrier rules and net neutrality principles...."We urge the Commission to level the playing field and order Google to play by the same rules as its competitors," SVP Robert W. Quinn, Jr. urged the Federal Communications Commission in a letter sent Friday.
Google has admitted to blocking calls in rural areas, but argues this was in the interest of "[providing] consumers with free or low-cost access to as many advanced communications features as possible."
THE FCC'S HEAVY HAND
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Last week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski failed to convincingly answer the most important Network Neutrality question of all: Is this intervention necessary? Chairman Genachowski offered two proposals to combat alleged ISP misconduct. One should be embraced, the other shelved. Chairman Genachowski claims that the FCC "will do as much as we need to do, and no more, to ensure that the Internet remains an unfettered platform for competition, creativity and entrepreneurial activity." He will advance this goal by insisting on transparency; he will jeopardize it -- and stifle further investments by ISPs -- with attempts to micromanage what has been a vibrant and well-functioning marketplace.
WHAT NETWORK NEUTRALITY IS REALLY ABOUT
[SOURCE: DSLReports.com, AUTHOR: Karl Bode]
[Commentary] If you've paid attention, you know the modern "network neutrality" debate took off in 2005, when then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre proudly, though dumbly, proclaimed that Google got a "free ride" on his network. According to Ed, this unfairness could only be rectified by charging companies who already pay for bandwidth money to ensure their traffic reaches AT&T consumers quickly. Such a bizarre statement obviously resulted in fear that phone companies planned to act as trolls under the metaphorical Internet bridge, grumpily extorting passers by. That created a desire by content companies and consumers for laws that would prevent this from happening. The entire concept of network neutrality is really very simple. It was born out of phone company executive greed, and remains driven by legitimate fear of market abuses by companies with a long history of them.
DO YOU THINK BANDWITH GROWS ON TREES?
User-generated content may have changed the Internet, but sites like YouTube are suffocating under the costs of storing it.
[SOURCE: Slate.com, AUTHOR: Farhad Manjoo]
This article is from April 2009. It discusses the costs associated with YouTube, and the dynamics behind advertising dollars. User-generated content is expensive to store and the videos with the most clicks, that cost the most, often contain subject matter advertisers are not willing to pay for. "YouTube sells ads on fewer than 10 percent of its videos." "According a recent report by analysts at the financial-services company Credit Suisse, Google will lose $470 million on the video-sharing site this year alone."
FCC 'NET NEUTRALITY' RULES EXPECTED TO ADVANCE ON VOTE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
Apparently, the Federal Communications Commission's proposal of new rules to prevent companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deliberately blocking or slowing certain Web traffic is expected to advance with three votes out of the five-member agency. The proposal, to be announced Monday by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, will include an additional guideline for carriers that they make public the way they manage traffic on their network. The additional guideline would be a "sixth principle" to four existing guidelines adopted in 2005 on Internet network operations. A fifth principle is expected to be announced by Genachowski on Monday during a speech at the Brookings Institute that would prohibit the discrimination of applications and services on telecommunications, cable and wireless Internet networks. Chairman Genachowski will be joined by fellow Commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn in launching the rulemaking proceeding in October.
http://benton.org/node/28031
QWERTY keyboard alternative
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard
Taming Your Digital Distractions
Is there any human invention more duplicitous than the personal computer? These machines were manufactured and initially marketed as devices to help us at work. We were told they would perform amazing feats of office derring-do — adding up rows of numbers effortlessly, turning our musings into beautiful magazine-quality documents, and letting us collaborate with one another across continents.
Boy, that turned out well, didn’t it?
The PC is becoming the new TV
Hierarchy of Digital Distractions
Media-morphosis: How the Internet Will Devour, Transform, or Destroy Your Favorite Medium
"In this report, we will take a closer look at the "media-morphosis" taking place across traditional media -- and what that tells us about the future." By novelist and BoingBoing editor, Cory Doctorow.
"District 9 (Part One): Can a Bench Be a Transmedia Extension?"
Transmedia branding, film, media institutions (H. Jenkins)
District 9 (Part Two): Out of Afrofuturism?
Race, identity, film, representation, science fiction (H. Jenkins)
Obama's FCC to enforce 'net neutrality'
The Obama administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads.
"We can't be neutral on net neutrality"
"Net neutrality is what every Internet user takes for granted when they go online," said Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on communications issues...."It simply means there are no gatekeepers. Any consumer can access any content without discrimination by the network owner."
The Good Enough (Tech) Revolution
Low end, low quality tech market is booming. Case in point, the Flip digital video camera. (Wired)
Facebook Exodus
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever.
.... and maybe this is why: Don't Let Facebook Ruin Your Relationships or this, 25 Things I Hate About Facebook, but not everyone hates FB, Facebook Song
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